IN his presidental address to the
Anthropological Section of the British Association, Prof. Sayce dealt
with dress as indicating certain racial facts. As he spoke of the high
antiquity of the Highland dress, we quote this portion of his address,
for it is both of interest and importance.
There are few things about which a
population—more especially in an early stage of society—is so
conservative as the matter of dress. When we find the Egyptian
sculptor representing the Hittites of the warm plains of Palestine
clad in the snowshoes of the mountaineer, we are justified in
concluding that they must have descended from the ranges of the
Taurus, where the bulk of their brethren continued to live, just as
the similar shoes with turned-up ends which the Turks have introduced
among the upper classes of Syria, Egypt, and northern Africa, point to
the northern origin of the Turks themselves. Such shoes are utterly
unsuited for walking in over a country covered with grass, brushwood,
or even stones; they are, on the contrary, admirably adapted. for
walking on snow. Now, the dress of Celtic Gaul and of southern
Britain, also, when the Romans first became acquainted with it, was
the same as the dress which "linguistic palaeontology" teaches us had
been worn by the primitive Aryans' in their first home. One of its
chief constituents were the braccae, or trousers, which accordingly
became to the Roman the symbol of the barbarian. We learn, however,
from sculptures and other works of art that before the retirement of
the Romans from the northern part of Europe, they had adopted this
article of clothing, at all events during the winter months. That the
natives of southern Britain continued to wear it after their
separation from Rome is clear from a statement of Gildas ("Hist., 19
"), in which he refers in no flattering terms to the kilt of the Pict
and the Scot. Yet from within a century after the time of Gildas,
there are indications that the northern kilt, which he regards as so
strange and curious, had become the common garb of Wales. When we come
to the 12th century, we find that it is the National costume. Giraldus
Cambrensis gives us a description of the Welsh dress in his own time,
from which we learn that it consisted simply of a tunic and plaid. it
was not until the age of the Tudors, according to Lluyd, the Welsh
historian of the reign of Elizabeth, that the Welsh exchanged their
own for the English dress. The Welsh, who served in the army of Edward
II. at Bannockburn, were remarked even by the Lowland Scotch, for the
scantiness of their attire, and we have evidence that it was the same
a century later. If we turn to Ireland we find that in the days of
Spenser, and later, the National costume of the Irish was the same as
that of the Welsh and the Highland Scotch. The knee-breeches and
sword-coat, which characterise the typical Irishman in the comic
papers, are survivals of the dress worn by the English at the time
when it was adopted in Ireland. The Highland dress, therefore, was
once worn not only in the Scotch Highlands and in Ireland, but also in
Wales. It characterised the Celtic parts of Britain, with the
exception of Cornwall and Devonshire. Yet we have seen that up to the
middle of the 6th century, at the period when Latin was still the
language of the fellow-countrymen of Gildas, and when "Cunedda's men"
had not as yet imposed their domination upon Wales, the old Celtic
dress with trousers must have been the one in common use. Now, we can
easily understand how a dress of the kind could have been replaced by
the kilt in warm countries like Italy and Greece; what is not easily
conceivable is that such a dress could have been replaced by the kilt
in the cold regions of the north. In warm climates a lighter form of
clothing is readily adopted; in cold climates the converse is the
case. I see, consequently, but one solution of the problem before us.
On the one hand, there was the distinctive Celtic dress of the Roman
age, which was the same as the dress of the primitive Aryan, and was
worn alike by the Celts of Gaul and Britain and the Teutons of
Germany; on the other hand there was the scantier and colder dress
which originally characterized the coldest part of Britain and
subsequently mediaeval Wales also. Must we not infer, in the first
place, that the aboriginal population of Caledonia and Ireland was not
Celtic—or at least not Aryan Celtic; and, secondly, that the dominant
class in Wales after the 6th century came from that northern portion
of the island where the kilt was worn? Both inferences, at all events,
agree with the conclusions which ethnologists and historians have
arrived at upon other grounds.
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