All Things Scottish:

 Material Culture and the Scottish Revival in North America

The Kilt

One possible method of approach is to model the final paper on an essay  by Susan Pearce. In it, Pearce selects one object of material culture, a British officer's redcoat worn at the Battle of Waterloo, and examines the range of meanings this particular object had for the owner and  different socio-economic groups. Pearce argues that the jacket is "a message-bearing entity" and can be interpreted in a number of different ways. For instance, for its owner, Lieutenant Henry Anderson, the coat may have acted as "the validation of a personal narrative: when the original owner told his story of the great battle, he referred to his souvenirs to bear out the truth of what he was saying ...." For the other members of his class, however, the coast took on another level of meaning. The Battle of Waterloo, Pearce writes,  became "the most celebrated passage of arms in the entire Napoleonic Wars".  "The socially approved norm, ideologically endorsed, " she continues, "saw the battle as embodying bravery, loyalty, worthy self-sacrifice, and national pride, so that its events became proverbial and all contact with it, like Anderson's jacket, was lovingly cherished." For the British labouring poor of the period, however, the battle was viewed somewhat differently. Through her examples of folk song, Pearce demonstrates that the working classes sympathized with the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution and expressed, "a hatred of the British soldiers at the command of the class oppressors ... in the period of abortive revolutionary action following 1815." To the survivors of this period Anderson's jacket represented their domination and suppression by the owner and his class."

A similar study that involved a uniquely Scottish material symbol such as the kilt might also yield a variety of meanings about its importance to domestic and immigrant Scots at different periods in history. The kilt, like Anderson's jacket, is a message-bearing entity. For instance, the kilt was at one time used as a metaphor for the political state of the nation. A Highland dance called the Sean Truibhas (pronounced shawn trews) supposes to represent the Highlander shaking his (Highland dancing was, until comparatively recently, the exclusive enclave of men) legs in an attempt to rid himself of the constriction of the trousers he was forced to wear after the banning of Highland dress following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746.  The metaphor is reiterated in folk song as well. Catherine-Ann MacPhee, a Gaelic singer from Barra, sings the following verse which said to be a protest song against the Act which forbade the wearing of the kilt:

farewell to the (new) tartan, it is my fairest choice, pleasingly set above the knee, tightly pleated all around

the curse of all the Gaels, upon King William and his kind, who insisted we wear the grey breeks, and took the kilt away from us

I pulled on the grey breeks, instead of the kilt, in order to be like the Lowlander, on the far side of the Clyde

I clad myself in the grey breeks, I must have looked foolish! no young lass will look my way, since I got the new uniform

but when I get to the army, I'll sport a kilt and a rough-haired sporran, a shaggy blue bonnet with a yard of ribbon, the storm of battle all around!

farewell to the (new) tartan, it is my fairest choice, pleasingly set above the knee, tightly pleated all around

Unfortunately, no date of the song is given in the liner notes. It is said to be "traditional" which means, generally, that the song is sufficiently  old that the original author is no longer known. Whether it was, in fact, composed immediately following Culloden or much later is unknown.

One might be able to derive many other additional meanings with further examination. For instance, the Highland regiments in the late-eighteenth, through the nineteenth and in to the twentieth century, wore kilts and much was written of their participation in the Empire's expansion. The members of those regiments wore the kilt like any badge of  honour. During the First World War, for instance, German troops nicknamed the kilted regiments "the ladies from Hell". It also seems clear that the Scottish symbols that Trevor-Roper argues are invented traditions were used to recruit Scots during the First World War. Paterson notes that recruiters during the First World War used these symbols with great effect. The "kilt, the pipes, and the romantic version of Highland history", he writes, "came together in the image of the modern soldier as the direct descendant of the old clan warriors, steeped in martial glory."

Any questions or comments? Feel free to e-mail me: rmaclean@chass.utoronto.ca.