Quote Originally Posted by OC Richard View Post
As with all historical matters, one needs to see the primary source.

It was a matter of stories being repeated so often, and by so many people in important positions, that they had become to be regarded as facts.

Highland Dress and Tartan have likewise built around them mythologies. Before I accept any story about these topics as factual I require supporting evidence.

So it is with your story. The story as presented doesn't match up well with the known timeline of the development of Clan tartans. Until I see the original source document I will consider it a story.
Being an inveterate story teller, I collect them and tell them for a wide variety of reasons. I am pretty good at recognizing the difference between story and
reality, as when my second grade self pointed out the flaws in the Columbus Day poetry reading. Made no difference to my teacher. Most people teach what they are taught without examining; I question pretty much everything. Even what I see happen. That habit has led to an excellent (though certainly
not total or perfect) education, one which has often differed with scholars of this or that. I have enjoyed the discoveries of primary documents and fake research revealed proving the widely accepted stories to be less than truthful and/ or complete (and my thinking proved correct). Though I was wrong once, in 1957.

There is much myth and much scholarship around the subjects herein discussed, as has been noted. There are holes in both. Which is why I posted this.
It merely points out that what we generally accept is not complete. We don't know everything about much of anything. In the court case cited, the
primary documents had been available and were carefully examined and then discussed in the meeting of a society of men whose experience with such
was more than extensive. Their point on the calendar puts them much closer to the events, and they had access to the documentation.

Although, as we know, documentation and research have been and will again be fabricated. This case may be an anomaly in the general development
as known, and it is worth noting that it occurred during a period when the chief's word was still accepted to be equally valid as the law. That is, there may have been no statute on the books, just judicial backing of a chief's authority.

I never deny anyone the right to a differing opinion, if we all agreed there would be pretty boring discourse.