Some interesting tartan info

[Sherry]

Came across this today:

Originally, the Scottish Tartan was a distinction of rank or position. It was not identified by weave but by the number of colours in the weave. If only one colour was used it depicted a servant, two, a farmer rank, three, an officer rank, five, a chieftain, six for a poet, and seven for a Chief. Eventually, clans or families adopted their own tartan, using a range of animal and earth colours which were frequently secret, only known to the weavers of the islands. They included yellows, blues, whites, greens, browns, reds, black and purple. Some say that a keen eye can identify the colour with a particular island, almost like a wine taster can identify the year and the vineyard

Chief's Dress Sett - worn by the chief and members of his/her family.
The Clan Tartan - worn by members of the clan.
The Hunting Tartan - Fall colours worn by members of the clan.
Mourning Setts - self explanatory.
District Setts - regional, worn by anyone in that region.
The Womens Sett - usually black and white colours.
The Royal Sett - The Royal Stewart, a free tartan which can be worn by anyone.
From: http://www.aldkiltmakers.com/ the Kilt Info section.

This is the description of this site's kiltmaker:
Meet Mrs Devine

One of the very few real kiltmakers left in Scotland, the company was started by one woman with a pride in her heritage and craft. With over 40 years of experience in her chosen trade, Mrs Devine now has over 20 employees; each trained to her own high standards. Taking 12 hours and 6000 stitches to complete a kilt means a lot of training is involved, a full 5-year apprenticeship.

The info seems, uhm, interesting...
Sherry

[bubba]

As I understood it the number of colors represented wealth more than rank. The wealthier the person the more colors they had woven into the tartan.

[michael steinrok]

Colors designated rank like the royal purple. It was hard to come up with hence the rank . Also number of colors allowed designated rank. Probably both of the above are right.

[macwilkin]

Sherry, et al: See Matt Newsome's article which debunks this myth:

...From the get go, he makes the mistake often repeated in early histories of the tartan by making reference to the Brehon Laws, which stipulated the number of stripes worn to indicate the rank of the wearer. Many today erroneously apply this to tartan – in other words, the more stripes in a clan’s tartan, the higher “rank” the clan was. (This would mean, of course, that poor Rob Roy would have been the lowest peasant, while the Earl of Airlie would have been the King of Kings!) The problem is that these Brehon Laws existed in Ireland, not Scotland, and dealt with striped ceremonial cloaks, not tartan of any kind. Yet this reference is repeated often enough that many take it to be true.

-- http://www.albanach.org/facts.htm

I'm sure Matt will have something to add to this. ;)

Cheers,

Todd

[GlassMan]

I do remember reading somewhere that during Queen Victoria's time when all the Clans were asked what "their" tartan was, some of the wealthier nobles tried to outdo each other with the numbers of colors used. (That might help explain why the Royal Stewart is so damn loud.) Maybe that bit of one-up-manship is what gave rise to the misunderstanding.

[Andrew Breecher]

Re: colours and rank/wealth. Obviously the more money you have, the better access you have to rarer dyes and fabrics. In England this resulted in sumptuary laws, designating the particular dyes, fabrics, and furs one could wear based on their station. A merchant might be wealthier than a duke, but he still couldn't wear the clothes that the duke had to go into debt to pay for. You still can't dress above your station. The most famous of these laws is the limitation of purple (and various shades of blue - hence the shade of "royal blue") for the royal family.

I don't know about the laws/traditions of various tartans, so I'm not even going to weigh in about that. Given the historical use of woad in northern Scotland, I'm sure that blue had play here, though most traditional tartans I can think of are mostly based on reds and greens.

Andrew.

[davedove]

Since most tartans were created relatively recently, the argument realy doesn't hold any validity. Now, for the patterns is us ages ago, I would be willing to bet that certain regions used certain colors based on what was available. Of course, the wealthier folks could afford to import the more expensive dies and thus have access to more colors. Some could very well have tried to show off their wealth by having more colors, but as Matt's research has shown, it was not a formal (or informal) system of identification of station.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Pretty much everything quoted in the original post is pure fancy (sorry Sherry! I know you were just trying to pass on information). This is a good example of why you have to be careful what you read regarding Highland Dress. Nothing in that information is true (including the fact that Mrs Devine is one of the last kiltmakers in Scotland -- as popular as the kilt is now, I daresay that are more kiltmakers in Scotland now than ever!).

As Todd already informed us, this notion of the number of colors somehow equating to rank comes not from the world of Scottish tartans, but from the old Brehon Laws of Ireland -- I cannot remember when these Laws were composed, but I beleive they were from the early medieval period. Someone else can let us know. But these laws referred specifically to ceremonial cloaks, and the number of stripes they could contain. They were not an attempt to regulate daily clothing. Think of it like the gowns worn by faculty and professors at graduation ceremonies. The colors worn by them indicate their degrees and the schools they earned them from. But they apply only to these ceremonial garments, and are only worn for this one function.

In any case, these ancient Irish laws have absolutely nothing to do with tartan. I think they only got confused when some people, under the mistaken assumption that the kilt, and clan tartans, were brought over to Scotland some 1500 years ago by the Irish (a myth that has been thoroughly debunked), encountered these old Irish rules about colored stripes, and immediately thought of Scottish tartans. But they are two completely separate things.

If this were the case, the red MacDonald Lord of the Isles tartan that is only red and green, would make the Lord of the Isles (a king in his own right) a lowly peasant. The Earl of Airlie, however, with his complex tartan, would be the High King of Kings! It just doesn't make sense when you look at actual tartans.

Further the classification of tartans given on this site is spurrious. From the top, only a very few clans have a specific "cheif's sett." And usually these are not true "cheif's setts" to begin with. For example, there is a truly beautiful MacNab tartan that is basically a light red/dark red check. This used to be commonly used in the nineteenth century by the clan. Somewhere along the line, though, it fell out of fashion, and now people often call it the "cheif's sett," seemingly due to the fact that there is an old portrait of one of the clan cheifs wearing it. But 100 years ago it was the most common MacNab tartan seen!

I've had people in the Clan MacNeil tell me that the MacNeil with the red line is reserved to the cheif. But you, or I, or anyone else can order cloth in this tartan easily. And there is nothing in the recorded information about this tartan that would indicate it was ever reserved just for the cheif.

There are a few tartans that have been designated cheifs setts, such as MacKintosh. But this is the exception, not the norm.

Hunting colors, I suppose you could call "fall colors" in the sense that they are earth tones. But I wouldn't want anyone thinking that the use of these tartans was limited to this one season of the year.

Mourning Setts, like Cheifs Setts, are really the exception, not the norm. There are only 5 or 6 tartans recorded as "Mourning" in the International Tartan Index. There are two Stewart Mourning tartans from the late nineteenth century. These seem to be the original "Mourning" tartans. The others are all modernly designed tartans (such as the Black Rose, a mourning tartan for the Society of the Confederate Rose). No doubt these modern "mourning" tartans are inspired by the romantic idea that clans had "mourning" tartans inspired by web sites like this.

By "Womens Sett" I assume she means Dress tartans, which though they originated as women's airisaide tartans are not, strictly speaking, limited to use by women. They do typically have a lot of white, but in no way are they limited to black and white. Most are very colorful.

And the Royal Stewart has been discussed many times before on this site. I would only add that a true "Royal Sett" would be the Balmoral tartan, the use of which is actually restricted to the Royal Family, unlike Royal Stewart which can be found on shortbread tins, greeting cards, pajamas, rental kilts, wrapping paper, and pretty much anything else all over the world.

Debunking the tartan myths!

Aye,
Matt

[macwilkin]

I do remember reading somewhere that during Queen Victoria's time when all the Clans were asked what "their" tartan was, some of the wealthier nobles tried to outdo each other with the numbers of colors used. (That might help explain why the Royal Stewart is so damn loud.) Maybe that bit of one-up-manship is what gave rise to the misunderstanding.

In 1815, the Highland Society of London began to collect examples of "named Highland clan tartans" for a collection. All clans were asked to submit a sample, along with appropriate documentation. Blair Urquhart, in his "Tartans: The new compact study guide and identifier", says that many Chiefs were not even aware of what a "clan tartan" was, and in the case of Lord Macdonald, Urquhart quotes a letter from him where he states:

"Being really ignorant of what is extactly the Macdonald tartan, I request you will have the goodness to exert every means in your power to obtain a perfectly genuine pattern..."

Most of the time, the Chiefs were writing to writing to the tartan suppliers, like Wilson's of Bannockburn, asking them for "their" clan tartan, with some very funny results:

http://www.albanach.org/sources.htm

Cheers,

Todd

[flyv65]

As Todd already informed us, this notion of the number of colors somehow equating to rank comes not from the world of Scottish tartans, but from the old Brehon Laws of Ireland -- I cannot remember when these Laws were composed, but I beleive they were from the early medieval period. Someone else can let us know. But these laws referred specifically to ceremonial cloaks, and the number of stripes they could contain. They were not an attempt to regulate daily clothing.

Peter Berrisford Ellis is a well known scholar and has written several books on the Celts, the source of most Gaelic tradition including the Brehon Laws. I'd have to pour back through my tomes, but I "thought" that chiefs were allowed a cloak of up to 5 colors, and that Druids. Bards, and Brehons were permitted a cloak of 6 colors. In the 4th century in Ireland Christianity began to exert a much greater sway with the populace, and the people began to "blend" the old and the new, with little heard of Druids after the 11th century, Brehon law untill the 16th century, and the Bardic arts into the 17th century. These are simply rough numbers based on my readings and I sure could be off a 100 years or so in any direction (IIRC, Boru held Druidic Advisors as well as Churchmen, Grania Ni Maille was married according to Brehon Law [the second time], and the O'Sullivan's march to Ulster was rumoured to have had a Bard).

It seems that the greatest threats to the traditional Gaelic way of life were not the English (although they were not without some blame), but the irreconcileable differences with the Roman or Latin interpretation of Christianity in the Isles folllowing the Synod of Whitby.

Bryan...hopelessly Pelagian...