Quote Originally Posted by Caradoc
Not quite. The "belted plaid" in "Rob Roy" was two pieces - one used for the bottom, one used for the top, and NOT stitched together.

Other than that, it looked reasonably close to a belted plaid (or bhreacain feileadh).
In Rob Roy, there are a couple kilt types. At the beginning, it is a "regular" belted plaid (as can be seen as he takes a dip in the loch and "comes on" to Mary. He also wears the 2 peice one, clearly shown around the "fight" at the end. One is an attempt at a philabeg, but leans more to modern kilts than historic philabegs. Remember, the early philabegs were just belted plaids without the top half attatched. All in all, not too bad for Hollywood. In comparison, the 2 look a bit different and hang different in some scenes, though others look like something in between (making it hard to tell which is which.


For the newbies to have any idea what I just wrote:
philabeg-> Small kilt/little kilt-> as opposed to Great kilt

The original belted plaid was roughly 54 inches across (top to bottom) and measured 3 or 4 yards up to 6 yards long, with most in the 4 yard range. The typical weaving loom would make 27 inch wide fabric, so two lengths were sewn together lengthwise to make a belted plaid.
To make a philabeg was simply to either rip the seem or NOT SEW the two parts together. By the way, there are some references to what is probably (always a matter of debate) a philabeg decades before "that Englishman" was ever in Scotland.