Irish wore kilts?

[-B-]

I would use the term "Yank" to describe a person from the USA and hope and assume that I am not causing offence to anyone, not "Yankee" as I think , perhaps wrongly, that may have insulting historical connotations to parts of the USA.

As to the last word you suggest, I would never ever use it.

Yank is decidedly different then Yankee , yank refers to a nation and I consider it a term of respect from someone from the British isles/ empire.

Yankee on the other hand can mean a lot of differing things depending on where you are. When in New England it is a term of respect that you are wise and frugal to sustain for the long haul. when down south is can be quite derogatory, when west of the Mississippi it is more of a tease. When in Boston well it is just down right an insult and may land you in some trouble.



Celts, Druids and Gauls ( even the Romans and Greeks too)work kilts/ cilts long before modern recorded history. Those that server to argue that 1600's introduced the kilt/cilt are fools who have not studied history well at all.

[Zardoz]

Worms , Can, Open!

[macwilkin]

I am in Georgia. Of course I live south of the Mason-Dixon line. I also live south of New York City, Chicago, Canada, Ohio, etc.

Geographically, you do of course, but from a historical perspective, you do not, as once again, the Mason-Dixon Line was never intended to be a dividing line between North & South. It was used to settle a land dispute between the colonies of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware in the 1760's. Note that there were many land disputes on those days, from the Wyoming Valley "War" in Pa. to the Carolina Regulators and most famously, the Green Mountain Boys against the "Yorkers".

It has only been through popular culture and myth that the line is associated with the Civil War. I've heard people claim it extended all the way out to the Missouri-Arkansas border, which is the Missouri Compromise line. I can certainly understand the confusion.

T.

[macwilkin]

Lets be honest.. no matter where an Army goes.. they get local labor to help in the service aspects of a unit... a regimental kiltmaker would have hired locals to help sew these kilts up.. uniforms were damaged and had to be replaced.. and in the past.. you could not just send back to Scotland for a kilt for a private.. economics.. just because you do not have something to prove it happened does not mean it did not happen... Was the Highland Regiments present in that area?.. yes without a doubt.. then why is it impossible for these laborers expand on their knowledge?.. it really was not all that long ago since the British left that area..

Again, do you have documentation for such a claim? While it may be possible, we can't say that for certain. Had I tried to pass that off for "research" on my MA, I would have been laughed out of the university. Certainly we can speculate, but stating that a Pakistani firm was around in 1910 doesn't confirm it.

And yes, you are correct -- local labour is frequently used. I already mentioned the 15th US Infantry in China using the services of Chinese tailors. US forces in the Philippines sometimes had khaki uniforms made in Hong Kong, as well as purchasing ith: helmets from the Brits to use in the Islands. The same with "theater-made" insignia in Vietnam and Thailand. Richard McKenna, a "China Sailor", depicts US sailors having a Chinese tailor to make "theater-made" shorts and shirts for gunboat duty on the Yangtze River in the 1920s in The Sand Pebbles.

If you look at the quote above from Reid's book, he implies that battalions on foreign service had kiltmakers, not just one per battalion. (One regular battalion in the British Empire was sent to India, South Africa, Australia, etc., the other remained on home service.)

Also, while it hasn't been that long, you are not taking into account the racial attitudes of the day.

I wouldn't say it is impossible, but given Reid's information about regimental kilt-makers, I wouldn't bet the farm on it until we see a primary source from a Jock stating it.

T.

[O'Callaghan]

Just an OT point: unless you live in Maryland or Delaware, you do not live south of the Mason-Dixon Line. As I tell my Civil War classes, the Mason-Dixon line has nothing to with the Civil War, but was a boundary-dispute between the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania in the 1760s.

Regards,

Todd

Everybody and his dog knows that. Mason and Dixon were the surveyors. Nevertheless, it is still regarded as the line between North and South. I live in Maryland, and nobody regards it as the North, even though it stayed in the Union.

[O'Callaghan]

I would agree to a point, Scott -- if I remember correctly, Presbyterianism didn't make inroads into the Highlands until the late 18th/early 19th century; many Highlanders at the time of the '45, for example, were Roman Catholic, and quite a few were Episcopalian.

Regards,

Todd

As you seem fond of pedantry, let me be the first to say that none were Episcopalian. The Church of England took that name in America due to the American revolution!

[macwilkin]

Everybody and his dog knows that. Mason and Dixon were the surveyors. Nevertheless, it is still regarded as the line between North and South. I live in Maryland, and nobody regards it as the North, even though it stayed in the Union.

If you'll re-read my post, sir, you see that I acknowledge that popular culture and mythology have made it the de facto border between North & South -- yet when I worked at a Civil War Battlefield, I dealt with visitors on an almost daily basis who were not aware of Mr. Mason or Mr. Dixion and the land dispute -- so you really can't say "everyone and his dogs" knows it.

T.

[macwilkin]

Everybody and his dog knows that. Mason and Dixon were the surveyors. Nevertheless, it is still regarded as the line between North and South. I live in Maryland, and nobody regards it as the North, even though it stayed in the Union.

If you re-read my post, I said that while the line is the de facto border between North & South, historically it was never intended to be. Popular culture and mythology and historical fact are not always equal.

You, residing in Maryland, certainly would be aware of it -- but I have met many visitors to the Civil War Battlefield where I worked who honestly believed it was the "official" border of the North and South, so you can't really say "everyone and his dog" knows the real history behind the myth.

T.

[Paul Henry]

Boys.... although this exchange between O'Callaghan and Cajunscot has me on the edge of my seat, it really doesn't have much to do with the original topic, so might I be bold enough to suggest that private messages would be so much better...a nd I for one will just have to remain in the dark about the geographical topology of the States...

Of course the "Irish kilts" subject may have worn itself out for this month anyway!

[O'Callaghan]

Which doesn't have really any bearing when we are talking about the origins of a garment first documented as being worn by Scottish Highlanders in 1594 AD (some one thousand years after the migration of the Gaels from Ireland into Scotland). And in that context (The Life of Red Hugh O'Donnell) the belted plaid was mentioned as a way one could tell the Scottish soldiers apart from the Irish -- by the manner of their dress. In other words, this was a distinctly Scottish fashion, not Irish in character.

Folks, I've said it before and I will say it again. The history of the kilt can be well documented in the Highlands of Scotland. It is a Scottish garment in origin. The fact that the Gaels came into Scotland from Ireland over a thousand years before the kilt was developed does not mean that the kilt is an Irish garment.

All the same, the difference between an Irishman wearing a leine and brat and a Scotsman wearing a leine (tunic or shirt) and a great kilt is not really in the garments themselves, but in how they were worn.

The Irishman of the period would have gathered (kilted) his leine into pleats with a belt, and then worn his plaid (blanket) as a cloak (brat), perhaps secured with a broach.

The Scottish innovation, probably for greater warmth and/or to withstand the winds of the highlands, was to wrap the plaid over the shoulder and around the waist (to form the great kilt) and then kilt/gather it with the belt in the same fashion as the Irishman had kilted/gathered the leine. The belt had to be worn on the outside to secure the plaid in this particular way, and so it followed that the plaid became kilted instead of the leine. Please understand that in the above I use the word plaid literally to mean a blanket (or really just a length of cloth), and not in the modern way to mean something worn only over the shoulder.

So, the above being the invention of the kilt, this did take place in Scotland. Whether you can say that wrapping the same untailored piece of cloth in a different way made a new garment is debatable, although I suppose most think it did, as there does seem to be consensus that this made the first kilt, but it still was the same piece of cloth.

Those earlier historians that regarded the Irish kilted leine as the first kilt were not wrong within their own parameters, they just didn't define the above event as creating the kilt. Indeed, the leine was the first garment to be kilted, where that means forming gathers with a belt, although not all versions of it necessarily were kilted.

Moreover, the modern kilt, by that standard, is not kilted but pleated instead, simply because the pleats are held by stitches and don't have to be formed every time it is put on. All the same, we still call it a kilt. People are asking how much it can change further and stilled be called a kilt.

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' ...