Formal Buckle Shoes

[OC Richard]

PS...I don't have time this morning but give me a day or two and I'll match you pic for pic with paintings of 18th century shoes and, if I recall correctly, all on the feet of Highlanders.

Oh yes, I'm sure there are plenty!

But images of people wearing one kind of shoe don't cancel out images of people wearing another kind of shoe; they just show that both kinds of shoes were worn.

Likewise posting 50 images of women from that time period doesn't prove that all people of that time were women (if I may resort to a bit of reductio ad absurdum).

Your claim was that ONLY buckled shoes were worn, and that claim is dispelled by showing images of men wearing other styles.

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

"There are some surviving shoes from the British Isles that vaguely resemble our ghillies, but they date to before AD 900 (Saguto, p.1, and Carlson). According to leading shoe scholars, ghillies as we know them are a modern invention based roughly on some surviving early medieval shoes, apparently a result of a combination of wishful thinking and a desire to come up with something for renaissance fairs, rendezvous, and such that is cheap, easy to make, and does not look obviously modern."

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.

And a 1542 letter clearly describes pampooties being made and worn in the Highlands.

Now, what I've NOT found are any pre-19th century images showing Highlanders wearing pampooties or ghillies.