"The belted plaid was the original dress. It is precisely that of a savage, who, finding a web of cloth he had not skill to frame into a garment, wrapt one end round his middle, and threw the rest about his shoulders.... And it is little to the honour of Highland ingenuity, that although the chiefs wore long pantaloons called trews, the common gael never fell upon any substitute for the belted plaid, till an English officer, for the benefit of the labourers who worked under his direction on the military roads, invented the fileah beg, philabeg, or little petticoat, detached from the plaid, and fastened by a buckle round the waist."
Although the above extract from the Quarterly Review, vol. i. p. 186., is not exactly a reply to the Query of A JUROR (Vol. iv., p. 7.), still it may be of some use to him.
I would like also to learn how much of the reviewer's story is founded upon fact, as I confess I am very much inclined to doubt the truth of it in toto.
A LOWLANDER.
Peace Illumination, 1802 (Vol. iv., p. 23.).
—The story referred to by MR. CAMPKIN does not appear to be so apocryphal as he supposes. Southey, who was an eye-witness of the illuminations, gives it as an indisputed fact. His words are:
"We entered the avenue immediately opposite to M. Otto's, and raising ourselves by the help of a garden wall, overlooked the crowd, and thus obtained a full and uninterrupted sight of what thousands and tens of thousands were vainly struggling to see. To describe it, splendid as it was, is impossible; the whole building presented a front of light. The inscription was 'Peace and Amity:' it had been 'Peace and Concord,' but a party of soldiers in the morning, whose honest patriotism did not regard trifling differences of orthography, insisted upon it that they were not conquered, and that no Frenchman should say so; and so the word Amity, which can hardly be regarded as English, was substituted in its stead."[2]
[2] Letters from England, by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, translated from the Spanish (3 vols. 12mo. London, 1807), vol. i. lett. 8. p. 93.
DOUGLAS ALLPORT.