Highland as indeed Lowland kindreds also affected the wearing of some plant in their caps, as the holly of Avenel, the thistle of Stewart, [1] the broom of Forbes, the sprig of fir, box, or heath that is the common badge of so many clans that it was only among near neighbours it could make a mark of distrust or defiance. Another token was the slogan or rallying-cry of the clan, often the name of some mountain or conspicuous rock in its country, as “Cruachan” was for the Macintyres and came to be for the conquering Campbells. There were further peculiarities which the Gael could interpret as easily as a Mohawk read the “sign” of Huron or of Delaware. But long before coming near enough to excite the war-cry of his foes, the keen-eyed Highlander might make out the hue of their tartans, warning him to be prepared for fight or flight, as the case might be, when the strangers were not of a friendly name. The Maclean reds and the Macleod yellows were like a danger signal on each side. It was not so, indeed, with all neighbours, which is almost as much as to say enemies. The Forbeses and the Gordons, once living beside each other on cat-and-dog terms, have tartans ill distinguished in general effect, by a thin line in the one case of white, in the other of yellow, which it would take a very sharp-sighted scout to pick out at musket range.
[1]One story of how this became the badge of Scotland suggests the geese of the Roman Capitol: A Dane, moving stealthily to the attack of some Scottish stronghold, trod in the dark upon a thistle, pricking out of him a cry that alarmed the garrison.
One might suppose those old feuds quite forgotten in our days, but I can quote a curious instance to the contrary. The tartan I have any right to is that of Forbes, in which I went bedecked when I wore what Wordsworth quite ultroneously belittles as—
The Roman kilt, degraded to a toy
Of quaint apparel for a half-spoilt boy.
“Half-spoilt” boy, quotha! I conceit myself, for one, brought up in more decency and order than the poet who ran so wild on Cumberland fells, wearing out his corduroys in nut-brakes, or unblushingly bare even of “cast-off weeds” when he made “one long bathing of a summer’s day.” The matter in hand is that at a more prudent stage of life, to save myself from being “half-spoilt” by a cold journey “on an itinerant vehicle,” I addressed myself to buy a plaid, Forbes tartan of course, but not finding one thick enough in the shop, I humbled my ancestral pride to put up with the Gordon pattern. This I did on two considerations: first, that the objectionable yellow should in time bleach itself to lamblikeness; second, that the ignorant natives of the country in which I mainly live would not know the difference. But after exposure to wind and rain for a generation, the hateful hue is as bright as ever; then one day in an hotel ’bus, at Bournemouth of all places in the world, I had as companions two elderly ladies who kept looking grimly askance at that perverted tartan of mine.
“Sir,” said one of them abruptly, “I hope you’re not a Gordon.”—“Certainly not,” replied I, somewhat taken aback; “but why?”—“Because our people don’t like the Gordons!” quoth this frowning dame; “we are Forbeses!” Shamedly I made confession of my fault, declaring how, in spite of appearances, I too boasted that choicest Highland descent; but my kinswomen heard me in the stony silence due to a pretended Forbes in Gordon trappings.
Hereditary instincts awoke in me to lighten up their natural resentment. I myself would think kindly of these unfortunate Gordons, and speak of them with subdued reprobation, as becomes a son of the nineteenth century. I feel no lust to lift from them a single head of cattle, however come by, nor to strip them of any tatter of character that may hang about their deplorable history. I strive to take a fair view of them as fellow-men, and would fain disguise their badges of infamy in the Perth dyeworks. Yet a candid spirit might well ask whether no critical commentator have shown cause to suspect that the enemy of mankind made his first creagh against our happiness arrayed in the Gordon tartan, its livid stripes on a green background readily suggesting that allegory of a serpent form. The white lines of my tartan are rather to be taken for traces of primitive innocence, as even a Gordon must admit; and the dourest Forbes may agree that all offence of the hostile colours has long been washed in brave blood.