Tartan by Nicola Wiseman Imagine there is a new boy at school. Everybody wants to know where he comes from and what his name is. But nobody dares to ask. How can you find out? The Scots, of course, did not have this problem - they would have known by looking at the boy's tartan. Tartan is a type of cloth with a cross-checkered pattern that repeats at regular intervals. It is woven from wool and traditionally has no more than six colors. The Scots are very proud of their tartans and rightly so, for they have been making them for hundreds of years. Indeed, the oldest known piece of tartan was found near Falkirk in Scotland and is about 1,700 years old! Originally, each local weaver made his own tartan. People in that district used it for making their clothes - particularly their kilts and plaids (or scarves), the main pieces of traditional Scottish Highland dress. If one clan - or family - was especially powerful in that district, then the tartan came to be considered as its own special clan tartan. Some clans even had two tartans, a bright one for special occasions and a plainer, grayer one for everyday wear and for hunting on the moors. After the unsuccessful rebellion of the Scots in 1745, tartan was banned by law. Only the Black Watch pattern (the tartan of the soldier regiments who policed the Highlands) was allowed. But nobody forgot his or her tartan. Indeed, in 1822 when George IV visited Edinburgh, Sir Walter Scott issued the statement, "Let every man wear his tartan." The result was that tartan and Highland dress became even more popular than before. Even families who did not have a special tartan quickly set about finding or creating one! Today, there are more than 2,500 different tartans in The Register of All Publicly Known Tartans. This includes all the old district and clan tartans, the royal tartans, and the regimental tartans. Some of the most famous are the Royal Stewart, the Campbell, and the Rob Roy. The majority of tartans, however, have been created in recent years, often to mark a special occasion.

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