District Tartans?

[Jock Scot]

Jock, I don't disagree with the majority of what you are saying. But I would maintain district tartans are worn in Scotland, if nothing else in a de facto sense that many clan tartans are also "shared" with a district. So while the wearers may not realise it, that does not take away the historical fact that many clan and district tartans are one and the same.

I think we agree more than we disagree, so we'll leave it at that.

Respectfully,

Todd

Let us take Campbell of Cawdor as an example as I think you said it was a district tartan too,sorry I can't remember where. I doubt that if you aked any Scot wearing that tartan would know that it was a district tartan as well, he would only know it as a clan tartan. Just wanted to make that clear.
All the best,
Jock.

[macwilkin]

Let us take Campbell of Cawdor as an example as I think you said it was a district tartan too,sorry I can't remember where. I doubt that if you aked any Scot wearing that tartan would know that it was a district tartan as well, he would only know it as a clan tartan. Just wanted to make that clear.
All the best,
Jock.

No disagreements there, Jock, but I wouldn't say that every Scot wouldn't know that -- you now make at least the third Scot that does.

The Campbell of Cawdor is also the Argyll District tartan.

Regards,

Todd

[Jock Scot]

No disagreements there, Jock, but I wouldn't say that every Scot wouldn't know that -- you now make at least the third Scot that does.

The Campbell of Cawdor is also the Argyll District tartan.

Regards,

Todd

I should worry? It is not my tartan!

[macwilkin]

I should worry? It is not my tartan!

Fair enough, Jock. For educational purposes only. :mrgreen:

T.

[Jock Scot]

Oh well, only another 5 million ,or so, of us Scots, to educate then!

[Dall_Piobaire]

Question on the Ayrshire district tartan. That is a smart tartan, but I thought I read that it was just approved in the late nineties. I thought Kilmarnock was included in the Ayrshire district? Is that just because of the redistricting? What district was Kilmarnock in before it was redistricted, or was it?

I'd love opinions on combining that with my Boyd tartan. Don't have a link to it though, sorry!

[Phil]

I have to admit that, like Jock, District tartans were complete strangers to me before I joined here. The first non-clan tartan I ever came across was when a work colleague who was in the Tartan Army bought himself an ex-hire "Flower of Scotland" kilt. His choice was dictated by what the shop had that would fit him and he never considered his clan for a moment.
It is nice that there are tartans available nowadays to fit every eventuality but, as Jock says, they are a total irrelevance to us Scots people - yet another fact like Borders families never having been clans and Irish people never having worn kilts that seems to cause immense difficulty here and raise recriminations against the person who has the gall to even hint at it.

[Bugbear]

I have to admit that, like Jock, District tartans were complete strangers to me before I joined here. The first non-clan tartan I ever came across was when a work colleague who was in the Tartan Army bought himself an ex-hire "Flower of Scotland" kilt. His choice was dictated by what the shop had that would fit him and he never considered his clan for a moment.
It is nice that there are tartans available nowadays to fit every eventuality but, as Jock says, they are a total irrelevance to us Scots people - yet another fact like Borders families never having been clans and Irish people never having worn kilts that seems to cause immense difficulty here and raise recriminations against the person who has the gall to even hint at it.

I tried to bring this up in another thread, but I think it didn't quite come across too well, or even may have made someone angry. Over here, in the US, a lot of us aren't raised with that same sense of clan. We do, however, end up being raised with a strong sense of our region or state and even city. Sometimes it's a group or even sports team. The concept probably doesn't translate very well, but this focus on distric tartans might be in part just from trying to understand the concept of a clan tartan as a non-Scot.

I have no desire to throw any of that in the face of the Scottish people, or to tell the Scots how to wear their own national dress. I also don't know what to do about any of this if someone has a kilt in a distric tartan hanging in the closet, or a kilt in any other non-clan tartan, like the one hanging in my closet. Sometimes it feels like the rubberband is being stretched too far to try to find a connection to something from "way back when."

I don't think we can include any of the non-traditional types of kilts in this, so they don't count.

[Phil]

I have no desire to throw any of that in the face of the Scottish people, or to tell the Scots how to wear their own national dress.[/i]

Well said, and I, similarly, would never presume to tell anyone what they should or should not wear. That is entirely a matter for themselves and not one they should ever have to justify to anyone else. I am sure that few, if any clan members would object to someone wearing their clan's tartan. For myself I am less comfortable with tartan being used in other ways than highland dress but that, again, is only my view.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

District tartans, as a concept, may indeed be largely "irrelevant" to the majority of the current Scottish population, but I don't think that fact puts district tartans into the same category as "Irish kilts" or "Border clans." (Ideas that are popular today but have no historical precidence).

District tartans actually have a pedigree that is just as old and traditional as clan tartans and military tartans. It is simply a matter of the clan tartans becoming more popular and predominant in usage over time. Some of the oldest known named tartans are, in fact, named for places rather than clans or families.

To illustrate this point, one of the earliest sources we have available for "named" tartans is the 1819 Key Pattern Book of the weaving firm William Wilson & Sons of Bannockburn. That pattern book contains some 250 tartans, of which roughly 100 have names. While many are named for clans and regiments, some are named for places, including:
Aberdeen
Argyle
Atholl
Caledonia
Crieff
Dundee
Fort William
Gallowater
Glenorchy
Lochaber
Locheil
Mull
GlenLyon
Perth

Some of those I have named actually date much older than 1819. The Aberdeen tartan, for instance, we first find mentioned in a Wilsons' document dated 1794, and the notes in their 1819 book refer to the tartan being from the "middle of the 18th century."

Of course there are lots of clan tartans named in this source, as well. We find Chisholm and Austin and Forbes, MacDougall, MacNab, Gordon, Ross, Stuart, etc. But my point is that the concept of wearing tartans named for places is just as old and valid as the concept of wearing tartans named for clans and families.

I'm not disputing the fact that many living in Scotland today are unaware of district tartans, or if they are aware of them don't think them to be relevant. I would argue with the notion that district tartans are new or novel. While they have never been as popular as clan tartans, they are indeed just as traditional and valid.