If ye will gang to the Highlands wi’ me.”
The rigorous Disarming Act, passed in 1747, created what was perhaps the most critical time in the history of the tartan. The pipes and the tartan were banned as treasonable things, and marks of extreme disloyalty to the House of Hanover. The law expressly enacted that “neither man nor boy, except such as are employed as officers and soldiers, shall, on any pretence, wear or put on the clothes commonly called Highland clothes, viz., the plaid, philabeg or little kilt, trowse, shoulder-belts, or any part whatsoever of what peculiarly belongs to the Highland garb, and that no tartan or party-coloured plaid or stuff shall be used for greatcoats, or for upper coats, on pain of imprisonment for six months, without the option of a fine, for the first offence, and transportation for seven years for the second.” This was stringent enough, and it nearly strangled all that was peculiar to the Highlands. But, thanks principally to the patriotic exertions of the then Duke of Montrose, the ban was removed in 1782, and the Highland garb restored to favour. It is now worn by five British regiments. The Gordons wear the Gordon tartan, the Camerons the Erracht-Cameron, the Seaforths the Mac Kenzie, the Argyll and Sutherlands the Sutherland, and the Black Watch a special tartan closely resembling the Sutherland. Both battalions of the Gordons, and one each of the other four regiments, are now in South Africa.
The Highland garb as we have it to-day is a compound of three varieties, all of which were worn in the seventeenth century. There was first the dress worn by the gentry—a shirt died with saffron and a plaid of fine wool tartan, with colours assorted so as to give the best possible effect. Then there was the dress of the common people—a shirt, painted instead of dyed, with a deerskin jacket above it, and the plaid, not always of tartan, worn over the shoulders instead of belted about the body. The third variety was the trews, but this cannot be traced farther back than 1538. It probably came from Ireland, where it was the dress of the gentry from the earliest periods.
The plaid proper consisted of a long piece of tartan carefully plaited in the middle and bound about the waist in large and very particularly-adjusted folds. While the lower part came down from the belt to the knees, the upper, after various wrappings so as to cover the whole body, was fixed to the left shoulder with a brooch, leaving the right arm at liberty. In wet weather the plaid was thrown loose, and formed a complete covering for the body. The headdress, when there was any, was a round, flat bonnet, the stockings were cut from the web of tartan, and the shoes were made of skin shaped in the best possible way to the form of the foot. The original of the sporran was a large piece of goat’s or badger’s skin profusely ornamented, which hung in front, and served as a pocket.
There seems to have been a time, before the dress developed into its present form, when the belted plaid and the trews were worn together. In 1656 a certain Thomas Tucker, who reported on the settlement of the revenues of excise and custom in Scotland, says one of his collectors, in order to avert the antipathy of the natives to an exciseman, “went clad after the mode of the country, with belted playde, trowses, and brogues.” “In sharp winters,” says a writer of 1680, “they wear close trouzes, which cover the thighs, legs, and feet;” while at the Battle of Killiecrankie, in 1715, “there were several of the common men died in the hills, for, having cast away their plaids at going into battle, they had not wherewith to cover them but their shirts; whereas many of the gentlemen that instead of short hose did wear trewis, though they were sorely pinched, did fare better in their short coats and trewis than those that were naked to the belt.”
By and by, however, the belted plaid and the trews gave way to the plaid and the kilt as we now have them. It cannot be said, indeed, that there ever was a period in which the trews held anything like universal sway. The transition was rather from the original form of the loosely wrapped plaid to the present form of the dress. There is a story to the effect that an English tailor named Parkinson or Ralliston invented the kilt in 1715 or 1745—it is a somewhat vague story—and both Pennant and Sir John Sinclair accept it as truth. Pennant, himself an Englishman, may be excused, but the man who edited the Statistical Account of Scotland might have known better. The Earl of Moray of Charles I.’s day wore the kilt, and Lord Archibald Campbell, in Records of Argyll, shows two pictures, one of 1672 and one of 1693, in both of which the kilt can be plainly seen. Besides, the Highlanders wore it in the rebellion of 1715. It is carrying conjecture a bit too far to contend that the Saxons, who were able to introduce very few of their customs among the Celts, introduced the national dress. The simple fact seems to be that the change from the belted plaid, with the plaid and trews here and there, to the plaid and kilt, took place when the altering circumstances of the people made continuous labour a necessity, and also, therefore, a convenient and inexpensive working outfit.
It gives one an insight into the habits of the times to read that the managers of the piping competition held in Edinburgh in 1783, apologised to the public for the deficiency in dress. The competitors, they said, having no prospect of appearing “before so magnificent and great a company,” had nothing in view in quitting their distant dwellings but the competition at Falkirk, where their instruments alone were essential. In 1785, however, candidates were warned to appear “in the proper Highland habit,” which has since held good. Pipers’ dress was sometimes stylish enough even in the middle of the eighteenth century, for we read that in a procession of the Royal Company of Archers in Edinburgh in 1734 there was “one Highland piper who was dressed in scarlet richly laced.”
In the present-day dress, as is well known, the upper part of the plaid is disjoined from the lower, and made up so as to resemble the ancient form. The kilt itself is plaited so as to resemble the lower half of the plaid, but as a matter of fact, it is always too well plaited to be more than a far-off imitation. When properly made, the garb is certainly one of the most picturesque in the world. It is not so well adapted for the hillside as the old was, having been “improved” too much, but it is remarkable as showing how closely mankind clings to habits and costumes which experience has proved suitable, and which is entwined into the history and traditions of their particular race. As to its suitability for war, a great deal has been said in connection with the present operations in South Africa, and it has been laid to the charge of the tartan that it not only betrays the presence of the wearer, and makes him a target for the enemy’s sharp-shooters, but also exposes the soldier to all sorts of chills, and the attacks of all the vermin that crawl over the ground on which he has often to sleep. There is no use denying the fact that there is a great deal of truth in this, and if the Government press their proposals for the reform of Army dress, and include in these proposals the abolition of the kilt as a fighting garment, it seems as if there will not be one half the outcry there would have been in the same circumstances before the war begun. The campaign has undoubtedly revealed the shortcomings of the kilt as a part of active service dress, but that is no reason why it should be altogether abolished. Sentiment can be satisfied by retaining the kilt for parade purposes and garrison duty, while common-sense will indicate that sentiment, unless it can be proved to be very strong indeed, must have little voice in deciding what is best in the face of the enemy. It would certainly be bad policy to totally dissociate the Highland regiments from their distinctive tartans. Recruiting in Scotland is not what it might be, and when the Highland regiments cease to be distinctively Highland it will decline still further. If the authorities wish to foster the military enthusiasm of Highlanders they cannot do better than foster all that pertains to their part of the kingdom. Besides, the tartan is not now the badge of a rebellious remnant, but of a race that is loyal to the empire of which it is a worthy part, and considering the high position the kilted regiments hold in the British army, it is not too much to expect that their peculiar dress should be left to them, for use in all possible circumstances.
The war has given a decided impetus to the general trade in tartans. The demand from the regulars remains practically stationary, as the number of men wearing the Highland uniform is always the same. Among Scottish Volunteer regiments, however, the kilt is coming more and more into favour, and quite a number of additional “Highland companies” have been formed recently. The 6th V. B. Gordon Highlanders is the only battalion in the Highland Brigade unprovided with the national garb, the Government having, owing to “financial difficulties,” declined to supply the dress. The honorary colonel, Mr. J. Gordon Smith, has, however, now given the regiment £1500 to enable the men to wear their territorial uniform, and it is almost certain that the Government will supply the regiment with the kilt in the future. But it is from fashionable civil life that the bulk of the increased demand comes. The headquarters of the kilt-making industry—for it is an industry—are in Glasgow, but the principal market is in London. The demand in the Metropolis for the Highland dress is very extensive, and the biggest firm of Glasgow manufacturers are kept continually employed fulfilling orders from the South. The favourite tartans are, naturally, those of the kilted regiments, but the fashionable Highland dress consists of the kilt with an ordinary dinner jacket above it—the full outfit would be too Highland for London drawing-rooms. In Scotland the formation of clan societies has, in the cities, revived interest in the different tartans, but in the real home of the kilt, the fastnesses of the Highlands, the dress is practically extinct. A few old men wear it, as well as some of the better class residents, visitors sometimes wear it, while retainers wear it as a sort of livery; but among the people themselves it is, to all intents and purposes, obsolete. The garb of old Gaul has ceased to be the at-home dress of the Highlander, and become the evening dress of the fashionable who would ape a Highland connection, and the mark of the Highland wanderer, who far from home stands by home customs out of patriotic love for his home land. We may regret the turn of events, but there is no use blinking simple facts.—W. L. M.