Fly Plaid at Burns Supper?

[jsrnephdoc]

I would hazard a guess that group of friends and admirers who started the tradition of celebrating Burns’s works and memory on his birthday in 1801 didn't wear clothing that was particularly “Scottish” because the “tartan craze” didn’t happen until several decades later.

Do we have a good idea HOW they would have dressed for that memorial celebration? Perhaps more relevant, what do we know about how Burns himself dressed, particularly later in his life, after it was clear there was more money to be made from writing wonderful verse than from farming infertile land? And, so far as "costumes" vs. customary semi-formal dress is concerned, couldn't virtually ANY wearing of kilts (except for weddings, graduations, and perhaps clan gatherings) be considered "costuming" rather than "custom," ESPECIALLY in Scotland?

Even at celebrations of Scotland's distinct heritage; e.g., the Royal Military Tattoo, the number of people who show up wearing "modern" kilts or even little bits of tartan is quite small. In that context, one might argue that when the food is ancient and the recitations old, dressing in the manner people did the first time such an event was held might be ENTIRELY appropriate, perhaps even ESPECIALLY if none of the attendees would have been kilted.

After all, events such as Burns night suppers are QUINTESSENTIAL "look-backs," and if those are shoehorned into stringent "rules," we risk forgetting from whence they originated. Such is the state of affairs right now in the USA, where history is being "sanitized" for quite ugly reasons.