Formal Buckle Shoes

[DWFII]

About this quote about Ghillies, the author might know a lot about American Colonial footwear but he's wrong here:

Had he looked outside of Britain, in the Aran islands he would have found the ancient traditional Gaelic footwear, pampooties, still being made and worn.

Again, I am not an historian and make no pretense in that regard. Nor can I speak for him to clarify or correct. The only thing I can say is that he was writing to me with regard to footwear that had been worn, and might be appropriate to wear, with kilts

However, I would simply ask you to re-read that quote again...in its entirety and for content not simply for weakness.

He does say quite clearly ghilllies "as we know them" are a modern invention. And he does reference "surviving shoes from the British Isles."

Beyond that, and in a similar vein as my remarks above, I suspect one reference in one letter in the 16th C. may not qualify as documentation to a historian. There are so many apocryphal interpretations and mis-identifications regarding kilts themselves documented in both historical and contemporary texts that it ought to serve to give us pause if not caution.

Our own Matt Newsome says, or implies...if I am reading him correctly...that ghillies (as we know them) were "invented" for pipers.

I might add just for the entertainment in looking at a similar impasse, that there is, according to the most respected and foremost shoe historians in the world, NO documentation and NO evidence for heels (as we know them) on shoes prior to the third quarter of the 16th century. About the time of kilts, actually. Yet pseudo-historians, less-than-stringent re-enactors, and Hollywood, insist on depicting 11th century knights in heeled boots, or early 19th C. British Royal Navy captains wearing riding boots at sea.

Might as well be wearing a wristwatch.