Clan and District tartan history

[Colin]

Interesting discussion guys, however it was veering way off topic. I did think it deserved it's own thread, so plaese feel free to continue here.

[GlassMan]

Apples and Oranges now, though...you're confusing a "district tartan" with a "clan tartan".

Considering in that in some areas at the time the population could be 3/4 or more of a given clan, there would have been a reasonable correlation between the two. The modern tendency for families to disperse was almost nonexistent outside of royal houses.

You quoted Martin Martin's comment, which says: "at the first view of a man's plaid, to guess the place of his residence" --notice that Martin says his residence, not his clan.

As the post I made prior to your clearly stated, I wanted to make sure that we were talking about apples and apples and not apples and oranges. And it does indeed seem that we are talking about apples and oranges. Since blood and residence was very closely allied in times prior to the 18th century, residence and clan would still have been close.

The problem with this statement is that you have provided no hard and fast facts that there was a regulated, uniform system of clan tartans before the early 19th century. I agree, much more research needs to be done, and we probably haven't discovered all their is to find about the concept of tartans, but until we have verifiable and documented evidence, it's best to not make statement of fact without them. I agree that the regional or district tartan concept is older than the clan tartan, but even that wasn't uniformly regulated.

I never claimed a hard and fast regulated system prior to Culloden. Only those who seek to dismiss the idea that there was any idea of tartan identification prior to the 19th century insiste on an exact analog to the modern tartan system.

I'm a historian and librarian by profession, as well as a Missourian, so you'll have to "show me" before I believe it! :mrgreen:

I agree with you on that. Which is why I've asked for further research before making definitive pronouncements. You may not have read my prior posts but with my undergraduate degree from Yale University, my graduate work at Harvard and a research fellowship at Princeton (all in Medieval European history) I am well acquainted with the concept of historical proof and my credentials are sterling. However, I must point out that records that are commonly available for one time period (19th century) are completely non-existent for others (early Medieval period). Hence the incredibly difficult time we have giving a precise date for the first known use of the kilt. While we know by what date it absolutely must have been worn by, that does not definitively state that it could not have been worn before then. Only that we do not yet have any proof of its prior existence. There is a difference between the two. Those of us who concentrated on Medieval History constantly come up against the problem of a paucity of sources. We must draw many inferences from only a few sources and also see what information can be gleaned from other fields of inquiry (such as art history, archeology, geology, etc.) to help explain occurances and practices. I will admit that the enforced creativity of Medievalists does lead us to question negative statements (such as a blanket insistence that there was no system of tartans prior to the 19th century) instinctively. Yet none of that is meant to question your own credentials. I respect you as both a historian and a librarian.

Again, I'd love to see your source for the story of the "tartan lawsuit", as well as the documentation for the Clan Mackay information -- did the historian provide a bibliography and the works he cited?

As soon as I am finished with my move to my new Handicapped Accessible home on the 19th I'll be happy to have my library unpacked and I'll search out the references for you. But sadly, they've already been packed as we are trying to pack the house ourselves to save money instead of having the movers do it for us. Unless you are willing to give me that time, I cannot give you the exact references. However, once I am unpacked I will happily give you the citations.

I for one am willing to let this drop until I've had a chance to move an unpack. That way we can diffuse a discussion before it mounts into an argument and someone says something we regret later. Cajunscot, I like you personally and have always respected your posts. So I hope you'll indulge me with the time to unpack.

--Phil

[macwilkin]

Phil,

We're actually agreeing now more than we're disagreeing; many thanks for the clarification on the whole "apples v. oranges" thing! :mrgreen:

btw, Matt is reading this thread even as we "speak", so I'm sure he'll want to weigh in on it as well.

No worries or hurries on the sources, btw -- I shouldn't have been so "demanding" on them in the way I typed my posts -- on the contrary. I have no doubts of your academic ability or integrity, and you haven't insulted mine -- although I only went to a piddly-little land-grant university for my BA and MA, not Yale, Harvard or Princeton! :mrgreen:

Good thread!

Cheers,

Todd

[KiltedCodeWarrior]

I don't know what the real answer is, but this has been a very interesting thread to read. Looking forward to more chapters.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Interesting thread, guys. Some great sources you've cited there! lol...

One real danger that we have when looking for any kind of early evidence of "clan tartans" or "district tartans" systems is a tendancy to project our contemporary notions back onto past sources. One perfect example is the quote from Martin Martin' Description of the Western Isles of Scotland in 1703.

Every Isle differs from each other in their fancy of making Plads as to the stripes in breadth and colours. The humour is as different through the mainland of the Highlands, in so far that they who have seen those places are able at first view of the man’s Plad, to guess the place of his residence.

I dealt with this quote in my article on district-tartans.com:

Many have extrapolated from this brief description that some kind of uniform and standardized system of district tartans was in place in the Isles and Western Highlands of Scotland at this time. This is a conclusion that goes beyond what the evidence warrants. All Martin is really saying, above, is that people living in the same location (often enough being supplied their cloth by the same weaver) would have certain similarities in the pattern of their tartans, and that these would be different from the styles in other locations. A person knowledgeable of such regional variations would be able to make a reasonable assumption about where a Highlander was from based on the characteristics of the tartan he wore – and the idea that one could identify the home region of a person based on certain characteristics of his clothing is hardly unique to Scotland. Any speculation beyond this would be suspect.

In other words, there is nothing directly in Martin's quote to suggest that all people of a particular clan, or of a particular place, wore a certain tartan. All he says is that people from a given location would have certain similarities in dress -- and we can say that about today, to some extent, especially in more rural and traditional locations.

Now, if there was a lot of other evidence in the early eighteenth century, contemporary with Martin, that also indicated a particluar system of clan tartans, then it would have more weight. As it is, though, all we have is this one quote that simply says people from the same area tend to dress similarly, and if you are familiar with the customs, you have a reasonable chance of guessing where they are from.

As for clans being asked to wear the same tartan when they come to battle, keep in mind that the famous quote from the Grants simply calls for broad striped red and green -- which describes about half the tartans out there! Also, if there was a "clan tartan" that all of Clan Grant knew about and possessed, the cheif would not have had to make this demand!

After reading Jamie Scarlet's recent little book on Military Tartans (Partizan Press), I'm convinced that the "clan tartan" actually had its origins in *military* tartans. We know that specific regiments were outfitted in the same tartan from sometime before the middle of the eighteenth century (I don't have his book right here with me now), and because many of these regiments bore clan names, the association naturally spread to the clan.

I can think of many clan tartans that originated this way -- Gordon, MacKenzie, Robertson (hunting), Murray, and many others.

Gotta run now! I'll have to keep an eye on this thread!
M

[GlassMan]

No worries or hurries on the sources, btw -- I shouldn't have been so "demanding" on them in the way I typed my posts -- on the contrary. I have no doubts of your academic ability or integrity, and you haven't insulted mine -- although I only went to a piddly-little land-grant university for my BA and MA, not Yale, Harvard or Princeton! :mrgreen:

Don't make light of that land-grant university. Some of the best history departments in the nation are not at Ivy league schools, but at public universities! I should now, I applied to some when I was working on Grad School applications.

[GlassMan]

After reading Jamie Scarlet's recent little book on Military Tartans (Partizan Press), I'm convinced that the "clan tartan" actually had its origins in *military* tartans. We know that specific regiments were outfitted in the same tartan from sometime before the middle of the eighteenth century (I don't have his book right here with me now), and because many of these regiments bore clan names, the association naturally spread to the clan.

That would definitely explain the references in MacKay literature to the tartans worn by the MacKay Highland Regiment and the MacKay Highland Fusiliers.

I'm going to have to go look at for that book. Sounds like it will make a nice addition to the library. I will reserve judgement on the book until I have read it. But from what I've read on our particular units, it was raised from predominantly our clan members and the tartan chosen was that of the local region which then became associated with the clan. While other clans of the area then added identifiable differences to the regional tartan to solidify their identity.

But once again, I'm having to rely on memory, since the blasted books are inside a box at the moment.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

To shed a bit more light on the Clan Chiefs running about their territory asking all the elders of the clan if they could recall what the "traditional clan tartan" was before Proscription, let me give a few illustrative anecdotes.

The first big push to get the clan cheifs to say what "their" tartan was came as late as 1815 when the Highland Society of London decided to put together a collection of tartans, with the seal and approval of the cheifs. (Keep in mind that this was just at the beginning of the "tartan cult" and the myth was already emerging that the tartan system was very old -- the complete lack of information about it in the past was only see as evidence of its being "suppressed"). Historical scholarship was not the same in the early nineteenth century as it is today.

For example, James Logan's work in The Scottish Gael (published in 1831, I beleive) was fine except that it suffered from one major flaw -- and that is that Logan assumed that anything that the oder generation said was "traditional" was necessarily "ancient" with a pedigree spanning centuries. We now know that many of these customs he described only emerged a generation or two before him. It would be a bit like asking your grandparents what things were like in King Richard's court.

Anyway, the Highland Society of London wanted to "preserve" all these "traditional clan tartans" before they were "lost" (all very romantic concepts). So they wrote to the cheifs of the clans asking them to submit samples of their tartans for the collection.

This is a major event in the history of tartan for two reasons: 1) it was the first real attempt to catalog the different tartans in one index, 2) it established the very important principle that the cheif has final authority over the clan tartan.

That aside, it did set many clan cheifs into a tizzy. Most of them didn't even know they were supposed to have a "clan tartan!" Keep in mind that just because you inherited the cheifship of a clan, it doesn't make you automatically an expert in your clan's history. If these "experts" from London said you had a clan tartan, they must be getting it from somewhere, right?

So, as Glassman said in an earlier post, many clan cheifs did indeed go about asking the older men of the clan if they could remember what the old clan tartan was. One such example is the cheif of Clan Donnachaidh (the Robertson clan). And he found several old men who claimed to know what the "true" clan tartan was. Problem was that they all said it was something different!

What the cheif ultimately submitted to the Highland Society of London as "the" Robertson tartan was the pattern worn by the Loyal Clan Donnachaidh Volunteers, a home guard raised in 1810. It is a military tartan, based on the Black Watch (we call it Hunting Robertson today). Since the unit only existed from 1810, the tartan was probably no more than 5 years old when it was submitted (and is another example of a clan adopting a military tartan).

More often than not, however, the cheifs would simply do what any Scottish tourist might do to enquire about a tartan -- he would write to the largest tartan supplier at the time, Wilsons of Bannockburn. The Chief of the MacPhersons did just that.

Wilsons had a tartan in their line originally called No. 42. When they began to assign tartans names in the latter part of the eighteenth century, they simply called this one Caledonia. Later on, a man from the east coast of Scotland named Kidd purchased an amount of this cloth, and his name got added to the record. So it was indexed as No. 42 or Kidd. Later on still, a man named McPherson in the West Indies purchased a signifigant amount of this pattern, and his name was also added to the records.

So when the Cheif of the MacPhersons wrote to Wilsons asking for a sample of "the MacPherson tartan" they sent him a sample of No. 42. And this is the sample that the cheif put his seal on and submitted to the Highland Society. Today we call this the red MacPherson tartan, although sometimes it is still sold under the name Kidd. (The present day Caledonia tartan, if anyone is wondering, is not the same sett, though it is similar. Wilsons gave the name Caledonia to several tartans).

You can see that Wilsons named their patterns for a number of reasons. In this case, the name came from a client who purchased the cloth. Sometimes it may be named after a location where it sold well (like Aberdeen or Dundee). Sometimes Wilsons did not know why a tartan was given a particular name. In their 1819 pattern book they commented that they had no idea why the Logan tartan had that name (remember they had been in business since the 1760s). They say that a man named Thomas Logan used to supply them with patterns, and it could be that this pattern was either found or designed by him, but this is a guess.

There are all kinds of interesting stories about where these tartans came from if you look back through the historic record (including one letter in Wilsons' archives from a tartan merchant, no doubt looking to fill an order for a client, that simply says, "please send a sample of the Rose tartan, and if there is none, send a different tartan and call it Rose."

Aye,
Matt

[beerbecue]

-- although I only went to a piddly-little land-grant university for my BA and MA, not Yale, Harvard or Princeton!

Recent data suggests that schools such as Yale and Harvard suffer from a horrible case of grade inflation... so much so that a B/C at these institutions is the equivalent to a barely passing grade (read D-) at schools with a modicum of academic rigor...

And to stay on topic...

This thread seems to me all the more justification to wear what you like, and to ignore those sites that use words like 'entitled' to describe what you can wear.

Very educational, indeed.

[GlassMan]

There are all kinds of interesting stories about where these tartans came from if you look back through the historic record (including one letter in Wilsons' archives from a tartan merchant, no doubt looking to fill an order for a client, that simply says, "please send a sample of the Rose tartan, and if there is none, send a different tartan and call it Rose."

Aye,
Matt

Of all the different little tidbits of the history of how various modern tartans got their names, that one is by far my absolute favorite so far!