Quote Originally Posted by M. A. C. Newsome View Post
By the way, I hear it said all the time that "just because the first documented evidence of the great kilt was 1594 doesn't mean it wasn't worn before that date." Which is perfectly true, of course. However, usually it is being said in order to justify wearing the great kilt for reenactments from 100 or 200 years prior to the date in question. While I would accept someone wearing the great kilt for a period of a decade or two before 1594, for the reason stated, there really is absolutely no reason to assume anything like the great kilt was worn in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries.
True, but I wonder just what the progression to the Great Kilt was and how long it took. In all honesty I cannot see that the Highland Gaelic Scot would progress from wearing something like contemporary English dress to wearing something like a kilt. Not that it could not happen that way, it is just a huge (impossible?) stretch of the imagination to see how it could have happened.

A much easier thing to see would be a progression from the léine and brat, something that was known to be worn by the Irish in earlier times as you yourself write, to a kilt. Still, I guess we will never really know.

As for asking a local group, well, it seems that this sort of question can be a bit of a religious issue, if you know what I mean when I say that, and I am reluctant to bring it up for that reason.

Oh well, may be I will just visit and not partake...

Mark