Highlanders v. Lowlanders

[Arlen]

As has been stated, the Kilt was a 'Highland' garment and Lowlanders would in some cases make fun of Kilts. However it is most certainly a 'Scottish' garment now.
Don't forget how many Highlanders moved to the Lowlands!
My family were from the Highlands as far back as we could trace until my grandfather moved to Perthshire and then Glasgow while he was a boy. The rest of the family are still in the same area of the Highlands and the old farm still has the same name!

[Phil]

As has been stated, the Kilt was a 'Highland' garment and Lowlanders would in some cases make fun of Kilts. However it is most certainly a 'Scottish' garment now.
Don't forget how many Highlanders moved to the Lowlands!

"Kiltie, kiltie cauld bum" would have been shouted at kilt-wearers by lowlanders making fun of their dress. I imagine any child would have wanted rid of its kilt as soon as possible to avoid such jibes and they would have been singled out as poorer members of society by their dress. What it is necessary to remember is that it wasn't until King George's visit to Scotland in 1822 that tartan and kilt-wearing by anyone other than soldiers became popular, stage-managed by Walter Scott. Afterwards the then mania to emulate anything done by the Royals (Queen Victoria and the Balmorality rush to buy Highland estates by rich Englishmen fed the same desire to copy). This was then encouraged by Wilsons of Bannockburn and later by the Sobieskis who enriched themselves by cobbling up all manner of spurious tartanalia to satisfy the sudden demand for kilts from the Scottish middle-class and land-owning gentry, many with Scottish names but few, if any with any genuine associations to a clan - pretty much like nowadays really. To say that kilts following their legalisation were a purely highland garb is misleading, however, as those commissioning their post-Georgian tartan-wear came from all parts of Scotland, not just the Highlands. Anyone who was anyone in those days had to have a tartan and there were plenty of tailors and weavers keen to satisfy the demand. It would be more correct to say that kilts as day-to-day wear were more common in the Highlands than elsewhere in Scotland where they were reserved for more formal occasions. Why this should be is probably down to the sheer impracticality of a kilt for many types of heavy industrial work - imagine a kilt trapped in the unguarded machinery of the 19th and early 20th centuries - but also to simple prejudices regarding Highlanders generally as rough peasants, referred to as "teuchters" and mocked by rhymes such as I began this with, whose dress was not considered genteel enough for polite society.