3 1 o Notes on Sport and Travel n 



vvc now see them, were in the earliest times the 

 products of their simple looms and innocent dye- 

 stuffs. Much is doubtless done in India by the 

 simplest loom, and fair work wrought by the cunning 

 of the hand-worker ; but that the tints of the tartans, 

 as we now see them, were produced by the three 

 simple dye-stuffs known to the ancient Highlanders 

 seemeth unto us utterly impossible. 



These three dyes were, black, from the roots of 

 the water-lily, red, which they extracted from a 

 moss or lichen found on rocks by the seaside, which 

 some call ' cudbear,' and yellow, which they obtained 

 from the roots or stalks of the heather. As we have 

 already heard, the Irish from the remoter districts 

 (where antiquity would have most lingered) were 

 not dressed in party-coloured tartan. Buchanan 

 tells us that their plaids were brown. Lesly also 

 says that in 1576 the tartan was exclusively con- 

 fined to the use of persons of rank. 



These tartan colours and patterns are indeed of 

 no antiquity whatever, having been brought from 

 the Low Countries first in the fifteenth century, 

 probably deriving their name from the ships in 

 which they were conveyed, a tartan being a small 

 and handy vessel, with one lateen (or latin) sail, and 

 a bowsprit for a forward jib or staysail. 



The first mention of tartan occurs in the 

 'accompts' of James the Third, 1474, and seems 

 to have passed from England ; for the ' rouge 

 tartain ' in the statutes of the Order of the Bath in 



