Putting on a Plaid!

[Orvis]

I agree with others here about the demonstrator fellow's weapon handling safety skills - he definitely needs some instruction to improve (I speak as somebody who is 70 and has been shooting since before I was 12), whether he ever handles real ammunition or not. The safety rules are the same regardless. As far as dropping swords and dirks point first into the soil, I learned long ago that it's a good way to get rust (from moist soil) and a permanent dark spot on the blade at the point. Also, when the demonstrator was showing us his plaid (laid out on the ground), it appeared to be a six-yard plaid, which IMHO is about two yards too long. IMHO, those Highlanders on the lower end of the economic scale probably couldn't afford more than a three yard plaid - I recall that the 97th Highland Regiment (in the 1790s) was issuing ORs only three yards of regimental tartan for their little kilts, which was considered perfectly adequate. As for the rest of the demonstrator's kit, well most of us Highland reenactors want the full panoply and dress as the Highland gentry would have had - in my 1745 Jacobite reenacting group, I don't see a lot of men who willingly want to dress as ghillies or poor men so they can show off their kit.