I can still remember how I felt when I first read Hugh Trevor-Roper’s essay, “The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland,” the mix of dizzy excitement at the utterly complete debunking of an idea that I thought was real and the thrill of a great story with fantastic(al) characters, all in the calm cool prose of a professional historian writing in full stride.
In 25 pages Trevor-Roper explains that what we think of as Scottish — “real Scotland,” the highlands that were never pacified by the British, that of kilts and bagpipes and clan tartans and all the rest — is a retrospective romantic invention. The Scottish hinterlands were actually an Irish colony, but after the union with England, as a sort of protest, the Scots invented the culture of the Highlands and invested it with the aura of antiquity. Tartans? Invented in 1842 by the awesome Allen brothers, who deserve a movie or something. Kilts? Invented in 1730 by an English Quaker from Lancashire, Thomas Rawlinson. Bagpipes ought to be harps. And the whole fraud of Ireland as colony of Scotland rather than the inverse is the product of two unrelated Macphersons, James and Rev. John.
The essay is in an edited volume by Hobsbawm and Ranger likewise entitled The Invention of Tradition. Highly recommended.
My brother goes to the “Gathering of the Clans” every year in Huntington Beach, CA. I have to laugh — how un-Highland can you get, a bunch of overweight middle-aged Southern Californians wandering around wearing kilts, t-shirts and baseball hats. (Not that my brother wears a kilt, mind you, although he is entitled. Giffords are a Sept of Clan Hay.)
But what about the Picts?