Tartans1

Each area or community grouping would doubtless have, as one of its artisans, a weaver. He (they were invariably men) would no doubt produce the same tartan for those around him and that tartan would initially become what we now call a District Tartan - one worn by individuals living in close geographical proximity such as glen or strath. By its very nature, that community would be one huge extended family that soon became identified by its tartan which it wore, not to differentiate it from its neighbours in the next glen - but because that is what its community weaver produced! It was one short step from there to connect that tartan to the name of the wearers.

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Tartan has without doubt become one of the most important symbols of Scotland and Scottish Heritage and with the Scots National identity probably greater than at any time in recent centuries, the potency of Tartan as a symbol cannot be understated. However, it has also created a great deal of romantic fabrication, controversy and speculation into its origins, name, history and usage as a Clan or Family form of identification.

What is a Tartan?

Tartan is a woven material, generally of wool, having stripes of different colours and varying in breadth. The arrangement of colours is alike in warp and weft - that is, in length and width - and when woven, has the appearance of being a number of squares intersected by stripes which cross each other; this is called a 'sett.’ By changing the colours; varying the width; depth; number of stripes, differencing is evolved. Tartan patterns are called "setts"; the sett being the complete pattern and a length of tartan is made by repeating the pattern or sett over and over again.

Origins

The Celts for many thousands of years are known to have woven chequered or striped cloth and a few of these ancient samples have been found across Europe and Scandinavia. It is believed that the introduction of this form of weaving came to the West of Northern Britain with the Iron age Celtic Scoti (Scots) from Ireland in the 5 – 6th c. BC. Early Romans talked of the Celtic tribes wearing bright striped clothing - there was no word at that time for chequered. One of the earliest

examples of tartan found in Scotland dates back to the 3rd century AD, where a small sample of woollen check known as the Falkirk tartan (now in the National Museum of Scotland) was found used as a stopper in an earthenware pot to protect a treasure trove of silver coins buried close to the Antonine Wall near Falkirk. It is a simple two coloured check or tartan which, was identified as the undyed brown and white of the native Soay Sheep. Colours were determined by local plants that could be used for dyes.

The Name

The word Tartan we use today has also caused speculation and confusion as one camp says it comes from the Irish word - tarsna - crosswise and/or the Scottish Gaelic tarsuinn – across. The Gaelic word for Tartan has always been – breachdan - the most accepted probability for the name comes from the French tiretaine which was a wool/linen mixture. In the 1600s it referred to a kind of cloth rather than the pattern in which the cloth was woven.

History

One of the first recorded mentions of Tartan was in 1538 when King James V purchased "three ells of Heland Tartans" for his wife to wear. In 1587, Hector Maclean (heir of Duart) paid feu duty with sixty ells of cloth in "black, white and grass colour" - the colours of the Maclean hunting tartan.

An eyewitness account of the Battle of Killecrankie in 1689 describes "McDonells men in their triple stripe” but probably the first visual proof of the existence of what we now call ‘Tartan’, was in a German woodcut of about 1631 which is thought to show Highland soldiers - no doubt mercenaries - in the army of Gustavus Adolphus and wearing a clearly identified tartan philamhor - the great kilt. The next important Milestone in the history of tartan was the 1745 rebellion, ending with the Battle of Culloden, fought on Drummossie

The romantic Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart - Bonnie Prince Charlie - ranged his inferior Jacobite forces of Highlanders against the Duke of Cumberland's Government forces. The Jacobite army was organised into Clan regiments and as historian Jamie Scarlett explains "here we have the first hint of the use of tartan as a clan uniform." To understand how this battle proved to be the catalyst for the great Clan Tartan myth, we have to look at the lifestyle and the terrain in which many of Scotland's major families or clans lived at that time.