Not reaching past the thigh,
With pleates on pleates they pleated are,
As thick as pleates can lie,”
which was a very good and concise description of the plaid as it then was. Another writer, in Certayne Mattere Concerning Scotland, published in London in 1603, says the Highlanders “delight in marbled cloths, especially that have long strips of sundrie colours ... with the which, rather coloured than clad, they suffer the most cruel tempests that blow in the open fields, in such sort that, in a night of snow they sleep sound.” From A Modern Account of Scotland, printed in 1679, also in London, we learn that “the Highlanders wear slashed doublets, commonly without breeches, only a plad tyed about their wastes, thrown over one shoulder, with short stockings to the gartering place; their knees and part of their thighs being naked; others have breeches and stockings all of a piece of plad ware.” A writer of 1710 supplements this by saying, “they wear striped mantles of divers colours called plaids”; a statement which brings the evidence to a date so recent as to render the calling of further witnesses unnecessary. That the kilt is a pure outgrowth of Scottish life there is no gainsaying. It could have been imported from Ireland only, and that it was not is proved by the two facts, that the colony of Irish Scots who settled in Argyllshire never overran Scotland, and that the checkered plaid was worn in Scotland at dates earlier than it can be proved to have been worn in Ireland.
The complete outfit of a Highland chief in the middle of the eighteenth century makes rather a formidable list. Here it is:—
Full-trimmed bonnet.
Tartan jacket, vest, kilt, and cross-belt.
Tartan belted plaid.
Pair of hose, made up from cloth.
Tartan stockings, with yellow garters.