KILT AND TARTAN

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1927, Page 20

KILT AND TARTAN

EVOLUTION OF SCOTLAND^. NATIONAL DBESS,. ' ■'-% Nine Englishmen ont of ten (and'per* haps an equal proportion of Soots), asked to describe the Scottish national dress, would begin their answer with the tartan kilt. This, indeeol, is the conspicuous feature. But ttie tartan is not distinctively Scottish; and the kilt, r at any rate in Scotland, is an ■upstart-, (says "The Times"). About 200 years ■ ago an English officer wrote, from tha! Highlands to his friend in London that: the tartan was not confined even to Celt and Goths, but was worn by-other' peoples; and that it was "ridiculous»<V "to imagine that the manufacture of it began in the Highlands. It had come; nrst to the Lowlands, and from Prance. Captain Burt's statement is not definitely contradicted by Mr. Loudon Macs'l6^ ,D °ugias > tete president of the ; beottish Society, who has just published a learned little book, "The Kilt- A Manual of Scottish National Dress": but Mr. Douglas ascribes a very humbla the different coloured fleeces of tha' from the wool of which.were? woven the checkered trews of Cert and; Gaul. Then, we may suppose, came, ittj obscure and turbulent ages, the ezten-l r,i° a V *'*$*%* f rom the trews the Plaid, and the development of its patterns .m order to mark off clan f?om clan Any scrap of romance about: Scotland is commonly ascribed to the: Highlands, just as air jokes used to be' ascribed to Joe Miller or "W. S Gilbert. 2? 1^ Forty-five, when tte weal! ing.ofth^tartan was forbidden it was not the Highlands.but the Lowlands, and especially the Lowland ladies, who' preserved^ tartan by showing, in dehance of the law, a passion for^t equal^ Hlf Victoria. As for'the kilt or iillibeg, as a separate garment it is not more than 200 years-old. As nanvTf '^"^P^, it Wa3 orig' nally only the end of the plaid "tucked up" and belted round the waist Be the history -what it may, the tartan kilt, more than" plaid, sporran, bon-' y?i °r a, Ul ht else > is the deterinin^ feature of Scottish national dres*. An!' t?*fi ? » D° mullon8 -wlw nave ai,.; ti>/aal dress. Every symbolical repre-*; mentation of these islands shows threV men, each in a different kind of dress.' It would show four if any one had dis^' a national dress ewel^ man- 6t these three tfie Scottish is the only dress which is in. bk.ee to the „«,'„ kilt » n a"ISS I ha 1 S t a g e a capital joke, on the S ' venienee, and in the castle a ß S y m bol of tarn P, osf)/^ mighty becomMgdSS S that the Scots have the sensl Sn£[fi