Costume ecossais livre de 1846

BRITISH COSTUME

A complete history of the Dress of the inhabitants of the British Islands By
J.R. PLANCHE with illustrations

London, M.A. NATTALI, 23, Bedford street, Covent Garden, MDCCCXLVI [1846]

[Nota : il existe plusieurs éditions, comme celle de 1847.]

CHAPTER XXIII

National costume of Scotland 332

Introduction

List of the principal ancient authors and works quoted or referred to in
this volume.

Scotland

Porphyry.

Ammianus Marcellinus.

Claudian.

Tacitus.

Herodian.

Dion Cassius and Xiphilin.

Isidore.

Gildas. Printed in Bertram's Scriptores. 8vo. 1757.

Matthew Paris.

Winton : Chronicles.

Fordun : Chronicles.

Froissart : Chronicles.

John Lesley : History of Scotland. 4to. 1578.

George Buchannan. History of Scotland : in his works, 2 vols. Folio.
Edinburgh, 1714.

John Major : History of Scotland.

David Lyndsay of Piscottie : History of Scotland, from 1437 to 1542.

Heron.



CHAPTER XXIII,

[pages 332 à 351].

National costume of Scotland

No rational doubt can exist of the great antiquity of the national costume
of Scotland ; that the chequered stuff which still forms it is the
variously-coloured garment of the Gauls described by Diodorus, at one time
the common habit of every Celtic tribe, but now abandoned by all their
descendants except the hardy unsophisticated Gaelic mountaineer, is admitted
, we believe, by every antiquary who has made public his opinion on the
subject. But to the same extent that our credence is given to the fact is
our wonder awakened that the existence of so peculiar a habit should have
been passed unnoticed by every chronicler and traveller, whether native or
foreign , for upwards of a thousand years ! Yet such is the case, as far as
we have been able to discover. The Scots are first mentioned by Porphyry
towards the end of the third century ; they are noticed again by Ammianus
Marcellinus in 360, and by Claudian in 390. under the name of Caledonians,
however, we have an account of them by Tacitus as early as the close of the
first century ; but he merely describes them in general terms as in a state
of great barbarity.

Herodian, Xiphilin, and Isidore speak of them as naked savages, with stained
or punctured bodies, wearing iron rings round their middles. Gildas
describes the Scots and Picts of his time as having only a piece of cloth
tied round the loins ; and the whole host of Saxon, Norman, English, French,
aye, and Scotch chroniclercs, down to the fifteenth century, are silent
respecting a costume which must have excited the curiosity of foreigners by
its singularity, and constituted the pride of the natives from its
antiquity.

Fordun, the historian of Scotland, who wrote in 1350, contents himself with
describing the Highlanders as " of goodly person, but mis-shapen attire ; "
and Froissart, the minute and pictorial Froissart, in his account of Edward
III's expedition in 1326, merely tells us, that ten thousand pairs of old
wornout shoes, made of undressed leather, with the hair on, were left behind
by the Scotch on that midnight retreat which baffled the English, and
terminated the inglorious campaign.

The seals and monuments of the early kings and nobles of Scotland represent
them armed and attired in the same fashion as their Anglo-Norman
cotemporaries. Illuminated MSS. Afford us no assistance ; and Lesly,
Buchannan, and Beague, all writers of the sixteenth century, bear the first
unequivocal testimony to the existence and prevalence of a party-coloured
garment in Scotland. To these three authors may be added the writer of a
chronicle of the same date, preserved in lord Somer's Tracts, who tells us,
" the inhabitants of the Western Isles delighted to wear marled cloths,
specialy that have long stripes of sundry colours. Their predecessors used
short mantles or plaids of various colours, sundry ways divided, and amongst
some the custom is observed to this day ; but for the most part now they are
brown, most near to the colour of the hadder (heather), to the effect when
they lie among the hadder the bright colours of their plaids shall not
betray them. "

At the same time John Major, who wrote the history of his native country in
Latin, merely remarks their being without stockings or covering for the
legs, and wearing a cloak for an upper garment ; and Lindsay of Piscottie,
whose chronicle of Scotland, from 1437 to 1542, is in the vulgar tongue,
says, " the other pairts northerne are full of mountaines, and very rude
and homelie kynd of people doth inhabite, which is called the Reid- Shankis
or Wyld Scotes. They be clothed with ane mantle, with ane schirt, faschioned
after the Irisch manner, going bair-legged to the knee ; " but not a word of
the chequered pattern of these garments. Indeed, unless " faschioned after
the Irisch manner " relates to their cut alone ; he implies by that
expression that the shirt or body-dress was the leni-croich, or large
saffron-coloured shirt worn by the Irish of that day, and which Mr. Logan,
in his " History of the Gael, " informs us, but without quoting his
authority, was actually worn by the Scotch Highlanders (History of the Gael,
2 vols. 8vo. London).

The authentic portraits of royal and noble personages of Scotland engraved
in Mr. Lodge's beautiful work, comprising those of the Regent Murray ;
George Gordon, Marquis of Huntley ; Henry, Lord Darnley, King of Scotland ;
David Leslie, first Lord of Newark ; James Hamilton, earl of Arran ; James
Graham, Marquis of Montrose ; Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyll ; Wiliam
Kerr, Earl of Lothian ; John Leslie, Duke of Rothes, &c. &c. exhibit no
trace of a national costume, and the painting of the Surrender of Mary,
Queen of Scots, at Carberry Hill, engraved by Vertu, and representing the
royal and confederated Scotch forces in battle array, appears equally
destitute of any distinction of dress, though the banners of the respective
leaders are scrupulously emblazoned, and the artist, one should suppose,
could not have been ignorant of the existence of a national habit at that
time in Scotland (One of the earliest representations of a Highlander is to
be found in Speed's maps of Scotland, published at the commencement of the
seventeenth century. The figure has merely a chequered mantle flung over its
shoulders, being, with that exception, perfectly naked. The Highland woman
is wrapped in a similar cloth, which is drawn over her head as well. No
great dependence can be placed upon their fidelity.).

There appears to us but one way of accounting for so strange a discrepancy.
The striped and chequered " garg of old Gaul " must have fallen into diuse
throughout the southern and most civilized portions of Scotland at a very
early period, and its manufacture and wear have been confined to the Western
Isles and the remotest retreats of the ancient Celtic population, from
whence it may have been gradually re-adopted by the highland clans during
the seventeenth century, and its popularity increased by its assumption by
Charles Edward, " the young chevalier ", and the subsequent prohibitory
statutes which the rebellion gave rise to.

But it is time for us to retrace our steps and examine more narrowly into
the texture, form, and manner of wearing this ancient and singular habit,
which is identified throughout modern Europe with the name Scotland.

With all our aversion from speculation and jealousy of tradition we find
ourselves in this instance without other guides, and must consequently
either lay down our pen at once or follow them with it to the verge of
probability. We have already stated that the earliest known authorities who
allude to the chequered dress are of the sixteenth century. Heron, however,
in his History of Scotland, says, that in Argyle and the Hebridae, before
the middle of the fifteenth century, tartan was manufactured of one or two
coleours for the poor, more varied for the rich.

Now the word tartan is derived by Mr. Logan from the Gaelic tarstin or
tarsuin, " across ; " but the French had the word tiretaine for a woollen
cloth as early as the thirteenth century (vide p.118), which generally
appears to have been dyed of a whole colour, and originally scarlet ; while
the true Gaelic term for the Highland plaid or mantle is breacan-feile,
literally the " chequered, striped, or spotted covering, " and, as we have
already mentioned in the first chapter of this work, the party-coloured
cloth woven by the Gauls and Britons was by them called breach and brycan,
from breac, speckled or spotted. The word tartan therefore, whatever may be
its origin, is, we are inclined to believe, the name of the material itself,
and not of the pattern it may be worked in (Tarsa, tarsin, and tarsna is
used for across, athwart, over, through, past, and would apply to the
crossing of threads in the weaving of any sort of cloth, and, with the
exception of tarsnan, which signifies a cross-beam, the root tars or tart,
in all its combinations, expresses thing which cross so minutely as to
deceive the sense, as the spokes of a wheel in motion, light shining through
glass, &c.).



In a wardrobe account of the time of James III, of Scotland, A.D. 1471,
quoted by Mr. Logan, occurs an entry of " an elne and ane halve of blue
tartane to lyne his gowne of cloth of gold, " and of " halve an elne of
doble tartane to lyne collars to her lady the quene ; " and in 1485 our qwn
Henry VII displayed in Bosworth Field a banner of " yellow tarterne, " on
which was painted a dun cow. That it was a stuff much used for banners as
well as dresses in the fifteenth century appears evident from the order of
Richard III. (in the document quoted page 215 of this work) for the
furnishing of " 350 pensills (small streamers) of tarteryn, " as well as the
same number " of buckram, " gonfanons " of fustian, " standards and trumpet
banners of sarcenet, &c., and it seems to have been superseded in modern
days by the " bunting, " of which our ship-colours and other flags are now
made (As these tartans are charged at the rate of nearly sixteen shillings
per yard, they must have been of a superior texture to the common breachan
worn by the Western Islanders and the peasantry of Argyleshire ; the latter
was the coarse homespun woollen cloth, and it is most probable that the
former was that mixture of linen and woollen called linsey woolsey by the
English and tiretaine by the French to this day.).

Mr. Logan informs us that woollen cloths " were first woven of one colour,
or an intermixture of the natural black and white, so often seen in Scotland
to the present day. " And we may add, that it will be recognized by our
readers as the stuff lately rendered fashionable for trousers, under the
name of " shepherd's plaid. " The introduction of several colours we have
seen, however, dates from the earliest period of its manufacture, and it is
asserted, both in Ireland and in Scotland, that the rank of the wearer was
indicated by the number of colours in his dress, wich were limited by law to
seven for a king or chief, and four for the inferior nobility (In the law of
colours, the Ilbreachta of Tigheirnmas, mentioned in page 354 of this work.)
; while, as we have already quoted from Heron, it was " made of one or two
colours " (that is to say plain, or merely chequered with another colour) "
for the poor. " Of the superior breachans, Mr. Logan informs us, that green
and black, with a red stripe, seems to have predominated ; and in an Italian
MS. Of the close of the fourteenth century, in the library of his Royal
Highness the Duke of Sussex, containing a multitude of illuminations
illustrative of scripture history, the curtains of the tabernacle are
repeatedly depicted of those identical colours disposed in the exact pattern
of the modern tartan.

This variegated stuff was also called by the highlanders cath-dath, commonly
translated, as Mr. Logan informs us, " war colour ", but ingeniously
rendered by a friend of that gentleman, " the strife of colours, " an
etymology which has certainly the high merit of being as probable as it is
poetical and characteristic. The epithet is exactly such as a Highland
senachie would have applied to the spendid breachan of his chieftain.

The breachan or plaid, we are told by the same writer, was originally a
large mantle of one piece, belted round the body, and thence called " the
belted plaid ; " and he seems to consider that it was also called the
triughas or truis, the word being derived from the root trus, gather, truss
or tuck up ; that it formed of itself the entire ancient dress, and that the
latter appellation was transferred to the pantaloons and stockings joined,
which were adopted on the prohibition of the ancient dress. But not only
have we positive evidence of the truis forming a remarkable portion of the
original Gaulish, British, and Irish dress, but Mr. Logan himself almost
immediately afterwards proceeds to describe them as either knit like
stockings, or, according to the ancient manner, formed of tartan cloth,
nicely fitted to the shape, and fringed down the leg ; adding that " there
is preserved a Gaelic saying respecting this garment, " by which the
quantity of stuff required for its making may be ascertained. We must
surely, therefore, be under some error in understanding him to deny the
antiquity of the truis.

In support of his assertion, however, he quotes the historians Major and
Lindsay, who describe the Highlanders as bare-legged from the knee, and
instances the many curious expedients resorted to in the rebellion to evade
wearing breeches according to the royal order, with the declaration of an
old Highland farmer, that " he would never lippen to a bodach that wore the
breeks. " But their disuse by the lower classes, in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, is no proof of their non-existence at a much earlier
period ; and if the truis were so much the object of their aversion and
contempt, and not acknowledged a portion of their ancient national costume,
how comes it that the young Pretender, who, during his romantic expedition
into England, marched on foot from Carlisle to Derby in the Highland garb at
the head of his forces, and had assumed that garb undoubtedly for the sake
of flattering the prejudices of his Gaelic followers, should have worn the
obnoxious articles, as he certainly did ? Vide engraving given herewith,
from a portrait of him in that identical costume.

Nay, more ! If the truis are not parts of the ancient Highland dress, why
are they named amongst the prohibited articles of appared in the Act of
1747, quoted by Mr. Logan himself, and ordaining that " neither man nor boy,
except such as should be employed as officers and soldiers, should, on any
pretence, wear or put on the clothes commonly called Highland clothes, viz.
the plaid, phillibeg or little kilt, trouze, shoulder-belts, or any part
whatsoever of what peculiarly belongs to the Highland garb, and that no
tartan or party-coloured plaid should be used for great coats or upper coats
? " We copy the paragraph from Mr. Logan's own pages. The " breeks, "
attempted to be forced upon the nether limbs of the brawny Highlanders, were
the Lowland and English knee-breeches of George II's reign, with all the
buttons and buckles thereunto belonging.

The phillibeg or kilt, in Gaelic, feile-beag, i. e. the " little covering, "
is another bone of contention amongst the writers on Celtic antiquities. At
present it is a petticoat in the modern sense of the word, being a separate
article of attire and put on like a woman's petticoat ; but originally, we
have no doubt, it signified literally a " little coat, " being the
corresponding habit to the Irish cota, filleadth or fallings, (Fillead, in
Irish, is used to express a garment folded or plaited round the person, and
fillead-beg would signify the esser plaited dress. ") and the British pais,
which, with the mantle and the trousers, formed the complete Gaulish or
Celtic costume. Kilt is a lowland Scotch or Saxon appellation, and also
signifies a shortened or tucked-up garment. " To kilt " is to truss or tuck
up. The lassie says, in the well-known song, -

" I'll kilt my coats aboon my knee,

And follow my laddie through the water. "

The period of the separation of the ancient feile-beag into a waistcoat and
kilt is at present unknown, but we imagine it to have been a comparatively
recent arrangement.

The sporan or pouch is a distinguishing feature of the Highland costume ;
but its first adoption, in its present peculiar and ornamented form, is
equally involved in mystery. That of Simon Frazer, Lord Lovat, executed in
1746, is said, by Mr. Logan, to have been smaller and less decorated. A
wallet, or dorlach, carried on the right side, was worn as early as the
fourteenth century, as we have evidence, in the effigy of a knight in the
cathedral church of Iona or Ilcolmkill (Vide Hamilton Smith's Ancient
costume of England, &c. pl.21) ; and some such appendage to the girdle is of
very early occurrence in the costume of most nations. The tasselled sporan
is however more like the pouch of a North American Indian, than the European
gypsire or aulmoniere of the middle ages, and its position in front is an
additional peculiarity.

Coverings for the head were little cared for by the hardy Celtic and
Teutonic tribes ; but a cap or bonnet (cappan and boined), answering the
double purpose of a hat and a helmet, was occasionally worn by their chiefs,
as much perhaps for distiction as for defence. Its material was originally
leather, and its shape, amongst the Britons and the Irish, conical. The flat
cloth bonnet, now worn in Scotland, we do not consider to have formed part
of the primitive costume. If ancient, it is of Saxon, Norman, or Danish
introduction. A cap, not very dissimilar, occurs in English costume as early
as the reign of Henry III ; and one shape, though not the best known of the
Scotch bonnet, bears a curious affinity to the still earlier Phrygian cap
worn by the Saxon, the Anglo-Norman, and most probably the Dane. Its colour,
blue, was very early distinguished as the favourite colour of the
Caledonians, but the chequered band, which now generally surrounds it,
according to General Stewart, originated as lately as Montrose's struggle,
when it was assumed as a badge of the fallen family of the Stewarts ; the
arms of their house being a fess, checquy azure and argent in a field Or ;
in which case we must presume it was originally white and blue. The general
colours are now white and red, or red and blue, alterations likely enough to
have been made by the victorious party, either then, in the time of
Cromwell, when the cross of St. George (gules in a field argent) displaced
the royal arms, or in the rebellions of 1716 and 1745, when red and blue had
become the colours of the reigning family.

A much older decoration of the bonnet is undoubtedly to be found in the
eagle feather, the peculiar mark of a chief, and the sprigs of holly, broom,
and other plants assumed by the various clans ; a sort of natural heraldry
which supplied the place of the emblazoned shield or embroidered badge, and
preceded, it is most probable, the distinction of the family Tartans. Mr.
Logan gives a curious list of the badges of this description appropriated by
the different clans ; and some of the Frazers and Mackensies were subjected
to penalties for wearing them after the disarming act of 1745.

The chequered stockings, gartered round the calf of the leg, are assuredly
not of Celtic origin. To the Saxon or the Dane, whose cross garterings and
half stockings or soccas, we have described in the second and third chapters
of this work, the North Britons must surely have been indebted for this
portion of their attire. The garter, as worn at present with a rose, is
altogether a modern innovation.

The primitive shoes have been described by Froissart from ten thousand
specimens. Like the brogue of the Irish and the British esgid, they were
made of untanned leather with the hair on. With the modern shoe came the
shoe-buckle : its introduction is dated by Mr. Logan about 1680.

The principal ornaments of the Celtic Gaël were the brooch and the belt ;
the first of silver, and sometimes of exceeding magnitude, embellished with
cairn gorums, and other gems both native and foreign. Bruce's brooch was
long, and may be still in the possession of the MacDougles, of Lorn. Another
similar relic is in the custody of the Campells, of Glenlyon, and is
engraved in Pennant. The belt was also highly ornamented, principally with
silver, from the earliest periods. Ferash or Fergus, a Scottish knight, is
described in the Norse account of Haco's expedition as being despoiled of
his beautiful belt by the victor (Johnston's translation, p. 99.).

To sum up our account of the ancient Highland dress in a few words, we see
no reason for doubting that it consisted of the mantle, close vest, and
trousers, worn by the ancient British and Irish, and Belgic Gauls, with
scarcely any variation, with the brooch, bodkin, or fibula, the hairy shoes,
the belt, and, in the earliest periods, perchance the torque.

The Saxon and Danish fashions by degrees obtained in the Lowlands, and the
intermarriages of the English and Scottish royal families, and the long and
close alliance between Scotland and France, contributed to assimilate the
costume of the court and the larger burghs and cities to that which
prevailed at the moment throughout Europe. The Gaël or Wild Scots, as they
were termed, kept aloof from the despised and detested Sassenaghs or Saxons,
as they contemptuously termed their lowland countrymen who had associated
with, imitated the fashions, and adopted the language of the English
colonists, and by the imperfect medium of oral tradition alone are we
enabled to arrive at the little knowledge we possess of this singular and
primitive people. The precise periods, therefore, when slight alterations
took place in their national attire, if recorded at all, must be so in their
national ballads, or in the retentive memories of their bards and elders,
which are as remarkable as the excessive longevity of the Highlanders in
general.



THE FEMALE HABIT

seems to have resembled to a very late period the dress in which Boadicea
has been described by Dion Cassius. A tunic or robe gathered and girdled
round the waist, and a large mantle fastened by a brooch upon the breast.

The former called the airisard appears from the poems of Alexander MacDonald
to have been worn as late as 1740.

White twilled cloth made from fine wool, and called cuirtan (" Cuirt "
signifies trade or manufacture, and " an " is a Gaëlic diminutive : hence in
the Celtic manner of compounding words cuirtan would mean the lesser or
finer manufacture.), was used for interior garments and hose, by those who
indulged in such superfluities. The latter, denominated ossan, evidently
from hosen, were of different dimensions, and the larger sort was called
ossan-preasach.

The hair before marriage was uncoverd, the head bound by a simple fillet or
snood, sometimes a lock of considerable length hanging down on each side of
the face, and ornamented with a knot of ribands - a teutonic fashion. When
privileged to cover it, the curch, curaichd or breid of linen, was put on
the head and fastened under the chin, falling in a tapering form on the
shoulders. The female costume, especially of the higher orders, varied in
the Lowlands according to the fashionable barometers of London or Paris ;
but an " English gentleman who visited Edinburgh in 1598, says, the citizens'
wives, and women of the country, did weare cloaks made of a coarse cloth of
two or three colours in chequerwork, vulgarly called ploddan ; " and "
plaiding " is still the term for the chequered tartans in the Lowlands. The
large or full plaid is now worn only by elderly females ; but during the
last century Bird tells us it was the undress of ladies in Edinburgh, who
denoted their political principles by the manner of wearing it.

For the

ARMOUR AND WEAPONS

Of the Scottish nation we have store of authorities.

Commencing with the Roman invasion, we find the Scots, like their southern
kindred, stripping themselves naked for fight. Stained from head to foot
with their war-paint, and wielding long heavy swords and round targets
(Tacitus in Vita. Agricola. Herodian.). the inhabitants of the coast of
Strathmavern were called Catini, from their use of the cat, a four-sided or
four-spiked club, which they darted forward at their enemy and recovered by
a leather thong attached to it. The Caledonians used also a spear, furnished
with a similar thong, for the like purpose, and at the ***-end of the shaft
it had like purpose, and at the ***-end of the shaft it had a ball of brass
filled with pieces of metal tostartle the horses by the noise when engaged
with cavalry.

The ringed byrn of the Saxon, and the improved hauberk of the Norman, soon
found their way across the border, but were adopted by the sovereign and his
lowland chiefs alone ; for though the early monarchs of Scotland appear upon
their seals in the nasal helmet, and the mascled, ringed, or scaly armour of
the Anglo-Normans, we find the Earl of Strathearne, at the battle of the
Standard, in 1138, exclaiming " I wear no armour, yet they who do will not
advance beyond me this day. "

In the next century Matthew Paris describes the Scottish cavalry as a fine
body of men, well mounted, though their horses were neither of the Italians
or Spanish breed ; the horsemen clothed in armour of iron network (Sub anno
1244, p. 436,37.), and from this period we find the seals, monuments, and
chronicles of Scotland agreeing as nearly as possible with those of England,
the Scotch being only later in their adoption of the improvements in armour,
which generally originated in the south of Europe, and gradually travelled
northward.

The Highlanders, however, evinced their wonted contempt for the inventions
of the Sassenach, and adhered to their ancient weapons and mode of warfare.
Body armour would they none ; as the old song says, they

" Had only got the belted plaid,

While they (the Lowlanders) were mail-clad men. "

Those who encountered Haco at Largs, A. D. 1263, were armed with bows and
spears ; the former being a true Highland weapon, though the Gael could
never cope with the English archers, who were proverbially said to bear cach
of them " under his girdle twenty-four Scots, " in allusion to the
twenty-four arrows with which each man was provided. Winton and Fordun both
mention the clan Kay and the clan Quhale, in 1390, armed in the fashion of
their country with bows and arrows, sword and target, short knives and
battle-axes ; and twelve years afterwards Donald, Lord of the Isles, broke
in upon the earldom of Ross, at the head of his fierce multitudes, who were
armed after the fashion of their country with swords fitted to cut and
thrust (The cut-and-thrust sword was the claidheamh-more or claymore.),
pole-axes, bows and arrows, short knives, and round bucklers formed of wood
or strong hide, with bosses of brass or iron. The short knife was the bidag
or dirk of the Scotch, the skiene of the Irish. Although most probably it is
far more highly ornamented at present than it was in those rude ages, the
ancient style of decoration and pattern is preserved. The intricate tracery
on the hilt is also seen upon the target or targaid -

" Whose brazen studs and tough bull's hide

Has dashed-so often death aside. "

The target here engraved is preserved in the armoury at Goodrich Court.

The dirk or bidag from the same collection is of the time of Henry VIII.

In 1318, every layman possessed of land, who had ten pounds' worth of
moveable property, was commanded to provide himself with an acton
(orhaqueton), and basnet (bascinet), together with gloves of plate, a sword,
and a spear. Those who were not so provided were to have an iron jack, or
back and breast-plate of iron, an iron head-piece or knapiskay, with gloves
of plate ; and every man possessing the value of a cow, was commanded to arm
himself with a bow and sheaf of twenty-four arrows, or with a spear
(Statutes of Robert I ; vide Cartulary of Uberbrothock, p. 233, M'Farlane's
trans.). by the iron jack is meant the jacques de maille, which was worn as
late as the sixteenth century, at which period it is described by a French
author, and the person who furnished Holinshed with his account of Scotland.

In 1385 an order was issued for every French and Scottish soldier to wear a
white St. Andrew's cross on his breast and back, which if his surcoat or
jacket was white, was to be broidered on a division of black cloth (Acts of
the Parliament of Scotland, vol.i).

In 1388 the Scotch army at the siege of Berwicke was astonished by two
novelties - the appearance of artillery, and the heraldic crests upon the
English helmets ; an ornament which had not been adopted in Scotland, though
worn for nearly a hundred years in England.

" Twa noweltyes that day they saw,

That forwith Scotland had been nane :

Tymmeris (timbres) for helmetys war the tane,

The tothyr crakys were of war. "

During the reign of James I of Scotland, archery was particularly
encouraged, and an order was issued that all men aged upwards of twelve
years " should busk them to be archers. " James III is said to have had ten
thousand Highlanders with bows and arrows in the van of his army ; and the
army of Jame V at Fala, immediately previous to the defeat at Solway in
1542, consisted of sixty thousand men, " twenty thousand of whom carried
pikes and spears, and twenty thousand were armed with bows, habergions [dans
l'édition de 1847 on lit : habergeons], and two-handled swords, " which was
the armour, " says Lindsay, " of our Highlandmen. " by this it would appear
that in the sixteenth century the Highlanders, in the royal service at
least, had been induced to wear the same body armour ; the word habergeon at
this period meaning indifferently a breast plate or a short coat of mail. A
French author in 1574 describes the Scotch as armed with a sword that was
very large and marvellously cutting ; and at this period the blades made by
Andrea Ferara became highly prized in Scotland, and whenever procured were
fitted into basket hilts, which first appear about this time. An Andrea
Ferara, with its original pounting, is here engraved from one in the Meyrick
collection.

The introduction of hand fire-arms added first the pistol (The pistol was
sometimes called dag, from the peculiar shape of its ***. The Highlanders
called it tack. A Highland fire-lock tack, of the time of George II, the
stock of iron and inlaid with silver, is engraved here from one in the
armoury at Goodrich Court. A brace of snaphannce Highland tacks are in the
same collection, dated 1626, with slender barrels, which, as well as the
stocks, are wholly of brass.) and afterwards the musket to the weapons of
the Highlander, who decorated them with silver as liberally as he had
previously done his belt and his bidag ; but the bow continued to be used by
him throughout the seventeenth century, and the last time it appeared as a
British military weapon was in 1700, when the regiment of Royal Scots,
commanded by the Earl of Orkney, was " armed in the old Highland fashion,
with bows and arrows, swords and targets, and wore steel bonnets. "

In the unfortunate rebellions of 1714 and 1745, the Highland bidags and
broadswords upon several occasions put the royal forces, cavalry and
infantry, to the rout in less than seven minutes. The charge of the
Highlanders is described by all writers as almost irresistible. Firing their
pistols as they advanced, they flung the discharged weapons at the heads of
their foes, and if bullet and blow failed to bring down their opponent, they
received the point of his bayonet on the target, and dirk or claymore was
instantly through his body. Their muskets were invariably thrown away after
the first volley, and as late as the battle of Killicranky they flung off
their plaids on rushing into action, as their Celtic ancestors had done
seventeen hundred years before them.



Illustration noir & blanc page 332, dessin avec la légende suivante : Scotch
brooch of silver, from Mr. Logan'work.



Illustration noir & blanc page 340, dessin avec la légende suivante :

Prince Charles Edward Stuart, from a portrait in the possession of Mr. G. A.
Williams, Cheltenham.



Illustration noir & blanc page 342, dessin avec la légende suivante :

Scotch bonnets from Mr. Logan'work.



Illustration noir & blanc page 346, dessin avec la légende suivante :

Fig. a, Highland target [bouclier rond] ; b, a dirk or bidag [poignard] ; c,
a Jedburgh axe [hache] ; d, a Lochaber axe [hache avec un crochet au bout] :
all in the Meyrick collection.



Illustration noir & blanc page 350, dessin avec la légende suivante :

An Andrea Ferara, with its original hilt, in the Meyrick collection.



Illustration noir & blanc page 351, dessin avec la légende suivante :

Highland fire-lock tack [pistolet], time of George II.



Illustration noir & blanc page 351, dessin avec la légende suivante :

Fig. a, battle-axe of the town-guard of Edinburgh ; b, battle-axe of the
town-guard of Aberdeen, from Mr. Logan'work.

Fin du chapitre consacré au costume national écossais.



mots clés : costume Ecosse écossais Highlands costume national écossais.


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