Part of the Scottish brand are the well known names starting with Mac, the sprigs and feathers sported in the caps of chiefs and chieftains, the kilts and the tartans. But what is the story behind all this paraphernalia?
One of the most distinctive feature of “Scottishness” is of course the names (typically Mac+something with mac being Gaelic for ‘son’). This system developed from perhaps as early as the 11th century, when it became common to distinguish between the clans by talking about the following of a distinct ancestor as the clan + eponym, for instance clan Domhnaill (or the Clan Donald). At the same time it became common to name the chief and later chieftains of the kindred group as Mac + eponym, thus Aonghas Mac Domhnaill (aka Angus MacDonald). Soon after the onomastic compound turned into a proper surname designating anyone from the upper echelons of the clan with a surname MacDomhnail as a person belonging to this specific kindred. Somewhat later it became common to designate everyone from a specific region belonging to a specific clan through the appropriate surname. By the fourteenth century such surnames were in common use within Gaelic Scotland. For a chief, to keep tally of each and everyone amongst his followers, finally turned into a complicated business; hence his need of chieftains and further down the line, their dependents, to be able to “know” those on the fringes.
Sprigs and Feathers
To know who was whom and belonged to which clan was especially important in battles and skirmishes. Exactly when it became common to position twigs or sprigs from distinct flowers in the bonnets served in order to distinguish between friends and foe is nevertheless complicated to ascertain. However it is told about the aftermath of Colloden in 1745 how the clans of the fallen soldiers were identified. This helped family and friends after the carnage to get them buried side by side with their kindred. Perhaps it also identified them during battle (It should be remembered that clansmen fought at Culloden on both sides.); but “sprigs” are not seen in the otherwise fascinating Penicuik drawings of soldiers from the Jacobite revolution. As to the eagle feathers sported by chiefs and chieftains it is commonly believed to be a Victorian invention.
Tartans
Tartan is a woven material, generally of wool and chequered in different colours. It was common enough in the Iron Age with bits and pieces found by archaeologists both in Scotland and elsewhere in Northern Europe and all the way to the great Eastern steppes. It is believed that the word “tartan” is derived from the French tiretain. This French word is probably derived from the verb tirer in reference to woven cloth (as opposed to knitted cloth). Today tartan usually refers to coloured patterns, but originally a tartan did not have to be made up of any pattern at all.
The earliest mentioning of the word ‘tartan’ derives from the accounts of King James V, who in 1538 purchased “three ells of heland tartans” for his wife to wear. Another witness stems from the purchase in 1587 by Hector Maclean of sixty ells of cloth, “white, black and green”. These later became the traditional colours of the Maclean hunting tartan. From around the same time a contemporary description by Bishop John Lesley in 1582 wrote how “All, both nobles and common people, wore mantles of one sort, except that the nobles preferred those of several colours.” [1]
The first pictorial evidence is however a woodcut from around 1631 showing Scottish mercenaries in the army of the Swedish King, Gustav Adolph. The four fierce soldiers are obviously wearing tartan philamors or great kilts. Even earlier it is known that The Independent Companies of Highlanders were wearing kilts as part of their uniform. In 1739 their kilt uniform was standardised with a new dark tartan.
The myth is of course that the different patterns or tartans and their link to different clans were introduced at Culloden. However, it is generally believed that the soldiers would have discarded their great belted kilts before storming into battle as may be seen on the Pencuik drawings. (Hence the identification by sprigs of flowers.)
Whatever the case, it is a fact that an Act of Parliament, which was intended to disarm the Jacobite soldiers, proscribed:
This proscription was not lifted until 36 years later.
However tartans was never prohibited for the upper echelons of highland society, nor for their women or lowlanders. Further, the use of tartans in clothing the new highland regiments was especially allowed. This caused a veritable explosion in the production of tartans in the second half of the 18th century, occasioning the later misconception that tartans as well as kilts were traditions invented by romanticists in the same way as James Macpherson invented the poems of Ossian in 1760. This later led to the famous misunderstanding by trevor-Roper that tartans was something which had been invented in the late18th and 19th century. While it is correct that the reworking of an embellished tartan-system was a child of romanticism, there is no doubt that the inventors, William Wilson & Sons of Bannockburn, took care to work with a genuine tradition, when they embarked on building their fame as purveyors of kilts. Wilson corresponded with agents in the highlands between 1810 and 1820 and collected more than 200 specimens. This so-called Cockburn Collection is presently held in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. Curiously enough the collection has not been scholarly edited and published.
Kilts
To sum it up: Clothes made of tartans – chequered woollen cloth – were well-known in Scotland from the 16th century an onwards; as it was elsewhere in Europe and in the later Middle Ages. At some point it simply became fashionable to use chequered cloths for the huge woollen cloaks or mantels, traditionally worn by men over their tunics and by women over their gowns, conventionally worn both belted and free hanging.
However, there is no reason to believe that these so-called great kilts were a recent invention. For instance there is evidence from bog finds from the Roman Iron Age that such throws – Roman Sagums – were adopted by Germanic people serving as Romans mercenaries; and that they afterwards had them transformed into distinct cultural icons [1]. Basically the great kilts were never anything but large cloaks or huge throws which might be buckled up for convenience, if not used as cover-ups when out in the open herding cattle, hunting deer or just plain blood-feuding. Perhaps it is worth remembering that the Scots word, kilt, is generally believed to stem from Old Norse kjalta (Skirt, Lap). In early medieval Danish kilta meant a fold, kiltning, an act of folding. We know that Viking Cloaks – Feldrs – could be quite large and also that vikings as seen on the picture- stones from Gotland seem to have worn short, wide breeches and large cloaks, presumably kilted up. However, again this needs a proper archaeological study.
Later in the sixteenth century it seems as if a new tradition was developed amongst Scottish Mercenaries, when they began to sport their kilted and chequered plaids as a specific “brand” signifying their celebrated ferociousness. At the same time it might even have felt natural to sport the specific tartans amongst fellow Scottish mercenaries as signs of which clan they each belonged to. These were probably the coloured mantles, which Lesley mentioned in his history (see above) and which another highlander, Buchanan recalled in 1582, when he wrote that the Scottish delighted in mottled clothes especially those with “long stripes of sundry colours… of purple and blue.” (Ibid. p. 179) We know that other mercenaries in the 16th and 17th centuries were marked out through their specific ostentatious clothing. There is all the reason to believe that a particular Scottish (and Irish) “folk-dress” was transformed at the same time into what it later became: a soldiers garb.
Perhaps all this took place even earlier. We know that Late Medieval Scotland was characterised by a growing division between Lowlanders and Highlanders as already the historian, Alexander Grant wrote about in 1984, when he outlined the formation of the two distinct cultures, as famously characterised by Fordun in his chronicle from 1380:
However, this is all very tentative and needs a scholarly rethink!
Wish to read more about Scotland the Brand and its medieval icons? Please follow the links below
Names, Sprigs, Feathers, Tartans and Kilts
NOTES:
[1] (History of Scotland. By John Lesley as quoted in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History. Oxford 2011, p. 179)
[2] This was recently argued by Susan Müller-Wiering in: War and Worship: Textiles from 3rd to 4th-century AD Weapon Deposits in Denmark and Northern Germany. Oxbow Books 2011
[3] As quoted in Independence and Nationhood: Scotland 1306-1469 (p. 201). By Alexander Grant. Edward Arnold 1984.
SOURCE:
The Oxford Companion to Scottish History
Michael Lynch (Ed)
Oxford University Press, 2001 – 732 sider
READ MORE
The Highland Tradition of Scotland
Hugh Trevor-Roper
in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger: The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992, pp. 15–42
ISBN 0-521-24645-8.