Today, 6 April, is Tartan Day – a principally North American day of celebration of Scottish heritage, although it’s also marked, unofficially, in Argentina. 6 April was chosen as it’s the date of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320.
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“Admiration for Scottish thought did not, for many Americans, extend to admiring, or even liking, the Scots in their midst. Jefferson included a condemnation of ‘Scotch and other foreign mercenaries’ in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence”
—Prof Susan Manning, “Scotland and America”
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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2007/05/scotland-and-america/
“It has been calculated that the area of tartan cloth made each year is sufficient to cover Edinburgh’s Royal Mile to a depth of six hundred feet, an event which you could be forgiven for thinking has already happened”
—“Tartan Nation: ethnicity & Scotland”
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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2011/11/editorial-tartan-nation-ethnicity-and-scotland/
#Scottish #literature #culture #history #tartan #TartanDay #ethnicity #identity
“As a patterned textile, [tartan] features straight lines, right angles, bright colours, and no ambiguity; as a symbol, its lines become fuzzy, its angles circular, its colours muddied, and its meaning polysemic.”
—Ellen R. Beard, “When Tartan Was Not Fake: The Disclothing Act in Gaelic Song”
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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2022/06/when-tartan-was-not-fake-the-disclothing-act-in-gaelic-song/
#Scottish #literature #culture #history #18thcentury #tartan #TartanDay #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #song #Jacobites
