Well-nigh forgotten and rarely encountered, save in the old
pattern-book or in the tartan collector’s museum, this design is
early, though its origin cannot be fixed with any certainty. It has
been supplanted by a comparatively modern pattern, known commonly as
the Malcolm but occasionally as the Mac Callum, which is the ancient
form of the name. The new scheme has existed some forty or fifty years
at least, as the Editor has received from a lady in Skye a specimen
in a portion of a silk dress her family has owned for about that
period without knowing the name of the tartan. In the collection of
the Highland Society of London (1822), in that at Moy Hall, and in
every other important repository of the kind, the Mac Callum as here
illustrated is ranked, and the Malcolm is wanting. It its believed that
the family, having lost trace of the old sett fifty or sixty years ago,
had the modern design prepared from the recollection of old people in
Argyllshire; but, as has frequently happened in similar circumstances,
the recovery of the original design shows that considerable deviation
had been made.
[Illustration: XV. MAC CALLUM]