the Highlands. Their objectives were to clansmen to arm themselves, play the keep the Highlanders employed and too bagpipes, and teach the Gaelic language Murray Clan occupied to start another rebellion and to to their children. By 1782, when the Acts allow for the rapid deployment of British were lifted, a generation of Scots had Society soldiers should the first objective fail. past that knew little of their former culture. It wasn’t until the early 1800’s One of the first road builders was a that interest in Scottish culture cropped Quaker ironmaster from Lancashire, who up again. Ironically, the survival of the Tartans in 1727 established an iron foundry at culture and dress depended heavily on Invergarry, near Inverness. He soon foreigners, especially the British Army. realized that whatever advantages the The first two sections are adapted During the years the Acts were in force, kilt had when worn by men in their from the Scottish Clan and Family soldiers in the Highland Regiments normal Highland pursuits, it was hardly Encyclopedia1 and Scotland and Her proudly wore the modern kilt. This the thing in which to Tartans2. opportunity allowed British tailors to fell trees and stoke shape into their mold what is now called furnaces. So he The Highland Plaid Highland dress. commissioned a Anciently, the local regimental Murray Tartans standard outer tailor to adapt the garment for men’s traditional There are a number of Murray Highland men was dress to make it tartans, but only four are generally the lein-croich, a more suitable for available today (listed in the order in kind of saffron manual labour. This which they appear in this tri-fold): (yellow)-dyed shirt tailor created the modern kilt by Murray of Atholl (ancient) Murray of whose tails came separating the bottom half of the kilt and Atholl (modern), Murray of Elibank, and down below the sewing the pleats to hold them in place. Murray of Tullibardine. The ancient knee, and made The invention caught on and by 1745 the tartans have the same warp and weft as from as much as nine metres of pleated modern kilt was very popular. the modern versions, but the colors linen. This in time gave way to the appear less vibrant, or more faded and In the aftermath of the Rebellion of féileadh-breacan or féileadh-mór (belted washed out. This is an attempt by the 1745 came the Acts of Disarming and plaid, big wrap, or great kilt), whose weaver’s to imitate use of colors thought Proscription of 1747. Like the Penal Laws name perfectly describes the normal to have been achieved by using ancient of Ireland, these Acts were designed to Highland dress for men during the plant dyes. destroy a culture. According to these new seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. laws, it was illegal to wear Highland The plaid was a huge blanket of woven clothing, including kilts, sporrans, and wool, a double-width (about two metres) any tartan material. It was also illegal for Rev 11/18 in breadth and between four and six

1 Way of Plean, George and Squire, Romilly. Scottish Clan 2 Fulton, Alexander. Scotland and Her Tartans. New and Family Encyclopedia. Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1994. York: Gallery Books, 1991. metres long. After belting it on, the Originally, the Interest in the tartan industry was wearer would sometimes drape the top different tartan setts rekindled in the 19th Century, mainly by half around his torso or sometimes over meant very little. the Allen brothers3. They published some his head, according to his whim or the People could tell of the first tartan books that identified weather. The legs were kept bare for in what area of tartans for specific clans. Most of these moorland bogs and generally oozy terrain Scotland you were tartans, it was later found, had been of the Highlands, bare legs were an from by the shade of created for these books. By that time the essential contribution to health. After all, the dyes that were chiefs of the clans had accepted the idea wet clothing could not be dried with any used in your of using tartan as a means of certainty or regularity in the damp and clothing. This gave rise to the “great identification. In 1822, with the first royal draughty conditions of even the finest tartan myth” that people of the same visit to Scotland in decades, Britain’s King homes. clan wore the same tartan. The truth is George IV made quite a show of it when that weavers in a particular area would he traveled to the Highlands wearing a The wool from which the plaid was often only have the resources or patience kilt which he was “reliably informed” was made was woven in either a striped or to weave one or two tartans, thus all the native dress. After that, the re- tartan (checked) pattern. Its close weave their customers wore a similar tartan. culturalization of Scotland could not be was midge (gnat)-proof and moderately stopped. The myths grew, fed by the water-proof, and the plaid served as a The connection between tartans and writings of Robert Burns, Walter Scott, blanket out in the open at night, as well the clans with which they are associated and Robert Louis Stevenson. It is from as a convenient garment to wear by day. is a fairly recent occurrence. In fact, these images that much of modern portraits of chiefs and lairds from the late Tartan patterns, Scottish culture is based. seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or setts, were show the tartan in a number of different created by the The Modern Kilt setts and that none of them equate to the interweaving at right The suggestion that the modern kilt, respective clan patterns of today. angles of the same also known as the féileadh-beag (little However, early in the nineteenth century sequence and kilt), was invented by an Englishman may the chiefs of the clans began to register, proportions of be unsettling to many Scottish under their own names, tartans that coloured thread. In traditionalists. The background to this were thought to be associated with the the majority of particular version takes place in the areas from which their clans came. Of tartans this aftermath of the Rebellion of 1715 and course, by that time much had been sequence is one which can be repeated the abortive mini-rebellion in 1719. As a forgotten and disagreements about back and forth in either direction means of averting further unrest, the which tartans should fall under whose between two pivot points, which can British set about building roadways into names raged then, and continue to this then be reproduced by multiplying each day. number to achieve the required scale.

3 Though the Allen’s were of sound English stock, Allan, and to Hay, finally calling themselves, respectively, Charlie’s mother, Clementina Sobieski) and Charles between about 1820 and 1840 they changed their name John Sobieski Stuart (John Sobieski had been King of Edward Stuart. successively to the more Scottish Allan, then to Hay Poland and was the grandfather of Bonnie Prince