The Laddie in his Plaidie

by Kristin Gleeson

If anyone is asked to picture a Scottish Highlander, one image is certain to come to mind. A man in a kilt. But did the Highlander always wear a kilt? Some may know that the kilt was outlawed after the final battle of the Jacobite rising at Culloden in 1746, when Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated, only to rise to the height of fashion during Queen Victoria’s time when she visited Scotland and made it her place for her summer holidays.

But if we go back before the Jacobite rising, to the Tudor period, is it likely that Highlanders would be dressed in the kilts we so often see pictured? In truth there are just a few sources that give us hints at what a Highlander looked like, and there is no doubt about the impact. They dressed markedly different from the Lowland Scot, who wore for the most part the same clothes as their counterparts in England. The newly made Lowland earls in this time period were known to wear blue bonnets which later came to signify them. The bonnet, which was similar to the type seen in portraits of Henry VIII and others of the time, was saucer shaped and not like the bonnets women wore later in time.

The first look at a Highlander in the Tudor period is found in 1521 in John Major’s A History of Greater Britain:

From the middle of the thigh to the foot they have no covering for the leg, clothing themselves with a mantle instead of an upper garment and a shirt dyed with saffron. ...In time of war they cover their whole body with a shirt of mail or iron rings, and fight in that. The common people of the Highland Scots rush into battle having their body clothed with a linen garment manifoldly sewed and painted or daubed with pitch with a covering of deerskin.

It appears that the main source of covering was the mantle and the shirt and even later, in the 1570s, Lindsay of Piscottie referred to the ‘Reidschankis, or wyld Scottis...cloathed with ane mantle, with ane schirt saffroned after the Irisch maner, going bair legged to the knie.’

The Bishop of Ross also described the highland man in 1578 and pointed out the ‘long and flowing mantles’ that served as a cloak by day and a blanket by night. He also observed that some men wore a short woollen jacket with open sleeves and that the linen shirts were large, with numerous folds and wide sleeves sometimes sewn up with red and green silk thread. The shirts were also sometimes coloured with saffron and others were smeared with grease to preserve them.

But the colours of the plaid were a far cry from the vibrant hues now seen today in various kilts. When George Buchanan, a Stirlingshire historian published a description of the Highlander dress in 1582 he mentioned that they delighted in variegated and striped garments, some in blue and purple, which was ideal for concealing themselves in heather. The majority, however, favoured dark brown, ‘imitating nearly the leaves of the heather, that when lying upon the heath in the day, they may not be discovered by the appearance of their clothes.’

1594, when the highlanders went over to join the forces of Red Hugh O’Donnell in his fight against the English in 1594, and an Englishman observed them:

They are 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 with a fringe to their shins and calves, their belts were over their loins outside their cloaks.

This entry is the first tangible suggestion of the presence of what was later called the ‘belted plaid’ or the ‘great plaid’ and eventually known as the kilt. This ‘great plaid’ was later described in 1689 by a chaplain who visited Scotland:

They are constant in their habit or way of clothing; pladds are most in use with ‘em which.. to only served them for cloaths by day in case of necessity were pallats or beds in the night at such time as they travelled.

These pladds are about seven or eight yards long differing in fineness according to the abilities or fancy of the wearers. They cover the whole body with ‘em from the neck to the kneese excepting the right arm, which theey mostly keep at liberty. Many of ‘em have nothing under these garments besides waistcoats and shirts, which descent no lower than the knees, and they so gird’em about the middle as to give’em the same length as the linen under ‘em and thereby supply the defect of drawers and breeches.

There is much discussion among scholars about when the kilt or belted plaid actually came into being because there is no clear evidence, only speculation. Antonia Fraser, in her iconic biography of Mary Queen of Scots clearly did not support the idea of the kilt when she discussed Mary’s love of wearing her national dress that ‘Scottish dress for a girl consisted merely of a series of wild animals’ skins draped about the person,’ and in her footnote wrote, ‘Plaid of a sort was already known at this date, and Mary later wore it in Scotland, but tartan, in the form we know it today, was not, and nor was the kilt.’

But in assessing the observers of the time and the use of the term ‘mantle’ which had no set length or size, it is possible to see that a length of plaid could be wrapped and draped in such a manner that it might be like the ‘great plaid’ or the early type of kilt. Each person would naturally have his own manner of wearing it, adapting it to his size and shape. But what is clear, however is that when writing a novel, there is no clear thought as to what they should wear. Within reason it is entirely plausible to dress the laddie in his plaiddie. This is what I chose to do in the first novel of my new series The Highland Ballad Series, The Hostage of Glenorchy.

~~~~~~~

Originally from Philadelphia, Kristin Gleeson lives in Ireland, in the West Cork Gaeltacht, where she teaches art classes on occasion, plays harp, sings in an Irish choir and runs two book clubs for the village library.

She holds a Masters in Library Science and a Ph.D. in history, and for a time was an administrator of a national archives, library and museum in America. She has also worked as a public librarian in America and now in Ireland.

Connect with Kristin::
www.kristingleeson.com
www.facebook.com/kristingleeson1
Twitter: @krisgleeson

Buy links: 

Amazon: http://hyperurl.co/l6pkqk
Nook: http://bit.ly/1SdFR7q
Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/the-hostage-of-glenorchy
Itunes: http://apple.co/1SdFUA9

Of Tartan, Celts and Long-dead Mummies

by Anna Belfrage

Say “tartan”, and people will immediately think of Scotland – and of kilts. The word conjures up images of stalwart warriors, dressed in skirts as they charge the English soldiers of centuries long gone by. From what one can read on the internet, the combination of a tartan skirt and a hairy male knee is about as close to heaven as one can get, and while having nothing against kilt-wearing men – I find them both handsome and ruggedly male, as they walk about in their heavy swinging garments with God knows what on underneath – I do not necessarily consider hairy knees to be a “die-for” vision.

Neither here nor there, as this post is supposed to be about tartan – or plaid, as some Americans say. Tartan is not a Scottish invention. Nor is it an Irish invention, which would otherwise be a logical conclusion, as the Scots originated in Ireland. Ancient Celts – from which both the Irish and, by association, the Scots, are descended – were known for their love of tartan, further borne out by the finds in Hallstatt, Austria. This is believed to have been the heartland of the Celtic culture back in the 8th century B.C., and the prehistoric burial grounds, as well as the old salt mines, have turned up quite a number of bits and pieces in tartan – skilfully woven twill cloth with horizontal and vertical stripes of different colours.

For us modern people, it is difficult to fully comprehend the effort that went into making clothes in the past. Most of us wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a plain weave or a twill weave, we never consider the work that has gone into the garments we so casually pull off the rack to wear.

For the truly ancient people, clothes weren’t much of an issue. The cave dwellers used skins to cover themselves with, and given the general conditions in which they lived, this was a smart choice. But I bet you that already back then, someone was decorating their leather covering with whatever they could find, transforming a shapeless garment into an individual fashion statement.

Millennia rolled by, and people learnt to farm. In Egypt arose cultures where clothes were definitely of importance, but given the heat, the thinner the better, and so the Egyptians concentrated on linen and cotton, on light colours to reflect the glare of the sun. I am sure the skilled Egyptian weavers would now and then decorate the products from their looms with a contrasting line in red, or blue, but to go as far as a colourful tartan, that they did not.

While our Ancient Egyptians were experimenting with monumental architecture and innovative farming, an entirely different way of life existed on the large Eurasian steppe, that endless roll of grasslands that extends from modern day Ukraine to China. Here people had for generations lived as herdsmen, leading their flocks from one new grazing ground to the other. Being a herdsman was being a nomad. Belongings were transported in carts, entire tribes travelling together as their flocks moved south or west or east. Home was not a permanent residence, home was what you could carry with you, and so fabrics became important, the quality of your textiles shouting to the world just how successful you were.

Textiles don’t do well over time. They rot, they get degraded to rags, end up thrown in the fire. As a consequence, only rarely do we find any remnants of the clothes worn by people who died thousands of years ago – unless they were buried in very dry conditions, such as the Andean altiplano or the Tarim basin in Central Asia, home to the Taklamakan desert, the most arid place on earth. And it is to this rather inhospitable area that we must go to find the oldest known tartan specimens in the world. Asia, you say, having major problems envisioning a Japanese kimono in Black Watch tartan. Yup, Asia.

For very many years, the Eurasian Steppe was considered a one-way street. The Huns, for example, came from the east and moved west, causing destructing and chaos as they went. Some centuries later, and it was Djingis Khan, leading his Mongol Horde from east to west. Only recently have we begun to realise that some migrants went the other way, travelling from west to east. Some of them apparently ended up in the Tarim basin, developed a flourishing culture that survived for several centuries before they disappeared, floating off without leaving much of a trace – except for two things; documents in a now extinct language, and the Ürümchi  mummies.

Some of the Ürümchi mummies are old. Very old, well over 3 000 years. They are also remarkably well-preserved, having been buried in almost perfect conditions from a preservation perspective. Astoundingly, the mummies seem to be Caucasian – very strange in Chinese Turkestan, where the predominant population is either Chinese or Mongol. But the mummies have blond hair, they are tall (very tall) and fair-skinned, they have high-bridged noses and round eyes. Interestingly enough, this tallies with descriptions in ancient Chinese texts, referring to a neighbouring people of great height, with fair or red hair and deep-set blue eyes. These Nordic hunks hung around in one form or other until somewhere midway through the first millennia A.D. They were the Tokharian.

From "The Mummies of Ürümchi" by E.W.Barber

Although the mummies have been found in various locations within the basin, and vary in age, they all share one further common feature; the high quality of the woven textiles they were buried with, many of them with a tartan pattern. Even more intriguing, the tartan patterns uncovered in Chinese Turkestan resemble not only those of the old Hallstatt culture (bi-coloured twill weave or three coloured plain weave) but also those of Scottish tartans (multi-coloured twill), which are not found anywhere else. So, are we looking at very ancient Scottish emigrants? Or are these people the ancestors of present days Scots?

Let us take a step back. Tartan patterns are generally restricted to woollen textiles. To make wool, one needs sheep, an animal that was domesticated well over 8 000 years ago. At the time, the sheep wasn’t woolly, it was hairy, more like a goat. It was bred for its meat, but with the passing of years and a conscious breeding effort, the hairy sheep became a woolly one, so that about 4 000 B.C. we had our classical white fluffy animal (and those of you with a more than passing acquaintance with sheep will know that rarely are they fluffy – or white).

Suddenly, there was a lot of wool. Spindles were invented, and looms were adapted to handle this new material, rather different from flaxen thread/yarn. Plain weave was replaced – or complemented – with twill weave (in which two threads of the warp are looped together by the weft, with an offset between the rows, thereby creating a diagonal pattern that runs through the fabric). Twill had the advantage of allowing for a tighter weave, thereby making the resulting cloth warmer. All of this seems to have happened in present day Turkey or thereabouts, a remnant of twill having been found in a 3 000 B.C. grave in central Turkey.

At the time, Anatolia and the Caucasus was a veritable melting pot for humanity. Innovations were made at an impressive speed: domesticated horses, carts, sheep, woollen textiles. All these novelties were shared between the peoples, probably using some sort of proto Indo-European language. And then, for whatever reasons – maybe they fell out, or maybe the grazing became restricted, or maybe some of them just wanted to see the world – began the exodus from the Caucasian heartlands, with some going east while the majority went west.

Tokharian princes

Our Ürümchi mummies – or their ancestors – obviously went east, leaving most of their tribe to go the other way. Maybe they went to Hallstatt, Austria and the salt mines, where they would develop into the people we call the Celts. Our voyagers on the eastern road carried with them an Indo-European language. (As late as in the 6th century A.D., a people in the Tarim basin spoke Tokharian, an Indo-European language that has a clear resemblance to the Celtic languages.) Those long-dead travellers also took along a love for their tribal tartan patterns, a love so strong that it would survive the long, slow trek across the endless Eurasian steppe. While none of this is conclusive evidence, I believe the mummies of Ürümchi were, in fact, a side-branch on the Celtic tree.

So where does tartan comes from? I guess it sprang out of love for colour and textile, a silent ode to the world that surrounded the weaver. Maybe she had her eyes captured by the spectacular colour of a winter sunrise, when the muted purplish grey of the receding night is shot through with strands of glowing pink. Maybe she was trying to capture all those elusive colours that lie trapped in the soft caress of an evening breeze - or maybe she was foresighted enough to realise, that somewhere down the line, men would look good wearing a kilt.

If you want to read more about the Ürümchi mummies and their fascinating textiles, I strongly recommend “The Mummies of Ürümchi” by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

Anna Belfrage is the author of four published books, A Rip in the Veil , Like Chaff in the Wind, The Prodigal Son and her latest release, A Newfound Land.  Set in seventeenth century Scotland and Virginia/Maryland, the books tell the story of Matthew and Alex, two people who should never have met – not when she was born three hundred years after him. For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website or her blog.