Highland Tartans

Around the time George IV repealed the ban on kilts two Welsh brothers, claiming descent from Bonnie Prince Charlie, wrote a book called Vestarium Scoticum which they claimed was a copy of a long-lost manuscript from the 1500s. While this book has long since been exposed as a forgery, it was influential in designating "ancestral" tartans to the Highland clans, resulting in the kilt becoming Scotland's national dress. 

Edited by Nick1986 - 31-Dec-2011 at 20:12

Many of those wearing tartan bought what they could afford rather than sticking to any clan colours. Their needs were to stay warm more than to fit in with a particular design. 

Originally posted by Nick1986 According to Anne Sutton and Richard Carr's book on Scottish tartans, the number of colors symbolised the individual's social status rather than his clan. Servants wore one color, farmers wore two, officers three, and chieftains five. Druids wore six and the king wore seven, but with the arrival of Christianity priests wore eight colors to demonstrate the church's superiority over the crown

Sorry Nick, that's utter nonsense. For a start, there is absolutely no evidence that Druids wore tartan, Christian missionaries (priests WTF?), tended to wear self-coloured robes - especially when the Abbeys /Monasteries were established they wore the robes of their order. Another problem with this load of bullshit from Sutton and Carr is that they don't seem to have gathered that there were kings, and there was the High King.

Also, in Gaelic culture there were no servants, other than the clan chief and his family (who wore much the same clothing as the rest of the populace) every one was, at worst, a retainer. There is also the not so minor fact, regarding their book, that a sett made up from two colours effectively means a three-colour tartan (warp, weft and crossover) the addition of another colour will increase the mixtures and colours quadratically, not arithmetically.. A sett of six base colours gives fifteen mixtures and twenty-one different colours.  

The best thing to do with the Sutton / Carr book is consign it to a charity shop, filed under fiction alongside the von Daniken tripe.

Effectively a tartan of eight (!) colours is black.

Originally posted by Nick1986 Originally posted by TheAlaniDragonRising Many of those wearing tartan bought what they could afford rather than sticking to any clan colours. Their needs were to stay warm more than to fit in with a particular design.  I've also heard tartans were originally region rather than clan-specific. This might explain why the Highlanders depicted in contemporary paintings (like the Jacobite clansmen charging the redcoats at Culloden) wear several different tartans. Perhaps Chookie can tell us more?

Culloden was in 1746, and there were many clans involved, but still I doubt the painting could give you an accurate depiction of how tartan might have been used originally.  

Originally posted by Nick1986 I heard the picture in this link was taken from life, using Jacobite prisoners as models

That painting was said to have been painted years after the battle, when it was unlikely those prisoners were still living. Would the painter have gone to the urgent trouble of gathering such information as you say, to only then paint the scene years later?

Originally posted by Chookie That painting allegedly dates from 1746 and it has a title "The Highland attack on the Grenadier Company of Barrell's King's Own Royal Regiment". Apparently it was painted for "The Butcher" but I can't see any prisoners doing him a favour......

My mistake, Chookie, the site I had looked on had said a few years later.

Originally posted by Nick1986 Perhaps the artist took sketches of the highlanders after the battle, either on site or at one of the British prisons? Alternatively, he may have used dead bodies

I guess All of those are possible, Nick. 

Sadly nobody has uploaded the complete Vestiarum Scoticum text online yet, but this website has illustrations of the 75 original tartans
Vestarium Scoticum gallery