Where do people get these ideas?

While doing an unrelated Google search, I came across this article, from 1999, about a local kiltmaker in Indiana.
http://www.roundaboutmadison.com/Inside%20Pages/Archived%20Articles/1999/4_99%20Pommehern.html

The first thing that caught my eye was the photo -- the gentleman (presumably the kiltmaker himself) is wearing a jacket that is not cut for a kilt. And his hose, likewise, look like fairly standard sports socks. Not that I am disparaging anyone's choice of clothing (please read the quote in my left sidebar from Erskine), but I would have assumed that someone made and sold kilts for a living would make an effort to at least have a shorter kilt jacket.

Reading on through the article, though, I just got more frustrated. The writer, discussing the styles of kilts, states, "There have been various styles of kilts worn over the years, but Pommehern [the kilt maker] prefers the traditional Renaissance box pleat design used by both Scots and Irish."

There are two huge mistakes in this one sentence. First of all, I'm going to assume that by "Renaissance" the writer here is referring to the time period typically portrayed in the Renaissance festivals here in the US, which would be the sixteenth century. The only style of kilt that was worn in the sixteenth century was the feilidh-mhor or "great kilt," which can only be documented back to 1594, so it barely makes the cut. This style of kilt was not tailored at all, and so was not really pleated so much as gathered up and belted on. It is unfair to say it was "box pleated" as opposed to "knife pleated." Besides, one doesn't really "make" a kilt like this so much as one learns how to arrange the cloth when it is worn.

Secondly, I have no idea where the writer got the idea that the box pleated kilts were worn by both the Scottish and the Irish. The Irish have never worn kilts, until modern times. It's simply never been a part of the traditional Irish garb.

However, I am sure that the author of this article is only repeating the misinformation that she heard from the kiltmaker, for she then quotes him directly (as I can only presume correctly) as saying, "The knife pleat kilt is an English monkey suit that Scots were allowed to wear after the period of Proscription."

Just to review a few facts here -- the period of Proscription, when Highland Dress was outlawed in the Highlands, lasted from 1746 to 1782. The earliest tailored kilt (with the pleats sewn in) that we have any kind of documentation of is from 1792; this is box pleated, and contains less than 4 yards of cloth. Box pleating was the norm in both military and civilian kilts from that point until the latter part of the nineteenth century. When we get into the twentieth century, knife pleating was the norm, with kilts having, on average, 8 yards of cloth.

So to say that the knife pleated kilt came about "after the period of Proscription" is technically true, but also quite irrelevant. Tailored kilts, period, came about after Proscription. And I have seen absolutely no evidence to suggest that "the English" had anything to do with the change in style from box pleating to knife pleating. Honestly, why would the English care???

The article also claims that the English were responsible for creating the clan tartan system. While it is very true that prior to the nineteenth century there was no system of clans and families being represented with particular tartans, to give the English credit for creating this system is not justified. It completely ignores the influence of such Scottish figures as Sir Walter Scot, James Logan, and the tartan weavers themselves, such as Wilsons of Bannockburn. A full account can be read in my article on the Sources of the Tartans.

While it is true that the first collection of "clan tartans" was created by the Highland Society of London, we must not think that the Society was made up of a bunch of Londoners! It was a Scottish ex-patriat club whose membership was very Scottish indeed!

The writer goes on to explain the other aspects of Highland Dress, such as the sporran, which is supposedly held shut with a penannular brooch. Penannular, according to the article, is "Celtic for not quite a circle." The confusion of Gaelic (there was never a language called "Celtic" so I assume she means Gaelic) with Latin is indicative of the general misinformation found in this piece. (Oh, and I've never seen a sporran, historic or otherwise, that was held shut with a penannular brooch).

Why am I wasting my time pointing out the mistakes in this article that very few people have likely read? Isn't it a given that misinformation and myths abound on the subject of Highland Dress? Well, yes, and I've come to accept that. It's a fool's errand to try and correct every error out there on the web dealing with this topic. But sometimes I encounter an article like this that is trying so hard to be informative, yet contains so many blatant errors, it almost seems like someone is trying to see how much malarky they can get away with.

The box pleated kilt was worn by the Scottish and the Irish in the Renaissance, until after Proscription when the nasty English forced the Scots to wear despicable knife pleated kilts. Those ratty-bastards! Arggh!

I mean, who comes up with this? Really?

Oh dear!

While doing a web search for something completely unrelated, I came across this article from Irish Roots magazine:
http://www.irishrootsmagazine.com/about/KiltFacts.htm

It is posted as a sample of the articles their magazine features. This particular article is from their 2000 third quarter issue. It's written by Patrick F. Meehan and is entitled "Kilt Facts: The Irish National Dress."

To be blunt, I have never in my career seen such a large collection of errors and plain nonsense as is included in this brief (three pages if you print it) article. To begin with, even the title is wrong! The kilt is not the Irish National Dress. It is the Scottish National Dress. Yes, I know many Irish people wear the kilt -- so do the Welsh, the Cornish, the Manx. You'll find Englishmen, Germans, Spaniards and Italians in kilts nowadays. And that's fine. But they do so because they choose to adopt Scottish dress. None of this means that the kilt is the Welsh National Dress, or the German National Dress, or the Italian National Dress!

There is the myth that the kilt somehow originated in Ireland. I deal with this in my article on the early history of the kilt.
http://albanach.org/kilt.html
This version of the kilt's origins, however, was not even suggested originally by the Irish, but by Scots who wished to prove the great antiquity of their national dress by suggesting that it was brought over by their migrating Irish ancestors in the sixth century AD. Accurate historical accounts show this to be patently false (as my above article shows). But such is the root of this particular myth, which has since been picked up by many Irish, as well.

So I run across people all the time who consider the kilt Irish in origin. But this particular writer just had me floored with misinformation. One really needs to pick apart the article one sentence at a time to correct all the errors. To begin with:

The kilt is the national dress of the Celtic lands - Ireland, Wales, Cornwall,
Isle of Man, Brittany and Scotland. It is far more popular at the moment in
Scotland, where almost every clan has its own tartan.

We just addressed this above. The kilt is most certainly not the national dress of every land with a claim to Celtic heritage. The kilt originated in Scotland, over the course of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries -- long after any of the places Meehan mentions would have considered themselves part of some general "Celtic" culture. So of course the kilt is far more popular in Scotland than any of these other places -- that is where it was born!

The kilt was originally called the feileadh mor, a belted cloth of about twenty
yards and partly pleated.

The feileadh-mor, or belted plaid, was the original form of the kilt, being worn in Scotland from the end of the sixteenth century through the eighteenth. So Meehan is right that the original kilt was the feileadh mor, though it was worn in Scotland, not Ireland (in fact, the first reference we have to the feileadh mor in 1594 is an Irish document commenting that you could instantly tell the Scottish Hebridean soldiers from the Irish soldiers because of their dress -- the Scots were wearing feileadh mors and the Irish were not!).

But most ridiculous here is Meehan's claim that the feileadh was twenty yards long! That's sixty feet, for those who want to do the math. Can you imagine sixty feet of heavy wool wrapped around you! One would barely be able to stand up. In reality, the feileadh mors were, on average, four or five yards long. They were made from two widths of 25" to 30" wide cloth sewn together to make a single width of 50" to 60". So a four yard feileadh mor would have been made from eight yards of single-width cloth. But even assuming Meehan here is referring to twenty yards of single width cloth, cut and sewn together to make a double width feileadh, that still leaves us with a ten yard (30 feet) length of cloth -- twice what was actually worn.

Many of the Norsemen who came to Ireland began wearing the kilt,
particularly the nobility. The famous king of Norway Magnus Barelegs, who
spent some years in both Ireland and Scotland, always wore a kilt.

Ok, so it is not enough to have the early Irish wearing the kilt, but now the Norse are getting in on the action! This is really too silly. The reference to Magnus Barelegs (more commonly called Barefoot) is from a 1093 account of his life that speaks of him and his soldiers adopting the garb that they encountered in the Western Isles of Scotland. It reads, "they went about barelegged having short tunics and also upper garments, and so many men called him ‘Barelegged’ or ‘Barefoot.’" That's it. Did you see a kilt mentioned? No, but most assume that if he was in Scotland, and barelegged, then he must be wearing a kilt, regardless of the fact that the kilt wouldn't be invented for centuries yet to come.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries men in Ireland and Scotland began
wearing shirts and the kilts were changed to the feileadh beag or brat beag
similar to the modern kilt and consisting of about 10-12 yards owoolenllen
garment.

Oh, so many errors! First of all, the feileadh mor was not worn until the late sixteenth century. The feileadh beag, the next development in the kilt, came about sometime between the late seventeenth and mid eighteenth century, depending on who you read. We don't really know. But the suggestion that it was worn in the fifteenth century is absurd.

Second, like the feileadh mor before it, the feileadh beag was worn in Scotland -- not in Ireland.

Third, the feileadh beag, like the feileadh more, was about four yards long, though only 25" to 30" wide. It most certainly was not ten or twelve yards. Even the modern day kilts that have much, much, more cloth than the original feileadh beags, have no more than eight yards of cloth for an average sized man. Even very robust men have no more than nine or ten yards.

The first person to wear a tartan or multi-coloured kilt was King James III
of Scotland who reigned from 1460 till his death in 1488.

Er... no. I'll be repeating it often I know, but the very earliest reference we have to someone definitely wearing a kilt comes from 1594. So James III must have been a ttravelerller. Or the author of the article is misinformed -- whichever is more likely.

In Scotland today almost every clan or family has its own tartan. Some of them
have a few different kinds i.e. the chief's tartan, the clan tartan, the working
tartan, the hunting tartan, the ceremonial tartan, etc.

Yes, most clans and families in Scotland do have more than one tartan. But I don't know where Meehan is getting his classifications. In all my years in the business, I've never heard of a "working tartan" or a "ceremonial tartan." A very small number of clans have true "chief's" tartans. The most common classifications of tartans are dress and hunting, but these refer to the colors of the tartans, and not any actusageeage. (Hunting tartans generally have more green, dress tartans more white, etc.)

Very few Irish clans had their own tartan. Among the clans that had were tFitzpatrickicks, princes of Ossory, and later barons and earls of Upper Ossory in
Queen's County (now called Laois). They had no less than five tartans. The
O'Murphys of Wexford, the O'Kennedy's of Ormond (North Tipperary) and a few
other families.

No Irish clans had their own tartans. Scottish clans didn't either, until the named tartans started to be fashionable in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. See my article on the "Sources of the Tartans."

http://albanach.org/sources.htm

The idea that Irish families might have tartans did not come about until the twentieth century. In 1977 the late William H. Johnston supposedly gave the Scottish Tartans Society information on a number of Irish name tartans that he found in an 1880 book called Clans Originaux held by the Pendleton Woolen Mills in Oregon. It was supposed to be the earliest record of Irish tartans. However in 2003 members of the Scottish Tartans Authority were allowed to examine photos of the book only to find that it included only well-known Scottish tartans and no Irish named tartans at all! So where did these tartans come from? Just a figment of someone's imagination? Who knows. But all the Irish named tartans for which we know the origin are definitely modern.

Fitzpatrickicks, for instanwhomhome Meehan claims had no fewer than five tartans, have exactly two on record. One that is supposedly from the Clans Originaux (which we now know to be false) and a second which is a more recent variation on the first. I've got no idea where Meehan might have gotten three mFitzpatrickrick tartans from.

In 1880 a book, Clan Originaux was published in Paris by J. Claude Fres et
Cil and it had a number of Irish clan tartans in it. It is long out of
print.

As I have already stated above, this book was examined in 2003 and absolutely zero Irish tartans were found. You can read about this book (and see a list of all the tartans it does contain) here:

http://www.tartansauthority.com/Web/Site/Tartan/Research/ClansOriginaux.asp

However, this information only came to light in 2003, and Meehan published his article in 2000, so he can be forgiven for not knowing. One other correction -- Clans Originaux was never published as a book. It is really a collection of tartan samples; what we would call a "swatch book" today. One that you might see when you enter a Scottish import store or a kilt maker's shop. Who J. Claude was, and why he put together this collection of tartan samples in Paris in 1880 is still a bit of a mystery. But one fact can be put to rest. He included no Irish tartans.

It is said that King James II granted the use of a special tartan to each
county in Ireland in 1689

Well, I have no idea who said it. That's the problem with articles like this that make odd claims and give no references. How can one possibly be expected to verify sources when the only reference is "it is said..." In any case, since the earliest recorded evidence of any standardized tartan patterns was for the Scottish military in the eighteenth century, I find it extremely far fetched that James II (or VII, depending on when you start counting) assigned set tartans for each county in Ireland in the seventeenth century.

The Irish County Tartans that you see today that are so popular were all designed in the mid-1990s by Polly Wittering of the House of Edgar and, though attractive and very popular, are entirely modern in design.

After the Battle of Culloden in 1645, Scots were fined for wearing the kilt;
in fact it was forbidden to wear it.

Um.... Culloden was in 1745, about a hundred years after Meehan has it. Maybe it's just a typo on his part (one that slipped past the editors of the magazine). If this were an isolainaccuracyracy, I'd forgive it. But given the many other historical doozies included in this article, you just never know....

In order to keep recruits in the army, King George. II allowed the
majority of Scottish regiments to wear the kilt and they became known as
'the ladies from hell'.

"The Lady's From Hell" is a name given by German soldiers to the Black Watch Regiment during WWI, long long after the period Meehan is discussing here.

Around 1820 Sir Walter Scot, the famous writer, defied the powers-that-be
and wore a kilt in public.

Is this the same Sir Walter Scott that once said, "Didancestorstors wear the kilt? Of course not! They could always afford trousers!" In any case, I don't think the "powers that be" would mind anyone wearing a kilt. Proscription was lifted in 1782, so I think that Sir Walter Scott would have been quite safe to wear a kilt thirty-two years later.

In 1822 King George IV paid a state visit to Edinburgh and Sir Walter
persuaded him to wear the Royal Stuart tartan, which he did. Then the nobility
all turned up for royal receptions in Edinburgh Castle and Holly rood Palace in
their kilts and clan tartans. It was again fashionable and the thing to wear a
kilt on every special occasion.

This section is more or less right! Let's all stop and applaud the author's success here for a moment, shall we?

Following this Meehan comments on a number of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Irish figures and their propensity to kilt wearing. Most of the kilts mentioned are solid colors, such as saffron and green. To comment on this, I will say that yes, the kilt was being worn at this time as a sign of Irish nationalism. However, the adoption of the kilt by people in the late-nineteenth century who were under the impression that the kilt was the ancient garment of thancestorstors does not make it true!

A friend of mine, Todd Wilkinson, makes this comment on the X Marks the Scot kilt forum:

"Several of the Irish revolutionaries of 1916 did this very thing [adopt the
kilt]. 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."

So I'm not disputing Meehan that people in Ireland did, about a hundred years ago, adopt the kilt as a sign of Irish nationalism. I'm just saying that this does not prove or support his claim that the kilt is an ancient form of Irish dress. All it means is that a lot of people a hundred years ago thought that it was.

Finally, we will return to our article, which ends:

In Dublin, one will find men wearing St Patrick's tartan and county
tartans during the summer months. Yet it would be easier to find a needle in
a haystack than buy an Irish county tartan kilt in Dublin. In seems most
Irish kilts and tartans are now supplied by MacNaughtons, kilt makers awoolenllen mills in Pillockey, Scotland.

It would seem that Meehan is bemoaning the fact that the Irish kilt is falling into disuse, when in reality it is more popular now than ever before! And even in his last sentence, he is in error. The Irish kilts and tartans he speaks of are supplied by MacNaughtons (The House of Edgar) in Pitlochry Scotland (not "Pillockey"), and that is for one very good reason. They were introduced by that firm in 1996 as a new line of fashion tartans, and they have the sole rights to produce those Irish County tartans. This just shows how new a thing this is.

As I state often when I encounter foolishness like this -- I am not disparaging anyone from wearwhatevertver tartan they like. I'm not saying not to wear an Irish County tartan, or an Irish name tartan, and I'm not saying Irish people shouldn't wear kilts if they so choose. I'm just saying recognize it for what it is. If you wear a tartan that was designed in 1996, accept that it was designed in 1996 and be fine with it. Don't go around creating false histories and spreading myths and legends that have been debunked long ago to try and give your new fashion some ancient pedigree.

Wear a kilt because you like it, it's comfortable, it's your heritage, or just because you want to wear one! You don't need sfancifiedfied reason to do so, and it only demeans you and the garment to persist in error.

Signing off for tonight....

Who is entitled to wear a tartan?

There has been a little debate going on recently at the X Marks the Scot forum about who does and does not have the "right" to wear a tartan. I've been a contributor to this discussion. Some enlightening opinions have been brought forth. Well worth a read!
http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11737&page=1&pp=10

The kilt a "pan-celtic" garment?

Some comments recently on the X Marks the Scot kilt forum have led me to wonder -- when and why did the kilt begin to be seen as a "celtic" garment rather than a specifically Scottish garment? I'm not trying to say that non-Scots should not wear the kilt, I'm just wondering about when and how the notion started that the kilt was something generally "celtic."

Some history. As we all know, the kilt developed in the Gaelic Scottish Highlands in the end of the sixteenth century. In fact, the first reference we have to the feileadh-mhor (the first type of kilt) is an Irish document from 1594 saying that you could tell the Hebridean soliders from the Irish soldiers specifically from the way they were dressed. Their kilts marked them as Scottish and not Irish. Over the next two hundred years, the kilt evolved, in Scotland, from the feileadh-mhor to the feileadh-beag and finally, at the end of the eighteenth century, into the tailored kilt. All the while this was seen as a specifically Highland mode of dress. Even in the lowlands, the kilt was seen as "barbaric" and was not worn.

Now, this begins to change somewhat after the Union of the Parliaments in 1707. Now, some Scottish lowlanders who were against the Union would wear the kilt as a sign of Scottish unity -- they would rather be identified with those barbaric Highlanders to the north than with the English. But this wasn't really common until the nineteenth century, when being Scottish was made popular, and the kilt had ceased to be worn as a daily garment and was instead used mostly for ceremonial occasions. Now lowland families began to wear tartans and all of that.

So we have the kilt change from a garment that is specifically worn in the Scottish Highlands to a pan-Scottish garment, identifying Scots, at home and abroad, whether Highland or Lowland in origin.

So why then do we today have the Irish, Welsh, Cornish, and Manx wearing the kilt, and speaking of it as a "celtic" garment? It was never worn by any other celtic group. I think the origin must lie somewhere in the twentieth century. When H. F. McClintock wrote his Old Irish & Highland Dress, published in 1954, he was already dispelling myths about the kilt being part of the Irish national costume. But these myths were being put forth, not by the Irish, but by Scots who wanted to claim an ancient date of origin for the kilt and so believed it to have been worn by their Irish ansestors who crossed over some 1500 years ago. The only kilt wearers in Ireland at the time were members of pipe bands and military regiments, based largely in Northern Ireland and of Scottish descent.

Keep in mind, as well, that until the latter nineteenth century, no one thought of themselves as "celtic." One was a Scot, and Irishman, a Welshman, etc. There was no sense of belonging to some overarchign "celtic culture" at the time.

Today, though, we have kilts being worn by people of Cornish, Breton, Manx, Welsh, and Irish descent, who see the kilt as part of their "celtic heritage" -- despite the fact that none of these groups ever wore the kilt before modern times. But now they all have tartans and other regalia. When people see me in the kilt, I'm asked just as often if I am Irish than if I am Scottish.

So why the change? When did the kilt become a "pan-celtic" garment? Again, I'm not saying here that non-Scots should not wear the kilt. But when did this shift occur?

Was the kilt invented in Austria???

Recall my post from last week on the "historical" information from the Welsh Tartan Centre? Well, the Welsh are not the only non-Scottish group making claims for the kilt. The Austrians are in on the act, as well. Here is a little article I put together last year after discovering some of this ridiculous claims while researching some Austrian district tartans.

A promotional article appearing on the Ananova web site (among other places) claims just that. This strange notion comes from one Mr. Thomas Rettl, who is marketing various tartans found in archaeological digs in Austria. There is nothing wrong with taking old tartans from such finds and reviving them. In fact, should these regions in Austria wish to be represented by a district tartan, adopting one of these old specimens would be a marvelous idea. But any serious historian would have to object to some of the ridiculous claims being made to promote these tartans.

First of all, the article claims that these are the oldest tartans in the world, dating to at least 320 BC. While they are certainly old, much older than any of the popular Scottish clan tartans, they cannot claim to be the oldest in the world. Tartan cloth dating to around 1200 BC has been found in the deserts of Taklamakan, China. Older tartan cloth may yet be discovered.

They also claim that tartan was not woven in Scotland until 1300 AD. This is another false claim. Surviving pieces of tartan have been found in Scotland that date to 250-325 AD (the Falkirk tartan). As the climate in Scotland is not the best for preserving textiles, we do not know how much earlier tartan cloth may have been woven.

That tartan has been found produced outside of Scotland, and from an early date, should surprise no one. Anywhere that people developed the technology to produce woven cloth, they likely also produced some sort of tartan design. After weaving plain cloth, the next logical step to make the cloth more decorative is to weave in stripes. And if the stripes are repeated in both the warp and the weft, you have a simple tartan. But only in Scotland has tartan been taken to such a high art form and imbued with cultural significance.

Mr. Rettl makes the leap of logic that if tartan was early worn in Austria, the kilt must have been worn there, as well. "Ever since we found out that Austria was the true home to tartan we have been doing a roaring trade," he is quoted as saying. "It was found not in Scotland but in a place called Molzbichl in Carinthia in Austria. The Celts who conquered Scotland originally came from Europe, which would back our claim to have had the kilt first."

The problem with his thinking is that tartan does not equal the kilt. One can find paintings of Japanese women in tartan kimonos, but that does not mean that they were wearing the kilt! A quick study into the history of Scottish Highland dress reveals that the kilt, as we know it today, evolved (in Scotland) from the untailored feilidh-beag, which in turn evolved from the feilidh-mhor or belted plaid, first worn in the Scottish Highlands in the late sixteenth century. To imagine invading Celts coming to Scotland from Austria in pre-historic times, wearing tartan kilts, is pure fiction! To make such a claim seriously is embarrassing (and would also contradict his other erroneous claim that tartan was not worn in Scotland until 1300 AD).

So while we applaud the effort to promote a traditional Austrian tartan, and are honored that Austrians would want to wear the Scottish national dress, we implore the promoters of these items to stop making such baseless, unhistorical claims.

Welsh sporran?

Ok, so back to the Welsh Tartan Centre. They write on their history page:

There is no evidence of the Welsh wearing a sporran. The Welsh used to wear a leather wallet called a 'sgrepan'. A 'sgrepan' is a very important part of the regalia serving to decorate and protect the wearer. It is made from leather, Welsh goat hair, Welsh cob hair and has leather straps.

One thing to keep in mind here is that sporran is simply the Gaelic word for a pouch. So to say that the Welsh did not wear sporrans is like saying they didn't wear pouches. Which only leads one to ask, "Where did they keep their stuff?"

And what of this "Sgrepan" that they are talking about? Well, I don't speak Welsh, but I would suspect that this is simply the Welsh word for a pouch or purse. If you look on their product pages you will find a listing for an Ysgrepan (one has to assume the same item is meant, though I don't know the reason for the different spelling). And what is it? Well, it looks an awful lot like a Scottish sporran... no surprise there.


The verdict. I have nothing against non-Scots, be they Welsh or Irish or Austrian or Iranian, wearing tartans and the kilt. I am flattered that they think highly enough of the Scottish national dress to want to adopt it. And if people want to design new tartans specifically for non-Scottish groups and families, go for it. But please, please, do not debase yourself and insult the intelligence of others by making false historic claims for these new designs.

Welsh Tartans

Ok, so there is this business called the Welsh Tartan Centre in Cardiff. They are designing and producing tartans for various Welsh families. "Tartans for Welsh families?" you might say. "I thought tartans were for Scottish families." And you'd be right.

Not that tartans must only be for Scottish things, mind you. Many US states, all the Canadian provinces, and other places like Ireland, Australia, even Japan have tartans. But these are, of course, all more modern than the traditional Scottish tartans most of us are familiar with.

So what about these Welsh tartans? People have asked me for my opinion and I say they are fine. They look a little non-traditional (the warp is a completely different design from the weft in most cases), but this is probably done to distinguish them from the Scottish tartans. I tell people these are fashion tartans, designed by this business, and have no official standing with any of the Welsh families whose names they bear. In that regard they are merely fashion designs that have been named for those families. If that doesn't both you, then go ahead and wear them. No problem.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. The Irish County tartans that were designed in the mid-90s by the House of Edgar woolen mill likewise are merely fashion tartans with no official standing. They have proven quite popular among Irish ex-pats.

But someone showed me today an article from the Welsh Tartan Centre's page, giving the "history" of Welsh tartans. Boy, oh boy... There are some doozies there, and while I don't object to people designing new tartans, I strongly object to people fabricating a false history for them in order to mislead the consumer and sell more products. Here is what I'm talking about:

The Welsh wore fashion akin to kilts two thousand years ago, probably with a form of leather trousers or leggings...

Er... excuse me, but no. What these people are most likely referring to is a simple knee-length tunic that was common to just about all Celtic peoples (as well as Norse, Germans, you name it) during that time period. A kilt, by definition, is a masculine style of skirt, a pleated garment worn from the waist to the knee. A tunic is a shirt, and by no stretch of the imagination can be called a kilt -- worn knee length or not.

This form of dress remained a feature of Welsh society confirmed by the discovery of a 9th Century stone carving depicting a man wearing a kilt. This evolved through the centuries into the woollen garment we are familiar with today. Initially this would have been made from raw coarse wool and undyed.

Since they don't tell us what stone carving they are talking about here, it is impossible for anyone to take a look at it to see if, in fact, it does show a man wearing a kilt, but I would feel most confidant in saying that it does not. People have attempted to make the same claim regarding early stone carvings found in Scotland and Ireland. Inevitably what the carving actually shows is a man wearing either a tunic belted at the waist, or an acton (a type of quilted shirt worn as armor) that extended to the knee.

The fact of the matter is that the kilt developed, quite organically, in Scotland. The first type of kilted-garment we have is the belted plaid, first found described in the late sixteenth century, that seemingly developed from the large mantle worn as an outer garment in the Gaelic Scottish Highlands. From this evolved the feileadh-beag (the lower half of the belted plaid, or feileadh-mhor), and from this was born (at the end of the eighteenth century) the tailored kilt. But to suggest that the kilt evolved in Wales and has its origins some 2000 years ago is patently absurd! Where they get the idea that the original kilts were undyed is anyone's guess.

The clan designs of Scottish Tartans have a long traditional history, but there is little historic evidence of clan named tartans in Wales.

Finally, some truth! Or is it really... the very next sentence reads:

Wales did however have regional tartans.

Argh! Again, where this information comes from is beyond me. And it is beyond frustrating! People have attempted to show that tartan identity in Scotland was first regional and second familial. But the reality of it is that "district" tartans and "clan" tartans seem to have developed side by side in Scotland. But in Wales? Absolutely not, there is no evidence of this. In fact, the first Welsh tartan on record anywhere is the "Welsh National Tartan" designed in 1967 by D. M. Richards, using the colors of the Welsh flag.

They make some amusing comments regarding a "Welsh sporran" as well, which I will get to in a moment. I'm being paged as we speak. More anon!