Clan and District tartan history

[M. A. C. Newsome]

To shed a bit more light on the Clan Chiefs running about their territory asking all the elders of the clan if they could recall what the "traditional clan tartan" was before Proscription, let me give a few illustrative anecdotes.

The first big push to get the clan cheifs to say what "their" tartan was came as late as 1815 when the Highland Society of London decided to put together a collection of tartans, with the seal and approval of the cheifs. (Keep in mind that this was just at the beginning of the "tartan cult" and the myth was already emerging that the tartan system was very old -- the complete lack of information about it in the past was only see as evidence of its being "suppressed"). Historical scholarship was not the same in the early nineteenth century as it is today.

For example, James Logan's work in The Scottish Gael (published in 1831, I beleive) was fine except that it suffered from one major flaw -- and that is that Logan assumed that anything that the oder generation said was "traditional" was necessarily "ancient" with a pedigree spanning centuries. We now know that many of these customs he described only emerged a generation or two before him. It would be a bit like asking your grandparents what things were like in King Richard's court.

Anyway, the Highland Society of London wanted to "preserve" all these "traditional clan tartans" before they were "lost" (all very romantic concepts). So they wrote to the cheifs of the clans asking them to submit samples of their tartans for the collection.

This is a major event in the history of tartan for two reasons: 1) it was the first real attempt to catalog the different tartans in one index, 2) it established the very important principle that the cheif has final authority over the clan tartan.

That aside, it did set many clan cheifs into a tizzy. Most of them didn't even know they were supposed to have a "clan tartan!" Keep in mind that just because you inherited the cheifship of a clan, it doesn't make you automatically an expert in your clan's history. If these "experts" from London said you had a clan tartan, they must be getting it from somewhere, right?

So, as Glassman said in an earlier post, many clan cheifs did indeed go about asking the older men of the clan if they could remember what the old clan tartan was. One such example is the cheif of Clan Donnachaidh (the Robertson clan). And he found several old men who claimed to know what the "true" clan tartan was. Problem was that they all said it was something different!

What the cheif ultimately submitted to the Highland Society of London as "the" Robertson tartan was the pattern worn by the Loyal Clan Donnachaidh Volunteers, a home guard raised in 1810. It is a military tartan, based on the Black Watch (we call it Hunting Robertson today). Since the unit only existed from 1810, the tartan was probably no more than 5 years old when it was submitted (and is another example of a clan adopting a military tartan).

More often than not, however, the cheifs would simply do what any Scottish tourist might do to enquire about a tartan -- he would write to the largest tartan supplier at the time, Wilsons of Bannockburn. The Chief of the MacPhersons did just that.

Wilsons had a tartan in their line originally called No. 42. When they began to assign tartans names in the latter part of the eighteenth century, they simply called this one Caledonia. Later on, a man from the east coast of Scotland named Kidd purchased an amount of this cloth, and his name got added to the record. So it was indexed as No. 42 or Kidd. Later on still, a man named McPherson in the West Indies purchased a signifigant amount of this pattern, and his name was also added to the records.

So when the Cheif of the MacPhersons wrote to Wilsons asking for a sample of "the MacPherson tartan" they sent him a sample of No. 42. And this is the sample that the cheif put his seal on and submitted to the Highland Society. Today we call this the red MacPherson tartan, although sometimes it is still sold under the name Kidd. (The present day Caledonia tartan, if anyone is wondering, is not the same sett, though it is similar. Wilsons gave the name Caledonia to several tartans).

You can see that Wilsons named their patterns for a number of reasons. In this case, the name came from a client who purchased the cloth. Sometimes it may be named after a location where it sold well (like Aberdeen or Dundee). Sometimes Wilsons did not know why a tartan was given a particular name. In their 1819 pattern book they commented that they had no idea why the Logan tartan had that name (remember they had been in business since the 1760s). They say that a man named Thomas Logan used to supply them with patterns, and it could be that this pattern was either found or designed by him, but this is a guess.

There are all kinds of interesting stories about where these tartans came from if you look back through the historic record (including one letter in Wilsons' archives from a tartan merchant, no doubt looking to fill an order for a client, that simply says, "please send a sample of the Rose tartan, and if there is none, send a different tartan and call it Rose."

Aye,
Matt

[GlassMan]

There are all kinds of interesting stories about where these tartans came from if you look back through the historic record (including one letter in Wilsons' archives from a tartan merchant, no doubt looking to fill an order for a client, that simply says, "please send a sample of the Rose tartan, and if there is none, send a different tartan and call it Rose."

Aye,
Matt

Of all the different little tidbits of the history of how various modern tartans got their names, that one is by far my absolute favorite so far!