Tartan Friday

From the comments on a previous post, we have this, from Michael Hare:

So what tartan do Episcopal clergy wear? Those of us who are of non-Highland connection would like to wear Clergy but the tartan makers refuse to make Clergy in kilt-weight.
Should we denounce them from the pulpit?!

Heavens, how should I know? How did I become the arbiter of clerical tartans? I’d suggest Michael that you direct the question to one of the many kilt emporia – they seem to be able to find family tartans for every American, Australian and Japanese who crosses their threshold. Surely they can rise to the challenge somehow.

This particular member of the Episcopal Clergy neither takes to the kilt nor wears trews. After all, is life not camp enough already?

I would direct this question to the Episcopal Bloggers of the North, but am struggling to think of whom they might be. Has the internet reached furth of Perth? It is odd really as every Tom, Dick and Agnes in the Diocese of Argyll has had a blog since the auld king sailed over the water, but bloggers from Aberdeen or Moray seem to be thin on the ground. Perhaps it is because of the new directive from the SNP “government” that all blogging from the far North has to be in the Gaelic and that from Aberdeen in the Doric.

Oh, how we struggle with questions of Scottish identity. I remember in the days when our sometime American mentor, Alice Mann was welcome in our company, she challenged the SEC about the Scottish/English question and told us we needed to get our heads in order and work out what we really thought about it. Hasn’t happened yet.

When I was sitting drinking tea in Edinburgh with Good Company on Wednesday afternoon, he innocently asked me, “So, how many of your bishops are Scots then?” He was thus subject to a diatribe about how the Welsh one was a Scot, the Scots one was English, the new one was a Scot and was certainly from Lincolnshire and the Irish one was, well, in Ireland. Before long, I was waxing lyrical about how Bonnie Prince Charlie’s mistress came from my own congregation, about the keeping of the memorial of Charles the Martyr and about the terror of the Penal Laws. After the first half an hour of this, Good Company smiled and said that he had never realised how complicated it all was. I stifled a cry of “And let me tell you what Glencoe was really about” and ordered another pot of tea.

English Breakfast, naturally.

Kilt Monday?

Can anyone tell me who designated Monday as Kilt Monday? Was it the spiritual residue of so many bekilted pipers marching about on Glasgow Green in the rain over the weekend?

Three kilt incidents – all on Monday. I just don’t get it.

  • Firstly, a long discussion after Morning Prayer which included the sentiment that the Provost would look good in the kilt. This sentiment did not come from the Provost. (Given the recent rather dramatic weight loss, I’m delighted to report that the question, “Does my bum look big in this?” has become merely rhetorical).
  • Then we get Fr Madpriest’s diatribe against kilt wearing going on all through the day. It began with a post entitled Perversion Too Far and continued in other places and on other Anglican blogs. (See, we don’t always focus on the Usual Topic). This even caused Rev Mother Ruth and I to get into a rare public spat in the comments on his post. You have to scroll through quite a lot to get to the spat. (This all reminded me a little of the Advent Wreath Controversy which raged here for a time).
  • Then I went to Compline in the evening. It was rather lovely striking a pose in a gloomy corner. Feeling vaguely moody and thoughtful in company at the end of a long day is a special treat you should try if you have never discovered it. Just when I thought that Kilt Monday was over, the Cantor came over and asked me whether or not I had decided to take to the kilt yet. She makes them and was wanting to know whether I had been convinced of the idea yet or not.

What was all this about? I don’t believe for a moment in cosmic tartan reordering, so what caused all this? Is it because the SNP have a whiff of power? I knew it was a bad idea letting them appear to get their hands on power.