From "Normal" to "Formal" - the kilt's place as a Highland garment

[ThistleDown]

The Singer company used to sell its machines on hire purchase terms - could it be that the distances between settlements and 'civilisation' in the Highlands prevented this, as it would be uneconomical for someone to go and collect a few pennies each week from an isolated hamlet?

My father's mother bought a Singer sewing machine at six pence a week when living in a village in Derbyshire in the 1920's. I believe that the collector came on his bicycle from the nearest railway station.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

I think that was quite likely the case in the Highlands of the 1920s and 1930s, as well, Anne. Hasn't Singer only been around for 150 years or so, though? If that's true the kilt was long gone as an item of common daily wear by the time the machine was being flogged door-to-door under a hire-purchase plan.

Rex

[ThistleDown]

I recently finished Samuel Johnson's travelogue of Scotland in 1773

While he commends the Highlanders for their hospitality and a general lively spirit, he continually comments on their poverty and lack of modern amenities.

He only mentions kilts three times, but has this to say about the kilt while on the Island of Sky.


“In the islands the plaid is rarely worn. The law by which the Highlanders have been obliged to change the form of their dress, has, in all the places that we have visited, been universally obeyed. I have seen only one gentleman completely clothed in the ancient habit, and by him it was worn only occasionally and wantonly. The common people do not think themselves under any legal necessity of having coats; for they say that the law against plaids was made by Lord Hardwicke, and was in force only for his life: but the same poverty that made it then difficult for them to change their clothing, hinders them now from changing it again.
The fillibeg, or lower garment, is still very common, and the bonnet almost universal; but their attire is such as produces, in a sufficient degree, the effect intended by the law, of abolishing the dissimilitude of appearance between the Highlanders and the other inhabitants of Britain...”

My take on this passage is that when a highland man is concerned with putting food on the table, he is not concerned about whether he is wearing a kilt or britches.

Yes, that last statement must certainly be the case in any poor society.

We should probably be a bit cautious when we read Dr Johnson's work. Apparently he was often told what folk thought he wanted to hear since he was an outsider and an Englishman; and, of course, he could only speak to those who had English and that was not the common man, to whom he quite probably would not have spoken even if he could.

It's probably a good idea to read what others wrote in the 18C as a double-check, and to consider why they were writing in the first place.

Rex