This has been an interesting thread with a great deal of erudite historical comment and the fascination for me has been the significance that the kilt seems to have achieved as a symbol of Irish culture among north Americans when celebrating what they believe to be their ancestry. That it should be associated with green-coloured beer and other strange manifestations of an imaginary created culture does not lend a great deal of credence to the legitimacy of this however. This strong belief in the kilt as an Irish icon is one that comes up regularly in this forum and does fly in the face of everything in my experience to date. I do wonder perhaps if a certain confusion has arisen in the past about specific ancestry as I do know that many non-British people overseas, including most Americans I have met, have great difficulty in differentiating the separate nations within the British Isles and tend to lump them all together as from England. In a similar vein I have seen comment here and elsewhere that some people with a “Mc” surname have believed that they had Irish ancestry so this confusion may be further confounded. No doubt the current fashion for genealogy will help to dispel some of these myths among the genuine seekers after the truth but there will undoubtedly remain many more left with their own versions of their ancestry and to quote another Irish relation – “He would argue a black crow was white” – it seems to be in the genes.
With many Irish relations from one side of my family I believe that I can claim to know a little of Irish life from first-hand experience, although I would not for a minute consider myself competent to pronounce on any historical matters beyond my lifetime. Having spent much time in Ireland over many years I can only say that I have never encountered any cultural or philosophical rationale towards kilt-wearing in anyone I have met. While there is a generally favourable attitude towards Scottish people, Scottish culture and dress is most definitely regarded as a tiny bit foreign, great for pipe bands, but to wear a kilt themselves would never even enter their heads. “Now what would I be doing something like that for?” would be the response you would get if you asked if they would wear a kilt.
As to the legitimacy of the kilt as an historic Irish garment, well this can be the subject of endless argument to prove or disprove, and I do detect a scintilla of entrenched views opening up in the discussion, but I just wonder what historians will argue about in a few hundred years’ time when discovering in sites like this that Americans actually wore kilts many hundreds of years earlier and this must prove that it was their national dress at the time!