Knowledge of tartans' origins vital to grasp our history

The National

3 days ago

Not so much today, but not too many years ago, I was a re-enactor of historical periods. Initially, when I lived in England, reenacting the English civil wars between 1646 to 1651. A few years before I migrated to Scotland, I met up with the Scottish contingent of that period which eventually led me to jump a hundred years into 1745 to 1746. The last Jacobite period if you will.
In each period, anyone and everyone had to be perfectly correct in what clothing we wore, what armaments we used, and if we partook in living history camping, then what domestic utensils, bedding and container chests were used. Men, women and children of all ages.
In order to succeed in this important aspect, England had a living history market twice a year where ready-made equipment could be purchased from experts in their field or, the correct material could also be purchased to create your own wardrobe etc.
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The point of all this is that historical knowledge was the backbone necessary to, not only wear the correct garb, but to have learned about its origins. Such as with the material for the great kilt of the 18th century.
Reading was obviously the necessary source for information and from various sources of authoritative writers.
For myself, I learnt that with clans, regardless of which glen they dwelt, most had a local wool spinner and weaver. The colour used in dying the wool came from natural source as in vegetation or crushed stone.
This was more or less the origin of how different clans, no matter how related to each other, had their variations of so-called colour and weave of wool into the criss-cross pattern we associate as tartan.
Homemade dyes would been quiet pale in some cases. I tried it myself using onion and carrot. The weave would also have been varied according to the choice of the weaver.
I expect there might be contradiction to my resourced information, but there was a general consensus amongst us re-enactors, wherever we came from, during discussions about our hobby around the evening campfires.
Ideas were shared and information appreciated.
Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife
THE letter by Gordon Ian MacLeod in the Sunday National (July 27) referencing John McGrath's great play, brought to mind a recent article in the Daily Mail regarding an ongoing case at the Court of Session where the parties in dispute are a wealthy (non-Scottish) landowner and a large energy company (also non-Scottish).
The dispute concerned constraint payments – credits given to energy companies to turn off wind turbines when either the demand for electricity is low or the grid cannot get the electricity to where it can be used.
Remarkably it turns out that these credits can be traded between energy companies and the landowner obviously wanted his cut of what was produced on his land – despite it being non-existent!
Is there a playwright out there who can give us 'The cheviot, the stag and the imaginary electricity' for 2025?
The lessons from the original play have obviously not yet cut through.
R Millar
Darvel
NOW that I am no longer a member of the SNP and my once treasured badge of honour, my plastic membership card, has been cut
up and awaits recycling, I can't help but think that it is perhaps ironic that it took Mhairi Black to spur me into doing something I should have done a long time earlier.
It will not matter to the SNP that another member has left because they don't listen to us anyway!
That is a sad indication of the state of play for all us independence supporters.
At least I got a good laugh when two plonkers had a chat on Monday.
As the president of the free world ranted that he didn't like all sorts of people and other stuff, including windmills and the Labour mayor of London, perhaps the Prime Minister should have told the president that windmills were very, very important because they sent power to England from Scotland down south so that the poor Scots could be charged exorbitant prices to buy it back!
He could also have told the president, who said that he wanted Scotland to thrive, that he, the UK Prime Minister, would never ever allow that to happen as England would be screwed if Scotland were to become independent.
It is nauseating to say the least watching people letting themselves be humiliated by a convicted felon posing as some sort of messiah.
I might not be a member of the SNP anymore but I am still a proud Scot.
As such I have to say that I think we are better than all this.
Old John
Ayrshire