All in the (Robertson) Family (the tartan, not the TV comedy)

[figheadair]

the whole idea of "clan tartans" was devised by the mills as a way to sell more cloth (no, you all have to be dressed in this pattern, which just happens to be for sale over here) (it worked)

No quite. The concept of clan tartans was introduced by the Highland Society of London in 1815 as part of their attempt to preserve elements of Highland culture, including piping and the Gaelic language, that were being lost. The fact that there had never been clan tartans was overlooked in the rusk to 'do something' before it was too late.

It is certainly the case that mills later picked on this but much of it was driven by customer demand.

[OC Richard]

The concept of clan tartans was introduced by the Highland Society of London in 1815 as part of their attempt to preserve elements of Highland culture, including piping and the Gaelic language, that were being lost.

The fact that there had never been clan tartans was overlooked in the rush to 'do something' before it was too late.

It's interesting, how being determined to preserve elements of a culture that they didn't know much about led to the 'preserving' of things that had never existed.

The same thing happened with piping. They set up piping competitions which were judged by gentlemen with almost no knowledge of the music of the Highland pipes.

This incident reveals much. In 1816 one of the pipers competing showed the judges

...a folio volume in manuscript, said to contain numerous compositions; but the contents merely resembling a written narrative in an unknown language, nor bearing any resemblance to Gaelic, they proved utterly unintelligible.

Amidst many conjectures relative both to the subject and the language, nobody adventured so far as to guess at either airs or pibrochs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCHR...&start_radio=1