25th Annual Texas Scottish Festival

**Morris at Heathfield** · 9th June 11, 03:32 PM

Originally Posted by Mike_Oettle

Many thanks, Shaun, for posting your pictures. I am sure Morris’s pics are fantastic, and probably every X Marker in North America can see them, but all I get is a succession of logos showing a frog in an ice cube.
Regards,
Mike

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I wasn't aware of this new policy.

I guess ImageShack has outlived its usefulness now.

**English Bloke** · 9th June 11, 04:02 PM

I really enjoyed that. What a fantastic post. Cheers. Shame image shack thinks they are too good for non US, non European countries. Kind of defeats the object of a world wide web if you ask me. I could go on... but I won't.

**mookien** · 9th June 11, 04:12 PM

Tell me your not the guy in the blue and black tights tossing the caber.

**Morris at Heathfield** · 9th June 11, 05:58 PM

Heh, heh. Not in this thread. Try this one, or this one. I think I've given enough clues now for anyone who's curious enough to figure out which one I am.

**Ancienne Alliance** · 9th June 11, 10:30 PM

Fun photos! Thank you for sharing.

Best,

Robert

**Electrickilt** · 10th June 11, 12:15 PM

Great Pics, Thanks for sharing.

**mookien** · 10th June 11, 12:21 PM

Morris at Heathfield: I give up. I guess your just going to have to remain "unidentified". :-)

**Morris at Heathfield** · 11th June 11, 12:24 AM

On Merlin's thread I was just joking around. I figured someone else who was at the games would see what I had done and call me on it, but I guess I made either my action or my intent too subtle.

Mike_Oettle: If you're still watching this thread, sometime in the not-too-distant future (maybe Monday) I'm going to try uploading my pictures to a new image hosting site. I haven't decided yet which one.

**M. A. C. Newsome** · 11th June 11, 03:54 AM

I don't know who "Torf the Kiltmaker" is, but it looks in this photo as if he is talking about the "registration" of tartans dating all the way back to the 1700's according to his timeline.

I may just be overly sensitive to semantics, but it really makes no sense to speak of "registering" tartans until modern times. The first formal register for tartans is the newly formed National Register (which it is very surprising to hear you say he knew nothing about, especially if his topic was the registration of tartans). Other groups such as the STA, the former STS, etc., would record tartans, but as these were and are not formally sanctioned government entities it would be technically incorrect to speak of "registering" a tartan with them. Although many people in practice would use that term. Nevertheless, the STA dates only back to the 1990s and the STS to the 1960s.

Before that time, all you had were private collections, the records of weavers, and published books on tartans. There was no body out there in existence to "register" a tartan with in the 1800s and 1700s, so I'm not really sure what to make of his timeline.

Maybe he means "recorded" tartans, as in there being an historic record of the tartan in a weaver's pattern book or other collection. In this case, yes, a good point can be made about the number of known, named tartan patterns increasing dramatically from about 1800 till today. But "registered" is a poor choice of terms if this is the point he was making.

Then there is this picture, which made me cringe!

He has the "first kilt" around 1594, which is correct (I'd phrase it as the "first recorded mention of a kilt" but that's a minor point). And he has the first "short kilt" in the early 1700s, which is correct as far as we know (the dating on the introduction of the feilidh-beag is not precise). I would have used the terms feilidh-mor and feilidh-beag here, but again that's semantics.

What really gets me is that his history gets worse the closer we get to the modern times, which is totally the reverse of what one would expect, as we have so much more in the way of records the closer you get to today.

He has the introduction of knife pleats sometime in the early 1900s. FALSE. The Gordon Highland regiment switched to knife pleated kilts in 1854.

He also has the introduction of the 8 yard kilt somewhere around 1960, according to his chart. FALSE. You can find kilts made from around 8 yards of cloth from the late 1800s.

I don't know where he is getting his information from. I'm trying not to sound harsh, but this really irritates me. I don't expect everyone to be an expert in tartans, or kilt history. However if you are going to be conducting a class or seminar on the subject, presenting yourself as an authority, I would expect you to know at least the basic facts. Especially when you have organizations such as the Scottish Tartans Authority, and here in the US, the Scottish Tartans Museum, who are very willing to make information available to you - or even come and give such a presentation ourselves at your Games.

**beloitpiper** · 11th June 11, 08:22 AM

Originally Posted by M. A. C. Newsome

I don't know where he is getting his information from. I'm trying not to sound harsh, but this really irritates me. I don't expect everyone to be an expert in tartans, or kilt history. However if you are going to be conducting a class or seminar on the subject, presenting yourself as an authority, I would expect you to know at least the basic facts. Especially when you have organizations such as the Scottish Tartans Authority, and here in the US, the Scottish Tartans Museum, who are very willing to make information available to you - or even come and give such a presentation ourselves at your Games.

I feel the same way about "Celtic Reenactors" who are basically LARPing. Why don't they understand that to reenact something, it has to have happened in real life?