completed my smart Daywear outfit (apologies to Kenneth)

[Jock Scot]

Their place from the Victorian period up through the 1960s was never major, true enough. In my collection of several hundred c1860-c1900 photos of men in Highland Dress I would say, off the top of my head, that Ghillie brogues account for 10% of the shoes at most. In The Highlanders Of Scotland only 11 of 56 kilted men are wearing them.

However small their place, it has been consistent. There's not a decade one can point to from the 1860s to the 1960s where they are not seen.



Thing is, kilt hire only took off in the 1970s. Ghillies had been worn in traditional Highland Dress for over a century before kilt hire existed.

I like to take the long view of things, and the historian in me makes me try my best not to view various periods in the past through modern eyes.

True enough that the rise of the kilt hire industry created a divide in civilian Highland Dress. That industry introduced several things which some now accept as traditional. Personally I set aside the innovations of that industry as being non-traditional. Since these innovations haven't been universally adopted by Highland Dress wearers the kilt hire industry has so far failed to fundamentally alter traditional civilian Highland Dress, though it's come close.

The Ghillie brogue, as it happens, is not one of the things created by the kilt hire industry, though the proliferation of them is.

You raise some valid points, although I tend to think in terms as modern, traditional or, historical and whilst historical may be very interesting it has little, perhaps some, relevance to the here and now. The relevence of traditional on the other hand, still does have huge influence today.

So in general terms do gillie brogues' historical relevance to traditional kilt attire fit the traditional definition? I think not.

Do gillie brogues, in general terms, fit the historical and modern definition? Oh yes, most certainly.

I quite agree that Gillie brogues were not invented by the kilt hire industry, but they most certainly misrepresent them heavily, as being traditional, as of course they also do for other things too, like the PC worn during the day and fly plaid .

[OC Richard]

I suppose my point is that we shouldn't take men in the 1920s to task for the crimes of the kilt hire industry, which wouldn't exist for another half-century.

Another example of that same mechanism is a certain ancient symbol, which must have existed around 70,000 years ago as fully modern humans began their odyssey across the globe, due to it being found in most every place that humans inhabit.

We have a local building, erected around 1900, which prominently displays this symbol, due to it being a common Native American motif.

That symbol, which indigenous peoples brought with them across the Bering Straight 40,000 years ago, and used as a decorative device on a 120-year-old building, must be covered with a huge tarp now.

Why? Because a political party adopted it in the 1930s.