"Tartan question" Topic

I want to know how much uniformity I can have in an FoG Highland skirmish BG for a Scots Royalist army (ECW).

I am obviously aware that the system of clan tartans is mostly a C19th invention although there seems to have been setts popular in districts.

As I imagine a small unit of skirmishers in reality were all neighbours, am I correct in thinking they would largely wear the same tartan?

Tartans from the 16th century were regional, as writers describe being able to tell people from different regions by their clothing colours.
Wikipedia quotes: 'Martin Martin, in A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1703, wrote that Scottish tartans could be used to distinguish the inhabitants of different regions. He expressly wrote that the inhabitants of various islands and the mainland of the Highlands were not all dressed alike, but that the setts and colours of the various tartans varied from isle to isle.[note 3] As he does not mention the use of a special pattern by each family, it would appear that such a distinction is a modern one.'

linking tartans to clans was a brittish invention/myth

Oh dearie me! The only modern thing about clan tartan is that improvements in printing and graphic design made codifying and cataloguing them easier, and hence brought them to the attention of the High Victorians, who romanticised things a little, but liked things to be orderly….

The records may be a 19thC development, but clan tartan has been around since weaving! (And yes, before the advent of mass production techniques, of course there would have been variations between islands and valleys, even between individual looms I daresay!)

Think for a moment – if they were a 19thC invention, why would they have been banned in 1745, after the rebellion?

All tartans were banned after the 1745, (as indeed were kilts) so that doesn't tell us anything about clan tartans.
No doubt particular areas had their own patterns, but I doubt it was as orderly as the Victorian 'clan tartan' system; for instance I'm sure that Macdonalds living on Skye would have a different tartan to those living in Lochaber; there wouldn't have been a 'Macdonald tartan'.
Tartans were regional – so if a clan was large and lived in several regions, it would have several tartans.

@ Navy etc

yes & no. You don't want to let Celtic Romanticism carry you too far away.

"To counter the myth that clan tartans were worn from the most ancient of times, many commentators swing completely the other way and insist that clan tartans are an invention of the Victorians and the wicked weavers! As with so many claims in all walks of life, the truth lies somewhere between the two.

It is widely accepted that in many of the isolated Scottish glens, members of the same clan or family would be grouped together. In all probability they would have one weaver amongst them who would churn out his standard design which would be worn by all. That could be regarded as the 'district' tartan for all the inhabitants of that glen. Since they were invariably all of the same family grouping, then it was also a 'clan' tartan although it wasn't regarded in that light for quite some time. It wasn't until the early 1700s that evidence (by no means irrefutable it has to be said) appeared, to suggest that some codification of those tartans was taking place.
It wasn't until Culloden in 1746 that firm evidence surfaces that some tartans were definitely regarded as clan rather than district. That evolutionary process was firmly hit on the head however by the post-Culloden proscription of tartan. When George IV visited Edinburgh in 1822, that's why there was such a scrabble amongst many of the chiefs to find or identify their traditional district/clan tartans."

link

A lot of the "color selection" was what plants & minerals were in the area.

I'd go with colors common to a particular area, but the actual sett be not-quite-uniform. So you might have the "Red Guys" with a red background, white(ish), purple and a little green; "Yellow Guys" with yellow background, a little red, blue, black (dark grey) and white; etc. But how wide the stripes are and in what colors wouldn't be uniform.

Vary the shades of the background color a little – the result of fading, different dye lots, etc.

All tartans were banned after the 1745, (as indeed were kilts) so that doesn't tell us anything about clan tartans.

It tells us that they were considered politically significant by the British Crown in 1745, which must mean they imparted a sense of identity – so clan tartans must have been recognised then.

I disagree. It merely says that the Sassenachs recognized the cultural significance of tartan & wanted a blanket ban.
They banned the speaking of Gaelic too.

If they'd see it as a clan thing, surely the (imaginary) tartans of loyalist clans would have been exempt.

@ Roderick. Good suggestion. Thanks.

Tartans imparted a sense of (Highland) Scottish identity.
That's why they were banned. Nothing to do with clan tartans.

Clan tartans were NOT a Victorian invention – the clan-based Highland regiments of the British Army had them during the mid-18th and early-19th centuries. Most (though by no means all) of these tartans were based around the Government Sett – the "Black Watch" tartan – with junior regiments adding an extra stripe or two for a regimental distinction. Some of these tartans later evolved into civilian clan tartans, but you have to be careful. For example, there is a common misconception that the Black Watch and MacKay tartans are the same, or very close, whereas in fact they are quite different, as this discussion shows:-

link

(scroll down to comment by M A C Newsome).

Prior to the 1740s, clans – or portions of them – would buy their cloth from a single local mill, or might even own a mill of their own. Each mill would use local vegetable and other dyes, and be set up to produce certain types of weave or sett. Thus, in any group that had bought all its cloth from one mill, it was quite likely that all would wear a particular weave – not a "clan tartan" as such, but capable of identifying folk from a particular area.

A lot of the "color selection" was what plants & minerals were in the area

Remember, this was long before things like travel, common use of currency and commercial trade existed. You made do with what was commonly available, generally only within a few miles radius from home.