1737 Household Valuation

[figheadair]

Could meeder be madder? I've seen some spellings for madder that are way off, mayder, maider. Kinda wide guess, but since it's cloth that it's referring to, then it could possibly be the colour.

I too had wondered about meeder being madder. It's possible but I've been unable to find and other variation of madder that replaces the 'a' with 'e' nor any other record of this spelling.

That does not of course mean that it could not be a variation of the word but I'm not convinced. Red had long been the generic word for a range of mid to dark shades in the red group. In Scots it was often pronounced and written as rid and I cannot imagine why a specific dyes source would necessarily have been used to describe a plaid.

Since madder is/was a common dye derived from the madder plant which grows throughout most of Europe. I tend to agree that it's probably referring to the colour RED, which would make sense if the plaid was a predominately red tartan. The coats of the British army were died with madder until sometime after the middle of the 19th century when madder red was synthesized in Germany. The colour is also known as madder rose (or pink) and is possibly the origin of the "pink" riding coats worn in the hunting field, although legend has it that these coats are called "pinks" after a Mr. Pink, the tailor who first produced them.

Madder was usually used for soldiers' tunics, Officers' and Sergeants' coats were dyes with cochineal which gave a brighter and more colour fast red.

I've been involved in the analysis of a lot of C18th pieces of tartan and 99.9%of them were dyed with cochineal rather than madder. Both dye stuffs give a range of reds and there is no way that the compiler of the invertary (sic) would have known what, if indeed meeder was being used to mean red, would have been used to dye the colour.

Without any other example of madder being used to mean red, plus the fact that none of the other tartan pieces or the Dornich are described by their overall colour, means that I remain unconvinced that meeder was being used to mean red.

Finally, if the plaid that survives is the one mentioned, and there is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest that the subject of the inventary (sic) owned it, then it's even less likely that the term meeder referred to madder red as the red in the plaid is a dark cochineal dyed shade.

Hopefully further research will turn something up to clarify the use of this unusual spelling.