Irish Kilt?

[OC Richard]

Here's the Irish kilt thing in a nutshell.

At the time of the English invasions, the Irish were wearing a traditional form of dress which luckily there are a number of contemporary illustrations of.

Here it is in 1521



It consisted of a large loose shirt called in the Irish language leine which was often dyed in a saffron colour, a light clear yellow. Worn with the leine was a short jacket with open sleeves and ruffs around the bottom called in Irish the ionar, and a cloak, heavy wool and fringed, called the brat. The ionar was often embroidered with interlace designs.

The English however were successful in stamping out this dress and imposing English dress upon the Irish. The traditional Irish dress became utterly exinct, with only a couple bits surviving such as the pamputai and crois of the Aran Islanders.

Fast forward to the late 19th century when many in Ireland were struggling to revive the Irish language and in general distance themselves from English culture. With the Irish language they were a bit late, the famine and the English radically reducing the number of native speakers, and today the language stuggles on the edge of extinction as a community tongue. With sport the Irish were wildly successful, with hurling and Gaelic Football becoming more popular than English football.

In matters of dress, attempts to revive the extinct traditional Irish costume of leine, brat, and ionar pretty much fell flat. One problem is that it seems that nobody in the late 19th century really understood the nature of these garment and how they were constructed. They mistook the bottom of the leine for a yellow kilt by false analogy with Highland Dress.

So here's Irish Nationalist Thomas Ashe in 1910 wearing some sort of kilt pleated all round.



This photo posted earlier clearly demonstrates how the revivalists misunderstood the traditional dress they were attempting to revive. Note that the leine and ionar have been conflated, with the ionar disappearing but its colour and embroidery ending up on the leine. And where did those huge collars come from? Nothing like that in the original costume.



Here we can clearly see the saffron bottom of the ancient shirt (leine) becoming detached and turned into a kilt. By the way, the colour of the traditional Irish leine was a clear pure light yellow, but for some unknown reason the revivalists made the colour darker and more of a "burnt orange"