… I went with a friend to the Edinburgh Tattoo. It’s a wonderful, gigantic mass of Scottish pipes and drummers, with bands from around the world marching back and forth in formation, skirling the pipes and percussing the drums. As a former drum major and a Scot-ophile, I thought it was just wonderful!
I highly recommend attending if you’re in Scotland in the summertime.)
Massed pipes and drums at the Edinburgh Tattoo. |
I sat through the performance with a knowledgeable friend from Edinburgh who was telling me about all of the units and brigades as they marched past. “That’s the Black Watch…and this group is wearing the tartan of Clan Campbell…” He could tell me huge amounts of the history of each band just from the appearance of the plaid pattern of their kilts, the shape of their hats, and the particular badges they were wearing.
It made me feel very much an outsider, I just didn’t recognize anything. That is, until the Regimental Band and Pipes from the Citadel (a military college in South Carolina) came onto the field, dressed in Confederate gray uniforms (although I don’t think the Confederacy had an official plaid pattern, nonetheless…).
Suddenly, I knew a GREAT deal about the band that was parading before us–and our mentorship roles were reversed. When those uniforms marched past, I could tell my friend a lot about the history of the uniform, what the stripes on the arms meant, and what battles were fought–the entire history of Confederate military garb.
That evening I realized how much history and knowledge is carried along in the dress, the badges, the hats, and the patterns that we wear.
This motivates today’s Challenges.
Hats are a very common sign of place and station in society. Here are three hats to identify. Can you figure them out?
1. Once upon a time, everyone wore hats. But in this famous movie, what kind of hat is being worn by the man on the far left? What’s the name of that hat? And what kind of person would wear such a thing?
2. Hats vary a LOT from place to place. Can you figure out the name of this hat? Where would this hat wearer be from?
Closeup of this kind of hat… |
Trust me, there’s no lat/long information here, and the pineapple is just a distraction. |
3. What’s the name for the kind of badge shown below? What kind of job does a person wearing these shoulder badges have? (Hint: Even though this is an archival photo, people with this job STILL wear these badges today.)
4. The pattern of plaid tells you a lot about the place where the wearer (or his military outfit) is from, and with it comes a whole lot of history. What region of the world is THIS kind of cloth from?
As always, let us know HOW you found out the answers.
It’s okay to say FMOK–“From My Own Knowledge”–if you know, say so! But if you had to search for it (like I did!), tell us how you did it.