Firstly I'm sorry for I should have picked this up before:

Hamish cited Balmoral as being the only tartan that is 'reserved', this is wrong for there are others-here I would cite my own clan where there is a reserved tartan for the chief and their immediate family.

However as mentioned in my earlier post, there are conventions rather than rules. Sadly people are looking for rules-specific rules: not realising that here in Britain and to be more specific in the actual clans-such conventions are oft stronger than any rules.

So whilst allowances are made for ignorance-and such people as dancers-scouts and the like: the convention is that an individual wearing a tartan to which they do not have a link under the convention concept is a bit of a rotter. Probably nothing would be said-but people would know.

So the right thing to do is to wear either a tartan to which one has a genuine claim-or look to one of the many excellent district tartans and the like.

This in turn leads to something else, oft on this board one reads about the 'highland heritage' which gave birth to the kilt and tartan as we know them today-that in turn leads to the clans. Looking to the clans-I appreciate the arguments about the evolution of clan tartans-now that evolution of linked tartans goes back to at least the raising of the Black Watch, and was later reinforced by the infamous royal visit-so we are looking at at least 200-250 years: long enough for a tradition to become a genuine tradition*. [Think here on a time span the USMC-do they not claim traditions!]

So rather than looking to rules, or a lack of rules, and ignoring convention: it might be better to make every effort to support that heritage, and if that means being selective as to which tartan to wear-so be it. For if we do not support that heritage-it will be lost.

So please do look to the genuine link twixt tartan and clan before getting a kilt-you will be supporting our shared heritage.

*My personal 'guess' is that clan tartans evolved from local weaves and colouration-so the actual clan tartans we see today are the product of evolution. Though I accept that some were lost, and as a consequence created at a later date.

In an earlier post I claimed the role of curmudgeon to this board-quite right: but in justification please remember that instead of coming to the kilt at a later age, I've worn it since infancy-and am now seventy. My sources for tartans and how to wear the kilt etc, come not from books/rules or this or that society: rather from the words of parents and clan elders-and looking to their example both as to how I should dress, and think.

James