Another song, “Heather Jock’s noo awa’,” by an unknown author, tells of a famous pickpocket who could creep through “a wee bit hole” and quietly pilfer eggs and cheese, for “Jock was nae religious youth,” who yet lived at a bountiful table spread with his spoil. Having often broken jail, the judge at last, without delay, sent him off to Botany Bay and bade him “never more play Heather Jock.”
Nevertheless, the allusions and references to the heath flower, in song, poetry, and conversation, are numerous. Scott speaks of the heath-bell “which supplied the bonnet and the plume,” and of the harebell,—of which our “shepherd’s purse” is not the contraction,—and again of other dew-begemmed blooms:—
“A foot more light, a step more true,
Ne’er from the heath flower dashed the dew.”
Between the world of heather and the Highlander’s costume, there is a close and subtle connection. Since in the evolution of Scottish dress the heath flowers—before the introduction of garden favorites, of exotic and modern flowering plants, or the more elaborate plaids of recent days—“supplied the bonnet and the plume,” it seems evident that art took her hints from nature. “A wide, billowing series of confluent hills, that for half a year mingled tints of brown, russet, and dun in a rich pattern,” is a description of the hilly landscape of the border region, out of which, for the most part, the development of the plaids, on a large scale of production, proceeded. These, blending with the best work and most cunning textiles of the Highlands and of the islands, have made the actual Highlander’s costume of which the modern reader thinks. It must always be remembered that the most striking difference in the daily dress of Lowlander and Highlander was in the cut, form, method of wearing, and general appearance, rather than in color or material. Roughly speaking, the abundant variety of tints and patterns is almost wholly modern.
For centuries, until banned by law, the most striking external mark of difference between the northland Scot, or the mountaineer, and the Lowlander, the man of the plains, was in the male costume. Scotland, though in Roman times inhabited by Celtic tribes, shared with the northern or Teutonic nations in the good providence that enabled her people to work out their natural life, not under Latin forms, nor according to the genius of classic paganism, but under the Christian religion and civilization, into whose school they came as young, docile pupils. Christianity is Scotland’s alma mater. Hence her people rejoice to-day in an art which has remained free from Mediterranean infusion. It is certainly wonderful that such an æsthetic dress as the Scottish costume should have grown up as something almost unaided; to say nothing of other interesting forms of artistic industry and decoration, which are wholly indigenous.
The tartan, though Scottish in its development, was hardly an original invention. The word comes from the Spanish and French “tire taine,” meaning in the former language something thin and flimsy, from “tire tar,” to tremble, or shiver, with the cold. In French, the term “tire taine” refers to the mingled fibres of linen and wool, or linsey-woolsey. Probably no word is known in either Gaelic or English, before the fifteenth century, describing the finer sort of tartans. After this date, the vocabulary is rich and the industry greatly developed. It is certain that the Highlanders by the eighteenth century possessed these peculiar textiles and their patterns which were varied to a wonderful degree, so that each clan had its own special tartan, by which it was distinguished. The Scots made the tartan the fit substitute for a heraldry that expresses itself in the “arms” and in a system of symbolical decoration copied from plants, animals, or the implements of war or industry. It is probable that European heraldry arose out of the crusades, which gave also to Scottish blazonry a tremendous impetus.
When, however, the modern world at large, attracted by the beauty and solid value of the Scotch tartans, used these as articles of dress for their own personal decoration, or for purely commercial advantage, then the heraldry of the tartan suffered confusion and decay. Manufacturers, for the sake of the money to be gained in the new enterprise, began to design new and purely imaginary tartans. This proceeding gave rise to the jests and ribaldry of the shallow skeptics, who throw doubt upon the reality of these distinctive patterns as ever having been, as at one time they undoubtedly were, distinctive as the particular badges of particular clans. The truth lies midway between the enthusiast and the doubter.
In political history, when conquest, subjection, or subordination of all to the supreme government must be secured, it seems necessary, at times, to suppress or abolish certain outward symbols or forms of dress which ally the thoughts and feelings of those subordinated to the insurgent past. It seems best to ban these, at least until the time when, order and uniformity having been secured, the resumption of the old liberty of dress, which has no longer any political significance, may be harmless. In the old Scot’s land we have heard about “the wearing of the green”—long proscribed, then allowed.
The Highlander’s costume has to-day no political significance, though it was once the badge of the insurgent, and later for a time under ban. After Culloden, in 1745, the British Parliament passed laws by which the Scottish hill people were deprived of their weapons. Then, also, the Highland dress was prohibited under severe penalties. Happily however, that ban was lifted in good season.