Thank you

[OC Richard]

good morning.
the photo you posted is exactly like what i have minus the knobs on top of the cantle. i will keep researching.
thank you for your insight and expertise.
mark weston

You're welcome!

About the knobs, there's no significance to how many there are. This is due to the various older makers selling the same styles of cantles with no knobs, one knob, or three knobs at random.

There is an interesting tendency for traditional military sporrans to no knobs, sometimes with three knobs for the pipers, while throughout the 20th century there's been an increasing tendency for civilian sporrans to have one knob.

But this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, because earlier in the 20th century civilian sporrans with no knobs and three knobs weren't uncommon, and recently certain military sporrans have only one knob.

In any case your pattern with the lion, cross, and maple leaves would almost certainly have a Canadian connexion.

Thing is, there's been a ton of Canadian Scottish units over the years, including a number which haven't been around for over a century.

For a complete list (16 pages) see

The Uniforms & History of the Scottish Regiments

Major R. Money Barnes

No publication date but from internal evidence it was written just before the 1953 Coronation.

Regiments tend to use similar badges on their various accoutrements, which helps because finding images of all the various cap-badges is far far easier than trying to track down specific sporrans. (There are plenty of regimental sporrans which I know exist, but which not a single image can be found online or in my large book collection.)

As I mentioned the only Canadian regimental cap-badge I could find that had both lion and cross was the long-obsolete Cameron Highlanders of Canada badge.

But in Barnes there's two and a half pages of Canadian Scottish units that were disbanded long ago and finding all their badges might be impossible.

Another difficulty would be if that cantle was only worn by pipers. In a regiment of a thousand men there would only be, at most, a dozen pipers, in the old days. (The British Army only authorised 6 per battalion.)