Irish wore kilts?

[sathor]

Does that mean Michigan was the winner? Or the other way round?

Its like getting the booby prize, only to find out much later that the booby prize was an expensive antique.

Wisconsin got royally screwed in the deal though, the UP would have been theirs.

[Morris at Heathfield]

A few miscellaneous points:

As any member of the male species ought to know, there's no such thing as 200 different colors.

If it has holes for your arms and neck, it's not a kilt; it's a tunic.

Pleats were all the rage in late medieval and early modern times. It wasn't just plaids that got pleated.

It is not known who invented trousers, but it probably wasn't a German. If I had to make a guess, I'd say they were invented in what is now Kazakhstan, southwestern Russia, or the Ukraine. The Scythians are among the earliest people known to have worn them. The Celts probably started wearing them around the same time as the Germans, if not before.

Kilts were worn in Ireland from an early date, namely 1594. The people who wore those kilts (or belted plaids) were often called "Irish" by the English and continental Europeans at the time, if not by the Irish themselves. So you could say that the kilt was originally "Irish" in that sense.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

A few miscellaneous points: Kilts were worn in Ireland from an early date, namely 1594.

A single specific question: Can you please provide the citation for the Irish having worn kilts in 1594? I only ask because that is the generally agreed upon date for the first recorded mention of the kilt -- any kilt -- observed to be worn in Scotland.

[Morris at Heathfield]

Well, I didn't say that kilts were worn by the Irish. I said they were worn by a people who were often referred to at the time as "Irish". The more proper term these days would be "Gaels". And some of these Gaels apparently wore their kilts in Ireland while serving as mercenaries. I'm going by Matt Newsome here. Looking at my own sources (Ian Grimble's Scottish Clans & Tartans), it would seem that Robert Gordon of Straloch was the first to note the emergence of the belted plaid in 1594, while the Irish source (Lughaidh O'Clery), writing in the same year, only notes the mercenaries' "mottled cloaks of many colours". Of course, I don't have the full original text of either source, so it's possible O'Clery mentioned the belt around the plaid as well.

The short answer is, I was just equivocating with the word "Irish". Perhaps I should avoid doing that in long, confusing, and potentially controversial threads.

EDIT: It would seem my source is mistaken. Robert Gordon of Straloch was born in 1580, so he would have been only about fourteen in 1594. From online research, it would seem that his description of Highland garb only dates to 1641, although he may be describing an earlier period. And a lengthier citation of Lughaidh Ó Clerigh's work, as here, shows that he did make particular mention of the belts being worn over the plaids. Ó Clerigh is also writing from the 1600s, but he is describing events that happened specifically in the year 1594. For a couple of timelines showing the development of the belted plaid, with sources, see here and here.

Finally, one more miscellaneous observation: tunics, like kilts, may be worn without trousers—especially if one wishes to traverse boggy terrain on foot.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Thanks for the clarification.

[Nick the DSM]

The Irish didn't wear them, Scottish Gaels in Ireland wore belted plaid. If I remember Ireland often hired belted plaid wearing mercenaries, Gallowglass, from the western isles and the highlands which is sourced in Life of Red Hugh O'Donnell(sp). Is this what you meant Morris of Heathfield?

[Rob]

Today, the term 'Celtic' is generally used to describe the languages and respective cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Brittany, also known as the Six Celtic Nations. These are the regions where four Celtic languages are still spoken to some extent as mother tongues: Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton plus two recent revivals, Cornish (one of the Brythonic languages) and Manx (one of the Goidelic languages). There are also attempts to revive the Cumbric language (a Brythonic language from Northwest England and Southwest Scotland). 'Celtic' is also sometimes used to describe regions of Continental Europe that have Celtic heritage, but where no Celtic language has survived; these areas include the western Iberian Peninsula, i.e. Portugal, and north-central Spain (Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Castile and León, Extremadura), and to a lesser degree, France. (see Modern Celts) ( this information is borrowed from Wikipedia)

I agree that the term 'Celtic' refers to a language group, so who are the 'Celts'? If they are people who speak a Celtic group language at the present time, then the definition is very restrictive as only a minority still speak it even in the (so called) Celtic countries. If we define Celts as being those whose ancestors spoke a Celtic group language, then we extend the definition to a huge number of people, unless we introduce some arbitrary cut-off date when the language was still in use by such ancestors. For instance, there are many (western) parts of England where Celtic dialects survived for centuries after the Saxon period (until the 18th century in a few cases, e.g. Shropshire). Modern DNA analysis shows that even in the most Anglo-Saxon parts of England the ancestral majority was still 'Celtic' Briton, so where does one draw the line?

[gilmore]

I agree that the term 'Celtic' refers to a language group, so who are the 'Celts'? If they are people who speak a Celtic group language at the present time, then the definition is very restrictive as only a minority still speak it even in the (so called) Celtic countries. If we define Celts as being those whose ancestors spoke a Celtic group language, then we extend the definition to a huge number of people, unless we introduce some arbitrary cut-off date when the language was still in use by such ancestors. For instance, there are many (western) parts of England where Celtic dialects survived for centuries after the Saxon period (until the 18th century in a few cases, e.g. Shropshire). Modern DNA analysis shows that even in the most Anglo-Saxon parts of England the ancestral majority was still 'Celtic' Briton, so where does one draw the line?

I had to chuckle when I read this. Only from a Briton...

Identity is a tricky thing. We Americans tend to think of ourselves as identityless, and so often feel the need to create our own, individually, thus some decide on an ethnic identity that we ourselves appropriate from another time, such as centuries-dead ancestors, or another place, such as Scotland, or Italy or Greece, etc. Some find one in joining a church or a political party, or having deeply held views on an issue, etc. A sense of who we are is not handed to us as it is in other, older and more settled cultures.

Just as identity is---or can be---constructed, both by individual, and by cultures, so it can be deconstructed. And this seems to be happening more as the world becomes globalized. Or maybe we should say that identities, a sense of self and who one is, are changing.

I guess you could say being Celtic is something like being Confederate. Am I a Confederate? No, but my great and great great grandparents were. It's a description, an identity, that's no longer relevant. Or certainly no longer as relevant as it once was.

[dfmacliam]

But the point is... in modern Celts, these areas mentioned are where the languages have survived.. the Celtic Revivalist Movement was dealing with the "revival" of the Celtic languages.. Cumbric for an example.. Now.. where do you draw the line... where do you want to draw that line?. Do you believe that being descended from these people make you a Celt?. do you believe that a people die once a language is lost?.. If thats the case... how many peoples on this earth are not as they claim?..

Being a Confederate is no comparison to being Celtic.. one is a group of people who has a history tracing back to 1200 BC united by a common language and culture.. the other is a group of people united under a particular political view point..

[Rob]

But the point is... in modern Celts, these areas mentioned are where the languages have survived.. the Celtic Revivalist Movement was dealing with the "revival" of the Celtic languages.. Cumbric for an example.. Now.. where do you draw the line... where do you want to draw that line?. Do you believe that being descended from these people make you a Celt?. do you believe that a people die once a language is lost?.. If thats the case... how many peoples on this earth are not as they claim?..

Different people draw the line at different times in history (or pre-history). If those in Britain, who can trace their ancestry back to Celtic speaking Britons (via DNA), were to trace their ancestry back still further, they would inevitably reach a time (about 3-4 thousand years ago) before the Celtic languages reached Britain. Linguists assume that prior to this time native Britons must have spoken a pre-Indo-European language (maybe related to the early language of the Basques). One could therefore ask the question as to whether that earlier linguistic cultural identity died out just because our ancestors stopped speaking that language and started speaking a Celtic language.

Also, when can we consider that a language has ‘survived’? For example, Cornish survived only as fragments from a few written literary sources. There was not enough left to reconstruct the entire language from what survived. Therefore the revival process involved the postulation of many hypothetical forms of words based on known old Breton and Old Welsh words. At least three different vocabularies have been suggested and the argument as to which is more realistic continues to this day.

We seem to have deviated away from the subject of the thread somewhat, but I believe there are parallels. Can we say that the Highland kilt of the 16th century descendants of the Dal-Riada Gaels who came to Argyll from Ireland 1,500 years ago evolved from Irish garments of that period, or was it an entirely new invention? Who can say for certain? All that we can say is that the kilt in its 16th century form was not in use in Ireland at that time.