Talk:Tartan/Archive 1

Archive 1

Yanks in kilts

Disregard

 – Off-topic; this page is not for addressing how to edit other articles than Tartan.

The reader here may be amused or irritated to read the following assertion, at Talk:Black tie

"The 'kilt' can be worn by anyone with scottish heritage (including by marrage), or from a location with a tartan (Canada and each province has a tartan that would be appropriate to wear). Many organizations also have a tartan (wearing that as well is acceptable). The point is to wear an appropriate tartan. Wearing the tartan is accepting the leadership of that "clan." A mute point today. There are many approriate tartans to wear. A person form Chile would wear the Cochrane tartan, to recognize the great contribution of the Admiral Cochrane to that country. Of course, if you have ever worn a kilt, the Government tartan is always appropriate. see link www.electricscotland.com/webclans/weartart.htm --User:Glenlarson"

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wetman (talk • contribs) 01:49, 4 February 2005 (UTC)

The link to electricscotland.com seems to be broken. Has the page moved?  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 17:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This is part of a "dscussion" at Talk:Black tie. Here it is in whole, with last response. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Glenlarson (talk • contribs) 05:53, 4 February 2005 (UTC)

"Highland regalia"

Resolved

 – To the extent any of this is on-topic, it is covered in the article's "Etiquette" section.

"Kilts have become normal wear for formal occasions, for example being hired for weddings in much the same way as top hat and tails are in England or tuxedos across the pond, and can be worn by anyone regardless of nationality or descent. " A recipe for fools. One could with equal truth say that any coat-of-arms can be selected and painted on the doors of one's SUV, "by anyone regardless of nationality or descent." In such circles, it is thought quite witty when someone refers to the North Atlantic as "the pond". --Wetman 19:17, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Now, coat-of-arms are "issued" by varrious authorities, usually governmental in nature, but also from some other "real" authorities, like varrious royal houses, and religious authorities. They can be obtained by those that are acceptable, in some conditions, like military officers and accidemic educated.

The "kilt" can be worn by anyone with scottish heritage (including by marrage), or from a location with a tartan (Canada and each province has a tartan that would be appropriate to wear). Many organizations also have a tartan (wearing that as well is acceptable). The point is to wear an appropriate tartan. Wearing the tartan is accepting the leadership of that "clan." A mute point today. There are many approriate tartans to wear. A person form Chile would wear the Cochrane tartan, to recognize the great contribution of the Admiral Cochrane to that country. Of course, if you have ever worn a kilt, the Government tartan is always appropriate. see link www.electricscotland.com/webclans/weartart.htm --User:Glenlarson

"A person from Chile would wear the Cochrane tartan, to recognize the great contribution of Admiral Cochrane to that country." Well, I live where Lorna Doone cookies are baked... But, which tartan would be appropriate if you were, say, from Vladivostok and stationed in Antarctica, one wonders... A "mute point" indeed! Similar fantasies encourage truly naive Americans to send away for "their" family crest-- say Smith-- and display it with pride to the gawping locals! The text remains in the article, what one calls "only a snare for geese."

—"I think we're all bozos on this bus." -Firesign Theater. --Wetman 01:47, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)--Wetman 01:47, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The original text was copied form the article titled kilt. Many may be upset at others wearing the kilt; however, Scottish culture has been spread around the world, including India and Pakistan, or any "British" Caribbean island, which have pipe bands. Few would think them of Scottish extraction, but they may be, and would have "right" to a kilt, regardless. They may even have a Scottish name!

One point of vies is but that, one. The talk page provides a forum for review, and yes many naive people do get "snared" ( see also Talk:Tartan). Don't know it is assumed I am a "Yank" but I do have more Scot blood than any other, all be it low land, but not the "name."

The reference for the assertion was provided. Do they live near?

Now white tie, was first what a Swed would wear to a wedding! --User:Glenlarson

Cornish and Welsh tartan kilts

Resolved

 – Covered in article now.

Just added a few brief words and links about the modern Cornish and Welsh Tartan Kilt phenomena. Bretagne 44 20:53, 1 March 2005 {UTC)

This isn't the Kilt article. We do now have mention of Cornish tartans, though not of Welsh ones, and might need to include the latter.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:58, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

The article now covers these in the appropriate subsections of the "Tartans for specific purposes" section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:06, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Citation/POV

Resolved

 – This opinion material quoted below was removed from the article long ago.

I was very tempted to simply remove the section but would rather give time for faults to be fixed:

Held up by widespread perception that the bill's initial drafting was unduly influenced by a self-interested minority industry faction, it is hoped that new law may yet emerge formalising tartan's status for the good of all. The reasons for needing a formal registry are severalfold: there are no clear definitions of colours, there is no standard definition of the sett, i.e., geometry, or spacing of the tartan's patterns. This lack of definitions has led to dumping of miscolored and malshaped tartans in the North American markets.

Widespread? says who?. Hoped by who? Reasons only given for the registry none against? Why should it matter what floods the American market. The para is simply editor pov and not impartial. It needs citation or major rewording. Alci12 17:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

"Right" to wear a tartan

Resolved

 – This sort of thing is covered by the article's "Etiquette" section now.

Speaking as a Scot, it is my sincere opinion that the kilt, like any other item of clothing, can be worn by anyone. It's nice to wear the "right" tartan if such a thing exists for your ancestry, but since the whole concept of clan tartan was made up after the clan system had largely collapsed, I don't think it's worth getting worked up about. Daibhid C 10:42, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Daihbhid, the wearing of kilts and tartan has spread far beyond Scotland, I wore one at my wedding as an alternative to the boring old suit. I'm an Englishman who has lived in Ireland for the last decade. Based on my ancestry, place of work and place of residence I can identify thirteen different tartans that I can wear, all but one of them a late 20th century design. There is a new tradition now and I like it. EddieLu 11:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Photo of loom

Resolved

 – The image has long been included in the article.

I have uploaded a photo to commons of a Tartan loom [1], which might be useful on this article in the future, but doesn't currently seem relevant since there is little here about the style of weave used in tartans. I couldn't write such a section myself, but given the different fabric weights and styles of use I'm sure there's something interesting to be said... Karora 12:56, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Very nice. Quite relevant, and pretty interesting.--Celtus (talk) 10:36, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Fashion

Resolved

 – There is no such image as File:Plaidpattern.png any longer, so nothing to discuss going forward.

A picture was added to the fashion section of the article; more specifically, the paragraph on "hipster". It was removed without explanation but complements the section well. Is there a reason that I'm missing? The picture in question: File:Plaidpattern.png —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ehhhhhhnnnnnn (talk • contribs) 04:30, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually there was an explanation in the edit summary: the illustration was excessive. For further explanation, it was a low quality photograph of tangential relevance to the article. Snapshots added by an uploader who edits almost nothing else usually turn out to be efforts by people to shoehorn their own self-portraits into articles. If this surmise was in error, apologies. But it still wasn't very necessary or relevant. Durova³³³ 04:44, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

English tartan

Resolved

 – The article no longer says anything about "check" being a northern English term or tartan being an English invention; the rest of this is a matter for Talk:Kilt or Talk:History of the kilt.

It says that tartan is called 'check' in the north of England. It might be called check by some, but it's also called Tartan! The national dress of Northumbria is the Northumbrian tartan, not 'check'. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 121.72.66.143 (talk) 08:32, 10 December 2006 (UTC).

I've never heard it called a check by anyone in Northumberland. They call it a tartan. The only people I've heard call it a check are Scots - usually a derogatory reference, e.g. "Of course it's not a really a tartan, it's a check!" Admitedly it is a check - but it's properly called a tartan! Anjouli 12:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm concerned about the section which says that tartan was invented by an Englishman. The oldest tartan-style fabric yet found dates to some three thousand years ago, which well predates England or Englishmen. Now, it's true that our modern form of the kilt was invented by an Englishman, but tartan? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.114.39.175 (talk) 19:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

What you say about the kilt is out of date actually. The small kilt, which is basically the bottom half of the belted plaid or 'great kilt' was already in evidence just before 'englishman' Rawlinson. He did promote it though, even if he didnt actually invent it - see kilt section for more details. As for 'tartan' - check designs can be found in just about all cultures, so it wasnt 'invented' by anyone, however it reached its fullest development in Scotland. 80.177.198.45 (talk) 17:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Take it from this Northumbrian; folk here in rural Northumbria call it both "check" and "tartan", with "check" being more common (along with "drab" and "plaid"). "Check" is just another word for the pattern. Nothing derogatory about it. Sigurd Dragon Slayer (talk) 05:08, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Hallstatt culture

Resolved

 – We're using other sources for the Hallstatt tartan material, and this date error is no longer in the article.

According to the textile historian E. J. W. Barber, the Hallstatt culture, which is linked with ancient Celtic populations and flourished between 400 BC to 100 BC, produced tartan-like textiles. Some of them were recently discovered, remarkably preserved in Salzburg, Austria.

I'd like to point out that the culture that flourished in the area between 400 BC to 100 BC is not called Hallstatt culture, but La Tène culture. I don't have the referenced book, so I cannot check if the mistake was already in the original (in which case the question arises which information is correct, the date or the culture), or if in the book, perhaps only a date or the name of the culture is given and the other information was added by the editor, and therefore I don't know what to correct. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:26, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Hipsters and tartans

Resolved

 – There is no such material in the article any longer.

The section under fashion about hipsters contains NO verified references, the one reference given does not mention tartan or plaid once, and is of dubious merit in any case. The paragraphs reads like original research. It might be better to be bold and delete the whole section until some reference can be found. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.207.146 (talk) 23:56, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

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Mummies of Xinjiang

Resolved

 – Our material on this has been updated.

Where is the article's mention and description of the Tartans of the mummies of Xinjiang, China?75.21.100.52 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 07:24, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't know when the Tarim mummies were added to the article but they are mentioned. I also added Xinjiang to be more specific geographically. ICE77 (talk) 07:44, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

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Proposed inclusion criteria for List of tartans

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Talk:List of tartans#Inclusion criteria, a proposal for a three-point list of inclusion criteria. There are at least 7000 tartans and we cannot account for them all in a single article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:41, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Intro

Resolved

 – The lead section now covers both of these points.

I see someone has reverted my change adding ‘plaid’ as a US term for tartan (not an incorrect term as the article claims). The source for this is Merriam Webster dictionary [[2]].

Also someone has reverted my change saying that tartan is a word for the pattern itself (on any material eg paper) as well as a patterned cloth. Any dictionary will confirm this.

Please don’t revert such changes. Ben Finn (talk) 21:36, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

PS the article itself already states the latter point later on.Ben Finn (talk) 21:45, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Proposed new section on government tartans

Resolved

 – We have the subject well-covered now both at this article, as to history, and at List of tartans, as to illustrating the ones still in use.

Various of the Wikipedia articles on Scottish Regiments (e.g. the article on the current Royal Regiment of Scotland) refer to Black Watch tartan, or to Government no 1, or to Government no 1A, but they are sometimes ambiguous as to whether they really mean 1 or 1A or what the difference is. I think it would help to explain this in one place, which the various articles on individual regiments could refer to. I propose adding a subsection under "Other Tartans" on this pages called "Government Tartans" and listing there either just 1 and 1A, explaining the origins and difference, or possibly listing all the other Government Tartans that are included in what I believe is the official specification, UK/SC/6335. Any better suggestions or objections?Johnstoo (talk) 16:22, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I decided that the best place for this list was in the "List of tartans" page so have added a starter version there.Johnstoo (talk) 12:17, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

@Johnstoo: That was a good call (and I edited the List of tartans section that's above your government section to no longer be partially redundant with it). However, as I've suggested in a thread below, the Tartan article really does need to better cover the overall history of regimental tartans (without trying to be a list of them all, or getting into WP:MILHIST levels of military-unit detail mongering). Something I plan to get to eventually (I have the sources for it).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:56, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm now done with this; see Tartan#Regimental tartans.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:35, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Unsourced quotations

Resolved

 – All three are now accounted for.

There are three unsourced quotations in the article. They are precise and in pre-modern English, so I don't think they are bogus, but we need sources for them. My searches so far have just been turning up other websites parroting Wikipedia. These likely all came from the same book, but I don't know which one it is (and it doesn't seem to be any of the ones I have). The quotations are all important material, too, so are not just something to delete.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:45, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I've replaced one of these with a sourced equivalent (though a not-quite-identical translation) from Grameid. The other two, pertaining to the Highland Society of London's 1815 letter and response to it, are from Blair Urquhart's rather obscure book Identifying Tartans (1994).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:05, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Diaspora

Resolved

 – Diaspora is covered. Portgual stuff added to to-do list in newer section.

The traditional dress of inhabitants of Nazare (Nazareth) in Portugal is a southern European interpretation of Tartan/Plaid. Legend has it this was from when the Scots landed there to help the Spanish and Portuguese defeat Napolean's army. The locals were so happy to see them or so taken with their garments that they fashioned lighter, more colorful versions. The Scots have been stationed so far and wide that this can't be the only instance of locals adopting Tartan as their own. —Preceding unsigned comment added by N.anderthal (talk • contribs) 22:29, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

@N.anderthal: Sorry no one has replied to you until now. We would need reliable sources for something like this. However, the article probably does need a section on use of tartan outside Scotland and the Scottish diaspora in US/CA/AU.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:05, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I've worked diaspora material into the 20th century section. Added the Portugal stuff to a list of non-Scottish material to cover, below.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:20, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Legal protection

Resolved

 – This section seems to be in good shape.

The "Registration" and "Etiquette" sections contained a kind of random commingling of legal (intellectual property) information in them, and I found good sourcing for more such information, so I merged that all into a "Legal protection" section, and put all three as subsections under a "Regulation" heading.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:23, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Irish Clans

Resolved

 – The material in question is no longer in the article, other than brief mention of modern Irish district tartans and an Irish family tartan.

The line "The Irish people had clans too, except each clan mostly lived within its own community, also known as a county. So far, there are 32 counties in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland".

True there are 32 counties in the island of Ireland but they are not connected in any way to the Irish clans. The county system was imposed on Ireland by the English administration and based on the English county system, it's not native to Ireland in any way. It still exists of course and to the people that live in them there is firece loyalty, I live in County Louth.

Before the gradual conquest Ireland was made up of kingdoms e.g. Oriel, Meath, Connacht etc with an over-all High King.

EddieLu 16:14, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I had enough and since no one countered my notes above I removed the section on Irish Clans, as it was basically made up.

The concept of Irish Clans is a relatively recent one, and indeed the Irish Govt. has recently withdrawn the courtesy recognition it used to give to Chiefs of the Name following the McCarthy Mor fiasco.

As for Irish clan tartans again these are very recent and have no basis in tradition and are not connected to the history of tartan.

The only clan tartan recognised by the Chief Herald of Ireland is that of Clan Cian.

The county system in Ireland is a local government administrative one and not connected to the old Gaelic system. EddieLu 12:33, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

'Irish County' tartans are modern and tartan as we know it today in Ireland does not have a long history, the 1600s 'Ulster tartan' is probably from a Scots settler --80.177.198.45 (talk) 14:16, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

The article now covers all of this (that is sourceable and worth covering).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:01, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Other sections that need some work

Resolved

 – All of these sections are well-developed now.

The "Colour: shades and meaning" section is missing "weathered", though it is mentioned later in our article. I have a source for this and for generally improving that section when I get around to it. (J. Charles Thompson's So You're Going to Wear the Kilt covers all these terms in considerable detail.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:20, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: "Weathered" turns out to be just another name for "ancient". Anyway, I have overhauled this section, too, with addl. source.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Or not. Sources actually did not entirely agree with each other. I've produced the best synthesis of them I can muster.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:25, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

The "Dress, hunting, and mourning" section on tartans-by-purpose is missing Highland dance tartans, a whole category. The material is confusing dress and dance tartans, which are distinct categories.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:38, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: I have fixed this problem, with several additional sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:43, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Also, the widely separated "History of registration" and "Registration" sections are redundant and need to merge (some of the material in the former needs to merge into the planned section on clan tartans, though; see thread further above).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:38, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: This has been resolved in my recent overhaul.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:07, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

The "Modern use" section should not stop dead at Queen Victoria, but continue to the present. Much of the material in the "Tartans for specific purposes" subsections "Corporate and commercial" and "Fashion" really belongs in the "Modern use" history section, with those two other sections being rewritten to discuss tartans that are for commercial and fashion purposes, not the general history of tartan in the abstract being used in modern commerce and fashion.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:43, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: I've done all this now, with addition of some new material, though the "20th century to present" section needs more, probably from Tartan: Romancing the Plaid.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:37, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Done. I've used all sorts of sources to round out this section on modern tartan.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:48, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Kirkin' o' the tartan

WP has no article (or article section) on this curious ritual (common in the diaspora and actually traceable to Scotland, but long abandoned there). It should probably be addressed under Diaspora and globalisation, for lack of a better place.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:44, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

"Jacobite" tartan

Resolved

 – Article covers it now.

I've run across several claims that 1707-onward Jacobites wore one or more specific tartans, that are identified. But so far I can't find proof of this.

In M. B. Paterson (2001), p. 172, footnote 38, is this claim: "the Jacobite sett has been known from 1712 'and is claimed to have been popular in 1707 when Lowlanders wore it as a protest against the Union of the Parliaments.' This is sourced to Margaret MacDougall's 1974 revision of Robert Bain's Clans and Tartans of Scotland.

However, in the SRT, here's what I find:

• Jacobite, Old [3] - "Several 19th century hard tartan specimens of this pattern are known from museum collections. Nothing is known of its origins. Given an 1850 date for archiving."
• Jacobite No. 2 [4] - "This sett appears in a collection made by the weaving firm Patons of Tillicoultry. The samples are undated but the collection is known to have been put together between c.1880-1950. The Jacobite sample is thought to date to the 1930's."
• Jacobite - 1850 [5] - "Details from W and A Smith's 'Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland', pub. 1850. The authors state that this pattern was taken from a silk scarf or plaid manufactured in 1712 but for which they offer no evidence beyond the family tradition of the unnamed lady said to have owned it when they were writing in 1850. Apparently based on the Smiths' claim, W & AK Johnston state (1896), again without any evidence, that this tartan was adopted by the Jacobites prior to the '15."

So, the third of these seems to be the source of the claim, but SRT considers it unreliable, and for good reason. I'm not really sure what to report in our own article. It needs (badly) to serve the purpose of refuting oft-repeated legends about "old" tartans, so we should probably cover this one way or another.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:05, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I managed to work it in.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:26, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Gauls

Resolved

 – Found enough sourcing to add some stuff to article

I've read repeatedly (in sources I no longer own; this was back in the 1980s and 1990s) that according to Roman writers of late antiquity, the Gauls commonly wore "striped or chequered" cloth, Latin lacking separate words for the two concepts. I think it might have even been in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico (58–49 BC), but I'm not sure; perhaps something from the early ADs. At any rate, it seems worth including under "Pre-medieval origins" if the details can be dug up somewhere.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:57, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Also: ca. 100 BC [more likely 60–30 BC, time period of the writing of his Bibliotheca Historia], Greek historian Diodorus Siculus described continental Celts as wearing clothing "brightly coloured and embroidered ... chequered in design, with separate cheques close together and in various colours", and seems to be describing tartan or something similar to it. I remember encountering this before in proper sources, though in this case I found it on a random website by Googling around. So a proper source will be needed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:16, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

D. W. Stewart in Old & Rare Scottish Tartans (1893) [6] has on p. 8 a quote of some side commentary on this, from the editor (E. G. Cody) of volume 1 the 1885 Scottish Text Society edition of John Lesley's The Historie of Scotland:

The Latin braccæ [what the Romans called Gaulish trews] is generally understood to be equivalent to our breeks. There are, however, traces of the Latin word being used in a wider sense to mean a loose flowing garment. ... We find braccæ described as pictæ and virgatæ, coloured and striped. Perhaps the original braccæ, which so took the attention of the Romans when they met the Gauls, were striped and party-coloured, and so gave rise to the name. In Irish, breacan still means a plaid. It would seem, then, that the Latin word is borrowed from Celtic.

This is interesting (iffy), but fails to cite the original Roman sources, so I'm still left looking for what those are.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:26, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I've found some more material, including a Virgil quote, and some info that Cody's etymology was bogus. Worked this into the pre-medieval section.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:12, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Twill construction

Resolved

 – The "Weaving construction" section has been completely redone with reliable, clear sources.

The "Construction" section begins with "Each thread in the warp crosses each thread in the weft at right angles."

However, I think this is wrong, and it should read something like Traditional tartan cloth is a 2/2 twill. Each pair of threads in the warp crosses a pair of threads in the weft at right angles. This produces a characteristic diagonal pattern when the material is examined closely. Then add a close-up illustration.

I am not a weaver, though, and am not certain this is the very best wording to express what tartan "is" from a construction standpoint.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:55, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: I've used wording like the above, and will later take and upload a close-up photo, since I can't find one on Commons that is clearly tartan and not some other form of twill.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:47, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Further update: I merged more detailed wording out of the lead and into this section. I think it is okay, but someone more experienced with textile terminology should look it over. I've asked for some review at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Textile Arts.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:50, 15 May 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 11:07, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Meeting with dead silence, I have ordered a book on tartan weaving. [sigh]  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:35, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

The pairs thing above was wrong. Each single weft thread goes over two then under two though the warp; it staggers by one thread on each pass, which has the effect of making also each warp thread cross two weft threads. Between three or four sources we have this covered now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:50, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something, the sentence that bothered you is trivially true of anything made on a loom, regardless of pairing. —Tamfang (talk) 01:29, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Good point. I'm still working that material over with additional sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

A note on citation style, and WP:FRINGE approach

In overhauling this article (for a month or more already), I retained the original citation style, for cases in which we have to cite the same source at multiple pages, which was to use markup like {{cite book | ... |ref=SJD}} in an endnote, then in the text <ref>[[#SJD|Scarlett (1990)]], p. 37.</ref>. I thought about switching to {{sfn}} format, which accomplishes the same goal with less manual coding, but did not for the simple reason that the hand-coded style is more flexible. In particular, it is easy to do nested citations, e.g.: <ref>[[#SJD|Scarlett 1990]], p. 37, quoting: {{cite book | ... |ref=XYZ}}</ref> followed later by <ref>[[#XYZ|Whoever (date)]], p. xiv</ref> And it is also easy to add notes to a particular page(s) citation, which is something sfn format cannot handle.

Maybe more importantly, though, I have taken to attributing authors inline in the text in the style "Scarlett (1990)" – or in the event of two authors with the same surname, "D. W. Stewart (1893)". This is a style more often seen in science topics, but it is actually rather vital here because many authors published works with very similar titles, the titles sometimes changed between successive editions, and many authors produced more than one relevant work to cite. Scarlett himself advised this style for such reasons.

This topic is also unusually prone to "legends" being passed down from one author to another, originally with no basis but repeated so often (sometimes with something of a politicised motivation) they have acquired a sense of incontrovertible fact about them, at least in the minds of many of the readers who will arrive at our article after encountering wild claims about "ancient" clan tartans (or whatever) on some blog. In encyclopedic writing, this makes direct attribution often more important than it would be in some other textile-related article. It's important for the reader to be able to understand at first glance when a claim is coming from a romanticized Victorian work or from a work of modern scholarship, especially when these views are juxtaposed.

Part of the "job" of this article is to dispel such legends when modern research can dispense with them (and toward this end, I've labeled the "legends" as such when addressing them). This topic has to be approached with WP:FRINGE in mind, because a large number of unsupportable claims have been made about tartan history, and they are subject to intense and emotional faith on the part of some writers and many of our readers. (The irrationality and heat brought in defense of some of the tartan legends in online forums is what inspired me to overhaul this article in the first place, because it was doing nearly nothing to address them, and was even repeating a few of them based on weak sourcing; we have similar problems in other articles on Highland dress, but one thing at a time....) This is not just my opinion, but a warning issued by all modern writers on tartan, who observe a strong trend of legendry floating around the subject and passed from book to book.

This also means that more than the usual care has to be mustered in editorially evaluating source reliability; it is not enough to simply find a secondary source and cite it willy-nilly without carefully considering how it fits into the entire picture of tartan research, as a large number of those modern sources (especially Web-based and journalistic ones) rely on Victorian primary "research" that took great "Ossian"-flavoured liberties with the facts and their interpretation. This even applies to bodies one might assume are the most reliable, such as Scottish Register of Tartans and the previous tartan databases.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:33, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Comments

Resolved

 – All 7 line-items accounted for.

Being a fan of Scotland and tartans, I read this article with much interest. I learned several things but I think the article can be improved and expanded. I made several improvements, primarily to the layout and the structure. I have a few comments.

1. The introduction briefly mentioned two of the most famous tartans, then it mentioned them again later. I consolidated the information in a single place and created a section for two of the most popular tartans. I also added two images.

2. The article is not clear about dress and hunting tartans. It provides an explanation for the dress tartan but it doesn't really say anything about the hunting tartan (explaining them as a "Victorian conception" is insufficient). My understanding is that hunting tartans are for the outdoors and that there is no correlation to hunting.

3. This article should have a dedicated section that lists adjectives that describe tartans such as ancient, muted, modern, dress, hunting, mourning and universal.

4. The tartan with the caption ""Ye principal clovris of ye clanne Stewart" which appeared in the Sobieski Stuarts's forgery Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842" should be properly labeled a "Clan Stewart/Stuart tartan" instead (possibly with the additional label of "dress" since the typical red of the standard "Clan Stewart/Stuart tartan" is replaced by white).

5. I believe the sentence "Both organisations are registered Scottish charities and record new tartans (free in the case of STS and for a fee in the case of STWR) on request." should really say STA rather than STS. It seems logical to me.

6. It would be nice to load an image of the Falkirk tartan in the origins section and an image of the Balmoral tartan in the etiquette section.

7. I am not completely sure whether the Black Watch is truly also called also Universal or that specific tartan happens to be a universal tartan. The big or small u make a difference in this context.

ICE77 (talk) 08:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

@ICE77: Taking these points in order:

1. Good!
2. "Hunting" tartans are now addressed adequately.
3. "Ancient", "muted" and "modern" are now covered in the colour section; "dress", "hunting" and "mourning" (plus "dance") are covered in the section on tartans by purpose. "Universal" isn't really a thing (it's a marketing term used to try to sell more tartan). We do mention it, though, under "Etiquette".
4. The image in question is no longer in the article.
5. The "STS" typo has been fixed.
6. There's no free image to use of the Falkirk tartan. The Balmoral is included, though in the "Family" section where it is first mentioned.
7. "Universal" has been removed from that sentence; you're right that it has been called "a universal tartan" but not "the Universal tartan".

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:51, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: Actually Black Watch was named "Universal" at one point, and the article now covers this. It was a term that the War Office applied, when they had a Childers Reforms plan to impose the same tartan on all the Scottish regiments, a plan they abandoned. It was not a name in regular use, but a few post-1881 writers did mention it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:44, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Design principles

Resolved

 – Section on this now exists.

I'd love to see some info about tartan design principles, if any exist. If there is a registry, how similar is too similar? What motifs appear in related tartans? Are there tartans that combine motifs from two or more others? In other words, is there anything in tartanry that corresponds to the symbolic language of heraldry? —Tamfang 05:46, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

@Tamfang: I realize I'm answering you very late, but you might like to have a response anyway (and the questions are best answered, for the benefit of later readers, anyway). There is nothing like heraldry's set of rules and terminology when it comes to tartans. Design principles as a general matter might be something we could cover, if some sources could be found for it, but this is doubtful. "How similar is too similar" is going to be a matter of the inclusion criteria set by a particular database. The only one presently publicly running that I know of is the official Scottish Register of Tartans, and it offers some guidance here. I may work a reference to that into the our article (update: done). Tartans that combine design elements: surely; many tartans are loosely derived from other, pre-existing tartans (Black Watch in particular is "ancestral" to a large number of modern tartans). But I'm not sure that digging deep into that would be properly encyclopedic coverage of the general topic of tartan; more a matter for analysis and history of a particular tartan, e.g. at a specific clan's article in a tartan section. "What motifs appear in related tartans?" I don't really know what you mean by that. There isn't a catalogue of meanings assigned to things like thin black strips or wide bands of green.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:22, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

There mostly isn't a catalogue of meanings in heraldry either, but there is such a thing as allusion. —Tamfang (talk) 15:27, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Tamfang: Well, we don't seem to have any sources suggesting that elements in tartan design are understood allusions. Some modern tartans come with design notes in the databases (SRT, etc.) in which the designers share their inspirations, like what a particular colour choice meant to them, but it's not a "shared language" between designers. The colours section of the article already addresses this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:36, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

@Tamfang: Suprisingly, I was able, between a couple of major sources, to find enough design-principles material to create a short section on it, at Tartan#Styles and design principles. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:20, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! —Tamfang (talk) 23:20, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

@Tamfang: There's now an image gallery showing the different (surviving) styles, though the right-most needs to be replaced with a closeup (I have the thread count, and software to generate one, just have to get around to it).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:51, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

For the benefit of anyone coming along later: Design principles in general are now covered at the "Styles and design principles" section. The legend of heraldry-like colour motifs with meanings is covered in a footnote in the "Colour, palettes, and meaning" section (the separate legend of a "caste" system of colour is covered in a footnote under "16th century"). "How similar is too similar" is addressed in the "Registration" section. Various potentially confusing terms are covered in "Etymology and terminology" for the basics, and "Weaving construction" for the particulars.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:51, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Tartan vs. plaid

Resolved

 – The terms are now fully explained in the article; the Annunciation angel is also covered.

What's the difference? 71.234.109.192 (talk) 08:19, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Good question. I have noted a tendency to label old tartan "plaid" if it is found outside Scotland. see the Annunciation angel in "plaid" (painted 1333) at the Uffizi gallery Florence [Angel in "plaid" cloak]. If this picture was painted or located in Scotland, we would without hesitation refer to the cloak as tartan. Personally, being rather fond of the painting, I tend to refer to the angel as dressed in tartan. So what if it's in Italy, angels have wings. Czar Brodie (talk) 00:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Tartan is plaid, but not vice versa?

I just watched a segment on CBS News Sunday Morning (originally aired 11/25/2007; re-ran 9/7/2008) entitled "Going Mad Over Plaid". In the article, Doria De La Chapelle, co-author of a book "Tartan: Romancing the Plaid" by Jeffrey Banks, Doria De La Chapelle, and Rose Marie Bravo] states, "A tartan plaid, first of all, is Scottish, as opposed to American or English. It's Scottish." The article concluded "In other words: all tartan is plaid, but not all plaid is tartan." I was never aware of such a distinction. It further explained that a tartan pattern has to be made of "perfect squares", whereas a "plaid" can have "stripes".

I was looking forward to comments on the article till I noted that comments expire 72 hours after the article airs.

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I someone could comment here on this rather strict definition of "tartan". Jbay54321 (talk) 14:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I just added a bit to the article about the term plaid. How i understand it, in Scotland plaid originally meant the garment known as the belted plaid worn before the modern kilt came into use. Because highland plaids, and later manufactured kilts, tended to be made up of tartan consisting of many colours, the terms plaid and tartan became confused and combined over the years, So before the confusion, plaid meant a type of garment/blanket, which could be made up of tartan; tartan was woven cloth on which patterns could be incorporated.

I just got Tartan: Romancing the Plaid out of the library, its one big beautiful book with gorgeous pics on every page :p.--Celtus (talk) 05:51, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

The article now explains this terminology adequately (without wallowing into opinions of individuals like De La Chapelle). However, we don't cover the Florentine angel in tartan cloak. I did find a working URL to get that image, but need to process it into Commons. It's on the to-do list.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:06, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

The painting is now covered in the article, but without an inlined image, as the design is too faint to be useful in the Tartan article, and I found a better medieval, non-Scottish tartan image.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:19, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

On the source-access difference between Victorian and modern tartan research

At some point, need to add something into the article explaining that a primary reason for the Victorian/modern split on the "ancient clan tartans" legend is specifically because the National Records of Scotland (formerly National Archives of Scotland) has indexed and made available large numbers of key period manuscripts (like copious records of Wilson & Son of Bannockburn) that Victorian writers simply did not have ready if any access to. I think a few pages in Scarlett (1990) briefly address this, but I'll need to hunt them down again. And even he was writing before the public Internet existed; Newsome, Eslea McDonald, and few other very recent researchers may have something to say about it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:56, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I've already quoted Thompson (1989) on the Victorian authors' bad habit of simply repeating whatever assertions they encountered in previous writing without much critical thinking being applied.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:01, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Irish tartan or alleged tartan

A while back, I ran into a source mentioning Irish nobles in Ulster having imported (and presumably wearing) Scottish tartan; but I didn't take note of it at the time and forgot which book or paper it was in.

There's a pervasive legend that the Irish were also commonly wearing tartan, and it needs to either be dispelled or proven correct at some point (see above RM discussion for how solidly some people believe that tartan is "Scottish and Irish"). Dunbar 1978 goes into some detail about how both the Irish and the Gaelic Scots (before the prevalence of the belted plaid) wore "mantles" (cloaks), over tunics (léine, often saffron-dyed), but (so far as I've read yet) does not indicate that the mantles were tartan. Various other writers I've already gone through said similar, and again did not mention evidence of the mantles being tartan.

Mackay (1924, p. 85) says:

Camden in his Britannia, first published in 1607, gives the following description of the Highland dress and armour : "They are clothed after the Irish fashion, in striped mantles, with their hair thick and long. In war they wear an iron head-piece and a coat of mail woven with iron rings; and they use bows and barbed arrows and broad swords."

So, that's one case of "striped".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Same author also makes it clear (perhaps without meaning to) that the term "mantle" was sometimes applied to plaids later:

The Rev. James Brome, in his travels over England, Scotland, and Wales, published at London in 1700, 8vo, gives (p. 183) the following description of the Highland dress and armour, which, although partly translated from Buchanan, has yet in it something original: "The Highlanders who inhabit the west part of the country ... go habited in mantles striped or streaked with divers colours about their shoulders, which they call pladden ....

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:06, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Found the Camden bit repeated in Dunbar (1979); incorporated it at end of Irish paragraph in "16th century" section. In lots and lots and lots of reading, this is the only period-piece I've seen suggest something that could be tartan in Ireland (and "striped" doesn't necessarily mean tartan); even this is contemporaneous with the Plantation of Ulster.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:02, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Clan tartans

Resolved

 – Error corrected, and "Clan tartans" section written.

User:2601:8C3:857D:5DD0:B592:73F3:E6AD:726D improperly added these comments (in bold) into the main article instead of the talk page:

The Dress Act of 1746 attempted to bring the warrior clans under government control by banning the tartan (tartan was not banned in the dress act - see the actual text) and other aspects of Gaelic culture. When the law was repealed in 1782, it was no longer ordinary Highland dress, but was adopted instead as the symbolic national dress of Scotland, a status that was widely popularised after King George IV wore a tartan kilt in his 1822 visit to Scotland. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the highland tartans were only associated with either regions or districts, rather than any specific Scottish clan. (no, clan tartans began to be identified as such from the end of the 18th century by the Highland Society of London and more widely Wilson's of Bannockburn)

I'll revert the edit but I think it's worth looking into by someone more knowledgeable. The Scotsman says that tartan cloth itself wasn't necessarily banned and The House of Tartan gives a late 18th century date for clan-specific tartans, not a 19th century one. Again, someone who is better versed in Scottish history and has the time might know better and how to track down more appropriate sources. TangoFett (talk) 23:07, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

The Dress Act (AKA Disclothing Act) claim does need closer examination. It was an act against Highland dress in general, but it might not have used the word tartan[e] specifically. "The end of the 18th century" is not correct. The Highland Society solicited "true clan tartans" from chiefs in 1815 (early 19th century) but many could not comply since there was mostly no such thing yet, while others newly adopted clan tartans. Some clans waited until later in the 19th century, especially after the mid-19th century (specifically 1842) publication of the Vestiarium Scoticum forgery, or even the early 20th in a few cases, to adopt a clan tartan. As for Wilson's, they and Lt.-Gen. Sir William Cockburn sent agents to collect "perfectly genuine patterns" from the Highlands from 1810 up to 1822 (again, early 19th century). These setts were numbered, given fanciful names, or named after prominent individuals, and not associated with any particular clans. (Those that are today used as clan tartans generally have completely different names, sometimes more than one, in the Cockburn Collection.) A source we can use is here. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:42, 8 May 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 22:49, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

This National Geographic article says that tartan per se was not banned by the Dress Act, but that the banning of kilts, Highland great coats, and trews (the garments typically made of tartan) reduced the Scots to wearing more mainstream European dress, and effectively the "everyday link to tartan was irrevocably severed". The article is quoting Peter MacDonald here, in a source we can also use (it analyses the Act of Proscription and its Dress Act in some detail).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:14, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I've addressed the error complaint this opened with (about tartan itself allegedly being banned), using some of the sources I mentioned. Also improved the chronological flow of material in that section. Updated: Also fixed the "tartan ban" error in the lead section, last night.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:44, 13 May 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 00:51, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Some additional points, and this all really needs to be worked up into a coherent, chronological "Clan tartans" first subsection under "Modern use" (though the "Modern use" header itself, bifurcating the "History" section, should probably go):

• 1831: James Logan published The Scottish Gael, a romanticized work that inspired some commercial weavers to invent a number of "clan tartans". This was after "the King's Jaunt" in 1822 but before Vestiarium Scoticum (1842).
• 1844: Publication of another dubious work, The Costume of the Clans, which purported to reveal a number of "clan tartans" without any evidence behind it. Some of the proposed tartans were nevertheless adopted.
• 1880: Clans Originaux was published in Paris by J. Claude Fres. & Cie. Several more purported clan tartans were adopted from this work.
• Early 20th century (during the latter Gaelic Revival and Scottish Renaissance): By this era, virtually all Scottish clans (armigerous and otherwise) had adopted at least one clan tartan. Perhaps the latest holdout was Baird, to 1950. Update: Whatever source I got that from is wrong or at least disputed, since another puts the date of the Baird tartan to 1906 (though with a later slight colour shift) [7].
• I have in old notes from the 1990s that one (single) clan tartan is purported to date to 1618, but I didn't note which one it was or what source said that (and I think it probably really meant that one of the modern, official clan tartans was adopted from a portrait dating to that era, not that a clan in 1618 declared they had an official clan tartan). It'll have to be looked up again. After downsizing my library from a backbreaking 5,000+ volumes to about 100, I no longer have a bunch of tartan books, but am re-acquiring some of them, so we'll see what they say, if no one else with access to a bunch of such books beats me to it.
• Official clan tartans (additional "side" tartans like hunting, dress, or dance) continue to be created into the 21st century. I ran into such a case late last year, though I didn't record which clan it was establishing a new tartan (it was a dance one as I recall, though). I would have found this while looking at clan association websites, so that would be how to find it again (and probably other instances like it). Update: Found it; it's the red version of MacGregor dance. The dance tartan is discussed here [8] and found in three colour palettes here. Two date to 1975, but one to 2005.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:14, 12 May 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 00:49, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: I have overhauled the article to have a coherent "Clan tartans" section, with a bunch of new info and sources, and with relevant pre-existing material massaged into it. I wrote it to be capable of splitting off into a side article fairly easily, if we thought that was warranted. Redirects like Clan tartan, Clan tartans, Scottish clan tartans, Highland clan tartan, etc., go to this section. I think this overhaul will much better serve our readers than making them wade through the entire long article to tease out tiny bits of clan-tartan-related detailia.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:06, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

A BBC documentary, Spinning a Yarn: The Dubious History of Scottish Tartan (which gets some minor things wrong but mostly agrees with the book sources I have) suggests, without any details or indication where they got this from, that "some MacDonalds", Clan Gregor, and the Gordons may have had early informal clan tartans. Not a great source, but it bears looking into in better sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:23, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

The 1618 clan tartan claim

Resolved

 – The claim has been accounted for in detail.

The claim I mentioned above, I've narrowed it down a little.

'The first documented effort to enforce a uniformity of tartan worn throughout an entire clan was in 1618, when Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun wrote to Murry of Pulrossie requesting that he bring the plaids worn by his men into “harmony with that of his other septs”. It was a Red Gordon!'[9]

As I said above, I had encountered this claim before. It's hard to know what to make of it without looking into a lot of old books; I'll add it to my to-do list. What I see in Googling around for this, is that "House of Gordon USA" says this, and dozens of other websites have copy-pasted it verbatim, with no one ever citing a period source. And the claim is vague; it could be referring to the size of the plaid (the plaid is a garment, not a pattern; in that era it would almost certainly have been referring specifically to the great kilt) or some other aspect than the tartan. Bears further research. If it does turn out to be early evidence of what amounts to a clan tartan that would be fascinating. But it also would not change the fact that almost all of them were adopted from 1815 onward.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:08, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I tracked it down to Innes of Learney, and integrated the material. It required moderating this article's long-standing implication that zero clan tartans pre-dated the late 18th century, though various claims like that the tartan in question is a known particular Gordon tartan are not sustainable. The sources actually conflict sharply on their ideas about what it was. I've documented this in a footnote.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:02, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Alleged 1793 commissioning of regimental and clan/sept tartans

Resolved

 – Dispelled in the article now.

In addition to the above, the House of Gordon USA clan association website claims:

'In 1793, Alexander, 4th Duke of Gordon commissioned three patterns based on the Government tartan (Black Watch) from William Forsythe of Huntly. He chose the version with the single yellow over check for himself and his new regiment, and subsequently offered the double and triple tram line versions to the two main Cadet Branches of the Family.'[10]

This would also be interesting if it could be substantiated by a source independent of the subject (especially given that this particular clan-society website has already proven unreliable on something).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:25, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

In Dunbar (1979) is the original 1793 material on which this embellished claim is based, and it says nothing of the sort. Forsyth (not Forsythe) made three variants of a regimental tartans, and the duke chose one. Nothing about clan tartans or cadet branches. I've covered this in the "Lack of further evidence of early adoption" section  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:20, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

D. W. Stewart and Thomas Innes of Learney

Resolved

 – Opinionated material from these authors has been balanced by cites to other researchers.

I've pored over the historical (and theoretical) material in these works – D. W. Stewart's from 1893, and Innes of Learney's from 1939. It's been quite a slog. Due to their propensity for quoting older material at great length, the books have been useful for a number of details throughout the article. As to their "clan tartans are ancient" theorizing, I have tried to give them a fair shake, a WP:DUE one, in light of modern tartan scholarship generally rejecting this viewpoint. (In short, I'm taking the WP:FRINGE approach that the popular but discredited viewpoint needs to be explained and dismissed with better evidence, not just swept under the rug.) This seemed best summarized as a subsection on the nature of the debate itself (which plenty of our readers would have no idea of before arriving here). That subsection still needs some work, relying more on modern books and their own summaries of the debate and where it has presently ended up; but it's a start.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:36, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I've balanced out the material from them by material from later, more research-than-advocacy-minded writers and the evidence they provide.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:36, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Morier's painting

Resolved

 – Kept the relevant point, removed the material that's misleading.

In the section on lack of evidence for early adoption, we have (with a source):

David Morier's well-known mid-18th-century painting of the Highland charge at the 1745 Battle of Culloden (right) shows the clansmen wearing various tartans, despite men charging in kindred groups. The setts painted differ from one another and very few of those painted resemble today's clan tartans.

Scobie (2012) claims that the painter relied on captured Highlanders as models, wearing whatever tartan they were told to put on. Scobie's article is irrational garbage, but if he's actually right about this particular claim, then the material quoted above (I think ultimately from J. Telfer Dunbar) is not actually a valid example of counter-evidence against the "ancient clan tartans" legend, and should be removed as misleading (though the accompanying illustration might be useable in the "17th–18th centuries" section). Our article at An Incident in the Rebellion of 1745 neither confirms nor denies Scobie's claim, so further source investigation is needed.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:47, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I found another source for the prisoners claim, so I have modified the passage to read: David Morier's well-known mid-18th-century painting of the Highland charge at the 1745 Battle of Culloden shows the clansmen wearing various tartans; very few of the setts painted resemble today's clan tartans. That point is actually still relevant, and not misleading.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:34, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Actually, Scarlett (1990, p. 23) says this is yet another legend. The original claim, from Archibald Campbell (1899) was: "The Highland soldiers must have been painted from prisoners, as it is impossible than an English solider, sitting as a model, could have put on the Highland dress so well." Baldfaced opinion with no basis, which later writers turned into certain fact. Regardless, the short version in the article now is better, because the depicted Highlanders not having matching plaids could have multiple explanations, like them all being paid models who brought their own outfits, or having been provided outfits from some random stockpile of tartan material that Morier had, or the artist just making up patterns that suited his fancy.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:40, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Dunbar (1979, p. 73) actually agrees with the prisoners story, and says it was accepted by the Jacobite Relics and Rare Scottish Antiquities Exhibition in Edinburgh in 1946.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:31, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Regimental tartans

Resolved

 – Section now exists, and the source conflict mentioned below has been dealt with.

We also need more coverage of the history of regimental and other military use. A good source for this will probably be The Uniforms & History of the Scottish Regiments, which I have obtained but not waded into yet. I also just re-obtained History of Highland Dress.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I have about half of this new section drafted.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:20, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Now about 4/5. It's been almost painful work, as The Uniforms & History of the Scottish Regiments in particular is very obtusely written. We also have an apparent source conflict, which I've spelled out here at a regiment article's talk page.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:41, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: The Tartan#Regimental tartans section now exists, and is comprehensive as I can make it with my available sources (and without bogging the reader down in regiment-naming and -merger trivia). I've tried to focus on tartan and tartans, not on units and their leaders.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:33, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

The source conflict mentioned above has not been resolved yet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:48, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Seems to be dealt with now. Two known sources versus an unknown conflicting one, so we're going with the two known ones.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:17, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Fencible regiments

Moved to Talk:Regimental tartan § Fencible regiments

Covering their tartans may be difficult, as sourcing is thin. One bit to use later: "The origins of the MacDonald (Clan Donald) tartan are equally vague [with that of Cameron of Erracht] but the similarity between the two, and also the MacDonell of Glengarry, suggests that the latter two were also military, probably Fencible, tartans, a theory supported by MacDonell of Glengarry in a letter in which he refers to the tartan being worn by his regiment." This is from (already cited elsewhere in the regimental section): Eslea MacDonald, Peter (January 2012). "The Original Cameron of Erracht Cloth?" (PDF). ScottishTartans.co.uk. Retrieved 24 June 2023.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:27, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Tartan colours

Resolved

 – Covered in the colour section to the extent sources address this idea.

The colours used in a tartan's sett do have certain meanings, as does the amount of one colour in relation to other colours. I'm not very sure about many of them and would appreciate a list of the colours and the usual meaning, so as to be better able to read classic Clan settsn (and also weigh the claims made by the many "fictive" and fashion setts, chuckle chuckle... ;=} ).

I know there is one for landownership (brown or green?), one for coastal or Islay clans (blue, IIRC), yellow or gold--wealthy clan (e.g. Buchanan), black--clan with much ties to the clergy, there is one for livestock-wealth (was it green for the pasture or read for the meat?), military connections (red?)... What else are there, and could an authority on the topic pls. insert them in the Tartan article?

Thanks,

DJ Vollkasko
Temporary Newton Library
http://www.stillnewt.org/library
(User:212.149.48.43 11:08:03 8 February 2006)

The article now covers this, as entirely a modern thing. There is nothing like an established code of meanings for colours. Rather, the designer of the tartan asserts what inspiration they had for using particular colours, and this is best recorded at that tartans's individual entry in a tartan database. (Example: [11]).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

PS: I can't find any source anywhere for ideas like yellow meaning money, black meaning clergy, etc., etc. Modern tartans, however, frequently come with notes in the tartan databases like TartanRegister.gov.uk indicating why designers chose particular colours, but these are specific to a designer and are not a shared set of symbolic meanings. PS: The "16th century" section covers how red setts were more common in the eastern clans and green/blue ones in the west.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:58, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

The legend of colours conveying a heraldic-style differencing system is addressed at the "Colour, palettes, and meaning" section in a footnote. In lots and lots and lots of reading, I have yet to encounter any claims that brown/green stood for land ownership, gold/yellow for wealth, black for clergy, etc., so the article is not specifically addressing them (no sources). I think the "gold for wealth" is a distortion of the idea that some of the brighter colours were more costly (due to imported dyestuffs; it's part of why they tended to be used as thin over-checks, but I haven't found a really clear source on this yet I have now, and have cited it.). "Black for clergy" can probably be traced to one or another alleged clerical tartans made up in the Vestiarium Scoticum being black and white (Scarlett 1990 mentioned this in passing - correction: it was Logan; see below). But at this point it's basically original research on my part; I would need a source more directly spelling this out. (I would like to be able to dispel this "colours have specific meanings" legend, but I can't find a source that even mentions it yet, beyond the old Victorian belief that it was a heraldic differencing system.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:00, 13 June 2023 (UTC); rev'd. 04:57, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Some more on alleged clerical tartans: First , the church kept better records than anyone, so we would expect to find some evidence therein, but there is none. Rather the opposite: there are bans on the ministerial wearing of bright or "variant" coloured clothing, and the latter would surely include tartan. Not to mention tartan plaids themselves, by name, were banned several times by various church bodies. James Logan in the execrable The Scottish Gaël (1831), the first in a series of Victorian tartan books that veered between plagiarism and extreme imagination, listed a "Clergy" tartan in black, white, and grey, as if it were something of antiquity, but it is clearly based on an 1820+ fashion pattern by Wilsons of Bannockburn, which was named "Priest". Frank Adam in The Clans, Septs, and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands (1908, and another work that is basically crap, even in the later edition heavily revised by Thomas Innes of Learney) listed a blue, black, and white "clerical" tartan with a made-up Gaelic name, but it is also clearly a rip-off of the Wilson's "fancy" pattern. (Source: James D. Scarlett, Tartan: The Highland Textile, 1990, pp. 10–11.) I'm not sure "ecclesiastical tartans" are enough of a pervasive tartan legend to bother covering in the WP article, which is already quite long. If so, I guess it could be a footnote under "Tartans for specific purposes". Though I'm skeptical anyone reads the footnotes, and more of them should be converted into main-body text, after the article is split up.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:57, 6 July 2023 (UTC)