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To: GSlob

Not much point in that without the weapon which all the armour etc. was meant to protect against!

Shields or breastplates displayed on a wall are 'castrated' without the swords!

Swords such as the basket-hilted broadsword variety used by Officers of Highland Regiments, Pipe Bands, and Highland Dancers are as much a part of our heritage as tartans. The Scots, unlike the English who were conquered and subdued by an invading foreign aristocracy, were a martial race up to more recent times and the carrying of the sword by civilian warriors was all part of the clan system where allegiance was given to the clan via the Laird.

Swords have come to symbolise honour duty and obligation in many cultures, but in Scotland, unlike England and Europe, they do so for all clansmen not simply the aristocracy or officer class. They remind Scots that they had to sometimes fight for what they believed in. In Scotland where the social divisions originally ran vertically (between clans) rather than horizontally (class) as in England, the Basket-Hilt displayed with Targe (circular shield) and Tartan gives a sense of history and belonging that only the nobility in other cultures can enjoy.

As to the knife wielding urban scum, - how many have or are likely to use a Basket-Hilted Broadsword?

Those who cannot understand why anyone has a legitimate purpose in owning a sword in the 21st Century, do so because they are culturally bankrupt and have no understanding ideas and emotions beyond those of a consumer society.

The Kerr clan motto is 'late but in earnest'; it relates to a battle not the January sales!


39 posted on 10/17/2006 8:42:03 PM PDT by Mike Martlet
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To: Mike Martlet

IIRC, in early Middle Ages they for a while had a fashion of trying to make an impact with rather heavy and blunt objects - from boulders to maces and threshers. Don't you even now feel an occasional urge to empty the wastebasket [or worse] from a high window on some barbarian several floors below, on the street?


40 posted on 10/17/2006 8:56:20 PM PDT by GSlob
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