
Spinning a Yarn - hooboy
https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/spinning-yarn/1583953
======
tomcam
I feel vindicated. The article points out that the ancient tradition of
Scottish tartans is actually a commercial invention about 250 years old, with
a clear and unambiguous origin story. Hilarious example of capitalism at its,
er, most... vigorous. Sir Walter Scott, not fooled for a minute, even plays a
cameo role.

What a relief. As a US citizen with extensive Scottish ancestry this has
puzzled me because I couldn’t find much historical evidence of this practice.
While I loved the idea of a family tartan and so did my kids. But I also
didn’t like the idea of being bamboozled, giving us Yanks an even worse
reputation. So much falls into place...

~~~
aoki
The bogosity of clan tartans has been documented since at least 1940; see the
footnotes in the chapter on Highland culture in Hobsbawm and Ranger’s The
Invention of Tradition (1983).

~~~
hirundo
> since at least 1940

According to the article, since The Glasgow Herald article in 1895. It turns
out that Father Christmas isn't real either, but some things people really
don't want to interrogate.

~~~
aoki
The chapter in The Invention of Tradition (there are PDFs of the book online
if you're interested in the topic) is about the efforts by Scottish
nationalists over the century prior to the Allens to establish the idea of
kilts and clan tartans (and efforts by historians against these ideas - the
author of the chapter points to a 1940 book by McClintock as making the case
"conclusively"). Clan tartans were not, as represented in the article, "all
made up in 1829 by two brothers from Surrey" \- the Allens were popularizers,
not the origin of the idea.

I mention this because I think that the whole idea of political "invention of
tradition," while it has lost currency because it seems to reflect poorly on
anti-colonial nationalist movements, is far more interesting than that of
"random people making up stories for gain."

------
pjc50
Crucially tartan was banned for about forty years:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dress_Act_1746](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dress_Act_1746)

Not quite a lifetime, but enough to totally disrupt any kind of continuity of
history.

