Family Name and Clan

[Arlen]

Ladies and Gentleman, behold your X Marks the Scot.com staff at work.

Troll suspected, identified, and removed.

All part of the service!

Cheers

Jamie

Did Mr. Tibbles help to sniff him out?

[Mike1]

The puir, dear child just registered on one of my own forums (for the third time, no less), to complain about being binned on this one (for the third time, no less). I've had the opportunity to toss him in the bin, twice in one day. It's been a good day.

[Detroitpete]

It appears as though opinions are as plentiful as tartans--and as 'universal' ;-)

[Arlen]

The puir, dear child just registered on one of my own forums (for the third time, no less), to complain about being binned on this one (for the third time, no less). I've had the opportunity to toss him in the bin, twice in one day. It's been a good day.

You can't make that stuff up.

[An t-Ileach]

I must have missed the excitement with the Sean bloke - it must have all happened during the long period when my wife was hogging the computer.

That aside, he got me thinking. Here's my rather rambling, and somewhat disconnected product:

It’s an obvious truism that not everybody who lives in Scotland is a Scot, and even fewer are Gaels; and that not all Scots live in Scotland. Similarly, even in percentage terms, it seems more people habitually wear the kilt as a daily garment outside Scotland – and Gaelic is used in many more places than Eileanan Siar.

I feel like Arlen on the matter of spellings of words – I may not like it, but undoubtedly these anglicisations have become part of English just like Prague (Praha), The Hague (Den Haag), Carmarthen (Caerfyrddin), Bowen (ab Owain), or Cornish (Kernowek).

This forum is dedicated to the kilt and those who wear it.

Undoubtedly, as Matt’s excellent articles elucidate, the kilt is originally a garb worn by the Highlanders and Islanders of Scotland – it wasn’t even a general Celtic or Scottish garment (Scottish being taken as an inhabitant of Scotland) – and is bound up with the history and culture of the Gaels.

As the song says,

“Uair chite fear-fèilidh 'sa ghleann
Bu chinnteach gur Gàidhlig a chainnt
Ach spion iad a fhreumh às an fhonn
'N àite Gàidhlig tha cànan a Ghoill
'S a Ghàidhealtachd creadhal-nan-sonn
'S tìr mhajors is cholonels 'n diugh th' innt'”

(Once if a kilted man was seen in the valley
it was certain that Gaelic was his language,
but they have torn his roots from the ground,
in the place of Gaelic is the foreigner's language,
and the Gàidhealtachd, cradle of heroes,
today it is a land of majors and colonels).

Well, I suppose the majors and colonels have these days been replaced by yuppies, golfers, and second home owners.

Part of that history and culture was the particular form of the Clan System that was to be found there (the clan system in some manner was a feature of all Celtic societies, and indeed still is among some other cultures). The intentional destruction of that system and its manifestations was aimed not only at economic advantages (English money – it was worth twelve times the equivalent in Scots – for grazing Cheviots, the caorach mòra), but also the elimination of an “alien” and threatening culture.

Hence the suppression and marginalisation not only of the dress and social organisation, but also of the language as a policy, which became systematic and even vicious in later Victorian times. It was also applied in Wales, and one of the best descriptions of how it operated is to be found in Richard Llewelyn’s book How Green Was My Valley. In Scotland, this was only latterly an English doing. It had been started as far back as the Margaretsons, and intensified by the Stuart kings: James VI hated the language. And yet it has survived.

Undoubtedly the whole business (I use that word advisedly) of tartans and entitlements is a product of 19th Century Victorian romanticism, that burgeoned after the visit of William IV to Edinburgh and particularly around the 1860s. The Gaels and their clans had ceased to be a threat after Cumberland and the first round of the Clearances, when the Clans were broken.

Not all the Chiefs participated in the Clearances, whether those of the 18th or those of the 19th Centuries. But far too many did, and in the process they finished off a cultural system in which they had held a key role – one that had almost metaphysical intensities.

There were some well-known Mega-Clearers, and the trauma of their legacy is still alive in parts of the country. When the film Seachd was being shot the poor actor who played the Duke of Sutherland kept getting lectured and “talked to” and generally made to feel seriously unwelcome. Thus, the Clearances could not merely be referred to as Na Fuadaichean but also as Am Brathadh Mòr (“the Great Betrayal”). Maybe some public contrition from their descendants might be nice?

Things evolve. And after great catastrophes, survivors pick up the pieces and try to rebuild. In Robert Heinlein’s phrase “survivors survive”. Undoubtedly, as a result of this much of Gaelic culture has survived in some form or another, particularly in north America.

This is what I see the Clan Societies as doing – they keep alive an ancient and historic culture. And they help to keep the descendants of people who shared a life, a culture, and a tragedy in touch. Who knows, we may need the Clan System again?

A corollary of the building of supranational blocs in which peoples lose their traditional landmarks seems to be the falling back on smaller, local community and tribal arrangements. If the clans come back, they will of course be different and organised differently – more like a Clan society, in my estimation.

In north America, Cape Breton Island and parts of Nova Scotia are key elements in the survival of the language. North Carolina around Grandfather Mountain was a Gaelic-speaking area until the eve of World War I. Seattle has been the seat of a genre of Gaelic punk music associated particularly with the two groups Nad Aislingean and Mill a h-uile rud. There are active Gaelic Societies in California, and in Australia. Actually, there’s also one in Japan and one in Moscow.

And cultures pick up new protagonists. One of the active and leading lights of the “Save Gaelic” movement in Scotland was the late Ali Abbassi of Glasgow, who died in 2004. A journalist of Pakistani origin, he had taught himself the language, and often subsequently had bit parts in Gaelic soap operas and sitcoms as well as doing a radio traffic slot. And there are Gaelic-speaking Pakistani-origin families. So why aren’t more in-comers making more effort?

The kilt, and tartans, have become a symbol of Scottishness. In fact, they’ve become a symbol of being a Celt, and all six Celtic nations are adopting them as visually distinct signs of who they are.

Yet, in Scotland, there seems to be a reluctance to take seriously that other manifestation of distinctiveness from the Anglosphere – the Gaelic language, which was a much more widespread separator than kilt ever was. At the end of the 18th Century, 80 percent of Scotland was Gaelic speaking.

I, among others, gave evidence to the Bòrd na Gàidhlig prior to the passing of the Gaelic Language Act. We pointed out that all the arguments – pro and con – had been had and gone through exhaustively in Wales over the past 80 or so years, so why couldn’t Scotland save time and money and simply take the Welsh Language Act and all its projects and policies and apply them to Scotland? Sadly, we didn’t get too far.

And it has taken the University of Wales at Swansea to convert the enormously successful Israeli Ulpan system for teaching Hebrew to immigrants to do the same for Welsh, as Wlpan,… and Gaelic (Ùlpan Gàidhlig).

The Welsh have managed to turn around the decline of the language, and Wlpan is featuring in its revival – I read that now some 28 percent of the people of Wales can carry on some sort of conversation in Welsh, which is a great stride away from the percentages as they used to be. And everything is bilingual.

In Scotland, we’re struggling.

At least people have taken to wearing the kilt, which I hope is a start, and I hope forums and websites like X-Marks get their due kudos for what they have done to make this very sensible garment popular and world-wide.

Even if people in Scotland only wear it at weddings and rugby matches it is, I hope, the thin end of the wedge. I hope even the availability of cheap foreign-made kilts will fill a role of making the kilt so affordable that people will wear them every day, and as they get more money buy somewhat better made and woven ones.

The imagination of those people in America who have developed the kilt – denim ones, ones with cargo pockets, and so on – show that the thing isn’t static. And Howie’s TFCK is also a good development. The more and better the merrier.

Perhaps, through the kilt, the Scots will grow out of what seems to me to be a psychology of the “colonised mind” (as I’ve heard Canadians call it) or the “colonial cringe” (in Australian) and return to learning and using Gaelic – the “language of Eden” as many used to call it - and have bilingual documents and road signs.

Ùlpan Gàidhlig should make this easily attainable – all that’s lacking is the will and the seriousness. I was pleased to find bi-lingualism blossoming all over Argyll last month; but saddened that the only Gaelic on Arran was to be found on CalMac schedules.

Let’s hope for widespread kilt-wearing in Scotland, and all do our bit to bring it about.

If people want to worry about what tartan they should wear, and what Clan they belong to, that’s their business and is mostly a harmless diversion. If it gets them wearing the fèileadh beag that’s all that really matters. And if through this they enable 28 percent of the people of Scotland to carry on some sort of conversation in Gaelic within a shortish time-frame, that’d be great.

To conclude with a couple more quotes from Cànan nan Gàidheal:

O Ghàidheil, o c’àite 'n deach t' uaill
'Nad fhìne 's 'nad chànan 's do thìr?

(O Gael, where has your pride
in your race and your language and your country gone?)

Ach fhathast tha beò cànan nan Gàidheal (but yet she lives the language of the Gael).

... And the kilt, and the tartan, and even the Clans – dead or not.

[The Celtic Gypsy]

This is an interesting thread. I am not Scot in any stretch of the imagination. And therefore have no clan association. What Tartan to wear? In talking with various "experts" on this, I found a variant of my surname affiliated with the Farquharson clan. Altho I still don't know a lot about Scottish history and how the Farquharson clan was a part of it all, I feel this is my clan and i feel it is okay to wear the tartan, should i decide to. I can appreciate traditions and customs of Scotland, so I may wear a bit of tartan rather then the whole regalia. I will respect it too if someone tells me i really have no right to wear any kind of tartan.

[Monkey@Arms]

An t-Ileach,

My compliments for an extraordinarily interesting and well written posting.

Best regards,

Jake

[BobsYourUncle]

What a great thread. JerseyLawyer and An t-Ileach have it right. It may be a slight excess of zeal that keeps people from wearing a tartan they cannot prove was worn by their family. The Clan tartan system is a recent fabrication, and specific tartans were not historically assigned to specific clans. The way clansmen identified each other in battle, if not by face recognition, was by plant badge or other insignia worn in the cap or headgear, not the particular tartan they wore.

Historically tartans were not assigned to families until the 19th Century, as part of Victorian fashion. Matt Newsome discusses this on his website, as he and others have pointed out, prior to the 19th Century it is impossible to establish that particular clan chiefs for whom a portrait records exists wore a specific tartan--where a portrait record exists, they show up wearing different tartans over the years. J. Charles Thompson has a concise discussion in his book So You're Going to Wear the Kilt, p. 18-26. Barb Tewksbury has a nice summary at pgs. 11-15 of her The Art of Kiltmaking.

As Tewksbury relates, many tartans were assigned to clans by the commercial weaver that produced them, giving tartans the name of the last person who ordered it. My own family tartan, MacPherson, was assigned in that fashion, when in the 19th Century the Clan Chief requested the clan tartan from the weaving house, they sent him a tartan previously named Kidd, because the last person who ordered it was a West Indies plantation owner named MacPherson. The Art of Kiltmaking, p. 14.

Perhaps one source of the feeling that one should not wear a tartan not "belonging" to ones family is that after the Act of Proscription following the '45 Jacobite uprising, wearing the kilt was outlawed except for those serving in the Highland Regiments, which sometimes differentiated themselves by adopting distinct tartans, frequently variations of the Government sett, or Black Watch tartan. I suppose one might not want to wear the tartan of a unit in which they did not serve [except Black Watch tartan, a universal] at the risk of being accused of Walting about. [However, I think that any regimental tartan should be fair game, and should be considered a Government sett, belonging to all the people].

The Lord Lyon is the governmental authority for registering the heraldry of the Scots nobility, the Lord Lyon registered the arms and insignia of the Scottish aristocracy, which heraldry did not at first include assignment of specific tartans to specific clans. Eventually, a Scottish chieftan who wished to bear arms would apply to the Lord Lyon and seek to meet the requirements thereof. The Scottish Tartans Authority is likewise a recent invention.

Family association is a good reason for wearing a particular tartan, but it is not historically accurate to take the whole clan tartan system too seriously, or to let it's existence keep you from wearing a tartan you admire.

Cheers!

[macwilkin]

While I agree with 99% of your post, Bobsyouruncle, there a couple of small points that bother me:

It may be a slight excess of zeal that keeps people from wearing a tartan they cannot prove was worn by their family...

Family association is a good reason for wearing a particular tartan, but it is not historically accurate to take the whole clan tartan system too seriously, or to let it's existence keep you from wearing a tartan you admire.

Yes, I know I can wear any tartan I take a fancy to -- but I choose not to if I do not have a connection to it. That is my perogative, and I sometimes wonder why those of us who choose not to wear any tartan "just because" are viewed as "zealous" -- if kilts are about "freedom", as many believe around here, then aren't we entitled to the freedom to wear only tartans we have an association with?

Just something to think about before every one "gangs up" on the traditionalists.

Todd

[An t-Ileach]

An t-Ileach,

My compliments for an extraordinarily interesting and well written posting.

Best regards,

Jake

(blushes) Thanks, Jake. David