Cheap PV kilt - probably not.

[Nemuragh]

I had never worn a kilt although my cousins, with whom I lived for a short time in my childhood, all used to wear them to church on Sunday (and to Boy Scouts, as I remember). My father gave his only kilt away before I was born. After WW2 ended and he was demobbed, he gave the kilt to his great army friend a Canadian of Scottish extraction who lived in Vancouver. Sadly, they never met again; he must have been a good friend to be given my dad’s only, presumably expensive, kilt! In any case, what I am trying to say is that there wasn’t a great tradition of kilt wearing in my family.

At some point, I discovered what the original kilt was and how it was worn and I thought that if ever I ‘needed’ to wear a kilt that was what I would wear and resolved that one day I ought to try it. I met a guy who was wearing one when I went to a fiddling weekend school with Charlie Mckerron at the Gaelic College at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. It was an impressive garment. This lad was learning to speak Gaelic by almost total immersion for (I think) 6 months; he called his kilt a “Feileadh”, the Feileadh Mòr.

Recently, someone exclaimed their disbelief that I had never worn a kilt so I thought to myself it was time to try the Feileadh but after reading up on it, I decided that it was too unwieldy for me to the extent that I was unlikely to ever wear it except once to try it out.

However, I had become intrigued by the ordinary, conventional kilt and resolved to buy a relatively cheap PV kilt to find out if I liked it. I have bought one but, although it has some admirable qualities, I don’t think it fits me very well and I don’t think I will ever wear it - but that’s another story.

John