Item ane whyt plaid worth eight punds With coat and trews and shoes worth four pund scots with four pair of lining sheits worth four pund the pair, ane pair of bed plaids worth twentie four punds tuo coverings worth four punds the peice Ten elne of new lining worth twentie shilling the elne. Item ten elnes of tartan at threttie shilling the elne.[41]
In 1669 the Rev. James Brome, M.A., Rector of Cheriton in Kent, visited Scotland, and in 1700 he published his work. His description of Highland dress and arms is largely adapted from Buchanan, whose work is, indeed, appropriated by many other writers. Brome’s note is as follows:—
The Highlanders, who inhabit the West part of the Country, in their Language Habit and Manners agree much with the Customs of the Wild Irish, and their chief City is Elgin, in the County of Murray, seated upon the Water of Lossy, formerly the Bishop of Murray’s Seat, with a Church sumptuously built, but now gone to decay. They go habited in Mantles striped, or streaked with divers colours about their Shoulders, which they call Plodden, with a Coat girt close to their Bodies, and commonly are naked upon their Legs, but wear Sandals upon the Soles of their Feet, and their Women go clad much after the same Fashion: They get their Living mostly by Hunting, Fishing, and Fowling; and when they go to War, the Armour wherewith they cover their Bodies, is a Morion or Bonnet of Iron, and an Habergeon, which comes down almost to their very Heels; their Weapons against their Enemies are Bows and Arrows, and they are generally reputed good Marks-Men upon all occasions; their Arrows for the most part are barbed or crooked, which once entred within the Body cannot well be drawn out again, unless the Wound be made wider; some of them fight with broad Swords and Axes, and in the room of a Drum make use of a Bag-pipe. They delight much in Musick, but chiefly in Harps and Clarishoes of their own Fashion, the strings of which are made of Brass-Wire, and the strings of their Harps with Sinews, which strings they strike either with their Nails growing long, or else with an Instrument appointed for that use.[42]
Thomas Kirk, of Cookridge, Yorkshire, who made an extensive tour in Scotland in 1677, kept a journal of his observations, and, thanks to his minute description, it becomes possible to demonstrate that the story of the modern invention of the feilebeg or kilt as a separate article of dress is a fabrication. For not only does he describe the kilt precisely, but he notes with great exactness the manner of wearing the plaid, which corresponds in every particular with its use at the present time. Writing at Inverness, he says:—
Here we may note the habit of a Highlander: their doublets are slashed in the sleeves, and open on the back; their breeches and stockings are either all on a piece, and straight to them, plaid colour; or otherwise, a sort of breeches, not unlike a petticoat, that reaches not so low, by far, as their knees, and their stockings are rolled up about the calves of their legs, and tied with a garter, their knee and thigh being naked. On their right side they wear a dagger, about a foot or half-a-yard long, the back filed like a saw, and several kinnes (? skeans) struck in the sheath of it; in either pocket a case of iron or brass pistols, a sword about a handful broad, and five feet long, on the other side, and perhaps a gun on one shoulder and a sack of luggage on the other. Thus accoutred, with a plaid over the left shoulder and under the right arm, and a cap a-cock, he struts like a peacock, and rather prides in than disdains his speckled feet.[43]
It is somewhat remarkable that this testimony, which decides the vexed question of the separate use of kilt and plaid prior to the eighteenth century, has hitherto escaped the notice of all writers on the subject.
During the turbulent period of the wars of Montrose and Dundee many bodies of armed Highlanders were imported into the Lowlands. One of the largest, known as the Highland Host, consisted of ten thousand men employed in the repression of the Western Shires. A letter in the Wodrow MSS., Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, written under date 1st February 1678, states:—
We are now all quartered in and about this town [? Ayr], the Highlanders only in free quarters. It would be truely a pleasant sight, were it at an ordinary weaponshaw, to see this Highland crew. You know the fashion of their wild apparel, not one of ten of them hath breaches, yet hose and shoes are their greatest need and most clever prey, and they spare not to take them every where: In so much that the committee here, and the Counsel with you (as it is said) have ordered some thousands of pairs of shoes to be made to stanch this great spoil. As for their armes and other militarie acoutrements, it is not possible for me to describe them in writing; here you may see head-pieces and steel-bonnets raised like pyramides, and such as a man would affirme they had only found in chamber-boxes; targets and shields of the most odde and anticque forme, and pouder hornes hung in strings, garnished with beaten nails and plates of burnished brass. And truely I doubt not but a man, curious in our antiquities, might in this host finde explications of the strange pieces of armour mentioned in our old lawes, such as bosnet, iron-hat, gorget, pesane, wambrassers, and reerbrassers, panns, leg-splents, and the like, above what any occasion in the Lowlands would have afforded for several hundereds of yeers. Among their ensignes also, besides other singularities, the Glencow men were very remarkable, who had for their ensigne a faire bush of heath, wel-spred and displayed on the head of a staff, such as might have affrighted a Roman eagle.[44]
This letter is especially noteworthy as containing an early reference to the badge or ensign used to distinguish particular clans. The “Glencow” men—no doubt the Mac Ians of Glencoe, a sept of the Clan Mac Donald—“had for their ensign a fair bush of heath,” and the badge of the Mac Donalds is still Fraoch or heath. The writer’s description implies that the rank and file of the Highland Host wore the kilt or the belted plaid; those who did not being, of course, the officers, who would wear the trews. That such was the fact is confirmed by what follows.
A sarcastic and amusing description of the Highlanders concerned in the expedition of 1678 was written by Lieut.-Colonel William Cleland (1661-1689), of the Cameronian or Earl of Angus’s Regiment, who was killed fighting the remnant of Viscount Dundee’s army. Not only does it confirm the description in the Wodrow letter, but it furnishes information of a detailed character as to dress and accoutrements, as the following quotation shows:—