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Bravehearts' Kilt Forum
Re: clans and tartans
Posted By: Ancient Marshall (client.uk.hub.oup.com)
In Response To: Re: Save your fingers Galician! (gaullish)
Date: 5/12/08 07:06
It is true that the modern Clan structure is now chiefly an exercise in nostalgia for Americans, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders. I wouldn't knock it: if it wasn't for them, some nice castles would have to be sold off by their traditional owners.
Many Lowlanders would not consider wearing a kilt, but they would wear tartan: the Highland Light Infantry was recruited mainly in Glasgow, and wore trews in the Mackenzie tartan. The oldest Lowland tartan I know of is the Douglas, which is given in Logan's "The Scottish Gael" (1831). "Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland" by Sir Thomas Innes of Learney lists as Lowland tartans: Armstrong, Crawford, Cunningham, Dunbar, Dundas, Elliot, Erskine, Hamilton, Home, Johnston, Kennedy, Kerr, Lindsay, Livingstone, Maxwell, Montgomery, Ramsay, Ruthven, Scott, Seton, Wallace, Wemyss. Much of this information is from what looks like a credible essay on the subject, originally published in "The Armorial" in 1962:
TARTANS AND CLANS
by Charles MacKinnon of DunakinOnce the tartans were specifically associated with the Highland clans of Scotland, although for a long time a number of the great Lowland Houses, both in the north-east and southern Scotland, have had tartans of their own. In addition to this there have been district and general tartans from the earliest times. Indeed the earliest tartans almost certainly were, or became, Highland district tartans.
Although, therefore, the public still tends to think of tartan as something essentially Highland, there are now in fact four distinct main types of tartan - clan, Lowland and family, general and universal, and district.
Before considering these tartans it is as well to clear up two points. The first is the definition of a Highland clan. A Highland clan is a special group of an aggregate of distinct families each professing descent from a common ancestor, all bound in loyalty to a chief who is the genealogical representer of that common ancestor who founded or is said to have founded the clan. These clans had their lands in the Highlands. The main distinction between the Highland clans and the great Lowland Houses is that the Highlanders generally believed their chief was their kinsman. The sense of kinship to the chief and the chief’s patriarchal rule were the hallmarks, and they are not generally noticeable in the Lowland Houses. Nevertheless in an Act of Parliament in 1587 Border “clams” are specifically mentioned. The Border clans, however, apparently did not wear tartan. Sir Walter Scott asserts that tartan was never worn in the southern counties till the Act of Union of 1707 when it was worn in protest, and that even then it had no clan or family significance to the Borderers. Nevertheless we see that as early as 1707 it was assuming the character of being Scottish rather than merely Highland.
The second point is that few of the tartans of today bear any resemblance to the tartans prior to 1746 so far as we can ascertain from portraits or specimens. This fact is often made much of, but it is not really important. There is no reason to assume that tartans would or should have remained static. In any case, a clan chief whose tartan was lost during the thirty-six years of proscription was quite entitled to assume a new tartan as his clan tartan.
The earliest list of tartans which survives today, if we except the Vestiarium Scoticum [which some argue was a forgery], is the Key Pattern Book of William Wilson and Sons, Bannockburn, compiled in 1819. In it fifty-five tartans are listed, thirty of them being Highland clan tartans, thirteen family tartans, and twelve district or general tartans.
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