The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

142 THE HIGHLANDERS [part i
CHAPTER IX.
The Highland Dress—Three Varieties of Dress" worn previous
TO THE Seventeenth Century; and their Antiquity—Arms
AND Armour—Hunting—Character of the Highlanders.
The dress of the Highlanders is one in many
?re?s'*"'* respects pecuHar to that nation, and is so singularly
well adapted to their mode of life and the nature
of their country, that it is difficult to believe that it is not the
original dress of its inhabitants. Of late years, however, the
antiquity of this dress and of the use of tartan in the Highlands
has been much doubted, and an opinion has very generally
prevailed
that it is but of modern invention, or, at all
events, that the truis is the only ancient form of the dress ;
although
what motive or circumstance could have led to the
adoption, at a recent period, of so singular a dress, the doubters
of its antiquity do not pretend to specify.
It would be too much, perhaps, to affirm that the dress, as at
present worn, in all its minute details, is ancient, but it is very
certain that it is compounded of three varieties in the
tierof^'hi^'
form of the dress, which were separately worn by the
and that
each of these can be traced back to the most
17th ce"nt*ury. Highlanders in the seventeenth century,
remote antiquity.
The first form of the dress was that worn by
vane y.
^^^ Duuc Uasal, or gentry of the Highlands, and
consi-sted of the Breacan or plaid, and the Lenicroich or High-
land shirt. They are thus described by Martin :— " The plad,
wore only b}' the men, is made of fine wool—the thred as
fine as can be made of that kind— it consists of divers colours,
and tKerc is a great deal of ingenuity required in sorting the
colours, so as to be agreeable to the nicest fancy. For this