Kilts were invented by the Scots... right?
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I've been doing a lot of research for my upcoming novella, A Portrait of a Highlander, and today I thought I'd share a story with you - a story I knew in a small way from the research I did for my prior books, but one that I've had to delve into much deeper for this one.
I've been doing a lot of research for my upcoming novella, A Portrait of a Highlander, and today I thought I'd share a story with you - a story I knew in a small way from the research I did for my prior books, but one that I've had to delve into much deeper for this one.
It's a bit of an epic, so you'll have to excuse me if it gets long. It'll be worth it, I promise.
It's the unexpected story of the kilt.
The kilt? Why is this coming up now?
As I mentioned last week, my upcoming novella will tell Tavish's story. He's the tall, dark, handsome stablemaster at Darnalay Castle, and of all my main characters, he's the most rooted in the Highlands.
(Yes, Jane and Cameron are Highlanders, but their mother was English, their father was a noble from a family that valued the English ways over the Scottish.)
Tav, in contrast, is a commoner, and a Highlander through and through. As such, developing his characters has meant creating a deeper history for him.
Who were his grandparents? His parents? How does his family's experience of history shape hid view of the world?
Should I put Tavish in a kilt?
To get to the bottom of these questions, let's go back and set the scene...
The History
For many hundreds of years, the Scottish Highlanders shared much of their culture with the Irish. High mountains and inhospitable terrain separated the region from the Lowlands and England, but it was relatively easy to access Ireland by boat.
Like in Ireland, those early Highlanders wrapped themselves in a "brat", a large woolen cloak, in order to stay warm in the harsh climate.
Sometime in the fifteenth century, the Highland version of the brat evolved into the "belted plaid", where a large piece of handspun wool (tartan) was folded and belted at the waist, then draped over the shoulders for warmth.
The belted plaid was a multipurpose garment. It protected one from the elements and could also be used for a blanket at night.
In 1707, the Acts of Union were passed in London, unifying Scotland and England. Suddenly, the Highlands were tied to the south in a whole new way.
But the Britain that the Highlanders became part of was a divided one, as the exiled Stuart dynasty and the current power, the Hannover dynasty, fought to decide who had the right to rule.
Many in the Highlands supported the Stuarts, the Catholic family that had been ruling Scotland since the fourteenth century. Known as Jacobites, these Highlanders actively worked against the established Protestant Hanover government to bring "Bonny" Prince Charlie (the Grandson of the exiled Charles Stuart) to the throne.
In 1715, there was an unsuccessful Jacobite uprising. In response - and hoping to stop further rebellion - the government in London opened the Highlands to outside exploitation by English investors and industrialists.
Thomas Rawlinson, a Quaker from Lancashire, answered that call. In 1720, Rawlinson moved to The Highlands and began manufacturing charcoal and smelting iron in the forests near Inverness. He employed local men, and he found the belted plaid that they wore to be too "cumbersome and unwieldy", so he directed a tailor in Inverness to make a garment that looked like the lower half of the belted plaid, with the pleats already sown in.
These were the first modern kilts.
The Jacobite cause was effectively defeated in April of 1746 in the bloody battle of Culloden Moore. Two thousand Jacobites were killed by British Redcoats on a battlefield near Inverness.
(Incidentally, the Culloden battlefield is a scant ten miles from Cawdor Castle, the castle that I based Darnalay on. This would have been in the time of Tavish's grandfather, making Tav's family very probably Jacobites.)
After Culloden, the British Government clamped down on the people of the Highlands, doing their best to extinguish any remaining Jacobite sympathies and assimilate the people into the larger British culture. Except for military use, kilts (both the belted plaid and the modern kilt) were outlawed.
What followed was a dark time for many Highlanders. The British acted as an occupying force, harassing and terrorizing the civilian population. Then, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Highland Clearance took place, exiling much of the population.
The laws banning kilt wearing were repealed in 1788, but the damage was done. Much of the culture, and many of the people were gone. The glens, which had once housed thriving agricultural communities, were reduced to barren pastures.
The Romanticization
In 1760, a Scotsman named James MacPhearson published an epic poem entitled Ossian, which he claimed was a translation of an ancient Scottish Gaelic epic.
Except he lied. Ossian was not ancient at all. MacPheason made it up.
That didn't stop if from being wildly popular. Its romantic depiction of an idyllic Highland existence provided the seed for Sir Walter Scott's novel, Waverly, which was published in 1814 to an adoring public. Waverly is set during the Jacobite rebellion, and like Ossian, it portrays a romanticized view of the (modern) kilt-wearing, bagpipe playing culture of the Highlands.
A culture far superior, far more ancient and more noble that the Irish.
I culture that never really existed.
King George IV (then Price Regent) read Waverly, and loved it. So much so that eight years later, when he had gained the throne and was planning a visit to Edinburgh (the first visit of an English king to Scotland in 170 years), he called on Sir Walter Scott to stage manage the whole affair.
Scott spared no expense. The entire city of Edinburgh was made over in tartan, all the noblemen in attendance required to wear kilts - neither of which were part of the Scottish Lowland culture of the city, nor did they gibe with the modern, Enlightenment aura that many in Edinburg would have preferred to project.
The King even wore a kilt. Here's his official portrait from the visit:
Except the official portrait isn't quite accurate. Instead of bare legs as shown, at the actual event, the King sported pink tights.
Except the official portrait isn't quite accurate. Instead of bare legs as shown, at the actual event, the King sported pink tights.
One citizen of Edinburgh wrote:
"Sir Walter Scott has ridiculously made us appear to be a nation of Highlanders, and the bagpipe and the tartan are the order of the day."
Regardless of what the people of Edinburgh thought, or what the actual ancient culture of the Scots was, Sir Walter Scott's version of Highland culture stuck. Tartan was all the rage, and the kilt became an icon.
This is when the "clan tartans" were invented, in London. They became a way for the Scottish noble families to lay their own personal claim on the trendy tartan fabrics of the day.
I'll stop the history lesson here, as we've reached the time period in which I write. But rest assured that Scott's romantic version of the Highlands still lives on today.
So, have we answered the question: would Tavish wear a kilt?
Would my cynical Highlander with Jacobite roots and radical tendencies wear one of those English invented kilts?
What do you think?
If you're interested in reading more about Sir Walter Scott's romanization of Highland culture, I highly recommend one of my all-time favorite historical romance series - The Enlightenment Series, by Joanna Chambers.
The first three books follow the unlikely and gorgeous romance between an ambitious and highly principled lawyer and the rakish son of a Marquess during the tumultuous years between the 1820 Radical War in Glasgow and the 1824 visit of King George IV to Edinburgh.
What do you think?
If you're interested in reading more about Sir Walter Scott's romanization of Highland culture, I highly recommend one of my all-time favorite historical romance series - The Enlightenment Series, by Joanna Chambers.
The first three books follow the unlikely and gorgeous romance between an ambitious and highly principled lawyer and the rakish son of a Marquess during the tumultuous years between the 1820 Radical War in Glasgow and the 1824 visit of King George IV to Edinburgh.
I'll see you soon!
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