THE HEATHER AS A CLAN BADGE. 



The origin of the selection of certain plants as 

 clan badges appears to be shrouded in mystery, and 

 mythology aids us but little in our research looking 

 to the discovery of the inception of the custom. 



Speaking of the Cativellauni, with which he says 

 the Scots were identified, Dr. R. C. Maclagan, in 

 "Scottish Myths" (1882), says: "Now what the pecu- 

 liar ceremonies were which characterized this people, 

 it is not easy to say, but it is curious to find among the 

 natives of North America, as figured by Lafitau in his 

 Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, published in 1724, 

 a dance which seems perhaps to point to what may 

 have taken place among our ancestors. I annex a 

 rough copy of the plate. Here we have a barbarous 

 people dancing what might be a 'reel,' in a circle 

 peculiarly like our stone circles. The total number of 

 performers is eight couple and an odd man. This 

 makes it, possibly, a sheer coincidence, much like an 

 'eightsome' reel, and, as in this latter, there is what 

 is called a 'prisoner/ so here we have the center occu- 

 pied by three of the performers, who may be perform- 

 ing what is allied to the 'jig/ a dance of three per- 

 formers. The green branches which they carry, and 

 with which one at least is dressed (?), make them 

 Vecturiones, while if the belief that the bladder-shaped, 

 crescent-ornamented things carried by some of the 

 performers are inflated bladders or skins, used perhaps 

 for causing sound, the bearers might be called Firbolg. 

 The Americans figured may have been less advanced 

 in the arts than the Cativellauni, but if the dance is a 

 'reel/ and was such as the Maiatai (Scots) danced, it 

 still survives after seventeen centuries. 



