To Kilt pin or not to Kilt pin that is the question?

[OC Richard]

Well let me put your mind not at rest, about wearing kilt-pins.

Yes you can have an individual, or two, or three, say they've worn kilt pins for many years with no problems.

It's what they call anecdotal evidence. With drugs it's "I took some ______ and my problem went away". The medical field doesn't take anecdotal evidence seriously, what they want are long-term studies with a large number of participants so as to get statistically valid data.

I don't think such a study about kilt pin wearing has ever been conducted or ever will be conducted, but perhaps the closest thing to it is something I've done several times over the years, and that's look through a pile of kilts owned by a pipe band.

A pipe band will typically own 30 to 50 kilts, and a pipe band will typically wear the same tartan for many years, for decades, sometimes for a half-century or more.

So, when you examine a band's set of kilts you're seeing a large number of kilts, many of them 20 or 30 years old or more, kilts which have been worn by many different people over a long period of time. You're seeing, cumulatively, hundreds of years of kiltwearing by hundreds of different individuals.

A band set of kilts of a band that has always worn kilt pins is entirely different from a band set of kilts of a band that has not. The latter pile of kilts will be in pretty good condition. Yes there are pleats which have started to come open here and there, some belt loops which have come loose, some buckles missing here or there, some stains.

If the band has always worn kilt pins what you see is kilt after kilt with worn fuzzy places where the kilt pins go, and that's the best ones. Many have ragged holes where the kilt pins go. Many have actual rips and tears, the worst large enough to put your hand through. In a pile of 40 kilts you might not find a single one that's not damaged where the kilt pin goes.

Yes I realise that bands are harder or their kilts than other kiltwearers. One culprit are the heavy drums which have metal bits sticking out all over. When a drummer unhooks his drum to set it on the ground oftentimes a metal bit catches the kilt pin and there's a little rip.

Pipers too, but for a different reason: pipers often have to march about in crowded rooms while playing. Both hands are on the chanter, the piper is trying to pipe while shoving his way between close-packed chairs... and rip! a kilt pin catches on a chair. It happens all the time.

When Drum Majors are twirling their mace I've seen the chains on a mace catch on the kilt-pin. Also the chains on the little knife and fork on the dirk catch on the kilt pin, fine unless something yanks on the dirk, like the mace. (At a show once our Drum Major's mace, while being twirled, struck his dirk so hard that the stone from the little fork went flying into the audience, never to be seen again.)

So yes back in the 70s and 80s I would wear a kilt pin. Heck, for years I wore two! But I've not worn one for many years now. Getting a $600 kilt and poking holes in it is sort of like buying an $80,000 car and punching holes in the sheet metal with an ice pick. No thanks.