Tartan

By Hugh Cheape

When the Apollo spacecraft landed on the moon Allan Bean, one of the crew reverentially laid a swatch of MacBean tartan on the moon's surface. Tartan is a symbol of kinship and belonging in Scotland, and a badge of identity recognized all over the world.

Alongside the powerful historic and national resonance tartan has for Scots is the fact that it has been borrowed repeatedly by fashion. Today, we are as likely to meet tartan in a couturier dress as in a kilt or plaid. Tartan is distinctive in colour, style and design. It conveys personality, ceremony and drama. All these aspects of its character have contributed to tartan being one of the best known and best loved fabrics in the world

The origins of tartan are remote. Tartan's history is nevertheless fascinating, thought it has been scrutinized with the eye of sentiment more often than of reason. Much of Scottish history has been dogged by speculation based on slender knowledge, by the mixing of truths and half-truths, and tartan is no exception. It history has been coloured by strongly held opinions and enthusiastic intuition, yet there is a well-documented story to be told.

The word 'tartan' probably French, (from the word tiretaine), was in use early in the sixteenth century, a period when Scotland was dynastically linked to France. The French tiretaine described a half-wool, half-linen cloth, sometimes described in English as 'linsey-woolsey'. It seems likely that, in some way we can't now trace, this word came to describe the fabric we now call tartan.

The use of checks and stripes in patterning cloth was known in prehistory, and must be almost as ancient as weaving itself. A piece of third-century fabric excavated in Falkirk shows a simple check, a form of design which survived known more recently as "Shepherd's Plaid'. Simple decorative weaving was known in all early cultures. Dark and light natural shades of wool were separated out and woven together in regular patterns. This early introduction of pattern into weaving shows how fabric and clothes were seen not just as protection but as an expression on creativity.

This book goes from this early history of tartan to what was popular and necessary related to cloth in each period of Scottish history. The book ends with pictures of various clan tartans and their history.