I am planning on going to the Highland Games on Grandfather Mountain (link) in North Carolina next July.  With this, added to my having wanted one for years, I will be buying, and subsequently wearing, a kilt.  (link to most likely supplier)

For the years that I’ve wanted one, I have thought of the ridicule that I will no doubt receive.  From the men, of course.  The women never seem to mind a man in a kilt.  QUITE the opposite, as I have seen.  Let me reiterate – QUITE the opposite.  But I can handle the words of some dumbass.  And if he decides to cross a physical line, I can handle that, too.  What I find interesting is that the opposition will likely come from a subset within the religious who would believe that a kilt (no doubt the mouth-breathing among them will call it a “skirt”) is inappropriate for a man.  Nevermind that the only men in their Bible that wore bifurcated leggings were the enemy.

Two things have turned me around from my hesitancy.  One was seeing the types of guys that wear one at the photo galleries at Utilikilts.  Notably, the below – Zakk Wylde, guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne.

Second is my very recent discovery of the band Albannach – if you have Winamp or another Shoutcast streamer, you can search for Albannach, and hear it for free.  It is amazing music.  One of the things modern humanity is less for is our abandonment of the Tribe. We have friends, acquaintances, family, cliques, etc. but few of us really have a tribe.  It is something very elemental, very visceral.  The music of our tribe should (and I believe, ultimately will) speak to us.  Very deeply, down to our core.  The music of Albannach is that – familial, fraternal, earthy.  Tribal.

So – who wants to be part of the Tribe?  Anyone want to don the pleats and tartans?  Anyone want to answer dozens of ladies asking, “so what do you wear under that?”

A Song For Kilts

How grand the human race would be
If every man would wear a kilt,
A flirt of Tartan finery,
Instead of trousers, custom built!
Nay, do not think I speak to joke:
(You know I’m not that kind of man),
I am convinced that all men-folk.
Should wear the costume of a Clan.

Imagine how it’s braw and clean
As in the wind it flutters free;
And so conducive to hygiene
In its sublime simplicity.
No fool fly-buttons to adjust,–
Wi’ shanks and maybe buttocks bare;
Oh chiels, just take my word on trust,
A bonny kilt’s the only wear.

‘Twill save a lot of siller too,
(And here a canny Scotsman speaks),
For one good kilt will wear you through
A half-a-dozen pairs of breeks.
And how it’s healthy in the breeze!
And how it swings with saucy tilt!
How lassies love athletic knees
Below the waggle of a kilt!

True, I just wear one in my mind,
Since sent to school by Celtic aunts,
When girls would flip it up behind,
Until I begged for lowland pants.
But now none dare do that to me,
And so I sing with lyric lilt,–
How happier the world would be
If every male would wear a kilt!

— Robert Service