April 6th is Tartan Day. Tartan Day was first celebrated in Canada. America jumped on board when in 2004, the House of Representatives decreed that April 6, the date of the signing of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, should be established as National Tartan Day, to recognise "The outstanding contribution and achievements made by Scottish Americans to the United States". One of the major sponsors of the event in Scotland is the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.
The Tartan Myth
Excavations in Mongolia reveal people wearing tartan patterned clothing that date to over 5000 years ago. The English word tartan is derived from the French tiretain in reference to woven cloth (as opposed to knitted cloth). Today tartan is generally used to describe the pattern.The word plaid, derived from the Scottish Gaelic plaide, meaning "blanket" was first used of any rectangular garment, sometimes made up of tartan, particularly that which preceded the modern kilt.
Martin Martin, in A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1703, wrote that Scottish tartans could be used to distinguish the inhabitants of different regions. He expressly wrote that the inhabitants of various islands and the mainland of the Highlands were not all dressed alike, but that the setts and colours of the various tartans varied from isle to isle. As he does not mention the use of a special pattern by each family, it would appear that such a distinction is a modern one. They were not based upon heraldic or name or clan. Highlanders wore tartan of bright and flashy shades to show off wealth and indicate status. They also favoured darker, natural tones that would emulate the shades of the bracken and the heather so that they might wrap themselves in their plaids and be hidden. But the colors chosen had more to do with what dyes were available to them (either locally or that they could afford to import) and personal taste than any clan affiliation.
Efforts to pacify the Highlands led to the 1746 Dress Act banning tartans except for the Highland regiments of the British army. It was probably their use of it which gave birth to the idea of differentiating tartan by clans; for as the Highland regiments multiplied so their tartan uniforms were differentiated. The pageantry invented for the 1822 visit of King George IV to Scotland brought a sudden demand for tartan cloth and made it the national dress of the whole of Scotland rather than just the Highlands and Islands, with the invention of many new clan-specific tartans to suit. Clever Victorian entrepreneurs not only created new tartans, but new tartan objects called tartanware. Tartan was incorporated in an assortment of common household objects such as snuffboxes, jewellery cases, tableware, sewing accessories, and desk items. The first regular, standardised tartans were woven by Lowland weaver William Wilson. Wilson was the first commercial, industrial producer of tartan material. On his mechanical looms, he could repeat the same pattern of tartan over and over again without fail.at first assigned these patterns numbers, but it was not long before names began to be associated with them as well. It had as much to do with salesmanship as anything else. By assigning the name of a romantic clan, local city, or popular ruling family to a tartan, Wilson could increase his sales. It is also claimed that the clan-based differentiation of the tartans was the invention of two brothers calling themselves the Sobieski Stuarts, who in 1842 published their Vestiarium Scoticum, an elaborate work of imagination which served as a pattern-book for tartan manufacturers. The Sobieski Stuarts claimed to be the only legitimate grand-sons of Bonnie Prince Charlie (as well as the great-great grandsons of John Sobieski, King of Poland). They had been born John and Charles Allen of Egham, Surrey.
The Declaration of Arbroath Myth.
Firstly, it was a letter, not a "Declaration" in the sense of the American Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Its correct title is a ‘Letter of the Barons of Scotland to Pope John XXII’, because that’s what it was. The signatories were medieval feudal nobles who did not think of themselves as fore-runners of the Enlightenment. They had no idea that nearly 700 years later the U.S. Senate would proclaim April 6 as Tartan Day in the belief that their letter inspired Jefferson, Adams and the rest. The Arbroath declaration is plagued with historic inaccuracies and imaginary kings. It is addressed to a Pope of the Avignon Papacy who was also the richest man in the world and who, when an order named The Apostolic Congregation preached against the worldly wealth of the Church, launched three crusades against these "heretics". A papal bull by Pope John XXII also allowed heresy charges to be brought against dead people allowing for property to be confiscated upon charges against a dead person, unable to defend themselves. Huge amounts of property was stolen by the church through this trickery. Thus the Scottish nobles sought such a Pope's dubious endorsement.
The Declaration was not a statement of popular sovereignty ( its signatories had no idea of such a concept) but a statement of propaganda supporting Robert the Bruce's* claim to be king of Scotland. "To this man, in as much as he saved our people, and for upholding our freedom, we are bound by right as much as by his merits, and choose to follow him in all that he does." Bruce, rather than John Bailliol, who was then recognised as the rightful king by the Pope.
The idea of a contract between King and people and not the traditional notion of the Divine Rights of Kings.was advanced to the Pope as an excuse for Bruce's unilateral coronation. This is a more accurate reading of the interpretation of the supposed "popular sovereignty".
The section “if this prince [Bruce] shall leave these principles he hath so nobly pursued, and consent that we or our kingdom be subjected to the king or people of England, we will immediately endeavour to expel him, as our enemy and as the subverter both of his own and our rights, and we will make another king, who will defend our liberties” can perhaps be read as a cautionary warning and a veiled threat to Bruce himself who had switched his allegience several times in previous years.
In the end, though, the Arbroath appeal failed to convince the Pope to lift the sentence of excommunication.
The Act of Abjuration (1581), where the Dutch deposed their Spanish ruler for having violated the social contract with his subjects could be just as easily cited as the influence on the American Declaration of Independence. Or even the English 1689 Declaration of Rights, which deposed King James II and brought to power William and Mary of Orange can be said to have had an influence on the Founding Fathers. The Scottish-American connection is simply a good marketing ploy.
*See the Scottish branch's Socialist Courier blog for post on Robert the Bruce
The Kilt Myth
The shendyt, worn by Pharaohs and warriors in Ancient Egypt, is often called a kilt and can be considered as such as it is a piece of pleated linen wrapped around the body at the waist. Despite the scenes in the movie Braveheart the belted plaid was not worn in the 13th and 14th centuries. The kilt first appeared as the great kilt, the breacan or belted plaid, during the 16th century, Highland Gaelic in origin, a full-length garment whose upper half could be worn as a cloak draped over the shoulder, or brought up over the head. The philibeg or small kilt, also known as the walking kilt (similar to the modern kilt) was disputedly invented by an English Quaker from Lancashire called Thomas Rawlinson sometime in the 1720s for the use of the Highlanders he and the Chief of the MacDonnells of Inverness employed in logging, charcoal manufacture and iron smelting, for which the belted plaid was "cumbrous and unwieldy".
The romantic myth of the tartan-kilted Highlander as the epitome of Scottishness developed from the middle of the 18th century. Yet at the same time as the myth was being constructed, the clan chiefs were organising the Highland Clearances of their own people, a process which continued well into the nineteenth century. This changed the Highlands from, by the standards of the time, being well populated to a sparsely populated land, something which continues to this day. While the actual Highland Scots had become a despised underclass, the aristocracy and landowners could now be seen wearing kilts and Tam o' Shanters, listening to the skirl of the bagpipes at local Highland games (another Victorian re-invention), sipping their single malts from their clan-crested silver flasks.
An article on Scotland and slavery may be of interest to some at Socialst Courier
As might be a blog-post upon the little-known short-lived union of Scotland and England during Cromellian times.
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