HEATHER AND HIGHLAND COSTUME
Let us look at the characteristics of Caledonia’s principal garment,
the heather: or, shall we say, rather, the hue upon Scotia’s cheeks?
Scotland is a land of colors. Her robes and cosmetics are of many dyes.
On her flowers are the flushes of the temporary blooms, on her rocks
the tints of eternity. Her tarns, her lochs, her bogs are as dye vats,
so rich, yet so changeful, are their hues, over which artists thrill
and glow.
Scotland’s richest hues are at their full between spring and winter.
Then, in nature, pink and purple are the reigning fashions. Over the
larger part of the land’s surface grows the plant called, in homely
word, ling, or heather, which botanists name _Calluna vulgaris_. These
evergreen shrubs flourish all over northern Europe, but other members
of the great family are found also in Africa, where they reach the size
of large bushes, while one favored child, in the south of Europe, grows
to the proportions of a tree.
Some of these species brought from southern lands ornament British
gardens, and produce their flowers in great profusion in April. In
fact, some flower-fanciers rear in greenhouses the different varieties
of heather, both exotic and native, with the enthusiasm which others
devote to orchids. There are special buildings, called heath-houses,
erected for the cultivation of the many varieties.
Blessed is the heather, for it enlivens the sterile lands of northern
and western Europe, which otherwise would be almost appalling in
their vistas of desolation! Great masses of heather give, even to the
most forbidding landscapes, a beauty suggesting something like human
sympathy. The common heather, like the man suddenly lifted to fame
and fortune, is apt to show the lack of early advantages, but give
this plant of the moors a sheltered place and kindly care, and it will
grow erect and “heave out its blooms”--as said an old mariner--so
as to touch the top of a yardstick. With purple stems, close-leaved
green fruit, and feathery spikes of bell-shaped flowers, this _Calluna
vulgaris_ is one of the handsomest of the heath flowers. Some heather
is white, but most of the plants are of a lilac rose color, varying
through pink to purple. It is this varying depth of color in the blooms
which adds to the glory of the August moors and hillsides.
Under ordinary environment, most of the plants have no human care to
give them comfortable growth. Out on the desolate moor, or on the arid
slopes, each bush has to wrestle with the tempest and withstand the
bombardment of sand and gravel hurled by the wind. Though like the pine
of Clan Alpine, “the firmer it roots him, the stronger it blows,” yet
the life of the heather is a constant struggle. Even though it rise but
a few inches above the surface, its roots must be anchored deep in the
ground to prevent its being blown away. Its white stalk must become
gray, hard, and tough, if the plant is to live.
The blossoming of the heather, even though it be “the meanest flower
that blows,” is hailed with delight as the opening of Nature’s floral
calendar. With its clusters of pink, in the time of flowering in
midsummer, and its mass of purple later on, it has a strange power to
awaken deep-lying thoughts. To the natives, more especially, this wee,
modest flower has a mystic potency to please and charm. It rouses among
them, at home and abroad, a feeling of patriotism. It becomes, in the
Scotsman’s associations, a link between his soul and the ground out
of which he came and into which he will go. Probably no toiling and
homesick Scot, pining in a foreign land, longs for anything in the old
homeland so much as for a sight of his native heather. To hold before
his dying eyes a sprig of “the bonnie” has been known to light there a
gleam such as nothing else can.
Virtually unknown, except to the scientific, in America, where it
has never been native, the ordinary or Scottish variety of heather,
wherever seen, has been largely imported by the sons and daughters of
Scotland. Heather is now found sporadic on the Atlantic Coast from
Newfoundland to New Jersey. More welcome than the thistle, in which
many hillsides of Scotland “are very fertile,” as Dr. Johnson remarks,
the heather has brought beauty to the eye and charm to the landscape,
instead of calamity, as in Australia, where it “is nigh unto cursing,
whose end is to be burned.”
As for usefulness, the heather to the Scots is almost what the bamboo
is to the Japanese, in its myriad applications to rural purposes. It
is, first of all, to the women, a broom plant. The largest stalks are
made into a broom; or, as the Scotch say, the “besom,” which readers of
Isaiah associate chiefly with destruction. The shorter stems are tied
into bundles that serve as brushes. It is Scotch humor that calls a
low, worthless woman a “besom,” while the proverb declares that “there
is little to the rake to get, after the besom.” The long trailing
shoots of the heather are woven into baskets. Dug up with the peat
about its roots, the “cling heath” not only makes good fuel, but it
often supplies the only material for heating and cooking that can be
obtained on the dry moors.
In primitive days, the “shealings,” or huts of the Highlanders, were
constructed of heath stems connected together with peat mud, and
worked into a kind of mortar, with dry grass or straw. Even to-day
hunting-lodges, temporary sheds, and cattle houses are often built in
the same way and roofed with the same plant. The luxurious bed of the
ancient Gael was made by spreading the heather on the floor or bunk,
with its flowers upward, making a soft and springy mattress. To-day,
many a deer-stalker, hill shepherd, or tramping tourist is glad to make
bedding of the same material. In former times, before Scotland had
become almost a synonym for whiskey and her glens for distilleries, the
young shoots were used in brewing, as a substitute for hops, while for
tanning material they have always served.
After the heather ripens, the seeds remain a long time in the capsules,
and furnish food to serve all kinds of birds, but especially to the
red grouse, which finds here the major portion of its sustenance. The
tender tops yield a large part of the winter fodder of the hill flocks;
for, when the mountain grasses and rushes are no longer luscious
or accessible, the sheep will perforce crop the heather. This fact
is the basis of one of those cherished notions, which local pride,
especially when “there’s money in it,”--and of like nature all over the
world,--has so generously furnished. It is a notion, almost dangerous
in some localities to dispute, that the fine flavor of Scotch mutton
comes from the sheep’s diet of heather tops, which menu, however,
exists much more largely in popular imagination than in actual reality.
Despite the pressure of the trade and the demand for the daily square
miles of newspaper stock required for an insatiable reading public,
manufacturers have not yet been able to make heather stalks compete
with other materials in making paper. The stalks are not sufficiently
fibrous for this special purpose.
Two of the four hundred and twenty known species of heather yield great
store of honey, furnishing a plentiful supply to the bees in moorland
districts. To secure a good crop, thousands of hives are annually
transported to the moors during heather-blossom time. It is highly
probable that from this honey the ancient Picts brewed the mead, said
by Boethius to have been made from the flowers themselves.
In the long stretch of the æons and centuries, through the alchemy of
sun and water, the heather has deposited the peat which to-day serves
for fuel, and of which recent science has, with the aid of molasses,
made food for horses and cattle.
Of the known species of the genus _Erica_, most are native to the
south of Africa, but the British Isles produce seven species, of which
some have been found only in Ireland. The heather “bells,” so often
alluded to in British song, are the flowers of the cross-leaved and
the five-leaved heather. Apart from song, these blooms flourish in the
field of rhetoric and conversation sparkles with references to them.
“To take to the heather” is a euphemism for absconding. To be “on one’s
own native heather” is to be at home. “The heather has taken fire” when
a man is in passion, an orator is eloquent, or the populace is in
anger.
The heather, or “heath,” as many natives call it, has its own
inhabitants. The little sandpiper is called the “heather peeper.”
Then there is the heath fowl, or moor hen,--its young being called
the “heath polt,” or pullets,--and the “black grouse” is her husband.
According to Thompson, in his “Seasons,”--
“O’er the trackless waste
The heath hen flutters, pious fraud, to lead
The hot pursuing spaniel far away.”
In America we call this heath hen the pinnated, ruffled, or Canada
grouse.
The game bird which is peculiarly associated with Scotland is the
“grouse.” The word means literally “speckled,” “grizzly,” or “gray,”
and when popularly applied includes almost all of the rough-footed
scratchers that wear feathers and have wings. The red grouse, of old,
was called “moor fowl,” or “moor game,” and in common speech is said
even to influence legislation; for in popular tradition, Parliament
adjourns on the day when the law allows this bird to be shot. On the
12th of August, throughout Scotland, one is likely to see in the tailor
shops and in many stores sprigs of heather decorating the cloth or
other merchandise. In the show windows will probably be seen pictures
of grouse hunters at work with their guns, and the graceful birds
rising “up from the valley of death” to fly, if possible, beyond
the reach of man. An immense number of Scottish acres are set apart
as grouse moors. When there are no rocks, bushes, gullies, or other
natural features for a covert, short bits of wall or lunettes of stone
are built, beyond which the hunters hide. These make a prominent
feature in many a square mile of desolation.
Though the guns are not by law allowed to blaze at the birds until
August 12 is fully come, yet at the railway stations one may see,
loaded on the first train of the day before, hampers packed full of
this material for enjoyable dinners, to appear in the London markets,
with startling if not legal punctuality.
It is said that the red grouse is rarely or never found away from the
heather, on which it chiefly subsists. On the contrary, the willow
grouse, with which we are acquainted in the New World, where heather,
in the strict sense, is unknown, prefers the shrubby growths of
berry-bearing plants, and is found numerously among the willows and
branches on the higher levels and mountain slopes. The snow-white
ptarmigan is the cousin to the red grouse.
It seems strange, at first, that the heather does not bulk more largely
in Scottish imagination, as shadowed forth in poetry and popular song.
Yet there is one poem by Jean Glover, entitled “O’er the muir amang the
heather,” which tells of coming through “the craigs of Kyle,” and how
_she_ charmed the poet’s heart, who then swears:--
“By sea and sky she shall be mine,
The bonnie lass amang the heather
O’er the muir,” etc.
Another song, “Heather Jock’s noo awa’,” by an unknown author, tells
of a famous pickpocket who could creep through “a wee bit hole” and
quietly pilfer eggs and cheese, for “Jock was nae religious youth,”
who yet lived at a bountiful table spread with his spoil. Having often
broken jail, the judge at last, without delay, sent him off to Botany
Bay and bade him “never more play Heather Jock.”
Nevertheless, the allusions and references to the heath flower, in
song, poetry, and conversation, are numerous. Scott speaks of the
heath-bell “which supplied the bonnet and the plume,” and of the
harebell,--of which our “shepherd’s purse” is not the contraction,--and
again of other dew-begemmed blooms:--
“A foot more light, a step more true,
Ne’er from the heath flower dashed the dew.”
Between the world of heather and the Highlander’s costume, there is a
close and subtle connection. Since in the evolution of Scottish dress
the heath flowers--before the introduction of garden favorites, of
exotic and modern flowering plants, or the more elaborate plaids of
recent days--“supplied the bonnet and the plume,” it seems evident
that art took her hints from nature. “A wide, billowing series of
confluent hills, that for half a year mingled tints of brown, russet,
and dun in a rich pattern,” is a description of the hilly landscape of
the border region, out of which, for the most part, the development of
the plaids, on a large scale of production, proceeded. These, blending
with the best work and most cunning textiles of the Highlands and
of the islands, have made the actual Highlander’s costume of which
the modern reader thinks. It must always be remembered that the most
striking difference in the daily dress of Lowlander and Highlander was
in the cut, form, method of wearing, and general appearance, rather
than in color or material. Roughly speaking, the abundant variety of
tints and patterns is almost wholly modern.
For centuries, until banned by law, the most striking external mark
of difference between the northland Scot, or the mountaineer, and the
Lowlander, the man of the plains, was in the male costume. Scotland,
though in Roman times inhabited by Celtic tribes, shared with the
northern or Teutonic nations in the good providence that enabled her
people to work out their natural life, not under Latin forms, nor
according to the genius of classic paganism, but under the Christian
religion and civilization, into whose school they came as young, docile
pupils. Christianity is Scotland’s _alma mater_. Hence her people
rejoice to-day in an art which has remained free from Mediterranean
infusion. It is certainly wonderful that such an æsthetic dress as the
Scottish costume should have grown up as something almost unaided;
to say nothing of other interesting forms of artistic industry and
decoration, which are wholly indigenous.
The tartan, though Scottish in its development, was hardly an original
invention. The word comes from the Spanish and French “tire taine,”
meaning in the former language something thin and flimsy, from “tire
tar,” to tremble, or shiver, with the cold. In French, the term
“tire taine” refers to the mingled fibres of linen and wool, or
linsey-woolsey. Probably no word is known in either Gaelic or English,
before the fifteenth century, describing the finer sort of tartans.
After this date, the vocabulary is rich and the industry greatly
developed. It is certain that the Highlanders by the eighteenth century
possessed these peculiar textiles and their patterns which were varied
to a wonderful degree, so that each clan had its own special tartan,
by which it was distinguished. The Scots made the tartan the fit
substitute for a heraldry that expresses itself in the “arms” and in
a system of symbolical decoration copied from plants, animals, or the
implements of war or industry. It is probable that European heraldry
arose out of the crusades, which gave also to Scottish blazonry a
tremendous impetus.
When, however, the modern world at large, attracted by the beauty and
solid value of the Scotch tartans, used these as articles of dress for
their own personal decoration, or for purely commercial advantage, then
the heraldry of the tartan suffered confusion and decay. Manufacturers,
for the sake of the money to be gained in the new enterprise, began to
design new and purely imaginary tartans. This proceeding gave rise to
the jests and ribaldry of the shallow skeptics, who throw doubt upon
the reality of these distinctive patterns as ever having been, as at
one time they undoubtedly were, distinctive as the particular badges of
particular clans. The truth lies midway between the enthusiast and the
doubter.
In political history, when conquest, subjection, or subordination of
all to the supreme government must be secured, it seems necessary,
at times, to suppress or abolish certain outward symbols or forms of
dress which ally the thoughts and feelings of those subordinated to the
insurgent past. It seems best to ban these, at least until the time
when, order and uniformity having been secured, the resumption of the
old liberty of dress, which has no longer any political significance,
may be harmless. In the old Scot’s land we have heard about “the
wearing of the green”--long proscribed, then allowed.
The Highlander’s costume has to-day no political significance, though
it was once the badge of the insurgent, and later for a time under
ban. After Culloden, in 1745, the British Parliament passed laws by
which the Scottish hill people were deprived of their weapons. Then,
also, the Highland dress was prohibited under severe penalties. Happily
however, that ban was lifted in good season.
The turbulence of the clans was at once diminished when they were
disarmed and the way was thus paved for peaceful compromise. The ways
of peace became more attractive to both kerns and chiefs after roads
had been made in the mountainous region. Then the economic situation
steadily improved and industry was associated with allurements nearly
equal to those of war.
One of the first things to be done, to command success in this new
venture in statecraft, was to make a clever adaptation of the Highland
dress, which should take away all idea of conquest or servitude, but
rather suggest ancestral freedom. In this, the success was instant and
marked. Attracted also by the high pay, the hardy men of the glens
enlisted by thousands in the British army.
It was the wise and far-seeing statesman Pitt, who, acting upon the
suggestion of Forbes of Culloden, saw that all that the unemployed
Highlanders needed were new outlets to their energies. For over
two-centuries the United Kingdom had no more loyal soldiers than the
Scots, whose valor in every land has been tried and on a hundred
fields of glory proved. The prohibitory acts, already a dead letter,
were, in 1782, formally repealed.
Since that time the tartan plaids have come into fashion on an
international scale. These are no longer thought of as a thing purely
Scottish, yet the credit of such a notable contribution to the taste,
the fashion, and the joy of the whole world belongs to Scotland. It
is one of the many gifts which this land and people have made to the
race at large. In the Empire’s struggle for life in 1914–16, among
the first, most valorous, most numerous, and most efficient, were the
Scots. Even for a “service” uniform, the modified Highland dress holds
handsomely its own.