Semiotics Of Tartan.

Semiotics of Tartan.

I was once told during drunken conversation with a Scotsman in my local pub one evening that the clan I am descended from (the Campbell’s) have to wear a white strip (to negative effect) in their clan tartan because of historical events sometime in the 18^th century. I’m not sure how much of that was true but it intrigued me because in my ignorance I thought a tartan was constructed from the materials at hand in the region. The colour and pattern of tartan in various Scottish clans is defined by where they are from and the surrounding areas.

Recently I attended a wedding where I met a Scotsman in his traditional Scottish dress (there’s always one). During another drunken conversation he educated me about his tartan, the different colours represented the region his clan hailed from. The blue backdrop represented the sea, strips of white mimicking the swash coming off the waves, yellow for the sand of the beach, green of the heather hills and a deep black of the slate rock in the region. This is a rough idea of what it actually looked like...

Campbell Tartan

The colours in this tartan I think simply represent the heather and the thistles that would have inhabited the clan territories.

Matthew A.C. Newsome (2008) looks at the connection between clan tartans and regimental tartans and argues that it was only when Scottish regiments started to emerge in about 1745 that tartans were adopted as a uniform and different regiments had different tartans. He argues that many families that were in the same regiment now wear a similar tartan. ‘ the  Campbells, Grants and Munros all wear the tartan of the Black Watch’.  (Newsome, 2008).

Tartans seemed, therefore, to originate organically using colours that could be obtained through natural dyes from the environment around them i.e. plants and animals –  yellows from heather and purples from sea shore whelks. Clans were more easily identified by the plants that they wore in their caps than the colour of their tartan  (Scotshistoryonline, 2012)

In conclusion I think I prefer the romanticized patriotic version which comes out after a few beers.

Reference List

Newsome, A.C.  ‘The Military Origin of Clan Tartans’ The Scottish Banner July 2008 p.9 (North American Edition),

The History of Scottish Tartans and Clan Tartans (2012) available at http://www.scotshistoryonline.co.uk/tartan-history.html   (Accessed 23 April 2012)