Ok, so everything you need to know about Glasgow you will know from this statue.
This, my friends, is the Duke of Wellington statue in Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow and yes, he has a traffic cone on his head.
Now let me tell you: I have lived in Glasgow for 18 and a half years and not once have i seen this man without a cone on his head.
It has been removed so many times by the council, but somehow it always seems to get back up there. And its not a small statue, its pretty fucking big, so whoever keeps on putting up there, is a determined wee fucker.
It has become a national symbol for Glasgow, cause it’s just the epitome of Glaswegian humour and they even painted the cone fucking gold for the Olympics.
And a few months ago the council said they were going to raise up the statue, so people couldnt put the cone on. And let me tell you: it was fucking pandaemonium about Glasgow, it was as if world war three had broken out. There were Facebook pages and protests and petitions and all sorts to keep the cone on.
So long and short of it, is that this stupid statue and its stupid cone is all you need to know about Scots, in particular Glaswegians, cause we can’t decide whether we want to rule our own country or not, but if you fucking dare try to take the cone off the Duke of Wellington’s head, there will be a nation wide outrage and Glasgow’s own version of Les Mis will happen, I ain’t fucking kiddin!
Saint Patrick’s Day, the only day each year I wear my saffron kilt. Although sometimes I get the question wether I’m Irish even if I’m wearing a kilt in a—to me clearly—Scottish tartan, most people associate any kilt with Scotland, and rightly so.
But there certainly is such a thing as an Irish kilt, and saffron kilts have been around as an expression of Irish nationality for over a hundred years!
The ancient Irish actually wore the léine, a linen tunic with voluminous sleeves and a hemline reaching the knees or higher, often dyed with saffron, which turned out quite yellow on linen. When there was a revival of Gaelic nationalism in the nineteenth century, the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic Association—two major nationalist organisations, both concerned with Irish identity—wanted a ‘costume’ or national form of dress. The léine was considered to be too difficult to be updated to the fashions of the day, so they adopted the garment of their Gaelic cousins in Scotland: the kilt, dyed either green or saffron. Used on wool, the saffron dye gave it a bit more of an orange-brownish colour, the one we associate today with saffron kilts.
The school uniform of St. Enda’s School for Boys (1908) included the saffron kilt.
Nowadays the saffron kilt is mainly worn by pipers of Irish regiments, often without a sporran.
