LET’S INVENT SCOTTISH HISTORY
Today, when Scotsmen gather together to celebrate their national identity, they tend to assert it openly by certain distinctive things. (With a few exceptions. Of whom I am happy to be one). They wear the kilt, for example, woven in a ‘tartan’ whose colour and pattern indicates their clan, and, as likely as not, there is the playing of bagpipes. It's good fun. In limited quantities. But both things, which are often said to be of great antiquity, are, in fact, of fairly modern invention. Developed after, in fact, union with England in the 17th century (sometimes long after). And, although there really was some effort to promote this ‘Scottish’ image of kilted, ancient bagpipe playing Highlanders before union with England it was laughed at by most Scots and was never representative of antiquity. It was a form of propaganda coming from elite estate holders who had their own cultural and other interests. As we will see.
It was not until around 1771 when Edward Gibbon (famous for writing his multi volumed ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’) made the mistake of promoting a work by two Scottish writers (James Macpherson and John of the same family) - their ‘Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland’ (1771) which caused the legends of ancient highland Scottish clans to be widely accepted by the aristocrats of Europe. It took a full century of honest research to clear Scottish history of these Macpherson fabrications. But the Macphersons in that time succeeded in putting the imaginary ancient Highland Scots on the cultural map. To create the typically romantic image with which we are all familiar. Aided by sympathetic and encouraging applause from chattering women of high status in the fashion salons of Paris such as Madame de Stael. With the now ‘ancient Scottish highlander’ culture seen as heroic and even said to be superior ( according to men such as F.A. Wolf of Germany) to that of Homer’s ancient Greece. Great stuff for the emerging Scottish tourist industry, you may agree !
In 1805 Sir Walter Scott, keen to build on these fictions, wrote an article for the ‘Edinburgh Review’ saying that the ancient Scots had, during the 3rd century worn a ‘tartan philibeg’. Although nobody had ever said so before. He produced no evidence then and nobody has since that time. (Not even the notorious Macphersons). But by that time it was already fashionable to be a supporter of this romantic idea of the Stuarts being the ‘real’ancient kings of Britain. (They, the Stuarts, were in fact an 18th century attempt to revive Celtic and even Etruscan ideas of feudalism. Which had certainly had impact on Britain in the centuries before the Christian Era. Conveniently hidden by the fact that they, the promoters of this Scottish tartan fashion were also loyal members of the Church of Rome).
So, how did the‘kilt’ come to be universally known as the ancient national dress of the Scottish highlanders ?
Well, as early as the 16th century various kinds of tartan cloth were already being imported in to Scotland - not from Britain but actually from Flanders and Holland. It was 200 years later when the kilt was invented as a traditional Highland dress. After 1707, in fact.
This modern origin of the kilt was first admitted to in 1768 by various writers but news of its recent arrival was only widely published in 1785. When, significantly, nobody at that time protested or disagreed with such facts. Nor did anyone defend the idea of ancient Scottish clans in family tartans. It was widely recognised to be a modern fiction. And, at the time of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 (with ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) the tartans being associated with the influential families involved were themselves a clever fiction. Tartan was at that time only a fashion garment that was being sold in some cities for some estate workers and their managers. A sort of company costume. Our idea that entire towns and their inhabitants of Highland Scots had always been identified down the centuries by wearing a particular tartan was (and is) sheer fiction. Although the formation of the Highland Society (1788) did even more to spread the myth of ancient tartans.
King George 4th’s Royal Visit to Edinburgh in 1822 cost lots of money and almost bankrupted his patrons in Scotland over the course of his stay. That event is largely responsible for the fashion for Highland ’clan’ tartans which we know today. The farce reached epic size that year when the King on his arrival toasted the ‘chieftains and clans of Scotland’ since those feudal estate holders had assembled there having earlier ordered any tartan for them to wear that was available. Claiming later to be owners of that same design for many centuries. Although, in fact, the first time they had seen it was when it was ordered from the cloth merchants ! Commerce doing the rest.
The manipulation of highland clan culture by Charles Edward Stuart (whose later supporters included many aristocrats and estate holders of the nobility in Scotland) is among the most laughable chapters of Scottish History. So-called. The invention, in fact, of ‘history’.
I can’t end without mention of the Sobieski Stuarts (men who, embarrassingly, produced evidence on their arrival in Scotland in the mid 19th century of being descended from Charles Edward Stuart and a Polish King of the Holy Roman Empire) but betrayed the fact that the real sponsors of Charles Edward Stuart were vested interests protected within the status quo of a Catholic Europe whose ancestors had little to do with Christianity (Roman or otherwise). The Sobieski’s published a book on the alleged ancient tartans of Scotland in 1846. Which was instantly rejected by anyone interested in historical reality. Theirs was a determined attempt to revive not only an imagined ancient Highland costume but also an imaginary and ancient Highland civilization that owes more in fact to Assyria, Babylon and ancient Greece than anything else. Paganism, in fact, hidden within the Stuart legend. Since the hierarchical control of nations is precisely what the Stuart and Sobieski myths were invented to achieve. And they did so. In Scotland.
But don’t tell the children !
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Originally Posted by hallaig
