Interesting 1773 Description of Kilt

[Bugbear]

I need to read this. I'm guessing you just found in google?

Here are the links to the two texts at Project Gutenberg.

Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland by Samuel Johnson
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by James Boswell

Those are the two texts that are reprinted in the book I cite in the first post. Your library might have that book, but it's mostly a reprint of those two texts, if you only want to read them.

[Bugbear]

Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland by Samuel Johnson, Project Gutenberg.

A little before the section on Raasay, there is a discussion by Samuel Johnson of a combination in table manners and attire that had changed with Proscription. He does not explain, as far as I can tell, how he knows all of this information on the past customs of the Highlands.

The knives are not often either very bright, or very sharp. They are indeed instruments of which the Highlanders have not been long acquainted with the general use. They were not regularly laid on the table, before the prohibition of arms, and the change of dress. Thirty years ago the Highlander wore his knife as a companion to his dirk or dagger, and when the company sat down to meat, the men who had knives, cut the flesh into small pieces for the women, who with their fingers conveyed it to their mouths.

I'm not sure if he is talking about the sgian dubh, in this case, or some other knife that would be worn along with the derk.


He then writes something that raised my antennae because it sounded familiar in practice to other historical events...

There was perhaps never any change of national manners so quick, so great, and so general, as that which has operated in the Highlands, by the last conquest, and the subsequent laws. We came thither too late to see what we expected, a people of peculiar appearance, and a system of antiquated life. The clans retain little now of their original character, their ferocity of temper is softened, their military ardour is extinguished, their dignity of independence is depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverence for their chiefs abated. Of what they had before the late conquest of their country, there remain only their language and their poverty. Their language is attacked on every side. Schools are erected, in which English only is taught, and there were lately some who thought it reasonable to refuse them a version of the holy scriptures, that they might have no monument of their mother-tongue.

So that's some of what Johnson has to say about Proscription,; I will probably need to go back and, from non-Wiki sources, read up on the subject to see exactly what was banned.

[Bugbear]

All right, I tract down "The Act of Proscription," as published on the Scottish Tartans Authority's site.

Most of it appears to be about arms and weapons, but here is the part about Highland attire.

Para 16. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That from and after the first day of August, one thousand seven hundred and forty seven, no man or boy, within that part of Great Briton called Scotland, other than shall be employed as officers and soldiers in his Majesty's forces, shall on any pretence whatsoever, wear or put on the clothes commonly called Highland Clothes (that is to say) the plaid, philibeg, or little kilt, trowse, shoulder belts, or any part whatsoever of what peculiarly belongs to the highland garb; and that no TARTAN, or partly-coloured plaid or stuff shall be used for great coats, or for upper coats; and if any such person shall presume, after the said first day of August, to wear or put on the aforesaid garments or any part of them, every such person so offending, being convicted thereof by the oath of one or more credible witness or witnesses before any court of justiciary, or any one or more justices of the peace for the shire or stewartry, or judge ordinary of the place where such offence shall be committed, shall suffer imprisonment, without bail, during the space of six months, and no longer; and being convicted for a second offence before a court of justiciary or at the circuits, shall be liable to be transported to any of his Majesty's plantations beyond the seas, there to remain for a space of seven years.

It was repealed in 1782, and we are in 1773 with the journals.

Draw your own conclusions about what is going on in the descriptions, but Johnson gets the law wrong.