The power of the kilt continues...

[AKScott]

Went to church klilted a couple days ago.

Young man marched up to me in the foyer after the service, maybe seven years old asked "is that a skirt?"

So I explained about telling a kilt apart from other skirts, how to tell if you are looking at menswear or ladies wear.

He mulled on that a moment or two, pointed at my sporran and asked, 'is that a purse?"

I said, no, not really. It is a sporran. It started out as a piece of armour {edit aparently this is incorrect} to wear while sword fighting and it turns out to be real handy with a pocket sewn into it.

We did a wee bit of fencing with "air swords" in the church lobby, in a discreet gentlemanly sort of way.

We got that over with and he asked about the pattern of my tartan.

I was just about halfway through the short version when he reared back and kicked me as hard as he could, smack in the sporran.

My dear friend (the young man's uncle) was mortified, but it didn't hurt a bit.

[Father Bill]

Rather sounds as if that last post might be moved to a thread called "The Power of the Sporran" Thank you, Lord, for body armour!

[CMcG]

<SNIP>
I was just about halfway through the short version when he reared back and kicked me as hard as he could, smack in the sporran.

My dear friend (the young man's uncle) was mortified, but it didn't hurt a bit.

Oh the temerity of children...

How did you respond to that?

[Chas]

Well, it's your own fault - you told him it was amour. He had to test it didn't he?

Regards

Chas

[McFarkus]

He was just checking to see if the sporran still protects you. Thanks be to God it does.

[Guinness>water]

I feel sorry for the next guy he encounters wearing pants and carrying a wallet!

[Ryan Ross]

Well, it's your own fault - you told him it was amour. He had to test it didn't he?

Regards

Chas

It blows my mind how often that blatant myth pops up. I really wish folks would stop spreading it around.

...would save me a lot of explanations at the tartan info table; people are forever asking questions about the sporran, and thinking along the same lines as the above propigated falshood.

...none the less, it turned out to be a good way to get the short man interested in Scottish dress, so that much is cool.

[Cowher]

What goes through the minds of children like that?!? Maybe it's because I don't have kids but I tend to think that my child would never do anything like that. Or they may do it ONCE. But then again it's because of moments like that I have no desire for children of my own.

[Dale Seago]

He mulled on that a moment or two, pointed at my sporran and asked, 'is that a purse?"

I said, no, not really. It is a sporran. It started out as a piece of armour to wear while sword fighting and it turns out to be real handy with a pocket sewn into it.

That's an interesting myth, and one which in all my years I'd never heard of until now.

I wonder if there may be some confusion with a codpiece, which was worn in the same general area?

The history of the armored codpiece is closely related to its counterpart in civilian male costume. From the mid-fourteenth century onward, male garments for the upper body had occasionally become so short as to almost reveal the crotch. In these times prior to the development of trousers, men wore leggings tied to their undergarment or a belt, and the crotch was hidden with a flap secured to the upper inside edge of each legging. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, this flap began to be padded and thus visually emphasized. As such, the codpiece remained commonplace in European male costume until the end of the sixteenth century. On armor, the codpiece as a separate piece of plate defense for the genitals appeared during the second decade of the sixteenth century and remained in use until about 1570. It was generally thickly padded on the inside and attached to the armor at the center of the lower edge of the skirt. While its early form was rather cuplike, it remained under the direct influence of civilian costume, and later examples are somewhat more pointed upward, similar in shape to a cashew nut.

(http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/afas16/hd_afas16.htm)

[AKScott]

It blows my mind how often that blatant myth pops up. I really wish folks would stop spreading it around.

I had never thought to question it, don't know where I read it first.

According to wikipedia today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporran

The sporran is descended from the medieval belt pouch, and is not descended from the Roman Balteus - groin armour.

Thanks Ryan.

EDIT: and simultaneously posting Dale.