Highlanders Discuss Highland Attire

[Jock Scot]

Regarding Asndell's paintings, we don't really have any reason to believe that the clothing depicted on his rural subjects was not what he actually saw and had experience of. He summered near Loch Laggan, so I would assume most of his images of Highland life were from around that area.

The top portrait is entitled "Sheep Washing in Glen Lyon."

I suspect that the Loch Laggan area was chosen as the subject title, I would not be at all surprised if the artist had never been there, as that was where Queen Victoria stayed on her first trip to the highlands.A good selling point, for an astute artist. She stayed at what you chaps would know as "Glen Bogle". Now any local could tell you and certainly Queen Victoria has confirmed it in her diaries that the area of Loch Laggan is the midge capital of the world.That is why she went to the East highlands the year after and bought Balmoral. Every one moved out of the area in the summer. All the sheep, cattle, dogs, even the infirm and poorest of the poor moved away and quite often stayed away. Glen Lyon, the longest glen in Scotland, is about sixty miles South of Loch Laggan.