TARTAN SYMBOLISM
©2006 Matthew A. C.
Newsome, FSA Scot, GTS
published in the
Scottish Banner, November 2006
Many of my readers know
that I am the curator of the Scottish Tartans Museum
in Franklin, NC. A big part of what we do at the
museum is to look up tartans for people, based on
family name, location, what have you. And I’ve
noticed that often when I show someone their tartan
for the first time, they want to know what the colors
“mean.”
They imagine that there is
some codified system of color symbolism in tartans,
where one can say, “red means courage,” or “white
means purity,” or some such. The reality is that no
such codified system exists. That certainly doesn’t
stop people from trying to make one, however!
Perhaps most common is the
association of Scottish tartan with the ancient Irish
Brehon Laws, which contained a system of displaying
rank by means of the number of stripes in a ceremonial
cloak. The more stripes (the more colors), the higher
ranking the wearer. I don’t know how many web sites
on tartan I’ve seen that make some reference to the
Brehon Laws. This is completely anachronistic! Not
only were the Brehon Laws Irish, not Scottish, they
became obsolete after the Norman invasion of Ireland
in the twelfth century, some six hundred years before
the advent of the clan tartan system in Scotland.
The thought doesn’t really
make sense, anyway. What is the significance in
counting colors? The Robertson tartan has three
colors (red, blue and green). The Robertson hunting
tartan has five colors (green, blue, black, red and
white). What does this tell us about the Robertson
clan? Absolutely nothing.
There was even one
gentleman who used to make a curious spectacle of
himself at Highland Games in the southern US by
approaching people and claiming to be able to “read”
their tartan. He claimed that there were hidden Ogham
messages in the tartan designs. No doubt these hidden
messages would tell him that Jesus was married, that
Elvis is alive and well, and reveal the identity of
the gunman on the grassy knoll. There is no shortage
of conspiracy theories, so it’s hardly surprising to
see them make their way into tartan lore.
The reality is that we
truly don’t know why certain colors were used in the
designs of traditional Scottish tartans. Some people
try and make connections. The tartans of the seven
clans of the Siol Aplin (the clans claiming
descent from King Kenneth MacAlpine) are all red
(Grant, MacGregor, MacKinnon, MacQuarrie, MacNab,
MacFee and MacAulay). Some have tried to draw
significance from that fact, but it’s quite a
stretch. About every other clan tartan is red, and
the MacAlpine tartan itself is green (though dating
only to the late nineteenth century).
When speaking of the use
of tartan historically, we can draw some conclusions
from color, but nothing like the symbolism that many
today imagine. For instance, red was a very expensive
color to obtain with natural dyes. Therefore someone
wearing tartan with a lot of red in it was more likely
to have wealth. One might also wear a bright colored
tartan in an attempt to show off one’s status. A
dark, earth-toned tartan might be chosen to blend in
with the environment, by someone on the hunt (or who
just wanted to stay hidden).
More meaning can usually
be found in the tartan design itself, rather than in
the colors used. It is possible to show relation by
similarity in tartan design. For instance, the
MacDonald of Clanranald and the MacDonnell of
Glengarry tartans are simply variations of the Clan
MacDonald tartan with white stripes added into the
design to difference them. In this way they show
relation to the larger parent clan.
The MacKay tartan and the
Gunn tartan are likewise related. The Gunn tartan is
in essence the MacKay tartan with a red line added on
the green. This makes sense as the two clans occupied
neighboring territory in the Scottish north. The
Morrison green tartan also is based on the MacKay
(this time with the red line added to the blue). This
was done quite deliberately when the Morrison tartan
was designed in the early twentieth century, to
showcase the historic links between the two clans.
And it is when you get
into the more modern era that you can start to
identify meaning behind the colors of the tartans.
The MacGregor tartan has been around for 200 years,
and no one really knows why it is red. But when a
tartan was designed only 20 years ago, or perhaps just
2, then the reasons for the color selection can be
found out.
This is especially
apparent in many of the new district tartans. The
Connecticut state tartan, for instance, designed in
1994 by three professors at Three Rivers College,
contains blue for the Long Island Sound, green for the
forests, red and yellow for autumn leaves, gray for
granite, and white for snow. They even made the
tartan asymmetric, offsetting the white stripe in
order to symbolize the irregularity of snowfall in
that state!
In the Nova Scotia tartan,
designed in 1953 by Bessie Murray, blue represents the
ocean, light and dark green the evergreen and
deciduous trees, white the surf, gold the Royal
Charter of Nova Scotia, and red the Lion Rampant on
their provincial flag.
Notice that in each case
the meaning behind the colors is particular to that
tartan. White may mean snow in Connecticut, but it
represents the surf in Nova Scotia. The white in the
Ottawa tartan is for the white pine. And just because
the colors in many modernly designed tartans were
chosen for symbolic meaning, don’t assume this is
always the case. It could also be that white was just
chosen for aesthetic purposes, which is a very
traditional thing to do.
Our museum’s home town of
Franklin has
its own town tartan, adopted in 2005. The colors
are red, yellow, blue and black. The designer of the
tartan, local hand weaver Virginia McSween, chose the
colors for economic reasons. In other words, she had
extra yarn in those colors lying about that needed
using! Sometimes there really is no greater hidden
meaning. I wonder what our “tartan Ogham reader”
would make of that!
