Hear the Pipes are Calling
Tradition is a strange thing in this country – it morphs in unexpected ways to become peculiarly South African. Take St Andrew’s College, a posh private boys’ school in the Eastern Cape town of Makhanda (Grahamstown). Here, many of the 1820 settlers of Scottish descent sent their sons to be educated to standards of excellence befitting the old country, since its founding in 1855 by the Right Rev John Armstrong, first bishop of Grahamstown.
One of its proud traditions is a band of pipers and drummers striding out in full regalia – kilts, sporrans, hose… the works. The annual St Andrew’s Highland Gathering is not much di-erent to what you‘d see in Edinburgh itself (apart from the scale of the event) and the Scottish lineage has changed.
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