Duke's Private Army.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 11 September 1914, Page 2

Duke's Private Army.

The Duke of Atholl occupies the unique position of being the only one of the King's subjects who maintains an army of his own. By a special act of grace the late Queen Victoria, shortly after she ascended .the throne, presented the Atholl Highlanders with regimental colors, and thus they were duly constituted an "army." The Duke himself is colonel of the "regiment," while his eldest son, the Marquess of Tullibardine, and his two brothers, Lord James and Lord George Stewart-Murray, are officers. Many of the leading gentlemen of Perthshire also hold rank. The men, numbering about 250 strong, are drawn almost without exception from the vast estates of Atholl. They are sturdy, stalwart Highlanders, many of them standing Oft. 4in. high.

Their regimental, attire is the oldfashionod blue coat with white sporran and Atholl ts-.rtan plaid and kilt. Formerly they were armed with axes, Highland claymores, swords, etc., but these weapons have now been replaced by the more modern equipment, although the skean-dhu—a short dagger which played a prominent part in early Scottish warfare—is still worn in the hose. The army, which is probably the only survival of the feudal times, when the chief of every clan was surrounded by a bodyguard of retainers, drills at stated periods in front of Blair Castle. Every man can speak the Gael ittongue fluently, and they have a characteristically wild dance of their own known as the "Ram's Keel."

Many of the Atholl Highlanders have lone- records of . service, some of them having completed fifty years

in the corps