Quote Originally Posted by Delaney View Post
Historically speaking, is it rational to say a Scottish kilt is a vestigial breacan and the Irish kilt is a vestigial brat, albeit adapted and adopted in the 19th century rather than the 18th century?
This is the point where I will probably depart from this thread, I think. Duck and cover.

The Scottish kilt is a version of the Highland feilidh beag or little kilt, originally worn only in the Highlands. There is some evidence that suggests the pleats were sewn in for the first time by an Englishman, Thomas Rawlinson, in the late 1700's, but there is pictorial evidence that the garment was around in the Highlands before that, although probably without the stitched pleats.

The Irish kilt is more or less a very late 19thc/early 20thc imitation of the Scottish kilt, but without the tartan. When the Gaelic League was seeking to form a national identity they moulded it with a view as to how Ireland would have developed without any English influence. The obvious thing to do (as far as the Gaelic League was concerned), was to look at the Highlands of Scotland where Gaelic was still spoken. The Athbheochan Ghaelach/Gaelic Revival that the Gaelic League began was also heavily influenced by the success of MacPherson's Ossian in the previous century.

The turn of the century adoption of the kilt and great highland bagpipe in Ireland was given credence by propagandists such as Grattan Flood whose silly and often self contradictory claims can still be found copied and pasted onto many "Celtic" websites today.

Books such as Grand Opportunity: The Gaelic Revival and Irish Society, 1893-1910 by Timothy McMahon and Ireland and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (Transatlantic Relations) edited by James P. Byrne have helped explain to me how some misconceptions have occurred.