Re-enactment / historical question

[M. A. C. Newsome]

True, but I wonder just what the progression to the Great Kilt was and how long it took. In all honesty I cannot see that the Highland Gaelic Scot would progress from wearing something like contemporary English dress to wearing something like a kilt. Not that it could not happen that way, it is just a huge (impossible?) stretch of the imagination to see how it could have happened.

A much easier thing to see would be a progression from the léine and brat, something that was known to be worn by the Irish in earlier times as you yourself write, to a kilt. Still, I guess we will never really know.

I never said that Highland Scots went from wearing English-style clothing to wearing the feilidh-mor. What I said was that in the period you are looking at (14th and 15th centuries), Lowland (English speaking) scots would have dressed like their English contemporaries, while Highland (Gaelic speaking) Scots would have dressed like their Irish contemporaries, which is where we find the leine and brat. It is this fashion that would later give rise to the feilidh-mor, and the first evidence we have of that is in 1594.

I'll only point out that we do have several different references describing what the Highland Gaels wore from the first half of the sixteenth century and none of them mention anything that might be considered an early feilidh-mor. So, going by the evidence we have (which is all we can go by, really), I'd feel fairly confidant saying that the feilidh-mor was not worn in the first half of the 1500s.

So if one is doing reenactment, I can see how wearing the feilidh-mor for, say, a 1580s impression or even 1570s might be justified. But not 1540s. And certainly not 1400's. This was the point I was trying to make.

As for asking a local group, well, it seems that this sort of question can be a bit of a religious issue, if you know what I mean when I say that, and I am reluctant to bring it up for that reason.

Oh well, may be I will just visit and not partake...

Mark

You haven't really posted that many details about the group that you would be reenacting with, so maybe there is something I'm not seeing. But it seems to me that if one of the members has invited you to participate and you don't want or are not able to invest in the proper clothing, they should not be offended if you ask if there might be anything they could loan you for the occasion. I know a lot of reenactment groups keep a loaner stock on hand for folks coming out the first time.