Viking roots: The Earl of Wessex in Hodden grey London Scottish uniform
QUESTION What is the origin of Hodden grey, an early form of camouflage?
THE Hodden grey of The London Scottish is an attractive greyish cloth with subtle shades of brown, salmon pink and purples. Once worn by the Scottish peasantry, it has ancient roots, derived from the old Scandinavian cloth wadmal, a coarse, dense, usually undyed wool fabric which came to Scotland during the Viking invasion. By medieval times, wadmal had become the grey Hodden, reputedly made by mixing black and white fleeces in a proportion of one to 12. The name Hodden is probably from the northern past participle of the verb to hold — wool ‘holding’ its natural hue.
The name changed from grey Hodden to Hodden grey in the 18th century, due to the influence of several poets who used the latter to fit their rhyming schemes. The first of these was Allan Ramsay in his dramatic pastoral The Gentle Shepherd (1725): ‘But Meg, poor Meg! Maun wi’ the Shepherd’s stay, An’ tak’ what god will send in Hodden grey.’ Other poets followed suit including Robert Burns in A Man’s A Man For A’ That (1795): ‘What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear Hodden grey, an’ a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; A Man’s a Man for a’ that.’
In the 19th century, Hodden grey became favoured by country gents as it provided good camouflage when deer-stalking, its colours and the quality of the cloth being further refined to suit their activity and station. In 1859, sponsored by The Highland Society of London and The Caledonian Society of London, a group of individual Scots raised The London Scottish Rifle Volunteers under the command of Lord Elcho, Francis Richard Charteris, 10th Earl of Wemyss. He chose to clothe his regiment in Hodden grey, to suppress interclan feeling on the subject of tartan and as a camouflage, stating: ‘A soldier is a man hunter. As a deer stalker chooses the least visible of colours, so ought a soldier to be clad.’
The only regiments who wear Hodden grey are The London Scottish and Toronto Scottish.
It was reputed at the time of the Boer War, when the London Scottish won their first battle honours fighting in engagements at Houtnek Poort, Doornkop and the Battle of Diamond Hill and as part of the column of 2/Gordons at Lydenburg, that this was the first use of camouflage in the British Army but British forces were dyeing their white drill uniforms to an inconspicuous khaki tone during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
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