"ENTITLEMENTS"

[Kilts_Knave]

I'm one of those American mutts who has no strong ties to any clans

(Though a lot of Irish families back there)...

Me, too. My question: How do the Irish wearing the kilt fit into all this? What is the history behind this? Matt (I wish I had time to read a book about it but I just don't)? Anyone? Just curious...

[macwilkin]

Matt & Jimmy C. will most certainly have more to add to this reply, but I think part of the association of the kilt with the Irish is due to the use of pipe bands by Irish military units, as well as the large numbers of Irish immigrants and their descendants in North American police & fire services.

For instance, the Irish regiments of the British Army began to adopt Scottish "customs" for their pipe bands at the turn of the century, and after independence & the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, a similar adoption occurred in the Irish Army. The same observation can be made with North American police & fire service pipe bands, which have borrowed heavily from the Scottish tradition.

Matt, Jimmy...your thoughts?

Cheers,

Todd

[A Dhuglas]

Vent away, brother. Your feelings are shared. Careful on the disemboweling and skull-knocking, though. Besides being messy you might force the creation of yet another Douglas sept ;) l know whereof I speak.

But these sites ARE calling them selves the clan Douglas (or whomever) sites. They come and they go constantly.

And it's hard to tell who is who any more. Everybody is asking for money.

Clickity

That site explains it rather well. And exposes some of the SORRY **** RAT BASTARDS SCANDALISING MY GOOD NAME!!! YOU YELLOW BASTARDS!

There are hundreds of links online. Just go to Google and type Lord Titles. And you can purchase these titles.

Let me save you the trouble.

Click here your Lordship.

This site isn't as scammy as some... Some, like I mentioned, pose as actual clan sites and offer up sob stories about getting your ancestral lands out of hoc, and how all Douglasses have a duty (Or insert name here) to cough up some money save our lands from the English. In return, you get a title.

It's getting where I worry about donating money to anybody.

Wretched scum. I would very much like to crack their vile skulls with my cane. Or a good old fashioned holy water sprinkler mace.

Sorry. This really chaps my hide. Makes me positively livid. I take a lot of my pride in my name. It's all I have in the world. My name means something. I decend from the Douglasses... I am dirt poor. My name... My name is all I have in my life that means something. I learn more and more about my history. What my name means. What it means to have this bloodline. The rich and noble history that is in the name it self. The importance. The story. It inspires me. Makes me stand a little taller. Makes me want to be a better man. Make my life have meaning.

And when some sot tries to cheapen my good name with crap like this it makes me want to rip off his head, reach down his neck hole, grab his spleen, and yank him inside out.

Sorry.

I feel better. Needed to vent.

Aaaaaah.

Todd, for a true and noble cause, I would gladly donate my last dime. I have exactly 11 cents in my bank account right now. If it where to preserve and keep our history and our cultural story, I would gladly give it.

I just want to know that it is going for the real thing and be assured of it.

Your sentiments are in lockstep with our family's history. Our ancestors' loosing the proverbial dogs of war ultimately led to my surname. Seems some friends and followers of English nobility overstepped their bounds with Douglas water/land. After mowing down said offenders and being forced to flee their lands (turns out these were good friends of the English King - don't recall which one at the moment) and evading the King's men, the Drysdale [Dryfesdale] surname was born.

Think scammers make you cringe? Try the freakin' "Beverly Hillbillies":

Drysdale? That name sounds familiar...
Where do I know it from?...
OH! Now I remember! The Clampits, right?...
That TV show. That's where I know it from!
Are you a banker too?!
yada yada yada

"God grant me the serenity to accept the fact that this cretin lacks both brain and manners. Stay my hands from encircling his/her neck and squeezing...."

But I digress. Entitlements. An interesting thread for sure. Seems we each have our own reasons for doing what we do, wearing what we do.

For me: my pride in my Dad, my family, my surname and my clan draws me naturally to Douglas tartans. And if I find the blood of other clans flowing in my lineage - it must be there, no? - I'll wear 'their' tartans with similar pride. As well as the tartan of any place with which I feel an allegiance (Scotland, Canada, USA, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, USA...) or tartans like Black Watch that are open to all comers -- plus I admire the Ladies from Hell.

Like my surname, I'm drawn to the bits and pieces of my past (personal or ancestral) that are all part of my heritage. There're what connect me to all who came before me and, hopefully, those who will come after me. That feeling of being 'connected' is the key for me.

Dread: "Remember who you are" are words I've tried to live by for a long time. So knowing who we are and the roots from which we came: no membership, affiliation or other entity created by man can trump our ancestry. I see being part of a like-minded group (like this one) that draws it members from among a common heritage (a clan society) as icing on the cake.

Keep the faith.

DD

[Sir Robert]

I think you guys tolally missed my point which is that: because we inheirit from both sides as Picts/Scots we literally have the blood of Kings in our veins. This REAL connection to REAL nobility. Not those Hanover Kings but real Kings who took their crowns with a sword.

What that means is almost nothing, but substantially more than nothing at all. What I recognize is that:

A. Us kilt wearing Folk are brave, and that is noble.

B. Persons who have no ties of blood to us but say with a kilt, "I am one of them" is traditionally "one of us" and noble for that.

C. We are members on "Clan Celt" and cousins (no matter how far removed) and should treat each other as the kinsman which we really are.

D. We are all ENTITLED to all tartans because our claim is REAL and the guy from Pakistan selling Kilts on the internet isn't entitled to say no, nor for that matter are Clan Cheiftans whose sole claim to a particular tartan is because he paid 752 pounds to some government puke.

My 2 cents.

[Granite]

Interesting discussion, good to see eveyone sharing their opinions...one thing to remember though...
...if you were to try and start up a converstion over here ('here' being Scotland) about this topic, you would at best get a strange look from the listener and at worst you would get told to 'get a life' ( this being a polite version of the more usual 'F.off!' )

Here, a man wears a kilt when he wants, where he wants, and as often as he wants.
If the kilt has been hired, then we will always ask to have our own family tartan, if it isn't available then our favourite colour will do fine.

If you then buy a kilt, then more often than not you will get one made in your own tartan, especially when a homemade kilt can cost up to £300, depending on the tartan involved.

No one gets bothered about it if you only wear the kilt once a year (usually New Year) or if you wear it every weekend - good for you if you do...

The wearing of a kilt here is not a badge of honour, it doesn't make you better or worse than the man next to you, nor is there any 'entitlement' to what tartan you should and shouldn't wear.

It will always be appreciated when it is worn. End of story.

The most you will have to put up with, is the older generation passing on the 'do's' and 'don'ts' of proper kilt wear.

Clan societies, to my mind, are good if they encourage people to gather together and celebrate a common ancestry, but not if they insist that only by joining will you truly 'belong' to the clan.

What a heap of nonsense...my name was passed to me by my father, and to him by his father, and to him by his father, etc...
I don't need a piece of paper from a 'society' to tell me that I belong and what rights I have.
That kind of thing would be treated with contempt here...

There will always be scam artists out to make a quick buck, but it you truly believe in yourself, then no 'society' can replace that.

The thing I like about this forum is the great interest shown by the many American enthusiasts in maintaining links with their Celtic heritage (Scottish, Irish, Welsh).

Remember, we Scots are very friendly (after we check you out first to ensure no weapons are being carried :-) but sometimes we can to do nothing but shake our heads at how overboard some people can go just to prove their ancestry.

Regards.

[A Dhuglas]

Remember, we Scots are very friendly (after we check you out first to ensure no weapons are being carried :-) but sometimes we can to do nothing but shake our heads at how overboard some people can go just to prove their ancestry. Regards.

So it's an "Is that a large, pointy kitchen knife under your sporran or are you just glad to see me?" kind of thing? ;-)

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Me, too. My question: How do the Irish wearing the kilt fit into all this? What is the history behind this? Matt (I wish I had time to read a book about it but I just don't)? Anyone? Just curious...

As Todd has pointed out, Irish kilt wearing is a relatively new thing. Most of the settlers of the Ulster plantation, beginning in the early seventeenth century, were Scots (although Lowland Scots and not kilt-wearers). But I suspect that this was the impetus behind the various pipe bands and the like that Todd describes. People in Northern Ireland of Scottish descent wanted to wear the kilt so as to identify themselves as Scottish rather than Irish. Then I guess the Irish were motivated to wear the kilt, as well, as a connection to their "Celtic anscestors." Remember, there was a beleif in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (well some people still have it now) that the kilt was some form of an ancient garment whose origins lay in the misty past of celtic legends. I suspect very few Irish who wore the kilt realized they were wearing a garment that developed in Scotland over the coarse of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

But in any case, kilt wearing in Ireland was never as common as it was in Scotland, has been relatively recent, and most Irish would recognize it as "a Scottish thing."

The trend for the Irish to wear the kilt has increased dramatically in the past decade or so. Prior to the introduction of the Irish county tartans in the mid-1990s, Irish people who wanted to wear a kilt usually wore the solid saffron kilts of the Irish regiments (that Todd has mentioned) or a solid green kilt (green for Ireland). There were a small handfull of Irish tartans, but these were few and far between, and not widely available.

The line of Irish county tartans by The House of Edgar changed the whole perception of the Irish kilt. Keep in mind that these are, strictly speaking, fashion tartans. None of them have ever been officially adpoted by the counties that they are supposed to represent. What we have here is the case of a Scottish tartan company who had the ingenius idea to design, on their own initiative, tartans for every Irish county to open the market for kilts and tartan accessories to a much wider consumer base -- and it has been very successful. Lochcarron of Scotland, around the same time, introduced a line of tartans for the Irish provinces.

There are also some Irish family tartans, some ligitimate, some not. What I mean by this is that some, like the Cian (or O'Carrol) tartan, were designed by the societies representing the families, officially adopted by them, etc. So even though they are recent (the Cian tartan is from 1984) they are legitimate family tartans. Others simply fall into the category of "fashion" tartans (some might even say a hoax!). I hate to say it, but there are some companies out there who, if someone calls and says, "I want a kilt in the O'Fallon tartan" will say, "Sure!" and then proceed to weave up a length of a tartan like MacLean with the red changed to blue and call it "O'Fallon." (I just picked the name O'Fallon here as a fictional example).

Furthermore, the Scottish Tartans Society has recorded a number of Irish family name tartans whose source was the pattern book _Clans Originaux_ from Paris in the 1880s. Well, the Scottish Tartans Authority has recently been able to obtain information about this pattern book from the Pendleton Mill in Oregon (who have the only known copy) and discovered that it contains only your standard Scottish clan tartans and no Irish tartans at all! So where did all these Irish family tartans in the STS register come from??? It's something that is being studied as we speak.

All that being said, there are some traditional Irish tartans. The Ulster tartan, for instance, was found buried on a farm in Ulster and dates from c. 1600. (Note, it is believed that it was Scottish woven cloth). The Connaught tartan is supposed to have been from a sample found in the west of Ireland. But keep in mind that these tartans bear these names because of the locations they were found, not because that is what the Irish originally called them. There is absolutely no indication that the Irish ever had named tartans.

So, all this is to say is that Irish kilt wearing is a recent trend, and if the history or legitimacy of a particular tartan matters to you, do some research and find out the story before you buy.

Aye,
Matt

[macwilkin]

Then I guess the Irish were motivated to wear the kilt, as well, as a connection to their "Celtic anscestors." Remember, there was a beleif in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (well some people still have it now) that the kilt was some form of an ancient garment whose origins lay in the misty past of celtic legends.

Several of the Irish revolutionaries of 1916 did this very thing. Patrick Pearce, the leader of the Easter Rebellion, even adopted the kilt as a uniform for his school for boys, St. Enda's, which was supposed to educate Irish boys on "traditional" Irish culture. From what I have read, the boys took quite a few beatings from local boys over their kilts.

Eamonn Ceannt, another leader in the '16, reportedly played the uilleann pipes for the Pope dressed in a green kilt. Another Irishman, Pierce O'Mahony, wore a green kilt & is pictured in "ancient" Irish dress, complete with wolfhound. O'Mahony lived in Bulgaria and is quite the national hero there -- a tartan was recently introduced in his honour.

Matt, I seem to remember reading that the Tara, or "Murphy" tartan, was listed in Clans Originaux -- am I just dreaming this up?

Cheers,

Todd

[Sir Robert]

Old Irish tartans and kilts, I don't think so.

But if you are willing to accept that these are a pure modern invention, why not?

Check out:
http://web.archive.org/web/200202201...o/Earlyirl.htm

This is a SCA website and is based on real sources and good research. You will notice that whenever NEW data has been found, the older data is quickly marked as discredited.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Todd,

Re: the Tara/Murphy tartan. This tartan was supposed to be included in the Clans Originaux under the name "Murphy." Now we know that this is false. It's really a mystery. All the information about the Clans Originaux was supposedly supplied to the Scottish Tartans Society in 1977 by the late William H. Johnston, who examined the original held at Pendleton Mills in OR. When the STA was sent photographs of the book in 2003 they found all 185 included tartans to be just your regular Scottish tartans -- no Irish names at all! So what happened?

In any case, we know that this same tartan was being sold at the Kilt Shop in Edinburgh in 1967 by the name "Tara." The same tartan, in different shades, has also been called "O'Keefe." Another note: the tartan is the same sett as MacLean of Duart, only woven in different colors.

Aye,
Matt