Quote Originally Posted by Bjørn View Post
I like to think its a show of wealth. I've seen photos of men from the American "old west" that have their pistol and Bowie knife in the same position. Displaying one's prized possessions front and center like that is a statement. In kind of the same way an oversized opulent codpiece was.
Wearing a sporran in the front and center position, I feel, came about out of practicality. wearing a pouch on your hip tends to get in the way of your arms, if its heavy loads your body in an unbalanced way. Another thing to note is that when a pouch is on your hip you can't really look into it without contorting your body or removing the pouch. A centrally located sporran solves all of that. Loading the hips uniformly, not really in the way of anything, gives a view into it to find the contents. Just my two cents as a guy that's worn a lot of things on his belt.
I'm definitely on board with the "show of wealth" explanation for the weaponry. I just can't see having those long items jabbing into the front of your thighs (or worse) all the time.

The sporran's a different matter. I find that managing a hip pouch becomes second nature when you do it habitually, rather like managing all that fabric in a great kilt. As (I think) Anne the Pleater noted, that fabric gets in the way when you're dealing with specific circumstances such as sitting in narrow armchairs - and so does a pouch - but otherwise they're not cumbersome. In combat, too, I suppose, and if your sporran served as your ammo pouch, you'd want it handy. (Admittedly, I can't speak with authority on the subject of combat.)

(I recall a few posts here where people have noted the circumstances when they've pushed a sporran off to the side under special circumstances. So I suppose it cuts both ways.)

All that said, I can see that it does make sense that a pouch might migrate to front-and-center. I can normally find everything in my pouch by touch (and medieval folk would have had a lot fewer items in the pouch - by the way, Jock Scot, sorry for hijacking the conversation). But I sometimes swing it around to the front to if I have to fumble in it. And if I have multiple things hanging from my belt, some of them (like a coin pouch) do end up around front. It's less vulnerable in front, as well (safer from pickpockets for one thing, although that reasoning may not apply to the circumsances Highlanders typically found themselves in).