Folding colour map. Unfolds to 100x76cm.

As early as the fifteenth century striped or checked cloth is mentioned in Scottish records, and in 1538 James V wore 'Heland tanane’ hose. Travellers’ accounts and portraits of the next two centuries tell much about Highland dress plaids coats and trews of tartan doth — while the modern ’little kilt’ was evolved in the eighteenth century Portraits show that tartans, different from the present clan setts, were worn then, and more than one by the same person. When, after the '45’. Highland dress, i.e. the plaid, philabeg or little kilt, trews, ‘tartan or party-coloured Plaid or Stuff’ were forbidden by Parliament, the close connections between 'the Highland Garb', the tartan and the warlike spirit of the men who carried the weapons shown below was demonstrated The prohibition applied to all except 'His Majestys Forces'.

There is much evidence which shows how popular tartan was throughout Scotland after the repeal of the Act (1782), but the ordinary clansmen gradually ceases to wear it as their distinctive dress. Letters to a firm of woollen manufacturers, Wilsons of Bannockburn, however, reveal the gradual growth of a desire to wear ’setts' associated with the wearer’s clan but there were patterns for the weavers to follow; this came with the nineteenth century. Most of the tartans shown here were in existence under these names before 1822 interest grew in all things Highland, stimulated by Scott’s 'Lady of the Lake’ (1810) and 'Waverley' (1814), George IV's visit (1822). Queen Victoria’s love for the Highlands and the valour of the Highland Regiments. Today Scots throughout the world recognise that the tartan and the kilt stand for Scotland.

PUBLISHED BY JOHN BARTHOLOMEW & SON LTD, SCOTLAND