MANY DECADES AGO, when Radio Luxemburg, the Station of the Stars, broadcast a weekly programme called Scottish Requests, with the presenter, Keith Fordyce, “calling bonnie Scotland”, one popular record was memorable for its awfulness. On most Friday nights, Andy Stewart could be heard singing that “let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low, round the streets in my kilt I go and all the lassies say hello, Donald where’s yer troozers”.
One Saturday morning about two years ago, a couple of kilted Scotsmen asked me for directions to Croke Park. As they went on their way, a Dubliner walked past me, repeating the question that had once agitated the lassies and cackling to himself. Happily, our visitors didn’t hear him, but I doubt that they would have been embarrassed if they had. Most Scotsmen abroad are probably inured to smart remarks about kilts and they know how to reply that “nothing is worn underneath, everything is in working order”.
Questions about the origin of the kilt are taken more seriously and suggestions that it is a Sassanach invention are not always welcome.
Unfortunately, there is little reliable information about the dress of the people of the Highlands before the 17th century, but according to a chronicler in 1573, they were “a very rude and homely people called red shanks or wild Scots, clothed with one mantle, with one shirt saffroned after the Irish manner (and) going barelegged to the knee”.
This mantle came to be known as the feileadh breachain from the Gaelic words for covering and chequered. It was a versatile piece of fabric, typically, about 6ft wide and 6ft to 9th long. By night it could be used for bedding and by day it could be wrapped around the body. Typically, the bottom third would be folded in around the waist with a belt, the middle third would be drawn in front of the shoulders and fastened with a piece of bone or wood, and the top third would be draped over the back. A mix of differently dyed threads was used in the weaving but there is no evidence that each clan had its own design. Clan chiefs also wore trews, garments that were a combination of breeches and socks.
In the Lowlands, the feileadh was called the belted or tartan plaid or blanket. The word tartan originally referred to serge cloth, then to a chequered pattern and eventually to a patterned cloth irrespective of its composition. In 1747, when Highland dress was banned, except in the army, the bottom part of the plaid was already being worn as a separate, pleated garment known as an feileadh beag. In English, it became the philabeg initially but later the old English word quelt or kilt became more common.
The splitting of the plaid may have occurred spontaneously, but according to an Edinburgh magazine in 1785, the kilt was invented by Thomas Rawlinson, an Englishman who managed ironworks in Glengarry and Lochaber around 1720, so that his workmen could cut timber for his furnaces without being encumbered by a full-length garment or working naked.
According to another version of the story, the innovation was down to a military tailor named Parkinson who had sheltered from the rain in Rawlinson’s home and observed a Highlander in the house who was also soaked but refused to put his plaid in front of the fire to dry because he was wearing nothing else.
At any rate, Rawlinson began to wear the kilt himself and after he convinced the local chieftain, James McDonald, to wear one the fashion spread. But it wasn’t universally popular and Prince Charles Stuart, although he encouraged his followers to wear kilts, didn’t do so himself.
When the dress ban was removed in 1782, trews and trousers were generally being worn in the Highlands, but kilts became popular among exiled Scotsmen in England, in part because of the high standing of the Highland regiments, but also because the Highlands
had become a romantic place in the imaginations of people who had read the supposed translations by James MacPherson of ancient Gaelic verse.
Tailors in London and Scotland were quick to expand the market by giving each clan its own design and in 1842, two men who had taken the name Sobieski -Stuart and claimed to be grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie, published a book containing allegedly authentic patterns and designs of clan tartans, copied from an ancient manuscript.
Meanwhile, in 1822, the industry had received an unexpected boost when George IV visited Scotland. The novelist, Sir Walter Scott, who was recruited to stage-manage the schedule of events, included a grand ball where the gentlemen, even if they were from the Lowlands, were obliged to wear Highland costume. George also wore a kilt at two functions, but over pink pantaloons.
Queen Victoria, in turn, became a fan of the kilt and encouraged her sons to wear it while staying at Balmoral Castle. The tradition was maintained by her successors but it seems to have died out with the current generation.
The kilt is only the foundation of an ensemble of pseudo-highland costume that now can include a cap, shirt, broach, belt, sporran, ornamental dagger, knee-high stockings, and shoes with buckles, and can cost more than €1,000.
Many of the kilted Scotsmen in town this weekend will be wearing hired gear and be Lowlanders or descended from immigrants, but what harm. They are welcome and, to paraphrase the presenter of Scottish Requests long ago, “lang may their lums (chimneys) reek, with jingling Geordies (gold guineas) in their pooches and whisky, or even whiskey, in their bottles”.