A question to stump the tartan experts.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

You see, the idea of clan tartans as we understand it didn't come about until long after the clan system had vanished, and long after its successor, feudalism, had also vanished.

So if someone else can honor their MacDonald clan heritage by wearing a tartan that their MacDonald anscestors probably never wore, why can't someone else honor their gypsy heritage by wearing a tartan that their gypsy anscestors never wore?

The point behind the tartan is that it is symbolic. We wear a particular tartan because of what it symbolizes, not because we believe our actual anscestors wore the same patterned cloth.

[macwilkin]

Was the person at Wilsons who designed and promoted this tartan trying to make money for the woolen mill? Certainly yes, that was his job -- just like the people who design new tartans today for Lochcarron, House of Edgar, Strathmore, Marton Mills, and all the rest. You wouldn't have any tartan cloth to wear if they did not.

Was the person who designed the Merilees tartan trying to pass this off as an authentic "gypsy" tartan that hearken back to the anscetral roots of the gypsies and that anyone with gypsy descent should wear it? I see nothing to suggest that. It seems they were just trying to tie into a popular novel. There have been tartans designed today to spin off of popular movies and TV shows. It's the same thing.

If you are looking for companies trying to make a buck off of people by passing off a false heritage, try the Welsh Tartan Center -- they completely invented the idea of Welsh families having tartans, and invented all the tartans as well. I wonder how many people buying from them realize that the Welsh never wore kilts or had family tartans?

My point is that while some of what you complain about does go on, I think you are directing your angst in the wrong direction.

Hear, Hear Matt! Well said.

Cheers,

Todd

[gilmore]

Methinks you are reading far too much into this, gilmore. Dreadbelly wanted a tartan with a gypsy connection, and this one had it, albiet a fictional one. And besides, Sir Walter was just as much as anyone "to blame" for many tartan myths, so why not chuckle at the irony of his connection to this supposed "gypsy" tartan instead of getting upset?

T.

Who is upset? I am wryly amused and saddened at the same time.

It is about more than irony. It is the perpetuation of myth at the expense of learning the truth about one's ancestors, their lives and their other now-living descendants, myths and distortions that were invented at the time to romanticize people---gypsies, travellers, Jews, and others---who were actually being demonized and persecuted by the powers that be.

Similar examples come out of the Clearances of the late 18th/early 19th centuries. Today, many of us in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc are the descendants of Scots emigrants who were thrown off the lands their families had lived on for generations by the landowners, who found it more profitable to raise sheep than have the land farmed. Both the landowners and tenants often had been of the same clan, albeit some centuries previous to this, when the clan system was actually a living entity, a way of life, and thus often went by the same surnames. Nonetheless, the cheifs and cheiftans who had become land owning aristocracy, forced many of our ancestors, who had become or remained peasants (or agricultural laborers, to use today's vernacular) to leave, and burning their homes so that they would not return.

These same cheifs and cheiftans often decided upon, or more usually acquiesed to, the tartan designs that the descendants of their evicted tenants and badly mistreated "fellow clansmen" so proudly wear today, totally unaware of their own history, of how the remnants of the clan system in Scotland played a part in their own ancestors forced migrations to the New Worlds.

Meanwhile, the Scots peasantry was being romanticized, by Burns, Sir Walter Scott and others, not unlike the romanticization of the gypsies and travellers.

[Dreadbelly]

So if someone else can honor their MacDonald clan heritage by wearing a tartan that their MacDonald anscestors probably never wore, why can't someone else honor their gypsy heritage by wearing a tartan that their gypsy anscestors never wore?

The point behind the tartan is that it is symbolic. We wear a particular tartan because of what it symbolizes, not because we believe our actual anscestors wore the same patterned cloth.

THAT is an excellent point to be made right there. Worded well and to the point.

Thank you.

[cessna152towser]

There once was a kiltie called Dread,
Who started an interesting thread,
On his ancestral gypsy,
Who rarely got tipsy,
While puzzling which tartan to spread.

[McClef]

As a customer of the Wales Tartan Centre I cannot say that I have ever felt myself misinformed as to the historicity of Welsh tartans.

It's a relatively new thing, they only started in 1996 and had a change of ownership in 2002. They did have a tentative look at history on their old site but I read it and consluded that it never made out that it all came from the mists of time like the Mabinogion.

Welsh families had no equivalent of a Clan Chief and the tartan names that have been linked with them can appeal to no central authority for approval. They will either become popular with the people who bear that surname or they won't.

With my Robertson connections I went for a Roberts/Probert and I love it. I now have an order in for the St David National (registered in the 1960s) which is probably the most popular of all.

And they are not just interested in "making a buck":

"We truly believe in this product and not just in a commercial way, we believe in promoting Wales around the World, and this is a great way of doing just that."


(email to me a couple of months ago in correspondence about my Roberts cilt)

I can only repeat that their quality of service and communications is second to none as is that of their products. They moved heaven and earth to get my cilt to me at my Edinburgh hotel and would have lent me a hire cilt FOC if it could not have been ready in time.

They also deal in Scottish and Irish tartanalia.

Traditions have to start somewhere and they are helping create traditions that will endure for years to come.

but I just felt that I had to redress the balance on what had been written about them in this thread.

[Kid Cossack]

Gilmore:

But weren't Cossack troops used by the Tsars and others to persecute/exterminate Gypsies and Jews during the progroms?

Indeed they were used against Gypsies and Jews, during the Pogroms and I believe Cossacks served in SS divisions during World War 2/The Great Patriotic War. THAT is nothing that I honor with my nom du internete. Rather, I honor a) the birthplace of my wife (Kazakhstan), b) the blood of my wife (Russian with a Cossack strain), and c) the idea of a free man, not beholden to any lord or master (on this Earth).

It is a rare people indeed whose history may be closely examined and found to be without blemish. I try to learn, positively, from what was honorable, and negatively from what was dishonorable.

There are reliable reports of Marines during World War 2 taking ears and skulls as trophies in the Pacific Campaign---that is not the reason I wear the Leatherneck tartan with pride (or the USMC uniform with pride, before that); the Black Watch participated in the Clearances----that is not the reason I wear the Black Watch tartan; and the Irish Republican Army attacked civilian infrastructure and planted bombs in cities----that is not the reason I wear the Irish National tartan.

Besides, the tartan I was recommending was more Kazakh than Cossack!

[Warlock]

Honour is a gift a man gives to himself! It is the one thing that no one can take away. Honour your ancestry any way that you see fit.

[gilmore]

Was the person who designed the Merilees tartan trying to pass this off as an authentic "gypsy" tartan that hearken back to the anscetral roots of the gypsies and that anyone with gypsy descent should wear it? I see nothing to suggest that. It seems they were just trying to tie into a popular novel. There have been tartans designed today to spin off of popular movies and TV shows. It's the same thing.

If you are looking for companies trying to make a buck off of people by passing off a false heritage, try the Welsh Tartan Center -- they completely invented the idea of Welsh families having tartans, and invented all the tartans as well. I wonder how many people buying from them realize that the Welsh never wore kilts or had family tartans?

So, it's OK to invent a totally bogus tartan as long as its name makes some reference to a fictional character in a popular novel, movie or TV show, but not OK to invent a totally bogus tartan based on actual, living surnames?

Or now it's OK that totally bogus tartans falsely attributed to surnames were invented 200 years ago, but it's not OK that totally bogus tartans falsely attributed to surnames were invented within the last 10-15 years? Is there a set point in time when tartans cease being bogus and become authentic?

I am just trying to get it straight in my head.

[Warlock]

Dreadbelly, DUCK! I believe a fight is about to ensue...