Glengarry dicing?

[OC Richard]

I learned a long time ago to post photos and let them do most of the talking. Whenever I just said anything, people would post that I was just making it all up! Off-putting, when I had a hundred photos in front of me showing exactly what I was saying. I came to realise that the people doing the criticising didn't have those photos sitting in front of them!

Likewise with The Highlanders Of Scotland. If I post an image from that, 20 people will say that MacLeay was inventing everything. So I post a photograph taken the same time showing precisely the same thing, which people accept. A perpetual head-scratcher, that.

Anyhow the story that the Glengarry was devised by an officer of The Cameron Highlanders in the 1840s seems to be rubbish. There are a number of portraits showing it earlier, and showing it worn by civilians. The accepted story seems to be that the Glengarry was first worn by The Glengarry Fencibles in the late 18th century.

Here's an early Glengarry, which appears to be merely a folded bonnet, in 1822



Here's one of the earliest photos I've seen of the Glengarry, showing the same thing as the painting above.



This bonnet is oddly shaped



This one has a more 'modern' shape to it, though in the first half of the 19th century



Now, about the Glengarry Fencibles, raised in 1794, here is their commander in 1812 (several years after the unit was disbanded). This bonnet has an intricate border I've not seen elsewhere. Is it the first "Glengarry" bonnet?