Recent Irish kilt question

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Here here, I have Scottish and Irish blood in me and have studied Irish history extensively for a long time. The Common pratice of the Irish Gael and his Highland Cousin wearing the same type of Clothing of almost a thousand years was no accident, these two sister cultures were more alike than Lowland-Highland Scot. However Scotland as a nation was allowed almost 400 hundred years to develop as an Indendent Nation free from English interference. Ireland during this period and especially after the Gaelic wars in Ulster was almost destroyed, along with many of the Irish traditions including the wearing of the Irish style of clothing the leine and Brat which became the Kilt thereafter.
If Ireland had of been left alone to develop and go down the natural path of the Gael who knows where it would have led today. It's culture was almost destroyed bannished to the pages of History. So yes the Kilt does share a place in Irish history as much as Scottish history, alas by another name or a belt or two missing.

While I can appreciate the emotion behind you sentiments, as someone who worked for several years in one of the departments of the Minister for Arts, Culture, Gaeltacht and the Islands, I would have to take mild exception to your comments concerning what you choose to characterize as "400 years of English interference", and how that somehow prevented the Irish from developing the kilt.

What might be characterized as "the Highland Scots" did indeed come from Ireland-- the North East portion of the Island to be exact. The people inhabiting this least populous corner of Ireland were, in their own time, regarded as "different" than the other tribal people in Ireland, and it is thought that they may have been the remnant of the original inhabitants of the island, pushed back by successive waves of incoming people.

Be that as it may, the Scots came from a fairly defined and somewhat isolated group of people, not from the Irish population as a whole. They brought with them the traditions of that group of people, not an amalgam of traditions drawn from the length and breadth of the island. So, to suggest that had the course of Irish history been different the "Irish" would have evolved into a kilt wearing people is to make a leap of logic that is not wholly warranted.

It begs the question, "Why?"

And the only answer that can be given, or so it seems to me, is one of attempting to justify the present day fascination with kilts and tartans by the Irish diaspora. I think this is merely a manifestation of a desire to have a "national costume" where none exists. The simple reason for this is that the attire of the Irish people followed the natural evolution of European dress, as did all of the British Isles, save for one poor, tiny corner of Scotland. That the Highland kilt achieved its place as the "national costume" of Scotland is down solely to its having been romanticized throughout the whole of the 19th century, primarily due to the military exploits of a few Highland regiments. I am of the certain opinion that, if the Scottish regiments had been forced into trousers in 1770, the kilt, as we know it, would never have achieved anything like the prominence that it enjoys today.

That said, there is no reason whatsoever to make up excuses (or projections of quasi, what if, history) to justify wearing a kilt made up in an "Irish" tartan. If someone feels that the only way they can project a positive image of their Irish heritage and cultural traditions is by borrowing the Scottish kilt, that's fine by me. All I ask is that one refrains from trying to give their "Irish kilt" an historical or cultural pedigree that just isn't there.