Panache Answers the "Big Kilt Questions"

[Peter Crowe]

When people have seen me in my OD UK Original, usually the most common questions I am asked are if I am from Ireland or if I play the pipes. Scottish tends to be way down the list.

What you say does happen in North America, but when I speak with my accent (middle class Glaswegian Scots) folk here in the US more often than not ask me if I am Irish, which only proves that many people in the States can't tell the difference between a Scottish and an Irish accent. No one from the United Kingdom or Ireland would ask if my accent was Irish, they might not be able to place it as Central-Western Lowland Scots, but they would be in no doubt I am anything other than a Scot.

Therefore, if people have been exposed to kilts through Irish-American heritage, they might make the assumption that kilts originated in Ireland. In my experience people from Ireland do not make that claim, and all the evidence clearly points to Kilts originating with the Breacon Feile in Scotland from the later XVI century.