Clan Carruthers Int Society CCIS                          PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

Could the Carruthers Tartan be from Gotland?  Possibly!

I was raised in rural Quebec and I have more real-life beard growing, axe throwing, bear hunting lumberjacks in my family than I have fingers on my hands (I still have all ten of my fingers, by the way… I can’t say as much for some of the lumberjacks in my family…). But lately as I’ve scoured the malls for a plaid blanket scarf, I found myself calling certain patterns plaids, and others tartans. And I couldn’t help but (internally) cry, “Someone please enlighten me!” But no one did, so I did it myself!

If you look up the word plaid in a dictionary, you’ll find a few definitions [1]:

1. A rectangular length of tartan worn over the left shoulder as part of the scottish national costume
2. a) A twilled woolen fabric with a tartan pattern
   b) A fabric with a pattern of tartan or an imitation of tartan
3. a) Tartan
   b) A pattern of unevenly spaced repeated stripes crossing at right angles

But a quick search for the origin of the word plaid reveals that the word is related to the gaelic word plaide meaning blanket or mantle [2]. So what we call the kilt, actually first appeared in what was called a “belted plaid”, literally like a belted blanket [3]. It looked like this (fun fact it doubled as a blanket for the night… much like our modern trend of blanket scarves). It was the predecessor to the kilt, today modern kilts are still worn with plaids (long length of fabric), but over the shoulder (separate piece of fabric, like this) [3]. Somewhere along the way, notably as the tartan wearers immigrated to America, the actual pattern was mistakenly called plaid.

So the correct word for the actual pattern is tartan. But then… where does the word tartan come from? Where does the pattern come from?

The fact is those who hold the answers to those questions have long, long been buried. The oldest tartan fabric we know of comes to us from the Tarim mummies.The Tarim mummies, named after the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, China (the most north-west region of China) where they were found, were found with pieces of preserved cloth, exhibiting tartan patterns. Contrary to intuition, these mummies don’t exhibit asiatic features, rather, they seem to be “from the west” [4]. The name for the culture that the Tarim mummies belonged to was the Tokharians whose language is most similar to that of the Celts [5]. See those interesting paths starting to form?

Unfortunately, we seem to know much more than that. How tartan became so strongly associated with the Scottish is a mystery, we can only assume that they saw it, liked it, and wanted to wear it!

Oh and one more thing, clan-tartans are modern inventions. In the origins of Scottish tartans the colours were determined by plant availability and to some degree personal taste [3]. When I say modern, I mean like, victorian-era, so today the tradition of clan tartans have been going long enough to not be ridiculous, but in the base of it it was all arbitrary: you retroactively picked a tartan for your clan, on the basis that you thought it was pretty.

From the Huldremose findings tartan now in the National Museum of Denmark

Tartans are quite appropriate for a Viking re-enactment, since we can rightfully say that the Gutlanders, and the Danes both wore tartans in the early 3rd and 4th century.   This style of dress did not stop, but continued through the Viking Age.

The Viking age, however, does not seem to show the same love for vibrant, large scale patterning as you see today in Scotland or Ireland.   The technology was certainly there to craft large plaids or stripes, but the evidence that they were used is lacking.

It was a burial tradition of the Guts, Gots, Celts, when one of their own, their Clan, their family died, to take a piece of tartan and place it in their mouth.   Many of the swatches they are finding in various archeological digs are found in this manner.  Sometime a whole mass grave will be unearth and every person in the grave will have the same tartan in their mouths.

Pictured to the left here are many of the samplings of various designs and weaves that have been found in Gotland, and tested to be from the 5th century.  At this time all weavers dyed their wool, and other materials, using only the dyes of the earth.  In Scotland and Ireland today, the oldest clans have the most natural muted colors in their Kilts.

***  The Carruthers Tartan is very muted in colors, and if  you own some you will see why the Carruthers tartan is ancient.  The colors are quite similar to those they found in Gotland.  The Carruthers ancestors who came from Gutland , brought their tartans with as did others from that area.   They came to fight, and when they advanced they tore off their cloth and fought naked.  ***

One of the Tartan or Kilt Makers that Clan Carruthers supports is:

USA Kilts (800) 368-8633        sales@usakilts.com

Carruthers 13 – 16 Ounce LOCH

https://www.usakilts.com/advancedsearch/result/?q=Carruthers

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Clan Carruthes Int Society CCIS  LLc

carruthersclan1@gmail.com               carrothersclan@gmail.com

Karen Swanson,  Croatia and Findland

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS HISTORIAN AND GENEALOGIST

 

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