Wearing a dirk casually

[Orvis]

It might be veering dangerously offtopic to comment on this (and yes my post will soon get onto the dirk thing) but as an American this intrigues me just as much as it does you.

I'm from West Virginia and the situation there is much like the situation Jock Scot describes in Britain: people who do sport hunting have the guns you use for that. The difference is that Jock Scot says a small percentage of the British population does sport hunting, while a large percentage of West Virginians do sport hunting, in particular deer hunting.

It goes to figure: West Virginia is vast tracts of dense forest teeming with millions of deer, and very few people! So you have your deer rifle and you go hunting in deer season. Seems like everyone has a deer rifle in their house. But your deer rifle is like your saw or hammer or drill- it's a tool for a specific function. It's not a collectable, it's not a doo-dad.

The stuff I hear all the time about "gun nuts" and people romanticizing guns etc comes from the imagination of outsiders and is foreign to my people. There are still many Appalachians who live off the land (they are Hunter-Gatherers, in truth) and to them hunting is survival.

This all being the case, I don't wear a dirk when I'm piping because there's no purpose for it.

As for why so many Americans, when they dress up in Scottish attire, wear historical or quasi-historical things like rough knit bonnets, Jacobite/pirate shirts, 18th century weaponry, leather bag-like sporrans, moccasins, and so forth, I can only guess that they link Scottishness with the time period in which most of our Scots arrived.

Like OC Richard, I don't care to violate the conditions set forth at the head of this page by discussing "why Americans feel the need to be armed." There are other web sites where one can go to get a sense of that, for better or worse. What I will discuss here is dirk-wearing and the propensity of some people at Scottish games (and Renn Fests, as well) to hang all the weapons upon themselves that they possibly can when wearing the kilt.

I wear 18th century style dirks with my 18th century kit because I'm a member of a reenactment group that portrays 1740s Jacobite Highlanders at Scottish games and similar events. In those days, nearly all Highlanders carried dirks of varying quality (depending, I suppose, on one's social class) and possibly a hideout knife (sgian achlais). When I'm portraying a Highland gentleman, I also carry a sword and a flintlock Scottish pistol. Highland reenactors also carry (depending on who they are portraying) Highland targes, Lochaber axes and flintlock muskets/bayonets. When I'm participating as a member of my reenactment group, I go armed as they would have back in the day. As I like to tell visiting moderns, the early 18th c. Highlands was kind of like Afghanistan - men usually were always armed, perhaps except when in their home environment, and even when not armed, weapons were close at hand. However, when appearing in modern Highland dress at other times, I do not carry weapons (and sometimes not even a sgian dhu). I see no need to do so, even were I wear full evening dress. In the USA, pipers and drummers are usually the only kilt-wearers that need to wear a dirk (as part of their uniform).

But when I attend Scottish games and Renn fests with my group, I see some kilt-wearing men who seem to think that one is not a true Scot unless they hang all possible edged weaponry on themselves. I recall seeing one fellow in modern Highland dress who not only wore a two-handed sword on his back and and a dirk, but also had a sgian dhu in his stocking and a kukri (in a brass scabbard, no less) hanging on his hip, as well as military ribbons and badges on his shirt. I was not impressed. I think the propensity to hang all these weapons upon oneself comes from the 19th c. portraits of Highland nobility and gentry (the portrait of "The Cock of the North" comes to mind), and modern people think they must do the same today. Some guys wear kilts or belted plaids (many times badly, in Braveheart style) with bearskin vests, pirate shirts, to-the-knee leather Native American-style boots, or whatever their interpretations of cuarans are. I think you get the idea and may have seen similar. IMHO, it's not like wearing modern Highland dress in a restrained and respectful manner (and I'm no kilt kop!). I expect to see it more at Renn fests than at Scottish games, but either way it's more like a dress-up costume parade. I have to admit that makes me cringe sometimes.

I will now climb down from my soapbox. Each must do as they will.