Figure 1.--|This CDV shows an unuidentified Cork boy wearing an elborate Scottish kilt outfit. He would almost certainly be from a Protestabt Accendancy family. Notice his Glengary cap with tartan streamers on the table. The CDV is undated, but looks like the late-1860s. The studio was Cook in Cork.

Kilts do not appear to have become a symbol of Irish nationality the garment became in Scotland. The authors and poets who helped create the romantic history of Scotland in the late-18th and early-19th century did not do the same for Ireland. (These writers influenced a young Princess Victoria and many others in England.) The kilts worn by Irish pipers and dancers appear to have little relationship to the actual kilts worn by the historic Gaelic people of Ireland. The current Irish kilt appears to be a copy of the short kilt fashioned by an Englishman in the 18th century and embraced by a generation of romantic poets and authors and even Queen Victoria herself. Unlike Scotland there appears to have been no real revival of kilt wearing in Ireland beyond ceremonial occasions or ethnic events. The British Army did adopt a kilt uniform for some Irish units. We are not sure sure when this occured, but some Irish units in World War I did wear kilts. The kilts we see in the photographic record in Ireland seem to be mostly Scottish kilts worn by boys of the Protestant Accendency. At the time it was fashionable for well-to-do English boys to wear Scottish kilts when dressing up--a style popularized by Queen Victoria.

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Created: 10:02 AM 9/8/2023
Last updated: 10:03 AM 9/8/2023