Why did scotsmen wear kilts

The entire visit was managed by historical novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott. He managed to lift the tartan ban and use the event to reforge Scottish identity around pleated worsted wool. JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. By: Cynthia Green. December 25, December 15, Share Tweet Email Print. Weekly Digest. Have a correction or comment about this article? Please contact us. Join Our Newsletter. More Stories. Performing Arts.

In , the parade replaced live animals with helium balloons designed by puppeteer Tony Sarg. Social History. Quirky History. When humans stopped being nomadic, we could no longer walk away from our waste. A collection of our recent stories in celebration of American Indian Heritage Month. When I finally decided to visit Scotland, it was the first thing that came to mind. Everyone has heard it - the speculation and jokes about what Scots wear under their kilts.

But I assumed, as I suspect many do, that kilt-wearing men were more of a stereotype that a reality. Imagine my surprise the first morning, when I walked down the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle, where briefcase-toting men were casually walking to work, outfitted in full kilt regalia. Any discussion about the history of the kilt is rife with disagreement. Early Irish stone carvings depicting men in knee-length garb have led to speculation that kilts were developed in Ireland and later imported by Scots.

English lore insists that Thomas Rawlinson, who owned an iron smelter in the Scottish Highlands early in the 18th century, modified the clothing of his workers because their belted plaids were too hot for use in his factory. He purportedly cut their tunic-like garments in half and added a belt, which became the kilt as we know it today.

Today, both theories have been largely debunked by historians. Irish carvings show men in tunics, rather than in traditional two-piece kilts, and the English myth is easily disproved because, beginning in the early 's, literature sources state that wearing of the "belted plaid" was nearly universal among all Gaelic Highlanders. Though I quickly became accustomed to seeing men in kilts on the streets of Edinburgh, it wasn't until I was invited to a Scottish wedding at Blair Castle that I realised just how fashionable kilts have become.

With one or two exceptions, every male guest at the wedding sported a kilt. Fascinated, I made the rounds of the castle's great hall, noting that no two were alike. Each featured a woolen knee-length garment that was pleated in the back; wrapped around to the front; fastened with belts, buckles, and finished with a pin on the free edge.

A sporran Gaelic pouch hung from a chain or belt on top of the front of each kilt and long woolen socks, turned down just below the knee, were often garnished with a sheathed knife Sgian dhu , belted to the calf just above the ankle. The kilt has come to signify a natural and unmistakable masculinity, but it has a long history of outside intervention and deliberate reinvention. From its origins as the basic garb of the Highlander, Scotsmen and non-Scotsmen alike have embraced it as uniform, formal and semi-formal wear, and casual everyday wear.

Form and Evolution The kilt as we know it today originated in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The belted plaid consisted of a four- to six-yard length of woolen cloth about two yards wide. In Highland Costume , John Telfer Dunbar explains how the belted plaid was arranged on the body. It was laid out on the ground and gathered in folds with a plain section left at each side.

The man lay down on it with one selvage at about knee level, and fastened it with a belt. When he stood up, the lower part was like a kilt, and the upper part could be draped around the body in a variety of different styles. Several dress historians, however, have discounted this method on the grounds of impracticality.

They propose that the most pragmatic and time-effective method was to gather the pleats in the hand, pass the plaid around the body, secure it loosely with the belt, and then tighten it after a final adjustment of the pleats. The kilt as worn today is the lower half of the belted plaid with the back pleats stitched up. Its invention is credited to Thomas Rawlinson, an English ironmaster who employed Highlanders to work his furnaces in Glengarry near Inverness.

Burnham asserts in Cut My Cote , it is more likely that the transformation came about as the natural result of a change from the warp-weighted loom to the horizontal loom with its narrower width. The Diskilting Act made an exception for those serving in the armed forces. Originally, the Highland regiments were dressed in the belted plaid, but in order to conform to the other regiments of the British Army, they wore a red coat cut away at the skirts to allow for its voluminous folds.

Other distinctive Highland features of the uniform included a round blue bonnet, a small leather sporran, red and white knee-length hose, and black buckled shoes. By about , however, the Highland regiments had replaced the belted plaid with the little kilt.

At the same time, the small, practical leather sporran developed into a large, hairy, decorative affair.