The bonnet blue and eagle plume;
The tartan coat and jaunty vest
And belted plaid become us best.
With limbs unchained and footsteps free,
The pleated kilt just shows the knee;
In hose and brogues we’ll roam at will
O’er purple moor and heather hill.
How quickly the dress was resumed—at all events in certain portions of the country—is shown by the following testimony. One of the Hebridean missionaries of the Church of Scotland, whose travels among the people extended over the eight years from 1782 to 1790, observes:—
The men wear the short coat, the feilabeg, and the short hose, with bonnets sewed with black ribbons around their rims, and a slit behind with the same ribbon in a knot. Their coats are commonly tartan, striped with black, red, or some other colour, after a pattern made, upon a stick, of the yarn, by themselves, or some other ingenious contriver. Their waistcoats are either of the same, or some such stuff; but the feilabegs are commonly of breacan, or fine Stirling plaids, if their money can afford them.
At common work they use either short or long coats and breeches made of striped cloth, and many of them very coarse, according to their work. Their shirts are commonly made of wool; and however coarse they may appear to strangers, they are allowed to conduce much to the health and longevity for which this country is famous; as I have known them eighty, ninety, and some even a hundred years old, in these islands, and able to do their daily work.