In 1727, the head of the McDonnell clan of Glengery decided to take up the foundry business. He rented the Invergeri Forest to a master from Barrow (Lancashire), Quaker Thomas Rawlinson and hired loggers and workers at the stove. Rawlinson often visited the production and noticed that the traditional Scots clothing, Breacan Feile, or a huge blanket with a belt (about 1.5 to 5.5 meters to 4.1 to 8.2 meters), which was worn as a cape with a hood or bandage on the thighs, and at night used instead of blankets, prevents them from working. Therefore, consulting with a tailor from Inverness, he modeled a short folded clothing to the knees, which later became known as Feileadh Beag (small Plaid), or Philabeg (small kilt) - this is rough anglization from the Kel. Thus, according to one version, it turns out that the main recognizable element of the ancient clothing of the Scottish mountaineers was invented by an Englishman.
Shortly thereafter, the second Jacobite uprising was suppressed and the British Parliament banned the traditional clothing of the Scottish highlanders. Forty years the Scottish skirt could not be worn in public, except as a form in the regiments of Scottish Highlanders, formed on the basis of the British army: a regiment of black guards (black watch, 1739), a regiment of mountain light infantry (1777), a regiment of seaside Highlanders (1778), Cameron Regiment (1793), Argyll, Sutherland and Gordon Regiments (1794). At the same time, when the Highlanders' Society in London was campaigning for the return of the Scottish skirt, civilians in the mountains of Scotland forever changed into trousers.
The famous regiment of "black guards" / "black watch"
In 1822, George IV visited Edinburgh, it was the first, after the reunification of Britain into a single state, the visit of the English king to Scotland. Sir Walter Scott, a novelist, played the role of ceremonial master. Two regiments of Scottish Highlanders, famous at Waterloo, marched in a ceremonial march in kilt. All the clan chiefs were asked to come to the parade in traditional clothes and they put on Scottish skirts, each with a different, complex and pattern of cells.
In Scotland, more than one century has successfully woven a variety of checkered fabrics used for sewing pants with narrowed to the bottom trousers for rich mods. However, colored checkered patterns were not associated with clans and with the origin (pedigree), but rather with the regions of their production, depending on the plants growing in one or another locality, whose juice was used for the coloring of weaving threads. In times when tartans were produced by handicraft methods, sheep wool was hand-stained using natural dyes - alder and oak bark, plant juice, seaweed, fruits and berries, for example, blueberries. Commoners used tartan (Scottish checkered fabric) for tailoring in general was forbidden.
The most famous drawing is the black-and-green-blue Scotch Black Watch Tartan Campbell, - wears a regiment of black guards, - the name comes from the founder of the kind of Sir Neil Campbell, who in 1306 distinguished himself on the Battlefield at Methven and saved King Robert Bruce. Representatives of this clan have always been in the service of the king and were in the vanguard of the expansion of the monarch's power in the western, mountainous and poorly-spirited regions of the country. The tradition to tie a picture of a tartan to a particular clan name arose, most likely, at the gathering of the regiments of the Scottish Highlanders in 1822.
The distribution of patterns on Scotland completed an amazing process of cultural fiction, developed and piled up in detail over the course of more than two centuries. At the first stage, after the foundation of the Presbyterian colony in Alster, the Irish origin of the Scottish civilization was apparently ignored, then eschewed it. In search of ancient and original artifacts and original Scottish traditions, legends and myths were born, like, for example, a kilt allegedly coming from the darkness of centuries. Such hoaxes seemed attractive, since they corresponded to the need to have an undeniable national ancestry.
At the last stage of the formation of a unified state, the beginning of which marked the law of amnesty (1786), the tribes of the Scottish highlanders descended into the valleys, and new traditions were gradually adopted by representatives of all Scottish clans, symbolizing their "non-Englishness". In this romantic game, Queen Victoria also joined, having acquired in 1848 for herself the Balmoral castle in Aberdeenshire. By order of Her Majesty, a balmoral scotch was developed for the queen and for her highly non-Scottish relatives and entourage.
McDonnelles of Glengery did not witness these events. At first they formed the branch (or subclan) of the MacDonald clan from the island of Skye, were once "the masters of the islands", their Gaelic name means "the sons of Domnal," the lord of the world. During the rare breaks in the war with the Mackenzie clan that they waged permanently, the MacDonelles defended and vigorously defended Catholicism and Jacobism. The head of their clan held the flag of James II at the Battle of Killikranki (1689), and his successor participated in the uprising of 1745, directing the actions of six hundred men from his clan and was subsequently imprisoned in the Tower of London. Nevertheless, after some time, sixteen clan leaders, sold the lands of their ancestors and emigrated to New Zealand. The red, black, dark green and white tartan of Macdonell has all the signs of an ancient and simple pattern, although it is not known for certain whether he decorated the Scottish kilt in 1727 or was invented much later.
Hidden messages from the depths of time, mysticism of Celtic beliefs and millennial cultural traditions do not always stand the test of authenticity and thoroughness.
