KILT AND TARTAN

New Zealand Times, Volume LIV, Issue 12651, 11 January 1927, Page 10

KILT AND TARTAN

SCOTTISH NATIONAL DRESS ITS HUMBLE ORIGIN* Nine Englishmen out of ten (and perhaps an equal proportion of Scots), asked to describe' the Scottish national dress, would begin their answer with the tartan kilt. ; This, indeed, is the conspicuous feature. But the tartan is not distinctively Scottish: and the kilt, at any rate in Scotland, is an upstart (says “The Times”). About 200 years ago an English officer wrote from the Highlands to his friend in London that the' tartan was not confined even to Celts and Goths, but was worn by other peoples; and that .it was “ridiculous” to imagine that the manufacture of it began in the Highlands. It had come first to the Lowlands, and from France. Captain Burt’s statement is not definitely contradicted by Mr Loudon Mac Queen Douglas, late president of the Scottish Society,, who has just published a learned little book, “The Kilt: A Manual of Scottish National Dress”; but Mr Douglas ascribes a very humble origin to the tartan. It began with the different coloux-ed fleeces of the sheep from the wool of which were woven the checkered trews of Celt and Gaul. Then, we may suppose, came, in obscure and turbulent ages, the extension of tartan from the trews to the plaid, and the development of its patterns in order to mark off clan lroni clan. Any scrap of romance about Scotland is commonly ascribed to the Highlands, just as all jokes used to be ascribed to Joe Miller or W, S. Gilbert. But after the Fortyfive, whan the wearing of the tartan was forbidden, it was not the Highlands but the Lowlands, and especially the Lowland ladies, who preserved the tartan by showing, in defiance of the law, a passion for it equal to that of Queen Victoria. As for the kilt, or fillibeg, as a separate garment it is net more than 200 years old. As the name “kilt” implies, it was originally only the end of the plaid “tucked up” and bolted round the waist. ONLY ONE IN USE Be the history) what it may, the tartan kilt, more than plaid, sporran, bonnet, or. aught else, is the determining 'feature of Scottish national dress. And the Scots are the only people in the King’s home Dominions who have a national dress. Every symbolical representation of these islands shows three men, each in a difforent kind of dress. Ft would show four if nnyono had discovered, or invented, a national dress for the Welshman. Of these three the Scottish is the. onlv dress which is in actual use, the only one which a sane person would care to bo seen wearing except at n fancy dross hall. The John Bull dress of the Englishman

was never national and is now a mere outworn symbol. The breeches, hat, and shillelagh of the to a play by Boucicault rather than to life, and bear no resemblance ■to the saffron kilt and chequered trews which the most instructed and Erinloving Irish, now claim to be. the Irish national dress. Yet the Irish and the. AVelsh have had as muoh provocation as the Scot to ding defiantly to any symbol of nationality that they might possess. Only the Scot‘ has, clung to his clothes, and has worn them so generally that they can he on the music-hall stage a capital joke, on the battle-field a glory, in the ballroom an envied distinction, on the moor a great convenience, and in the castle a symbol of nationality favoured by the highest in'the land. The survival and success of this costume may tempt the intellectually curious into profound speculations in the comparative psychology of peoples. They may do well not to leave altogether out of count the truth that the Scottish national costume is (to sav nothing of its romantic associations and its convenience for certain purposes) a mighty becoming diess. and that the Scots have the sense to know it.