Highland regiments sporran chart

[OC Richard]

Dear OC Richard, I think the highlighted sporran is specific only to the drum major, another similar sporran with 3 tails is unique to the pipe-major, the rest SNCOs wore the standard badger head sporran.

It's a messy situation which I don't fully understand. Here's the two-tassel DM and three-tassel PM as you point out.



The Colour-Sergeant also wore two tassels



The messy part is that there was a second type of cantle as well. That boxy cantle at some point was replaced by this one, similar though not identical to the common cast-thistle cantle that's become ubiquitous for civilian horsehair sporrans.



What I don't know is if it's a 1st Battalion/2nd Battalion thing. As we know in the period immediately following the 1881 amalgamations the non-kilted Battalion of each pair would have to acquire the kit of the kilted Battalion.

But since both Battalions already had Pipes & Drums some items of pre-amalgamation kit continued to be worn. (The Seaforths never did put both Battalions' pipers in fully matching kit.)

So I don't know whether or not the boxy cantle and rounded cantle survived side-by-side in the two Battalions, but it can be seen that eventually the boxy cantle was discontinued and both Battalions ended up wearing the same rounded cantle.

In 20th century photos both the Pipe Major and Drum Major are seen wearing the same three-tassel rounded-top sporrans, however from the photos I've seen the white sporran only survived for these two positions, no longer worn by the Colour Sergeant and whatever other Senior Sergeants might have worn it in Victorian times.



(Note that the DM above's cantle is not the traditional Argylls pattern, but the common civilian pattern, which by the way was later adopted by certain other regimental pipers in modern times.)