SCA you know those crazy guys that beat each other up with sticks

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Sir Robert writes:

The official time period for the SCA is 400 AD to 1700 AD.

This is incorrect. The very first sentence one reads at www.sca.org is:
"The SCA is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe."

Pre-seventeenth century means the year 1600 or earlier.

Robert also writes:

The persona might be say a Scot from 950AD and we don't really know for sure if they wore kilts or brats or what.

Yes, we can be sure that Scots did not wear kilts in 950 AD because the historical record shows that the kilt simply did not exist then. If a person is wearing a kilt and claiming to portray a Scottish Highlander from the tenth century, he is simply wrong. We don't know a whole lot about what Highlanders did wear in the tenth century, but as we can find no evidence of anything related to the kilt prior to the very end of the sixteenth century, it would be baseless to assume that this garment was worn six centuries earlier.

Will Prat writes:

Matt, for belted plaids to be worn by a whole group of Scottish mercs in 1594, they had to have been in use for a while. After all, they didn't just invent them for the job. Their being worn in 1594 certainly makes a date of origin of 1580 or a bit earlier likely and in fact lends credence to the descriptions ca 1575 that could be read either way.

Will, I appreciate what you are saying here, and agree with you to a certain extent. I think it highly unlikely that the group being described in 1594 as wearing belted plaids were the very first people to have worn that style. However, the fact remains that (as I have stated) the first recorded evidence of the belted plaid being worn is in 1594. It may likely have been worn prior to that, but any earlier date is just speculation. I think it is remarkable that of the many other sixteenth century accounts of Highland Dress that we do have, only one or two could possibly be imagined to describe the belted plaid. So it certainly wasn't common prior to the last decade of the sixteenth century.

Aye,
Matt

[Sir Robert]

The SCA is "understood" to be post Rome (400 AD) to about 1700. But the original folks were closer to renfair types including yes, Elves. Today they get closer to the Re-enactor than Rennies. With a world wide organization there is a LOT of variation.

The fact is that anything you say (about the SCA) is likely to be true to one extent or another.

[Kiltman]

I'm not active in the SCA. Here in the Northwest we also have the Fur Trade to re-enact. We even have one of the Hudson Bay's and Northwest Company's fur trading post just down the road at Spokane House. I try to say involved with them and their effort to build a full size Spokane House. I do appreciate the SCA, but just don't have time for it.

[prattw]

Will, I appreciate what you are saying here, and agree with you to a certain extent. I think it highly unlikely that the group being described in 1594 as wearing belted plaids were the very first people to have worn that style. However, the fact remains that (as I have stated) the first recorded evidence of the belted plaid being worn is in 1594. It may likely have been worn prior to that, but any earlier date is just speculation. I think it is remarkable that of the many other sixteenth century accounts of Highland Dress that we do have, only one or two could possibly be imagined to describe the belted plaid. So it certainly wasn't common prior to the last decade of the sixteenth century.

Aye,
Matt

Matt,

Just a point of interest on my part, how many descriptions DO we have between 1550 and 1600?

Speculatively, it seems that what must have happened was that the brat/plaid got gradually bigger until it was more effective to belt it around the outside. And the impetus for that seems likely to have been the increasing cost of linen relative to wool as the troubles in Ireland cut into the production of linen. Its the sort of thing that would likely have happened gradually, with the plaid gradually becoming larger over the last quarter of the 16th century. Being a biologist I tend to see most major cultural changes as happening by an evolutionary process.

I should make clear that I definitely see your basic hypothesis as correct (to say I agree with you would be giving too much weight to my knowledge in the matter; much of what I know about it comes from your work.) I just think that you tend to put slightly too much emphasis upon the terminus ante quem, probably driven by all the "ancient Celtic tradition of the kilt" blather.

Will Pratt

[M. A. C. Newsome]

Robert,

The by-laws and pretty much everything else put out by SCA, Inc, all say "pre-seventeenth century" which by definition excludes the years from 1601 on up. I know you'll find people involved in the SCA in different places who "push the envelope" and attempt to include dress and activities that are post-period, the fact of the matter is that the stated time frame they are interested in is 1600 and earlier.

Will,

I try and make the distinction between what we can prove and what we can speculate about. It's fun to speculate, and I'm not saying you can't do it. But at the same time, we can't give too much credit to what we think probably happened. We need to distinguish this line of thought from what we know for a fact, and can prove. At the end of the day, the fact remains that the earliest date we can *prove* that the belted plaid was worn is 1594. Does this mean that it definitely was not worn prior to that date? No, not at all. It's just that we cannot say for a fact that it was.

In Old Irish & Highland Dress, which is the best book on this topic, McClintock gives us 10 written accounts of Highland Dress prior to 1594, all but one of them (if I remember correctly -- I don't have the book in front of me) from the 16th century. So, of the nine that date to the 16th century, only two of them, from 1578 and 1581, in my opinion could be read in a way to suggest the belted plaid. But both of them could just as easily be read to refer to a plaid worn unbelted, as well. It's a guessing game, and we can't really say for sure. But when we get to the 1594 reference, we *can* say for sure, and that's my point. We are no longer guessing -- we have a definitete description of a belted plaid, no doubt about it.

Aye,
Matt

[Woodsheal]

Bona fides: masters degree in history, minor in archeology.

I learned that as a general rule (especially in the ancient, dark age, medieval periods), by the time some literate persons got around to writing about some aspect of a remote, less-literate culture, that aspect had probably been in place for some time. And what we have as "surviving" records represent only a fraction of what was actually generated at the time.

The Gaelic culture of the Scottish highlands pre-1600 was primarily a non-literary, oral-tradition culture. This means they weren't generating written documents about their own cultural characteristics, including their unique form of garb. The "surviving" documents of the period re: Highland dress are from the occasional foriegn observer.

Thus, a surviving document from the 1590's describing a belted plaid would almost certainly indicate a practice that had been in place for some length of time....

[prattw]

Bona fides: masters degree in history, minor in archeology.

I learned that as a general rule (especially in the ancient, dark age, medieval periods), by the time some literate persons got around to writing about some aspect of a remote, less-literate culture, that aspect had probably been in place for some time. And what we have as "surviving" records represent only a fraction of what was actually generated at the time.

The Gaelic culture of the Scottish highlands pre-1600 was primarily a non-literary, oral-tradition culture. This means they weren't generating written documents about their own cultural characteristics, including their unique form of garb. The "surviving" documents of the period re: Highland dress are from the occasional foriegn observer.

Thus, a surviving document from the 1590's describing a belted plaid would almost certainly indicate a practice that had been in place for some length of time....

The thing is, all of the surviving documents from before 1575 are clearly describing the brat and leine combination (well, in the Highlands and Isles I guess we ought to refer to plaid and leine). Thus 1575 would be the terminus post quem for the belted plaid and 1594 the terminus ante quem. Matt prefers to go with the latter, where I'd rather say something like "the belted plaid developed sometime during the last quarter of the 16th century". That's not a lot of difference.

Will Pratt

OK, went back and checked the actual reports. There are clear descriptions of Leine and plaid as late as 1578. Though that is in a book pblished in Rome and there could be a lag, there is a description that was current from 1573 (Lindsay of Pitscottie.) One would presume that there was some overlap, they didn't just suddenly change from leine and plaid to belted plaid, all over and over night. Given the late records for definite general use of leine and plaid (I hadn't remembered it as that late) I'd be inclined to give less credance to the "indefinite" reports that _could_ be the belted plaid and split the difference between 1594 and 1573 for a terminus post quem of ca 1580.

(For non-historian/archaeologist types, Terminus post quem is the date after which something under discussion MUST have happened and T. ante quem is the date before which it MUST have happened. Obviously in this case our post quem date is soft and our ante quem date is quite firm.)

WLP

[Woodsheal]

Agreed! Though some of the earlier descriptions are subject to interpretation (and conjecture!), de Beaugue's "light woolen rug of several colors" for example (1556). A "rug" sounds more like a rectangular plaid than a mantle - maybe...!

[Tiran]

I am an SCAer. Have been for 10 odd years now on and off. I am in an off phase right now. Some day I would like to get to Estrella (and of course Pennsic), but for now Clinton is my annual war.
I have a bit different view of things up here. Maybe its because we have less members, and are more spread out, and have a shorter camping season, we have less of the elf ears/vampires etc. I have seen these and the other mentioned issues when I venture south of the border (and I would guess perhaps East above the border)
The thing I have noticed with the SCA is it is more accepting of people with low budgets, specialized (craft not time period) interests and people with the attention span of a fruit fly (like me) than other re enactment groups. As long as I made and attempt at periodish garb I was welcomed. If I wanted to know serious garb, down to the stiches used, there were people that I could ask. But as long as I was not claiming my polyester t-tunic was as accurate as it got, no one gave me greif. Mind you the attention I got in my various kiltlike things remimds me of the Renn Faire posts elsewhere on this board.
But I always found the SCA welcoming. And large enough that if I didn't like someone for what ever reason, I could just walk away and not be forced to deal with them constantly.
And no matter what the subject, I could find someone who knew something about it, and could point me towards experts and reliable sources.

[Sir Robert]

I too studied Anthropology in college and I tend to "connect the dots."

The 1594 date is firm and the earlier dates much less so but the direction they point is backwards from that date.

Now to be honest fads can come up quickly like bluejeans became almost universal during the 1950s but in fact date to 1849. Try to find a painting of someone from the 1920s wearing jeans. So some future historian who might not have access to Levi Strauss & Co records might not date them any further back than 1950.

So if we KNOW 1594 and we SUSPECT 1575 then the first use of a belted plaid COULD be before that.

You talk of "leine and plaid" as pre-dating the "Belted Plaid" and I agree totally.

Beyond that I SPECULATE the ancestor of "leine and plaid" was the "Leine and Brat" of the Irish but there are reasons to beleive (stone carvings) that the Irish brats were striped.

Perhaps the answer could be found by looking instead at the "Belt." For example was there a sudden reason for a belt to be worn by the Scottish men such as a war or a sudden use of Scotts as Mercenaries in the 1500s?