Brief Introduction

[Standard]

Welcome to the Rabble

[figheadair]

Just curious, do you have a kilt in the Edinburgh tartan?

I know the answer, pick me please.

[sgian]

Welcome, brother..!

From the clues you have given I suspect your initials are M.F-L. and that you are, professionally speaking, rather partial to a cuppa. And you very kindly sent me a copy of your superb book.

Am I wrong?

My guess about records for identifying the recipient of the ivory sgian would most likely now be at Balmoral or perhaps Windsor. If a Victorian item, it could well be that clues can be found in the Queen's own journals - I have come across vague and incidental notes she made of this kind, along the lines of 'Went driving with Lady Churchill to Glen Muick, Brown and Grant on the box. It rained. Grant's brother was given a new knife...'

If only she had gone into greater detail, so many historians' work now would be much easier!

Incidentally, we all go incognito here, hiding behind our noms-de-plume, but mine is a play on my name which you should work out easily..!

Good to hear from you and yes I suspect I also know as to who you are. Trust all well with you and yours. Whilst I agree the place to look would probably be in Windsor Victoria`s diary would be to early. I will continue to research and if I am lucky perhaps I will capture a picture of someone wearing it some time. Happy Easter and stay safe.

[jsrnephdoc]

Good Afternoon from a very wet Edinburgh where I live.

I would be most interested to hear from anyone who has any related Balmoral Highlanders uniforms or Sgian Dubhs which they consider to be rare. As a matter of interest i have three Balmoral Highlanders S/D`s made by William Robb one of which is Ivory. I have yet to ascertain who the ivory piece was made for as there appears to be no records available. Can anyone help?

I'll be posting my newbie greeting as soon as I've read a few of the others. It will include a photo of what I often use as a substitute for a Sgian Dubs, because I live in Bozeman, home of Montana State University and it's celebrated Paleontology Program and on-campus "Museum of the Rockies," from which a former Chairman of the Department of Paleontology ventured out to teach Steven Spielberg about dinosaurs before the filming of the Jurassic Park movie series.

[jsrnephdoc]

I'm a 77 yo retired Nephrologist living in Bozeman, MT. My exposure to Celtic culture began even before I learned to speak. My mom (a high school British Literature and French language teacher) and my dad (an Episcopalian priest) NEVER addressed each other by their given names. One was "Jo," the other "Jo Jo," interchangeably, Neither I nor my 2 siblings ever questioned the origin of those nicknames (which bore NO relationship to their formal names whatsoever), until decades later (and more than a decade after the death of my dad, who brought Scottish culture into our home), following my mom's death. We three sibs gathered from widely dispersed residences in the U.S. at their retirement cottage sitting on a beautiful wooded lake about 40 miles south of Lake Superior. My sister planned my mom's attire (her stoplight red Robertson kilt and matching waistcoat) for viewing by friends at the mortuary before her funeral. Imagine my sister's dismay when she reviewed the mortician's handiwork and discovered Mom lying with THE PLEATS IN FRONT)!. None of us had the temerity to demand that the kilt be reversed.

A day or two before her Requiem Eucharist in the cathedral (featuring a piper and "Amazing Grace," of course), we three were reminiscing about their lives (more than nine decades for my mom), and I pulled a volume of Bobby Burns verse from my previously departed dad's bookcase. Thumbing through it idly, I discovered and read John Anderson my Jo, memorized it instantly, explored its own history, and discovered that I cannot read or recite it without blubbering a bit. It was my honor to do so in public just under 3 months ago, at my very FIRST Burns Night Supper.

By the time we were kindergarteners, we each had some "stoplight red" Robertson Red tartan tidbits (ties, scarves), plus trinkets (clan crest blazer badges, cufflinks, etc. When she was in high school, my sister acquired her first kilt, which I borrowed (she says "stole" from her—she claims I never returned it—to wear in my College's Pipes and Drums Corps (I managed to learn 3 songs, but could never play them unless I plugged the drones with wine corks to keep the bag inflated).

I didn't start wearing the kilt until more than a decade after my mom's death, 2 decades after my dad's. I'd inherited his Argyll and Prince Charlie Jackets (which were much too large for me), but in 2015 I had a Robertson Ancient Hunting kilt made for me by Wm Glen and Sons in San Francisco (actually, they did the measurements, and the tailoring was done by unknown forces in Scotland). I found a seamstress in Santa Rosa who was able to downsize Dad's jackets, acquired a formal sporran, kilt hose, pins and brooches, and wore the outfit perhaps less than a dozen times before it and everything else I owned were consumed in the October 2017 "Tubbs" California wildfire.

Rebuilding our home took FOUR YEARS, and all the homeowner's insurance companies ceased paying "temporary living expenses" after two, so we were forced to retire and move from "high rent district" California, to Montana, where my wife's son had studied Architecture after finishing his active duty with the US Marine Corps (AND having returned to MT himself from Santa Rosa for similar reasons). Even before we retreated from Sonoma County, however, Celtic items (a new dress sporran, a mounted-for-wall-display clan crest, a Sgian Dubh, etc had begun appearing on the front porch of our temporary fire-refuge residence. We suspected that my world-traveler son was the source of these, but when he'd appear or call (the latter from varying continents and countries I could guess only if caller ID information accompanied the call) he'd neither confirm nor deny the latest deposits.

Once we were temporarily settled in a rental home in Montana, my son called me (I think he was then in Greece) and asked for my "measurements," including a tell-tale HIP CIRCUMFERENCE. So it came as a bit less than a surprise when, just before Christmas, a lovely dark gray tweed kilt jacket appeared enclosed in a shipping carton from Kinloch Anderson in Edinburgh. About two months later, another arrived, this one from USA Kilts, in Pennsylvania, with a Robertson Ancient Hunting kilt and flashes inside. I've never looked back, and I'm now up to 4 kilts that I can pair with one of 3 newly purchased jackets (the Prince Charlie acquired used at a Montana Celtic Games assembly just as the pandemic was waning).

This past summer, my sister (the initial kilt donor), my man of mystery son, and I spent 10 days together in Scotland. We drove a HUGE suv along the paved sheep's path roads, blew out a tire on a wooded NARROW road where even the "Passing Places" wouldn't accommodate two Minis without trouble (losing almost a day because of that), but reveled in tours and tastings (Glenlivit distillery, Culloden, the Isle of Skye (with one night in an actual castle in Glencoe), the Locharron Mill and retail outlet in Selkirk, and of course Edinburgh, where we visited Kinloch Anderson, toured the Royal Yacht Britannia (fascinating), reveled in a performance of the Royal Military Tattoo on the Castle Esplanade, and toured the Royal Castle just across the street from the Scottish Parliament.

Not all my Celtic dreams are fulfilled yet, however. My sister has used remnant fabric to fashion TWO separate Robertson tartan sashes for my spouse, and I've purchased a lovely "celtic knot" brooch for it for her, but she's yet to appear in public in either. I'm still working on that, or getting her to wear a ladies kilt, kilt skirt, or shirt dress. <scotlandshop.com> has some lovely examples that I've not seen elsewhere.

Of course, Bozeman and the Highlands share some ancestry that goes back more than 65 MILLION years, punctuated by the mass extinction caused by the celestial visitor deposited then on Mexico's gulf coast. As a tribute to that shared heritage, whenever i'm reasonably confident it won't offend anyone, I tuck a "substitute" sgian dubh into my sock:

(the one on the right is actually a plastic ball-point pen purchased from the Museum Shop at the Museum of the Rockies). And I mistakenly added it to my very first message, to the person who joined just before me (oops!)