A book recommendation
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I traveled to North Carolina to participate in the final day of Kilt Kamp. During this day several speakers covered many topics on the Kilt and the cloth it is made from. During the last talk, Matt covered the evolution of tartan and how many of our tartans today can be traced back to the Black Watch (or government sett) tartan.
During the talk, Matt mentioned a book by James D. Scarlett titled "The Origins and Development of Military Tartans, A Re-Appraisal"
This is quite a scholarly work and covers the authors idea on how the Black Watch tartan evolved into what we know it as today. I found the book extremely readable and very easy to follow his conclusions. The addition of the color strips into the book certainly showed the similarities of certain tartans to one another and almost made it understandable without any accompanying text.
While I will not give away the complete conclusion of his work, his thoughts on the Black Watch being an old Campbell tartan were quite interesting and very different from what I have heard before.
If you are at all interested in the history of military tartans, I strongly recommend this work.
(p.s. I was unable to find this book available in the U.S., but found it here.... http://caliverbooks.com/bookview.php...849d6c&id=3710 and though it ships from the UK, I received it less that a week after ordering it.)
"A veteran, whether active duty, retired, national guard or reserve, is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America", for an amount of "up to and including my life." That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it." anon
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