User:Ethan.A.Gray of Craiglea (UK)/Project/ScottishClans&Tartans

Introduction
The origins of Scotland's clans and of their distinctive dress are wrapped in controversy. Yet their story can be traced back with certainty to the middle of the 5th century, and to Ireland where the Scots then lived. Here the earliest historical High King was known as Niall Noígiallach (of the nine hostages), whose descendants of the O'Neill dynasty expanded northwards into Ulster. As a result Fergus Mór of the little kingdom of Dalriada moved his seat of government from northern Ireland, and crossed the sea to find a new Dalriada for his Scots in the land that now bears the name. In 563 a prince of the house of O'Neill called Colum Cille (Dove of the Church) joined them there, and is remembered today as Saint Columba. A century later the Scots were organised in three principal kindreds from Ardnamurchan in the north to Kintyre in the south: the kindreds of Lorne, Angus and Gabrán.

In the course of time these kindreds, and the dynasties of the Celtic church, proliferated into the clans of medieval record. To the north and west of them lived the Picts, to the west and south the Britons, while the first serious encounter with Germanic peoples occurred early in the 9th century when the Viking long-ships appeared. The Scots held their own against all these peoples. The Gaelic tongue replaced Pictish throughout the Highlands; it replaced the Welsh tongue in large areas of south-western Scotland; it drove the norse language from every island in the Hebrides. And when the Gaels were in the death-throes of their final struggle against another Germanic most spectacular victory. After every attempt had been made to destroy their ancient clan organisation and their distinctive dress, these were adopted as the proper emblems of all Scots throughout the world.

The most distinctive garment which the Scots brought with them from Ireland, and which had probably been worn in the reign of Niall, is called in Gaelic Léine. It was a form of shirt men wore of a length that ended a little above the knee. Probably it was generally made of linen, and although the earliest references describe it simply as light-coloured, it was probably of the yellow shade which led to the English description of it as a saffron shirt. There are ample descriptions of this garment throughout the 16th century, of which that of a French visitor in 1556 is typical: 'They wear no clothes except their dyed shirts and light woolen coverings of several colours', 'certaines couvertures légères faites de laine de plusieurs couleurs.' It was at about the same time that a cleric in the north of Scotland commented on this spartan attire to Henry VIII. 'We of all people can tolerate, suffer and always best with cold, for both summer and winter (except when the frost is most vehement), going always bare-legged and bare-footed.'

There is no evidence that the Scottish Gaels continued the Irish practice of marking the léine with stripes to indicate the rank of the wearer. A High King wore seven stripes, one of them purple. The Ollamh (chief man of learning) wore six, a striking reminder of the importance attached to scholarship. But in the 17th century the shirt went gradually out of use in Scotland, while the 'coverings of several colours' grew in size and significance. At the battle of Kilsyth in 1645 Montrose instructed his soldiers to put away their plaids and knot the ends of their shirts between their legs. But many of his men actually came from Ireland, while others from the west had perhaps not been affected by the ruin of the Irish linen export trade that resulted from the Elizabethan conquest.

Meanwhile wool, a commodity that had been in the Highlands, was now becoming available to all. And so the rug grew into the ample plaid which a Highlander could pleat around his waist in many folds, draw over his head when it rained, and roll himself up in to sleep at night. It expanded in fact into a garment measuring five feet in width, and between twelve and fifteen feet in length. The belted plaid took the place of the léine as a covering for the lower half of the body. This had been long enough for the men of Montrose to be able to knot the ends between their legs for the sake of decency in 1645. The earliest portraits showing men wearing the belted plaid show its apron reaching to about the same length, almost to the knee. Yet there is evidence that it by no means always did so. When William Sacheverell was appointed in 1688 to recover stores from the sunken Armada ship in Tobermory bay, he observed that a minimum of the plaid was being worn below the belt. 'It is loose and flowing, like the mantles our painters give their heroes. Their thighs are bare, with brawny muscles. Nature has drawn all her strokes bold and masterly; what is covered in only adapted to necessity...What should be concealed is hid with a large shot-pouch.' This helps to explain why the logical French called the sporan, which is simply the Gaelic for a purse, a cache-sexe.

In about 1730 another Englishman, an official of the Forfeited Estates Commission of the name of Burt, wrote comments on the way this dress was worn which confirm and amplify those of Sacheverell. 'A small part of the plaid, which is not so large as the former, is set in folds and girt round the waist to make of it a short petticoat that reaches half way down the thigh, and the rest is brought over the shoulders, and then fastened before the neck.' He adds later: 'The stocking rises no higher than the thick of the calf, and from the middle of the thigh to the middle of the leg is naked space...and for the most part they wear the petticoat so very short, that in a windy day, going up a hill or stooping, the indecency of it is plainly discovered.'

By this time the patterns woven into the plaids had already become elaborated into what are today called tartans. The original French word tartaine had no reference to design or colour, but defined a type of material. But it was already acquiring its new association by 1538, when it was used in the Lord High Treasurer's accounts. James IV had abolished the Lordship of the Isles, and his son James V was continuing his aggressive policy towards Gaelic Scotland in an attempt to bring it at last within the effective jurisdiction of the crown. James IV had learnt the Gaelic language: and the accounts show that James V adopted a form of Highland dress, a short Highland jacket of velvet, tartan trews, and the long shirt. 'Heland tertane to be Hoiss' evidently refers to the kind of tight trousers or hose of which one actual example survives from before the Forty-Five, besides numerous portraits in which they are depicted.

By 1730 Burt noticed: 'Few besides gentleman wear the trowze, that is, breeches and stockings all of one piece and drawn on together; over this habit they wear a plaid, which is usually three yards long and two breadths wide, and the garb is made of chequered tartain.' But there is no mention of a plaid in the 1538 accounts when James V adopted the dress of a Highland gentleman.

There is increasing reference during this century, however to the coloured mantle noted by Beaugué the Frenchman in 1556. In his Latin history published in Rome in 1578 Bishop Lesley wrote: 'All, both nobles and common people, wore mantles of one sort (except that the nobles preferred those of several colours)'. Writing in his own incomparable Latin, George Buchanan, who possessed a Highlanders knowledge, commented in 1581: 'They delight in variegated garments, especially stripes, and their favourite colours are purple and blue. Their ancestors wore plaids of many colours, and numbers still retain this custom but the majority now in their dress prefer a dark brown.' It is a pity that the use of the word plaid depends upon James Aikman's translation of 1827, rather than the direct testimony of Buchanan.

The learned Robert Gordon of Straloch described the dress of the Highlanders in 1594. They wear still wearing the saffron linen shirt, but he described it as short. 'In the sharp winter the Highland men wear close trowzes which cover the thighs, legs and feet.' The summer saw the emergence of the Highland dress as we know it today. 'Their uppermost garment is a loose cloak of several ells, striped and party-coloured, which they gird breadth-wise with a leather belt, so as it scarce covers the knees.' The proto-kilt and the proto-tartan appear to have evolved at roughly the same moment.

They had done it so that at about the time when most of the clans had assumed their final identifications and alignments. The bagpipe and the Gaelic language were about to give unprecedented expression to clan loyalties, triumphs and disasters. What part, if any, did those stripes and party-colours play as symbols of a clan spirit? If they had signified anything in 1411, Lachlann Mór Mac Mhuirich would have exploited the fact in his incitement to battle at Harlaw. Yet between that date and this actual sett has developed something of the mystique of the Colour of a regiment, and the question is, just when and how it did so.

Pride in the dress itself is an entirely different matter. A mediaeval knight was doubtless proud of his horse and arms. But his precise coat-of-arms was in the first place a form of military identification, as the tartan had not yet become by the time of the last, decisive clan conflict, the battle of Culloden. By 1594, indeed, Lughaidh O'Clery distinguished Hebrideans even from their nearest kinsmen the Irish by their dress. 'They were recognised among the Irish soldiers by the distinction of their arms and clothing, their habits and language, for their exterior dress was mottled cloaks of many colours.' The distinction was lost upon foreigners when Mackay's regiment fought in the Thirty Years War. Five soldiers were depicted in 1631, wearing identical tartan, though they carry the belted plaid in various ways and one has adopted tartan pantaloons. The news-sheet calls them Irish, as English-speakers called them likewise in their own country by this time. If they felt loyalty on their uniform tartan, Gaelic literature is silent on the subject, and so is the unique record of their services which was published in 1637.

John Taylor the 'Water poet' payed a visit to Braemar in 1618 and described the Highlanders 'with a plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours.' But it was the dress itself, rather than these colours, that was the object of pride. 'As for their attire, any man of whatsoever degree that comes among them must not disdain to wear it; for if they do then they will disdain to hunt.' A hundred years later Burt remarked the same. 'The whole people are fond and tenacious of the Highland clothing, as you may believe by what is here to follow.' He then describes a woman who reprimanded a Highlander for wearing Lowland costume.

By this time there is evidence of the standardisation of setts. But it appears that a particular pattern had become common to a particular locality, and was only associated with a clan because different clans predominated in each district. Martin Martin testified in 1703 to the development of the weaver's skill. 'The plad wore only by the men, is made of fine wool, the thread as fine as can be made of that kind; it consists of divers colours, and there is a great deal of ingenuity required in sorting the colours, so as to be agreeable to the nicest fancy. For this reason the womans are at great pains, first to give an exact pattern of the plade upon a piece of wood, having the number of every thread of the stripe on it.' Alas, not a single sett stick has survived the proscription of the Highland dress after the Forty-Five. 'Every isle differs from each other in their fancy of making plaids, as to the stripes in breadth and colours. This humour is as different through the mainland of the Highlands in so far that they who have seen those places is able, at the first view of a man's plaid, to guess the place of his residence.'

Although nobody remarked on this before Martin in 1703, it could by then have been true for a very long time. This highly developed weaving craft of the women of the Highlands could not have been introduced suddenly in a thousand scattered homes. It might have been true when O'Clery wrote his observations in Irish Gaelic in 1594, although he did not allude to it. From 1587 the annual rent to the crown from Islay consisted of sixty ells of black, white and green cloth. The lands from which this tribute was raised were occupied during almost the entire period in which it was paid by the Macleans, and to this day the tartan now called Hunting Maclean is of precisely those colours.

To be continued...