Kilts at Swanage Folk Festival

[BEEDEE]

I used to live in Lytchett Matravers (1976 - 1980). Don't recall the Swanage Folk Festival then - is it new? Would love to see pictures.

Brian

[McClef]

Swanage is situated on the lovely Isle of Purbeck. Nice to hear of kilts reaching Dorset - I wonder what Thomas Hardy would have thought?

[Pleater]

Sorry, I never thought to take a camera - I had to get my morris kit together, with drum and sticks, my song books, and my set of recorders - that is wind instruments, not sound recorders.

Swanage is a lovely place - the harbour, its protecting cliffs, the small pleasure craft on the moorings, and the people enjoying the warmth of the water, as it is a sun trap, all combine to make one think of somewhere further South, at least when the sun is shining.

The bus to Swanage still goes across on the ferry, the folk festival is a fairly recent arrival, but I don't think that the Cornish black kilt is really impinging on the local consciousness. Cornwall is still regarded as a place apart, to some extent. Even with the improved road travel is is somehow still an Attic province. The locals would certainly not consider themselves associated with the Cornish folk.

The people wearing the black kilts would, I suspect, have been wearing black trousers as everyday garments, so the kilt material would be close to what they normally wore.

Whilst I was at the kilt selling tent people were showing great interest in the kilts, the black ones in particular, and commenting on them, their weight - and when the man was serving elsewhere, him - I assumed that the kilt was his only garment - and envying him the freedom of the sun and air.

At the time, mid afternoon, there was not a cloud in the sky and just a breath of wind, enough to keep the kite sellers demonstration models in the air - there was a good one of a 'Red Barron' Fokker triplane.

The kilt seller had obviously been working on his tan for a good long time.

[GMan]

Love it!!