Origins of the kilt, is it Celtic or not?

[davedove]

Now as a second possability what if instead the great kilt in Scotland and the leine & brat have a common ancestor in the toga which is likely at least 5000 years old and brought out of the Med by the Celts then the little kilt could be said to be the remains of a Pan-Celtic Toga.

What you think?

I've seen that theory before and it's not altogether unreasonable. Although I wouldn't say that the kilt is a direct development from a toga, it is a later development from a general toga-like manner of dress that existed all across the ancient world.

[Archangel]

Ok Scots and Irish dressed about the same, from 500 to 1000AD, right? At least prior to the time period where we beleive the great kilt likely had it's origins (1600s). Irish dress (Leine & brat) were outlawed by the English in Ireland in 1200s to suppress Irish nationalism. The kilt was outlawed in 1745 to keep the Scots down, also by the English.

So if we follow this line of thought, the Irish and Scottish clothes had gone their seperate ways before the great kilt was born thus the kilt can NOT be considered "Irish."

Now as a second possability what if instead the great kilt in Scotland and the leine & brat have a common ancestor in the toga which is likely at least 5000 years old and brought out of the Med by the Celts then the little kilt could be said to be the remains of a Pan-Celtic Toga.

What you think?

Well, that's valid in the same way that an Armani suit is an extension of the fig leaf. You're approaching history from a linear perspective. It doesn't work that way. You have to account for evolving technologies, socio-religious values, trade patterns and a host of other things.

First, define "kilt". Then define "Celtic". Oh, and for good measure, define "origin".

[Shay]

You might as well say they came from a combination of the short toga and the Egyptian pleated robes... two major powers at the time.

I don't think it's valid, but I'm having fun imagining see-through linen kilts.

I'm just cheerfully wrong that way.

[Rigged]

Here's link to a site that sells ancient warriors made of pewter. It looks like they got the outfits pretty-much correct.

http://www.angelfire.com/tx/ToySoldier/knights.html

[Sir Robert]

Arch, I ain't gonna play the word game. Kilt, Celt, and Origin have their normal meaning as per Meriam-Webster.

Shay, Egyption, what on Earth are you talking about? Pharonic Egypt and it's culture and thus it's place as a fashon exporter fizzled out one and a half thousand years before the dates we are discussing.

Rigged, yes the Egyptions had a male skirt that obsolutely fits our definition of kilt but we know that the kilt today has it's origins in a wool blanket.

Arrg! Lets start this again: the kilt today is decended from the great kilt invented somewhere in Scotland before 1600. Prior to 1200 the Irish nobles wore the leine and brat which is ALMOST the same as the great kilt except the belt location.

So what do we know about our Pictish ancestors? Almost nothing, except that their religion, language, and culture were different from that of the Celts.

What little we know of them is post Celtic contact, the Pictish culture did not last long after that.

I'm trying to find a Celt-kilt connection, but it just ain't happening.

[Rigged]

It could just be that a kilt is such a practical garment that similar garments keep popping up throughout history because they just make so much sense.

The garment we call a kilt today obviously (to me anyway) comes directly from Celtic culture. The combination of the arrangement of pleats, the flat apron, the direction of wrap all seem to be direct decendents of a Scottish (and therefore Celtic) design.

I hope that no one would be offended by the fact that many design ideas used in Europe were borrowed (some would say "stolen") from the Egyptians ( who, in their turn "borrowed" from the Babylonians and Phoenicians and others).

A culture would have to be completely isolated from the rest of humanity to be a truly "pure" culture. Such cultures tend to be rather backwards and stagnant.

Thanks to the Celts, the Scots, the Brits and the Irish -- and, more recently, a guy name Steven, the modern kilt is a vast improvement over similar garments that came before.

[Manu]

I dont think the kilt is necessarily celtic. Celts unbifurcated garments, but again so did most people during that time. The Scots just evolved that unbifurcated garment into something new, just like other nations/cultures developed other unbifurcated garments.

[Archangel]

Arch, I ain't gonna play the word game. Kilt, Celt, and Origin have their normal meaning as per Meriam-Webster.

I'm trying to find a Celt-kilt connection, but it just ain't happening.

the dictionary is for the word game, you are asking for the history game. For that we have to agree on what you are looking for in history terms.

[Shay]

Shay, Egyption, what on Earth are you talking about? Pharonic Egypt and it's culture and thus it's place as a fashon exporter fizzled out one and a half thousand years before the dates we are discussing.

Rigged, yes the Egyptions had a male skirt that obsolutely fits our definition of kilt but we know that the kilt today has it's origins in a wool blanket.

I was being facectious. I don't think the kilt as a pleated, unbifurcated garment is any more 'Celtic' than using stuff to make your hair stick up for battle- yes, it was a trait of Celtic warriors to do so at one point, but so have plenty of other cultures.

Pleated skirts (as Rigged pointed out more clearly) are found the world over. There's the fustanella and hakama around today for starters, but many ancient civilizations showed pleated MUGs on their statues of men and boys. The kilt is simply the most codified and yet varied of them all.

Kilts as a garment under that name are specific to Scotland, Ireland, Wales, etc, and as such I count them as Celtic garments until people sop asking my husband if he's from Scotland every time he wears one.

[Kilts_Knave]

I hope I am not overstepping boundaries, but I had a similar question Matt Newsome answered. I have cut and pasted it here:

As Todd has pointed out, Irish kilt wearing is a relatively new thing. Most of the settlers of the Ulster plantation, beginning in the early seventeenth century, were Scots (although Lowland Scots and not kilt-wearers). But I suspect that this was the impetus behind the various pipe bands and the like that Todd describes. People in Northern Ireland of Scottish descent wanted to wear the kilt so as to identify themselves as Scottish rather than Irish. Then I guess the Irish were motivated to wear the kilt, as well, as a connection to their "Celtic anscestors." Remember, there was a beleif in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (well some people still have it now) that the kilt was some form of an ancient garment whose origins lay in the misty past of celtic legends. I suspect very few Irish who wore the kilt realized they were wearing a garment that developed in Scotland over the coarse of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

But in any case, kilt wearing in Ireland was never as common as it was in Scotland, has been relatively recent, and most Irish would recognize it as "a Scottish thing."

The trend for the Irish to wear the kilt has increased dramatically in the past decade or so. Prior to the introduction of the Irish county tartans in the mid-1990s, Irish people who wanted to wear a kilt usually wore the solid saffron kilts of the Irish regiments (that Todd has mentioned) or a solid green kilt (green for Ireland). There were a small handfull of Irish tartans, but these were few and far between, and not widely available.

The line of Irish county tartans by The House of Edgar changed the whole perception of the Irish kilt. Keep in mind that these are, strictly speaking, fashion tartans. None of them have ever been officially adpoted by the counties that they are supposed to represent. What we have here is the case of a Scottish tartan company who had the ingenius idea to design, on their own initiative, tartans for every Irish county to open the market for kilts and tartan accessories to a much wider consumer base -- and it has been very successful. Lochcarron of Scotland, around the same time, introduced a line of tartans for the Irish provinces.

There are also some Irish family tartans, some ligitimate, some not. What I mean by this is that some, like the Cian (or O'Carrol) tartan, were designed by the societies representing the families, officially adopted by them, etc. So even though they are recent (the Cian tartan is from 1984) they are legitimate family tartans. Others simply fall into the category of "fashion" tartans (some might even say a hoax!). I hate to say it, but there are some companies out there who, if someone calls and says, "I want a kilt in the O'Fallon tartan" will say, "Sure!" and then proceed to weave up a length of a tartan like MacLean with the red changed to blue and call it "O'Fallon." (I just picked the name O'Fallon here as a fictional example).

Furthermore, the Scottish Tartans Society has recorded a number of Irish family name tartans whose source was the pattern book _Clans Originaux_ from Paris in the 1880s. Well, the Scottish Tartans Authority has recently been able to obtain information about this pattern book from the Pendleton Mill in Oregon (who have the only known copy) and discovered that it contains only your standard Scottish clan tartans and no Irish tartans at all! So where did all these Irish family tartans in the STS register come from??? It's something that is being studied as we speak.

All that being said, there are some traditional Irish tartans. The Ulster tartan, for instance, was found buried on a farm in Ulster and dates from c. 1600. (Note, it is believed that it was Scottish woven cloth). The Connaught tartan is supposed to have been from a sample found in the west of Ireland. But keep in mind that these tartans bear these names because of the locations they were found, not because that is what the Irish originally called them. There is absolutely no indication that the Irish ever had named tartans.

So, all this is to say is that Irish kilt wearing is a recent trend, and if the history or legitimacy of a particular tartan matters to you, do some research and find out the story before you buy.

Aye,
Matt

Thanks Matt!