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?

[Father Bill]

Thanks Richard. I imagine that many have come to understand your status as an expert based on your incredible photo collection. However did you become interested in collecting them?

Sorry for the hijack on the thread.

[jf42]

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.

I think the association of the Glengarry with the 79th has to do specifically with a pleated bonnet, constructed so that it could fold flat neatly and be stowed away by soldiers, unlike the round undress bonnet which had assumed impractical proportions if we are to judge by the photos of the 92nd taken at Edinburgh Castle in 1845.



As your selection shows, Richard, the soft bonnet with a fore-and-aft crease was being worn some time earlier, from at least c.1820 onwards, according to surviving images.

It's interesting that Logan in Costumes of the Clans of Scotland should have said:
"The form of bonnet, which has received the name of a “Glengarry,” is not of more than about fourty years' standing" - (which would mean around 1805) adding- "and in the opinion of many it is in no way an improvement on the original shape."

We probably shouldn't place too much reliance on a date reached by that route but, at any rate, the illustration by McIan shows a soft crowned bonnet similar to the bonnets we see from about 1820 onwards, so we know what they meant by a Glengarry in 1845.



It's a moot point whether Macdonnell of Glengarry introduced the 'Glengarry' bonnet for his Fencibles circa 1794. I'm not sure we have any evidence as to the style of the bonnet they wore but I imagine we would first need to distinguish between a 'mounted' uniform bonnet and some sort of undress headgear.

If you look closely at the bonnet shown in the Raeburn portrait, it's not actually pleated or even creased but is simply a slightly shaped version of the cylindrical, cocked bonnet worn by Highland regiments since the 1770s. A boat-shaped style of bonnet, with a pronounced 'prow' known sometimes as the 'cockit bonnet' <http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/cockit_bonnet> - can be seen being worn by a number of soldiers and civilians in John Kay's caricatures of Edinburgh personages from the 1780s and 1790s.


Macdonnell's bonnet looks as if it has been blocked into a fairly rigid shape. He is not in military uniform but in any case it is doubtful that gentlemen of his standing would have been a-folding up their best bonnets and tucking them in a knapsack.

It's possible that the softer bonnet with a creased crown depicted by McIan as referred to by Logan came to be associated with the publicity-seeking chieftain following his antics during the visit of King George IV to Edinburgh in 1822. I see that the Dictionary of the Scots language supports that notion- although they also reference the Raeburn portrait. Whether their note is based on more concrete evidence, I couldn't say. <http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/glengarry>