Kilts Scottish only??

[macwilkin]

I did notice that Campbell said it was "likely" but he flatly stated "which at that time was worn by both Scotch and Irish". He sees the kilt as being the popular, (though perhaps not national) dress of the Irish as well. I will try to find the reference to the kjlit in ancient Mann, but am leaving in a few hours and may not get to it for a couple of weeks. I have seen a few references to this in my Manx literature, so I personally think there is SOME evidence that the a form of the pleated kilt was worn in ancient times by the Manx and Norse. I am not, however trying to attribute the origin of the kilt to the Manx. It matters little to me, really.

Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but what I am responding to is the apparent denial that it is correct for any but the Scots to claim the kilt as part of their heritage, or even an ancient garment. Again, I am not trying to say that the Manx "invented" the kilt or any such thing. Only that it was worn by the Manx prior to recent times, at least in the form of the kjilt. My Manx ancestors were likely wearing the kilt before my American Grandpappy's wore Levi's. Though I have no photos of them doing so, I don't think many Scots would have such hard evidence of there direct ancestors wearing the kilt either. But it is OK for them to claim it as part of there heritage becasue it is "likely" that they did. If we are to apply the same logic and standard to the Irish and Manx, then what reason is there that we should not say so as well?

So, back to the original question - is it OK to claim the kilt as part of my heritage? I think so. It is recognized as the national dress of Scotland, and I am not trying to take away from that. But if my ancestors also wore the kilt am I precluded from saying so because the Scots have made claim to it and popularized it in modern times?

Again, it was put forth earlier that accuaracy was needed to arrive at an answer to the question. It was also said that no credible evidence exists that the kilt was worn in ancient times or anyone prior to the Scots.

I respect Mac's scholarship, but nobody knows everything and being an expert does not mean that one has read every word ever written on a subject. "Experts" may know a lot, but a scholar will continue to consider new data as it comes to there attention, as their motive should be to arrive at an objective conclusion, based on fact. We can all learn something. I have learned plenty from the great people who post here and from Mac. I like to think that I am teachable as well, and certainly open to correction. But I don't take what anyone says as the last word when I have seen evidence that indicates otherwise.

With humble reverence,
Kevin

Kevin,

Whilst I respect your passion for your heritage, as someone who makes his living in the history and information retrieval (library) trade, I need to see sources. Matt's research is based on sources, many of them primary or contemporary sources, which are the best kind of course.

I'm afraid you're getting on the defensive here, which you shouldn't be. Again, neither Matt or myself are saying that you cannot wear the kilt as a symbol of your pride in your heritage. Far from it -- what is being said is that the kilt's origins are in Scotland, are not that ancient tae boot. The adoption of the kilt by other Celtic nations is a relatively modern phenomena, just like the relatively modern adoption of tartans by Highland Clans and Lowland & Borders families. To those clans (and nations), the tartans are important symbols, regardless of their age. In fact, many Lowland families wear kilts & tartan today when their ancestors wouldn't have been caught dead in them, because the kilt was the garment of the "wild Highlanders" -- over time, the kilt has become a "national" garment for Scotland, and not just belonging to the Highlands.

One can speculate if their Scottish ancestors wore kilts, but one cannot say definiately that they did, if there is no evidence of it. Others may have-- family photos, letters, etc. But the key is sources -- and so far, you've only cited one source that really didn't say anything, save personal opinion by one gentleman. Matt is not perfect (and I never made that claim, btw), but he has done years of reasearch on this subject. Those of us who make our living in the historical field should always be open to learning and re-evaluating history, but only when credible sources surface, and not just speculation.

Bottom line: wear your kilt and show your pride in your Manx heritage. No one is saying you shouldn't. We're just saying that there is not enough evidence to make statements that the kilt is an ancient garment worn by the Irish, Welsh, etc. -- I can speculate all I want to about a certain historical event, but as a trained historian, I cannot, in good conscience, present a historical "fact" without some source -- and sources are never perfect or final, and historians are never totally objective -- but we should strive to be as much as possible.

Again, please do not take offence -- that is not my intention at all.

Cheers,

Todd

[bubba]

Every tradition starts somewhere. This is as good a time as any to make the kilt into a Celtic garment

[KiltedManxman]

Todd,

Perhaps I have become defensive. Forgive me this. I am not offended by you or Matt at all. I truly appreicate your comments. Thanks for taking the time to restate your thoughts. Again, when I return from my journey in a couple of weeks I will try to locate the references mentioned and send them along if I do. I would appreciate your opinion on what I find.

Many Blessings,
Kevin

[KiltedManxman]

Todd,
I did find a few references.

Here is an excerpt form chapter 5 of:
From King Orry to Queen Victoria. A SHORT AND CONCISE HISTORY OF THE ISLE OF MAN BY EDWARD CALLOW, LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, TERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1899.

I included a couple of leading paragraphs to give a reference for the time period in question.

"This great warrior died 1095 A.D., after a reign of thirty-six years, at the Island of Islay, on his way to resist an invasion of his northern insular territories by Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, to whom he had refused to do the customary homage and vassalage. He left three sons, Logman, Harold, and Olave.

With the loss of their great King, the Manx seem to have lost for a time some of their spirit and pluck. Not only the lesser isles but Man itself speedily became an easy prey to Magnus Barefoot, who came to the island with 160 ships.

Now occurs a peculiarly interesting historical record. In the Norwegian annals of Magnus Bare foot we have the earliest known mention of the Highland dress or kilt, which seems to have been the ordinary costume of the Manx and other islanders of that period. It was from his adopting it himself that King Magnus obtained the sobriquet of ‘Bare foot.’ ‘They went on the streets,’ says Saone Struleson, the Icelandic historian, ‘with bare legs, whence Magnus was called by his men Barfod or Barbeen—Barefoot or Barelegs.’ This proves the great antiquity of the kilt."

And this snippet from chapter 9 of A HISTORY OF THE ISLE OF MAN BY
A. W. MOORE, M.A. 1900

"A change, however, was to take place in this respect towards the end of Godred's reign, in 1093, when the Norwegian throne was ascended by the ambitious Magnus,8 surnamed Barefoot from his having adopted the kilt, who determined to reassert his supremacy over the vassal kingdom. Before a year was ended he equipped a large fleet and sailed to the Sudreys."

and form chapter 2 of the same volume describing the dress of the Manx during the Celtic period up to the end of the 11th century:

"Their dress consisted (1) of the lenn, 41 a kind of loose shirt generally of woollen cloth, but sometimes of linen, reaching a little below the knees of the men, and forming what is now called the kilt. This garment was of different colours, some being spotted, checkered, and variegated, each tribe or clan having apparently special colours. Over the lean came the roar, a kind of closely fitting tunic reaching to the-hips, and bound round the waist by the criss, 42 a girdle or scarf, often of some rich colour, especially purple. The inar, or tunic, appears to have been open at the breast, so as to show off the embroidery of the lenn. Over the left shoulder, and fastened with a brooch, hung the brat, 43 a shawl or plaid like that of the modern Scottish Highlanders. In the earlier times this was the skin or fur of a wild beast, and a thorn did duty for a brooch. The legs were bare, or covered with a kind of legging or hose fastened by thongs. The only difference between the dress of the men and the women was that the lenn of the latter reached to the ankles."

Your comments would be appreciated.

Kevin

[bear]

"Their dress consisted (1) of the lenn, 41 a kind of loose shirt generally of woollen cloth, but sometimes of linen, reaching a little below the knees of the men, and forming what is now called the kilt.

The way I read this passage, it says they wore a lenn (leine) and that the lenn would one day evolve to become a kilt. It doesn't state the kilt was there.

[The Wizard of BC]

If I may interject a couple of further referances I have used when asked about the history of the kilt.

1) "The Invention of Tradition" by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Published by Cambridge Uneversity Press, 1983. isbn 0 521 43773 3
Now in it's twelfth printing.

Of note is the entire second chapter which is entitled "The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland."

2) "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" by Arthur Herman. Published by Three Rivers Press, 2001. isbn 0 609 80999 7

read chapter 11 entitled "The Last Minstrel: Sir Walter Scott and the Highland Revival", and chapter 13 entitled "The Sun Never Sets: Scots and the British Empire".

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Kevin,

I'm going to reply to a few of your points, but first I want to once more refer people to _Old Irish and Highland Dress_ by H. F. McClintock. If your library doesn't have a copy, Scotpress has issued it on CD-ROM. It was originally published in 1943. Secondly, I'm typing with a baby in my lap, so forgive me any typos. :-)

Regarding your quote from Mr. Campbell, please keep in mind that he is a Scot, apparantly one fond of the kilt, writing in the latter nineteenth century. I made passing reference earlier to the fact that it was not originally the Irish who made the claim that the kilt was an ancient garment from Ireland, but the Scots! They made this claim in order to support their theory that the kilt was a very ancient form of dress. This way they could say that their Irish anscestors some 1500 years ago brought it to Scotland when they migrated.

Note that he says both the Irish and Scots wore the kilt "prior to English rule." I don't know exactly when he is referring to, but the English have been in Ireland since the twelfth century! The idea that the kilt was hundred, if not thousands of years old was very popular in nineteenth century Scotland. However, we now know otherwise. We've gone back, looked at the written, the pictoral, and the achaelogical evidence, and done some serious study on what the Scottish Gaels, the Irish Gaels, and other celtic peoples wore in the past. And we now have the timeline fairly well established that shows the kilt originating in the form of the feilidh-mhor in late sixteenth century Scotland, quickly becoming the standard garb of Highland men, evolving into the feilidh-beag sometime prior to the early-to-mid eighteenth century, and then evolving at the end of the eighteenth century into the tailored kilt.

Many writers and commentors in the nineteenth century simply did not have access to the same research that has been done since. They simply beleived the prevailing theory that the kilt was an ancient garment shared by all the Gaels, Irish, Scots (and yes, Manx), and I think your Campbell source is simply reflecting this. In other words, it tells us more about the attitude of Scots in the nineteenth century than about the clothign worn by Manx or Irish in ancient times.

Regarding King Magnus Baerfoot -- I've dealt with this document in the past, as well. The Magnus Berfaet Saga of 1093 says exactly this about Magnus' clothing:

It is said that when King Magnus returned from this expedition to the West, that he adopted the costume in use in the Western Lands, and likewise many of his followers; that they went about barelegged having short tunics and also upper garments, and so many men called him 'Barelegged' or 'Barefoot.'

The word translated above as "short tunics" is kyrtlu and "upper garments" is yfir hafnir. All that this description really tells us is that he wore nothing on his feet or legs. Any imagined reference to a kilt is fanciful. What happened is that many people, in an attempt to establish some ancient legacy for the kilt, saw this reference to the men in Western Scotland being barelegged and automatically assumed they were wearing kilts, even though kilts are mentioned nowhere in the description.

We really don't know what the Scottish Gaels wore in the eleventh century, but we do know that in later times their dress was identical to the Irish Gaels (in fact, the development of the kilt in the late sixteenth century was the first thing that differenced Scottish and Irish clothing). In the eleventh century the Irish were wearing simple tunics, usually short tunics for active men, and a cloak or wrap of varying descriptions. There is every reason to assume that this is just what King Magnus was wearing in the above description.

In your last reference by A. W. Moore, the "lenn" he describes is the same as the Irish leine (which is really just the Gaelic word for "shirt"). In the sixteenth century, the tunic or leine worn by both the Irish and Scottish Gaels (and probably the Manx) had become a very full garment, with long sleeves, and bodies so full that when worn belted at the waist they really did look pleated. Since most descriptions we have of the leine come from the sixteenth century, people tend to think of all leinte (the Gaelic plural) as this elaborate and copious. But in earlier centuries it really was a much more simple tunic.

Many in nineteenth century Scotland, once again, attempted to identify the kilt as having evolved from the leine. It seemed to make sense. The bottom part of the leine could look very much like a pleated skirt, and since the leine was worn by the Irish centuries ago, it would seem to establish the great antiquity of the kilt, which was the goal. However, despite similarities in appearance in woodcuts and other illustrations, the leine and kilt are two unrelated garments. The leine is a shirt, worn long so that the bottom comes to the knee (or often to the ankle, with the shirt bloused up over the belt to make it knee length). The kilt is a wrap around garment of completely different construction. And we now know, again through more scholaraly research than was available one hundred years ago, that the kilt evolved not from the leine, but from the plaid or mantle that was worn as an outer layer on top of it.

Again, I refer you to _Old Irish and Highland Dress_. McClintock examines many primary sources, both pictoral and written, from the time period, which is much more reliable than studying the writings of people writing centuries after the fact. It is the largest examination of contemporary sources on Highland Dress that has been put into print.

And he even has a chapter on the clothing of the Isle of Man. it is brief, for as he says, there is no real description of Manx dress from the past for us to go on, but as they had such close ties to Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, one can assume their dress was similar as well. He then describes their "folk costume" of "fifty years ago" which would have been in the late nineteenth century -- long, footless tockings, trousers, a woven belt called a "criss", a linen or woolen shirt, a short jacket, and either a tall beaver hat or a knitted had like a Scottish bonnet. Over this, a cloak (or "plaid") if it was cold. Sorry, no kilts were mentioned. :-)

Aye,
M

[KiltedManxman]

Matt,

Thanks for taking the time to give such a detailed response. I will take the time (when I can) to further research these things.

Blessings to you and the baby!
Kevin

[KiltedCodeWarrior]

Thanks Mac, Kevin, and Todd. This is fascinating, and as one who is trying to figure out whether my initial reasons for wearing the kilt were valid, I can see that the answer is somewhat muddy, although it sounds like the book Mac referenced should clear it up when I get a copy. Luckily, I only started wearing the kilt because of my own belief that it was a traditional garment for the Welsh, and now I wear it because I want to and I can!

[Planopiper]

Just to add another level of intrestto the whole Kilt/Celt discussion, I just got this from Answers.com Early History of Ireland page.
http://www.answers.com/topic/early-history-of-ireland

"The truth is more complex. For a start, recent DNA studies have suggested that the people who introduced the Celtic languages to these islands may well have been Celtic-speakers, but they were not members of a Celtic race. Ethnically they were indistinguishable from the pre-Indo-European inhabitants who preceded them. What’s more, their arrival had so little impact on the genetic inheritance of the native peoples that they cannot have numbered much more than a few thousand.

The Y-chromosomes of the modern Irish are closely related to those of the Basques, which has led some anthropologists to surmise that the Basques are a remnant of the pre-Indo-European population of western Europe, and that the pre-Celtic language (or languages) of Ireland may have been related to Euskara, the Basque tongue. (See Celt for a discussion of the so-called “Celtic problem.”)"

So if the Irish aren't really Celtic, genetically speaking, then either are the Scots, right? Keeping in mind this is regarding genetics, which is not necessarily the same thing as cultural. Could be the Irish and Scots are genetically of a pre-Indo-European race but adopted aspects of Celtic culture.

It all gets so complicated.