Saint Patrick’s Day, the only day each year I wear my saffron kilt. Although sometimes I get the question wether I’m Irish even if I’m wearing a kilt in a — to me clearly — Scottish tartan, most people associate any kilt with Scotland, and rightly so.
But there certainly is such a thing as an Irish kilt, and saffron kilts have been around as an expression of Irish nationality for over a hundred years!
The ancient Irish actually wore the léine, a linen tunic with voluminous sleeves and a hemline reaching the knees or higher, often dyed with saffron, which turned out quite yellow on linen. When there was a revival of Gaelic nationalism in the nineteenth century, the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association — two major nationalist organisations, both concerned with Irish identity — wanted a ‘costume’ or national form of dress. The léine was considered to be too difficult to be updated to the fashions of the day, so they adopted the garment of their Gaelic cousins in Scotland: the kilt, dyed either green or saffron. Used on wool, the saffron dye gave it a bit more of an orange-brownish colour, the one we associate today with saffron kilts.
The school uniform of St. Enda’s School for Boys (1908) included the saffron kilt.
Nowadays the saffron kilt is mainly worn by pipers of Irish regiments, often without a sporran.
Another year, another Saint Patrick’s Day, so enjoy it! 🙂
Actor Euan McGregor shot at Crieff Highland Gathering 2001 where he was Games Chieftain
Has Ewan McGregor ever been games chieftain at — or even just attended — the Lochearnhead Highland Games? After all, those are the ‘home’ games for clan Gregor! ?
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If you want to read about this trip from start to finish, instead of in reverse order, click here!
Our last day in London, our last day of visits to museums, bars and breweries. We started our day checking out the Old Spitalfields Market, having a pulled pork bagel for breakfast, followed by a last coffee at Nude Espresso. After the lines at Dennis Severs’ House turned out to be a little too long, we went to the Guildhall Art Gallery, mostly to check out the remains of the Roman amphitheater, underneath the current building. In the afternoon we visited one last brewery — Anspach & Hobday — and the last BrewDog bar of our trip — BrewDog Soho. The last underground voyage took a bit longer than foreseen, when there were some problems on the direct line to St Pancras. We made it to our Eurostar well in time in the end, thus concluding this beer-filled London trip.
Lunch at Herman Ze German, to prepare us for another beer-filled afternoon. We went to Partizan Brewing on the Bermondsey Beer Mile, then headed north for the Beavertown brewery.
Nearby we planned to go to a meet-the-brewer event for just a couple of beers, but we ended up going full-on hipster by tasting a few more at Affinity Brew’s tiny container brewery!
Today’s dinner: fish ‘n’ chips at Poppies.
After a chilly breakfast at Cafe 1001, and a hot macchiato at Exmouth Coffee, we headed to the Tower of London. The first time we visited London, we were just too late to get access to the Tower, so we were looking forward to be ably to actually visit it this time.
Apparently a cold day in February is an excellent day to avoid queues: there weren’t any!
