KILT AND TARTAN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5082, 31 January 1927, Page 4

KILT AND TARTAN.

HISTORY OF ORIGIN. A PRACTICAL SYMBOL. Nine Englishmen out of ten (and perhaps an equal number of Scots), asked to describe, the Scottish national dress, would begin their answers with the tartan kilt. This, indeed, is the conspicuous feature. But the. tartan is not distinctively Scottish ; apd the kilt, at any rate in SccfJand, is an upstart (says the London Times). About 200 years ago an English officer wrote from the Highlands, to a. friend in London that the tartan was not confined even to Celts and Goths, but was worn by ether peoples ; and that it was “ridiculous” to imagine that the manufacture of it began in the Highlands. It had come first to the Lowlands, and from France. Captain Burt’s statement is not definitely contradicted by Mr Loudon Mac Queen Douglas, late president of the Scottish Society, who has jusiti published a learned little book, “The Kilt: A Manual of Scottish National Dress” ; but Mr Douglas ascribes a very humble origin to the tartan. It began with the. different-coloured fleeces Of the sheep, from the wool of which were woven the chequered trews of Celt and Gaul. Then, we may suppose came, in obscure and turbulent the extension of tartan from the trews to the plaid, and the development of its patterns in order to mark off clan from clan. Any scrap of romance about Scotland is commonly ascribed to the Highlands, just as all jokes used to be; ascribed to Joe Miller or W. S. Gilbert. But after the Fortyfive, when the wearing of the tartan was forbidden, it was not the Highlands but the Lowlands, and especially the Lowland ladies, who preserved the tartan by showing, in defiance of the law, a passion for it equal to that of Queen Victoria. As for the kilt, or fillibeg, as a separate garment it is not mare, than 200 years old. As the name “kilt” implies, it was originally only the end of the plaid picked up and belted round the waist.

Be the history wliat it may, the tartan kilt, more than plaid, sporran, bonnet, or aught else, is the determining feature of Scottish national dress; and 'ihe Scots are the only people in the King’s home dominions who have a national dress. 'Every symbolical representation of these islands shows three men, each in a different kind of dress. It would show four if anyone had discovered, or invented, a national for the Welshman. Of tihese three, the Scottish is the, only dress which a sane person would care to be seen wearing except at a fancy dress ball. The John Bull dress of the Englishman was neve,r national, and is now a mere, outworn symbol. The hat, breeches, and shillelagh of the Irishman belong to a, play by Boucicault rather than to life, and bear no resemblance to the saffron kilt and chequered trdws. which the most instructed and Erin-loving Irish now claim to be the Irish national dress. Yeh the Irish and the Welsh have had as much provocation as the Scottish to cling defiantly to any symbol of nationality that they might possess. Only the Scot has clung to his clothes, and has worn them so generally that they can' be on the. music-hall stage a capital joke, on the battlefield a glory, in the ballroom an envied distinction, on the moor a 1 great convenience, and in the castle a symbol of nationality favoured by the highest in the land. The survival and success of this costume may tern nt the intellectually curious into profound speculations in the comparative psychology

of peoples. They may do well not to leave altogether cut of count the truth that the Scottish national costume is (to say nothing of its romantic associations and its convenience for certain purposes) a might becoming dress, and that the. Scots have the sense to know it.