True Kilts: Debunking the Myths About Highlanders and Clan Tartans

https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/debunking-the-myths-about-kilts/

by pepys • 9 years ago

73 16 9 years ago

psergeant2• 9 years ago

   > these tartan traditions are 
   > nearly 200 years old

These are pretty old by American standards, albeit not by Scottish.

arethuza2• 9 years ago

We seem to be pretty good at re-inventing traditions for a bit of fun - Up Helly Aa in Shetland and the more recent Beltane fire festival in Edinburgh being good examples.

http://www.uphellyaa.org/

https://beltane.org/about/about-beltane/

psergeant2• 9 years ago

Scots in “will capitalise on credulous foreigners” shocker.

mhd• 9 years ago

They're older than Lederhosen.

ucaetano• 9 years ago

Lederhosen have been around for a while, at least since the middle ages, as they are simply farm worker pants made of leather.

Sure, the romanticised modern version is recent, deriving from German unification and the Rococco period.

52-6F-62• 9 years ago

I always considered this pretty common knowledge, but I grew up in a household of semi-recent immigrants (I'm 3rd gen on my father's Scottish side, and 1st/2nd on my mother's Irish side depending on context) — so these kinds of things were impressed upon us in a way, sort of favouring retaining some cultural association.

I guess I figured such because of the large population in North America that can trace its roots back to the British Isles, but maybe that was too generous.

That said, the emphasis in my family was usually on plaid/tartan patterns being emblematic of Gaelic culture on whole, and much less being put on an associated pattern with the clans. Seemed more to be something that wealthier groups could afford to care more about.

My father's side doesn't even have its own tartan: http://www.scotclans.com/scottish-clans/clan-fairlie/ — Most often any information I find points us to take up a Ross or de Ros, and sometimes Boyd tartan — or being originally from the highlands, a Stewart. (from what I can tell in any of my reading it was the Jacobite uprisings where our family name came from in the first place.) I think my mother's side does have one or more tartans associated with them, but that seems to have been more of the Scottish influence on same/similar family names or migration.

kiliantics• 9 years ago

This just gave me a case of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. I saw a reddit comment on /r/AskHistorians just yesterday[0]. Many of these "traditions" in Europe were fabricated, mostly in the late 19th century to foster a sense of nationalist unity.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5aocbl/is_th...

JoeDaDude• 9 years ago

And no true Scotsman will be caught outside doing construction work without his Utilikilt! [1]

[1] http://www.utilikilts.com/accessories/switchback.html

True Kilts: Debunking the Myths About Highlanders and Clan Tartans

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