As attentive readers of this column may have
surmised, “tartanology” is far from an exact science. Mistakes abound in
the tartan world, and anyone reading a book on the subject should be aware
of this fact. Renowned tartan expert Jamie Scarlett commented to me once,
“No book has ever been written on tartan that did not include mistakes –
including my own!” I certainly share in that sentiment.
For instance, it has been recorded that Peter
MacDonald designed the Carolina tartan based on an old tartan worn by the
Royal Company of Archers (RCA) in 1730. In asking MacDonald about this,
however, I discovered that this is not the case at all! MacDonald did use
an eighteenth century sample of tartan which was cut from a piece of
clothing, possibly from a jacket.
It is known that the RCA wore tartan jackets
in the eighteenth century. Somehow it was mistakenly recorded by the
Scottish Tartans Society (STS) that the original sample MacDonald used was
from an RCA jacket. It was then stated as fact in District Tartans
by Drs. Gordon Teall and Philip D. Smith, Jr., in 1992. The error was later
repeated in my own book, the Compendium of District Tartans, which I
coauthored with James A. Bullman in 2004. And so another tartan myth is
born!
That error involves only a minor detail of
the tartan’s origins. Others involve the tartans themselves. I have
recently acquired a book by Dr. Micheil MacDonald (Peter MacDonald’s father)
entitled, The Clans of Scotland, and have been perusing its chapter
on tartan. He includes this amusing blunder:
“…one American Professor of Linguistics,
applying his passion for scholarship to the subject of tartans, ‘discovered’
a reference to a ‘Border’ pattern in an old list of tartan patterns. His
find was immediately published as the tartan traditionally worn by folk from
the Border country between England and Scotland... This was hailed by many
as an exciting new discovery -- but the pattern in question, sad to say, was
no more than that used by 19th century manufacturing weavers for
the borders of blankets and plaids.”
Of course, Dr. MacDonald is not himself
infallible, as three pages later he mistakenly includes a picture of the Old
Buchanan tartan as “Craig!” I happen to know the “American Professor of
Linguistics” MacDonald refers to, and just so he doesn’t feel alone in his
erring, I’ll reveal one of my own embarrassments.
One of the mistakes (not the only one!) that
made it into the first edition of the Compendium of District
Tartans involved the Old Lochcarron tartan. You see, there is no Old
Lochcarron tartan, which made its inclusion somewhat problematic. The
confusion arose because of how the STS had indexed a sample of the MacLellan
tartan. They called it “MacLellan, Lochcarron Old.” Normally when a tartan
is referred to by two names such as this, it is because the tartan has more
than one name. For instance, the Keith tartan is listed as “Keith, Austin,
and Marshall,” because the tartan is known by all three of those names.
Because of how it was indexed, I assumed that the MacLellan tartan was also
at one time known by the name “Old Lochcarron.”
As it turns out, the STS sample of the
MacLellan tartan was woven by Lochcarron woolen mill in the ancient (old)
color scheme. Someone decided to label it “MacLellan, Lochcarron Old.” In
the absence of any other information, confusion reigned! Mea culpa, mea
culpa, mea maxima culpa!
Another example involves the Lochaber
tartan. This is a truly old tartan, dating back to at least 1797. It is a
typical blue, green and black design, with lines of red and azure. The John
Telfer Dunbar collection, held in the STS archives, also included a sample
of tartan called Old Lochaber, which was all blue with thin red and azure
lines. Later research under strong lighting revealed that the background
was not entirely blue. In reality it contained blue, black and green, which
had faded to a nearly uniform shade of blue. This was simply an old piece of
the usual Lochaber tartan, with only the red and azure lines showing. There
really is no “Old Lochaber” tartan. However, by the time this was
discovered, it had already been picked up by the mills. You can now
purchase it from the House of Edgar, where it is woven in the “ancient”
colors as part of their Old and Rare line of medium weight kilt cloth.
Of course tartan mistakes are nothing new.
Some tartans now considered traditional in fact owe their existence to
errors of the past. The well known Buchanan tartan originated when someone
mistakenly produced the tartan in a non-reversing (asymmetrical) sett. The
original symmetrical version is still available, but is now known as “Old
Buchanan.”
There are two versions of the MacAlpine
tartan, one containing both blue and black, the other having black only.
The origins of them are not known, but it is speculated that the black-only
version came about when a weaver was short on navy blue yarn. Black is very
close to dark navy blue, so a substitution was made.
The popular Shaw tartan has its origins in a
printing mistake. It first appeared in an illustration by Robert McIan in
James Logan’s 1845 book, The Clans of the Scottish Highlands. His
Shaw figure was meant to depict Farquhar Shaw, of the Black Watch regiment,
who was executed for mutiny in 1743. Logan’s text describes him as wearing
“the regimental tartan” with a red line. This would be an early form of the
Black Watch tartan. McIan’s usual practice was to draw the outline of the
tartan pattern and have illustrators fill in the color later. It seems with
this tartan that blue was used for black (or perhaps black ink faded to
blue), which resulted in the usual black part of the tartan being shown as
blue with thin black lines as borders (McIan’s original guide lines).
In 1969 the chief of the Shaws adopted two
new tartans, designed for the clan by D. C. Stewart and based on the
MacIntosh sett. The tartans are called Shaw of Tordarroch, and there is a
red and green version. Despite these being the chief’s tartans of
preference, the erroneous Shaw tartan has been retained and is the most
common tartan still used by the clan today.
One could go on recounting such stories. The
history of tartan is full of them! What is interesting to note is just how
many mistakes, errors and blunders have managed to find a secure place in
the tartan tradition.
