History of the Kilt

I Digress

24 Apr

Today we digress from the Battle of Culloden to talk about the history of the kilt and how it came to be the cultural skirt that we know today.

The Legacy of the Kilt

When we think of the kilt, images of highlanders walking through Scottish moors and glens, all kitted out in the national dress spring to mind. And it well should. The kilt is one of the most recognised pieces of clothing.

But what you might not know is that the kilt we mainly see around today is quite different to the kilt of the 17th century, when it first became popular as something to wear and went by the name of the belted plaid.

The idea of the kilt is more than just a skirt, or even a covering. It was wool woven so tightly that it became a barrier between the rough Scottish weather and our skin which isn’t a fan of extreme temperatures and the damp. The piece of cloth was used in a variety of fashions, it could be worn to keep one warm yet free to move, during fighting, of which the Scottish armies did quite often where the pleats of the kilt would almost act like an armour protecting the Scottish soldier. And when the nights were cold, which I’m told they often are in Scotland, and you’re caught out and about in the middle of the night, the wool cloth can easily be laid out and used as a very warm blanket.

So quite a handy tool for anyone in Scotland who needed to do just about anything.

And yet after the Battle of Culloden the proud wearing of the kilt was banned. The Acts of Proscription from 1746 to ’47 meant that the Highlander was effectively robbed

of everything that made them who they were which included their dress.

And if you were found breaching this act the consequences were not lenient. For your first offence you faced 6 months in jail, and for your second offense it was 7 years indentured as a slave and sent off to the colonies. That’s quite an escalation.

The part of the act that specifically banned the kilt went by the Dress Act, or the Diskilting Act.

The act was in place for about 35 years, attempting to suppress the sense of community which Highland Culture provided, and this meant a whole generation of Scots went about their life with these very Scottish symbols missing from their life.

It turns out the only people exempt from the Diskilting Act was the Highland Regiments of the British Army, who were given different tartans to wear to make them easily identifiable.

Finally in 1782, the Diskilting Act was repealed. And who can we thank for this amazing feat? That would be a group of about 25 Highlanders who came together in London in order to support Scotland’s economic recovery, and along the way they managed to get kilts back up and running.

The only issue was that it had been so long since people had last even seen a kilt, and many had gotten used to walking around in pants, so kilts weren’t really welcomed back with open arms. But this did open the door for the kilt to be imagined as a romantic form of dress that went along with the romantic vision of the Highlander. In fact, Malcolm Chapman in his The Celts: The Construction of Myth, referred to this change of perception of the kilt as the

romantic rehabilitation of Highland dress.

All of a sudden Highlanders weren’t dangerous barbarians walking around bare-legged looking to plunder any chance they got. They were now admirable, loyal, basically a ‘noble savage’ but in a colourful kilt.

Where the Kilt came from

The kilt in its original form started out as an incredibly functional piece of clothing. As we already know it was practically the blanket chameleon. And it isn’t isolated to the use by the Scots, a similar blanket/cloth item with a ‘criss cross’ weave has been seen in other cultures.

What’s interesting is what we see as kilt today is far from what it was back when it was super useful. There were no vibrant designs, that wasn’t the main concern, and was really only reserved for those who could afford something a little extra. So really the colour or tartan design of your kilt said something about your wealth.

But the first kilts were mainly solid colours, white, brown, green and black were the most common, mostly because people would use the plants around them to dye the wool, so a lot of natural colours.

The first written evidence found describing something that we would call a kilt today is from 1582, from a book called The History of Scotland by George Buchanan. George describes the kilt, mentioning the kilt as a length of woollen cloth with a tight woven striped cross, that was used as a piece of garment during the day and a blanket at night.

This particular kilt is known as a belted plaid or a great kilt. Basically it was quite a large bit of woollen cloth, some would have a criss cross weave others would be plain.

The full-length garment that was known as the belted plaid would be worn in a number of ways, depending on what you were doing. There’s so many videos about it out there on the interwebs, so if you’re interested go and have a click around in our ‘Related’ section, who knows what you might find.

Mainly because of the weather and terrain, the belted plaid had its advantages. The wool kept the warmth in, but you could still move around, the upper half served as a handy cloak when it started with that Scottish drizzle, and the wool was known to dry out fairly quickly, so you weren’t walking around soaked the whole day, and as we already know it did excellently as a blanket for nightly sleeping.

But if we move forward a bit from the belted plaid, the kilt we know today came a little later, towards the start of the 18th century. So this newer kilt was only about knee-length and was known as the small kilt or walking kilt, really it was just the lower length of the belted plaid, so without the cloak bit up top. It became quite popular by the time we get to the mid 18th century, but you could still see the belted plaid out and about.

The evolution of the Kilt

So Highlanders in kilts definitely give off romantic notion vibes, and many might not be aware that we actually have Sir Walter Scott to thank for this, by almost rewriting Scottish cultural history especially where the kilt was concerned.

As we know originally the kilt naturally evolved around what was needed, it was the swiss army knife of the cloth world for all the things it could do. But as we head into the 18th century, we start to see the rise of industrialisation that we know will quickly take over the world. And this meant that Scots who used to spend their time out and about in the clean fresh air with plenty of space to move about, were now in confined dark spaces, and the belted plaid just wasn’t conducive to that kind of environment. So naturally we see the belted plaid evolve once more into a smaller kilt, with the cloak end of the cloth removed, and to make the whole thing lighter it would no longer have been a blanket but a sewn piece of cloth making getting in and out of it a whole lot easier, but we’ll go into how to wear the kilt a little later on.

So a bloke who goes by Thomas Rawlinson is the one who takes credit for this smaller kilt. He reckons that he’s the one who had the idea of removing the cloak part of the kilt so that the men could work more efficiently and practically in his factories. Supposedly he brought the Highlanders

out of the heather and into the factory.

Not without controversy, Rawlinson’s claim has been questioned by quite a few people. One of them being Dorothy K Burnham who reckons in her book, Cut My Cote, it was more of a natural evolution by the men working the factory themselves who came up with the lighter, smaller kilt. Which you have to admit, does make a little more sense.

But let’s duck back to Sir Walter Scott for a moment. So this bloke had a mind to basically recreate Gaelic culture, including the Highland dress with a romantic notion surrounding the whole thing. And he took the chance to give it a go when George IV was booked to visit Edinburgh in 1822.

Sir Walter was asked to help out with organising the whole event, and he went full blown on the dress code. He asked everyone attending to wear full Highland dress in their family tartan, and that included the King. So everyone turns up in what appears to be a publicity stunt promoting the kilt as fashionable, and we have to admit goes a fair way in cementing the kilt as the national dress of Scotland. But the attendees, including the King, were not walking around in belted plaids. The King, in particular, wore what a Scottish noblemen wore, which included the small kilt that was quite bright and colourful. Hugh Cheape has his own thoughts on this ‘reinvention’ of the kilt, that he lays out in his book Tartan, let’s have a listen to what he has to say:

‘Highland dress’ turned into ‘tartan costume’. A practical dress with style became … a fashionable dress with little regard to function.

And that’s what the kilt will continue to be until we get to our present day.

Now if we just pop back to Scott’s dress code for the King’s Edinburgh visit. The only issue with it was that, as we already know, there weren’t really any designated family tartans. Some of the more wealthy clan chiefs may have had their own individual tartans woven, but it wasn’t that widespread.

And so that meant that everyone who didn’t have a family tartan all ran to the closest weaving mill to choose one. At that time tartans were known by numbers and not clan family names, so naturally if you needed a tartan because you were attending a function with the King at Edinburgh Castle, you just picked one of the tartans that you liked the look of and that was yours.

It wasn’t until we get towards the end of the 18th century, that we start to see the tartans going by the names of the clans that had chosen them, or more often than not, nearby towns or districts. What’s really interesting is that back in 1800 there were only about 90 to 100 tartans that went by a name, as we head on over to today you’ll lose count at over 7000.

What’s interesting about this was that you didn’t need to be from a certain clan to wear a certain tartan. People were picking out and wearing what they liked, or what colour and pattern caught their eye. It didn’t really have anything to do with ancestry. But with people with Scottish heritage spread across the globe thanks to the Highland clearances, having a ‘clan tartan’ really did allow those people living abroad to feel a sense of connection to their ancestry.

What’s pretty shocking is that there really aren’t any rules or regulations around who can wear which tartan. So wear the one that’s associated with your heritage, or if you’re not really a fan of it, you can choose one that has associations with your university or school, your sporting club, or you can just pick one that suits your fancy.

As we head on into the 19th century, good old Queen Vic fully embraces the use of tartan, and she pretty much sparks a trend for tartan throughout the fashion world with kilt like skirts becoming popular with women, not to mention the appearance in private school uniforms, pretty much keeping in line with tartans being a display of wealth.

The accessories and details of the kilt have also developed and evolved over time. These days we see fringes, sewn waistbands, sporran loops and quite often a second buckle and strap on the hip, that just wouldn’t have been around early on. Kilts can be made in almost any fabric you can imagine and some even have some handy pockets. Talk about natural evolution.

Even better, was the adoption of the kilt among the youth at the end of the 20th century. Scotland was gaining a new cultural and political confidence with

a new generation of [young] radical Scots … reclaim[ing] the wearing of the kilt from the embrace of nearly 200 years of established, commodified gentrification.

And boom, the kilt is bloody everywhere. And it’s not just being seen at formal occasions anymore. The youth are wearing their kilts with T-shirts, trainers and woolly socks hanging around their ankles. Here’s Lou Taylor’s thoughts from The Study of Dress History:

Now young Scotsmen wear their kilts according to their own cultural codes and on their own national identity terms.

How to use a Kilt

So, how do you actually get into a kilt and get it situated so that you can walk around with it falling down? Well, now that’s quite a tricky question. We don’t actually know how the original kilt-wearing Highlanders put their kilt on, but some people do reckon they’ve worked it out.

So John Telfer Dunbar in his book Highland Costume, reckons that the woollen cloth would be laid out on the ground and the middle would be gathered in folds. The Highlander would then lay down on the cloth with one end about level with the knee. He would then wrap the cloth around himself fastening it tight with a belt. When he stood up, wallah, you’re looking at a kilt, he would then grab the extra upper part and wrap it around the body, there were several ways to do this depending on what you needed.

But there are some that reckon this whole lying down on the ground thing was just way too impractical. A couple of dress historians think that the easiest way to do it was to gather the pleats in your hand while you’re standing up and then pass the plaid around the body, again holding it on with a belt but this time loosely, only tightening the belt once you had arranged the pleats so that they were comfortable.

Now the little kilt was similar, being gathered into folds and then held at the waist by a belt, but without the upper part. And then of course, the tailored kilt we see today, none of this folding is needed, instead of gathering, the pleats are sewn down, so you just wrap it around, secure the buckle and you’re good to go.

Usually accompanying the kilt, you’ll probably recognise the sporran, a small bag worn around the waist and over the kilt. The kilt itself has a pin holding the two pieces of fabric together at the front, and a Sgian dubh (skee-an doo), a small dagger that tucks into the sock. And you have your complete romantic idea of a Highlander.

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