that "one of his serjeants had taken a fellow wearing a blanket in form of a philibeg. He carried him to Perth, but the Sheriff-substitute did not commit him, because the blanket was not a tartan. On his return he met another of the same kind; so, as he found it needless to carry him before a magistrate, he took the blanket-philibeg and cut it to pieces." Another officer wrote two months later: "One of my men brought me a man to all appearance in a philibeg; but on close examination I found it to be a woman's petticoat, which answers every end of that part of the Highland dress. I sent him to the Sheriff-substitute, who dismissed him."[1]
Smollett, in his Humphry Clinker, pleads the cause of the dejected Highlanders, who had not only been deprived of their ancient garb, but, "what is a greater hardship still, are compelled to wear breeches, a restraint which they cannot bear with any degree of patience; indeed the majority wear them, not in the proper place, but on poles or long staves over their shoulders."[2] In 1782 the Marquis of Graham brought in a bill to repeal this prohibitory Act. One of the English members asked that if it became law, the dress should still be prohibited in England. When six Highland soldiers had been quartered at a house in Hampshire, "the singularity of their dress," he said, "so much attracted the eyes of the wife and daughters of the man of the house that he found it expedient to take a lodging for them at another place."[3] A Lowland friend tells me that one day at church her grandfather turned two Highland officers out of his pew, as he thought their dress improper where there were ladies. This she learnt from her aunt who had been present. Old Malcolm Macleod, if he did not return altogether to the ancient dress, nevertheless broke the law. "He wore a pair of brogues; tartan hose which came up only near to his knees, and left them bare; a purple camblet kilt; a black waistcoat; a short green cloth coat bound with gold cord; a yellowish bushy wig; a large blue bonnet with a gold thread button." Sir Walter Scott tells us that "to evade the law against the tartan dress, the Highlanders used to dye their variegated plaids and kilts into blue, green, or any single colour."[4] Malcolm had done this with his kilt, but in his hose he asserted his independence. Yet so early as the beginning of last century, according to Martin, the Highland dress was fast dying out in Skye. "They
