Borthwick in his Antiquities[5] prints the Accounts for 1474 of John, Bishop of Glasgow, Treasurer to James III., which contain the entry: “Halve ane elne of double tartan to lyne riding collars to the queen.” Pinkerton adopts Borthwick’s reading.[6] Pitcairn cites entries, under date October 1488, of a fabric called “tarter,”and he adds “this is evidently tartan.”[7] Had the conclusions of these antiquaries as to the identity of the words been correct, then these would be the earliest specific references to tartan hitherto discovered in our records; but that they are not is pointed out by the editor of the Treasurer’s Accounts, who writes:—
Tartar, the name of which bespeaks its Eastern origin, though it was no doubt imitated by the weavers of Italy and France, is described as “single” or “double,” according to texture, and as “variant” or shot, the warp and woof being of contrasted colours. This not uncommon word has been frequently misread “tartan,” and examples of its occurrence quoted from the Treasurer’s Accounts as illustrative of the early use of that material.[8]
The opinion of such eminent antiquaries has misled all subsequent writers of important works relating to tartans, with the exception of John Sobieski Stuart and W. F. Skene; even works appearing many years after the issue of the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer continue to perpetuate the old errors.
There is a significant passage in the old Gaelic tale of “Curio,” describing the giant Anteus, which runs thus:—
Nibidh dono tuighi na craibheach, na pell, no brotrach, na brecan, na crocend anmanna, fui isin leapaidh sin acht a thaoebh fri sin talmain.
Now he had not thatch, nor branches, nor hide, nor coverlet, nor breacan [i.e., tartan, or tartan plaid], nor skin under him in that bed, but his side to the earth.[9]
“Brecan,” literally a speckled or variegated cloth, has been employed in the Gaelic language as synonymous with tartan and the tartan plaid from earliest times, in evident allusion to the checked or spotted appearance of the garment. “Breac” signifies parti-coloured or spotted. It is a Gaelic name of the salmon and of the trout, conferred, no doubt, on account of their speckled aspect.
A curious fifteenth century reference to “hewyt,” i.e., coloured, striped, or variegated clothing, occurs in a sumptuary law of the Scots Parliament:—
Item it is statut that na yeman na comonner to landwarts wer hewyt clathes siddar na the kne na yit ragyt clathes bot allenarly centynal yemen in lords housis at rids with gentill men thar masters the quhilks sal haf narow slewis and litil poks.[10]
The introduction of printing naturally tended to produce and to preserve many descriptions of the Highland dress written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Scottish historians and by travellers from other countries. Of the more important of these, the earliest in chronological order is John Major (1469-1550), whose work was originally published in Latin in 1521. He writes:—