The Invention of Scotland

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. George Santayana, 1906

Summary

The kilt and distinctive clan tartans are the invention of Englishmen in the early 18^th to early 19^th centuries. Most people, Scots and English alike, now believe they are the product of an ancient Scottish Celtic culture. Although the Celts lost their rebellions against the British Crown and Parliament in 1715 and 1745, Celtic mythmaking, with English help, eventually conquered the Lowland Scots, the English and finally the world.

The Invention of the Kilt[1]

“Traditional” Highland Dress  -  Myth and Reality

More than seventy years ago, my father (an Edinburgh historian and teacher) told me this joke:

“If a Londoner sees a man in a kilt they think he’s a Scotchman. In Edinburgh, if they see a man in a kilt, they think he’s a Highlander. In the Highlands, however, if they see a man in a kilt they know he’s an Englishman.”

Alas, how things have changed. Travel to Scotland today (as I did earlier this year) you will be welcomed at the border by a person (a woman on this occasion) playing the bagpipes in full highland regalia. Continuing to the capital Edinburgh, your ears are assailed on every corner of Princes Street by more kilted persons playing medleys of Scottish tunes. I spotted a tour guide from Germany dressed in tartan kilt and sporran (what clan did he belong to?). In the Royal mile there was a bare-chested man in a kilt with his face painted blue – I think he was channeling Mel Gibson in that wildly-inaccurate 1995 Hollywood Movie Braveheart. It seemed that every second or third shop was offering to kit you out in your own personal clan tartan. Even in the Highlands itself, you can’t always get away from the tourist shtick.

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“Guten Morgen, Herr Schmidt, from Dusseldorf, ja? – yes, yes, one moment sir… (he types on his computer) – here it is, we do have a tartan for you, sir – it is the ancient dress tartan of the McHaggis of Invercreagh. A Herr Schmidt from Heidelberg was here – in this very shop sir – in… aah… 2003 – and he assured us that his great-great grandfather married a lass from the McHaggis clan in 1876″ – We have very strict standards in this establishment, you know, but you most definitely qualify.”

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Lowlanders make up more than 80% of the Scottish population and have mostly Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Welsh or Irish roots. Prior to the late 18^th Century, Lowlanders almost universally regarded Celtic Highlanders as half-naked savages living in primitive conditions outside of normal, law-abiding, civilised society. They were not wrong.

The few available accounts of the dress of Highlanders before the mid-to-late 18^th century describe (in some cases with wood-cut illustrations) a single length of hand-woven woollen cloth called a plaid, woven in a cross-banded pattern called tartan[2]. This was worn over the shoulder to hang fore-and-aft to mid-thigh and secured at the waist by a belt. Below the waist, the plaid was arranged to form a sort of open-sided mini-skirt. Excess material could be draped over h head and shoulders like a shawl. A small storage pouch (or belly-bag) could be hung from the belt. They called this accessory a sporran. It had the added virtue of preventing the front skirt from blowing too high in a wind. Highlanders were a tough and hardy race. The wealthy few might wear a linen shift below the plaid. The even wealthier few (i.e. Clan Chiefs) scorned the peasant dress and wore tartan trousers called trews (or trowse).

Following the aborted Jacobite rebellion of 1715, English Regiments were stationed in the West Highlands at Fort William and in the East at Inverness. The Army built new roads and tried to suppress inter-clan fighting and ensure safety for travelers.

The early 18^th century was the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in England. Thomas Rawlinson (1669-1737) was a member of a family of Quaker Ironmasters who owned and operated a number of blast furnaces in Lancashire and Chesire. They used hematite ore from nearby mines and reduced it to iron with charcoal. The ore was plentiful, but wood for making charcoal was not. Around 1725, Rawlinson travelled to the now part-pacified Highlands to seek fresh charcoal supplies. His eyes were on the virgin birch forests of Invergarry, north of Inverness [3]. These were owned by Ian McDonnell, Clan Chief of the McDonnells of Glengarry. Rawlinson and “The McDonnell” formed a partnership. The Chief would lease access to his forests and provide labour from his serfs. Rawlinson would ship iron ore from England to Glengarry and build an iron smelter there; for their return journey his ships would load charcoal for England. A synergistic and mutually profitable arrangement, they hoped. Representing his family, Rawlinson moved to live in Glengarry (he rebuilt Invergarry castle, destroyed by the Army after the 1715 Jacobite rebellion) and became Managing Director of the enterprise.

Rawlinson soon realised that the half-naked dress of his new employees was unsuitable for industrial operations, whether felling trees, making charcoal or attending to open-hearth iron furnaces. For Rawlinson it was a Health and Safety issue, but the garb also offended his Quaker sensibilities. So, in 1727, he approached the tailor of the English Redcoat Regiment stationed in Inverness and together they devised an industrial dress for his employees. This was a separate, belted, mid-knee length tartan skirt in plaid material featuring multiple stitched-down pleats to keep it heavy and weighted. They called this garment a kilt. Both Rawlinson and the Chief wore the new dress, and its obvious practical advantages soon made it widely popular.

In 1725, with unrest and disorder still rife in the Highlands, the English adopted a policy of Divide and Rule. They raised an armed militia (called a watch), drawing its recruits from Highland clans that had been loyal to the crown during the 1715 rebellion of the Old Pretender. These were mainly Cambells, but also Grants, Frasers and Munros.  The militia uniform was a one-piece belted plaid (12 yards long!) in a distinctive dark tartan of green and blue which quickly led to their nickname, The Black Watch (in Gaelic: Am Freiceadan Dubh). For a different explanation of the nickname, and the subsequent history of the Black Watch and other Highland Regiments, see footnote [4]. The presence of the Watch created the beginnings of the idea that groups of Highlanders could be identified by a common tartan. Later, their plaid was converted to a kilt, topped with the red jacket with contrasting regimental facings of the English soldier.

The Invention of Clan Tartans

In 1822, the brothers John and Charles Allen[5] appeared in Edinburgh. They were born and raised in southern England from an English naval family (their grandfather was an Admiral, their father a naval Lieutenant), but nothing of their early life is known. Somehow, by the time they were young adults, they had acquired a fascination for and a knowledge of Gaelic and Celtic myth and legend. For many years before their arrival in Edinburgh, they appear to have been corresponding with major Scottish tartan retailers. These were now commercial firms concentrated in centers close to the Highlands, like Stirling. The Allens provided them with “traditional” designs that the brothers, when later challenged, would claim to be based on an ancient, illustrated text in their possession – a family document (they claimed) handed to one of their ancestors by Bonnie Prince Charlie no less [6]. Among their many talents, the Allens obviously had a flair for textile design. Of course, no one ever got to see the originals of these “ancient family document”. Sir Walter Scott did ask, but was fobbed off with elaborate and ingenious excuses. The designs, along with elaborate and fanciful stories of their origins and how they came to be in the possession of the Allen family were eventually published as Vestiarium Scotticum” (1842) and later as “Costume of the Clans” (1845). These lavish, limited-edition, books, with their multiple hand-coloured plates, became a major source of tartan designs throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

1822 marked the visit to Edinburgh of King George IV. This was a big and lavish event: the first visit of a British monarch to Scotland for almost 200 years. The organiser, Scottish romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott, wanted all the clan chiefs to come to Edinburgh to meet the King. Each was to bring a number of retainers identically dressed in a kilt of a distinctive tartan so that so that the elderly King could tell which clan was which.  The Chiefs hurried off to the Stirling tartan emporiums to choose designs from their pattern books. These patterns were mostly the creations of the Allen brothers.

Edinburgh was full of kilted Highlanders. The King was charmed and ordered for himself a kilt in Royal Stuart tartan. You can Google a slightly farcical portrait of the portly Hanoverian King in this outfit.

The extravaganza was a great success. The Celts had finally conquered Scotland, and England too. Their sartorial revenge for the battle of Culloden in 1745. Later, the Celtic myths were to conquer the British diaspora around the World as well. Every Highlander, Lowlander, or Englishman with a Scottish surname, or a hint of Scottish blood in their ancestry, now can choose their very own “traditional” tartan [7].

Following a visit to Scotland in 1843, Queen Victoria and her Consort Prince Albert fell in love with the Highlands and acquired a large estate near Braemar in the Dee valley of Perthshire. In 1848, they built a pseudo-Gothic mansion called Balmoral and filled it with Gothic-Celtic-tartan kitsch. There they would spend their summer holidays and Albert could stalk deer in a kilt without appearing too ridiculous. A tradition the Royal Family has maintained to this day.

With Victoria and Albert for an example, wealthy upper-class Englishmen flocked to the Highlands to buy similar estates where they could pretend to be Clan Chiefs and slaughter the local wildlife (much better than foxes). They bought land (as Queen Victoria had done) from Clan Chiefs eager to sell out their tenants for a dollop of cash and a chance to become part of the English aristocratic establishment. The local subsistence population (whose presence, along with their sheep, would have restricted the field of fire) had their tenancies revoked and were forced to move out. Many emigrated to the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. The Highlands became depopulated and remain so this day. The event is called the Highland Clearances.

Final Thoughts

There are no real villains in this story. Thomas Rawlinson brought jobs and money to an impoverished Highland community and had concerns for his workers’ physical and moral safety. John and Charles Allen made little or no money from their fantastical schemes and got no royalties on their designs. They lived on the charity of friends and died in genteel poverty in the late 1870s, still researching their imaginary roots. The Celtic myths they helped promote were harmless and amusing stories that give all Scots a sense of Nationhood and a glorious, romantic past.

Tartan patterns are genuine Highland inventions that reflect the artistic genius of the Celts.

The “traditional” Highland dress, for all its dubious origins, is still a fine and impressive dress for a man.

Victoria and Albert, playing at dressing up in their Highland Estate, were hardworking Royals who deserved their summer holiday fun.

Looking even further back in time

My tale of Scottish myths and legends almost exactly mirrors how, around the 13^th century, the Anglo-Norman aristocracy of England adopted the Celtic myths and legends of Wales and Brittany – the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table - as the true history of their own inheritance.

That is an example of the process that the quote at the head of this post refers.

Acknowledgments

The factual content of this post is taken from the book: The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, by Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. Specifically, Part III: The Sartorial Myth. Trevor-Ropers’ book was published by Yale University Press and printed by Cambridge University Press in 2006.

It is a meticulous scholarly work with full documentation and references and written an easy and readable style.

Extra details have been added from an internet search

The words and the commentary are mine.

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 Personal Note:

This post was prompted by nostalgic feelings for Scotland as it was when I was a lad more than 70 years ago. But would I really want to live back then with no fridge in the kitchen, no washing machine in the laundry, no TV in the lounge, no computer in the office and no car in the garage? Definitely not.

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