Highlanders v. Lowlanders

[O'Callaghan]

So, help me out with the knowledge you folks have. Cause, since I have been doing the 18th century Highlander for 15 years (Jacobite, F and I and Rev Wars) we get the questions all the time. I continually try to make sure my lads and I are giving the correct info. Please correct or modify the info I have below so I can get a better timeline of "kilt history".

1. Kilts first appear in the 1400s, I believe "they" trace it to that time period because there is a gravestone someplace that shows a Highlander in a kilt.... this supposedly the earliest indication of kilt wearing? Any good research before that. AND, before that it was all English clothing??
2. So, kilts were worn and were the fashion in the Highlands (I had read anything north of the river Tay was Highland). Then, we have the '45. After Culloden, Kilts (Scottish dress) was outlawed....they quickly went out of fashion unless you could get awa' with it, so far north the English didn't care??
3. However, if you joined the military (42nd, 78th, 77th, etc.) you could wear your "native dress", the kilt. This was done to entice young Scots to join the British army?
4. George IV and Sir Walter Scott make it vogue to wear the kilt, 1820s??
5. Sobieski brothers (cousins to the BP Charlie) do their hoax with "the book" of tartans and clans begin to register clan tartans....is this the time that Lord Lyon gets involved?
6. Brings us to today!!

Sorry this is long, but I'd like good, hard info to be able to share with the folks ask the questions at reenactments. I feel we do a good job with this, but it can always be better with XMarks info.

Your servant and MANY THANKS. Malcolm

Kilts didn't simply appear from nowhere. You should probably add a number zero, where the Scottish kilt evolved from the Irish brat.

The immediate predecessor of the 'great kilt' (aka Féileadh Mor, etc.) was the Irish brat (cloak). The Irish of the time wore the brat over the leine (tunic), and the great kilt continued to be worn over the leine for a long time after. 'Kilting' as a verb referred originally to gathering into pleats, invariably with a belt. The Irish did this with the leine itself, and the 'big' innovation (he says with tongue firmly in cheek) was to wear the belt on the outside of the cloak and 'kilt' (remember that's a verb here, meaning gather) the cloak instead of the leine (tunic). This was probably done because the Scottish highlands are windier than Ireland! Then, 'hey presto', the cloak magically changes from an Irish brat into a Scottish great kilt, even though both are the same piece of cloth, the same woolen blanket (or plaid, in Gaelic), and both are used as blankets for sleeping too.

Modern kilt vendors tend to call those sashes that mimic the top half of the great kilt a 'shoulder plaid' if Scottish but a 'brat' if intended to be Irish, but this is marketing. The Irish have worn kilts as far back as the lowland Scots, but never wore the great kilt.

So why am I even talking about Ireland? The leine and brat were brought to the highlands of Scotland with the Irish Gaelic tribe called the Dal Riada, who the Romans called the Scotii, from which the name 'Scots' comes. They certainly colonised the area around Argyll, and exercised control over a much wider area than that. Without the Irish Dal Riada settling in Scotland there would be no kilt, no Scots Gaelic language and no bagpipes.

The Gaels were not the only Celts in the British Isles, the Britons were Celts too, and the Picts who lived in the Scottish highlands before the Gaels came from Ireland may or may not have been Britons. What's more, many highlanders (and indeed people of certain other specific areas of the British Isles) descend from vikings. However, the Briton language seems to have left no trace in either Scots or Scots Gaelic or English, and the Dal Riada never held sway in the lowlands, so Gaelic blood in the lowlands is due to migration following the clearances. If you said Celtic rather than Gaelic that would include Britons, and that's a more difficult question to answer, as Briton DNA is probably far more widespread than Briton culture or language.

The lowland Scots are indeed a similar ethnic mix to adjacent parts of England, and adopted the kilt about as recently as the Irish, to turn things around a little.

FWIW, the O'Callaghans are of the Eoganacht or Eugenian tribe, not the Dal Riada, although all the tribes of Irish Gaels are considered to be branches of the Milesians.