SCOTTISH TARTANS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 7, 23 September 1942, Page 2

SCOTTISH TARTANS

Probably most people hold the opinion that Scottish kilts and tartans are as old as Scottish hills, but from what a recent writer, a member ol' a Scottish ducal family, has said in his boc!'.c of recollections, that opinion is quite wrong. This writer says that it is well known that tartons ascribed to certain famous Lowland family names are just the inventions of enterprising tailors who design to attract, the attention of folk who lvave an eye for the picturesque. Pie even suggests that Highland and Lowland clans alike are indebted to tailors who lived not any further back than the last century. He speaks of a certain tailor who told him that on an average he gets three orders a year to invent tartans for one family or another. This tailor says there arc now about (j()() distinct tartans.

We may still look upon tartans and kilts as being picturesque but that does not make them ancient, for this writer says that as a matter of fact even in the eighteenth century the lu# was not worn to any large extent.