Scotland's gift to the world?

Who wouldn't feel the need to lift a naughty little tartan skirt and apply at least one firm spank? I suspect even the vanilla-erest vanilla would derive some pleasure from doing so.

Someone arrived at this blog a day or two ago via the admirably straightforward search 'tartan + spank'. And why not? There's definitley some natural linkage between the two.

But I think there's a bit of a attitudinal split between how North America thinks about tartan in this context and how us Brits do. I'm no expert on US culture (never been farther west than Donegal as it happens), but from what I've seen the short tartan skirt is an essential part of the schoolgirl uniform in the US of A. Or at least of the popular school uniform fantasy.

Britney Spears added fuel to the fire, of course. So, for example, if you go looking for a schoolie outfit at UK online store Ann Summers you find something that's at lot more to do with hitting Britney one more time than St Trinian's. The Spanking Art Wiki article on the subject says tartan has been fetishised just about everywhere. Proximity to Scotland isn't an issue, this is a connection that works as well in Japan as it does in the US. Tartan's links with strict school discipline mean that it switches on a naughty little lightbulb thought in the minds of those who are receptive to those thoughts. But it doesn't quite work for me. Yes, a tartan mini is cute but here school uniform skirts should austere, plain and grey.

To my way of thinking tartan is more about men's kilts and the British army, which has a long traditions of fighting men in what really amounts to a skirt. And there's the question of what they wear underneath.

If you can believe what you're told (and I have no first-hand experience here) it's supposed to be nothing. Bottoms and the rest are supposed to go bare under a kilt.

Which I've always thought left the wearer at a disadvantage. For a start, it's never that warm in Scotland and often breezy.

But also, isn't a young man wearing a kilt and nothing else is in a very vulnerable situation when around a tawse and someone strict?. Scotland seems to have a very sound tradition of no-nonsense discipline and perhaps that's what the no underwear rule was about - making sure the disciplinarian always had easy access when there was punishment to dish out.