Timeline of Key Gaelic Historical Events

The purposes of this timeline are threefold:

to provide a rough outline of Gaelic history as it relates to the rest of the world, and internally as it relates to movement of people between Scotland and Ireland (but without wallowing in tedious lists of kings, etc.);
to provide genealogists with key event dates that may relate to the movements of their ancestors, and to identify known migration patterns;
to provide a few dates that relate especially to Highland dress, tartan, Scottish regiments, folk heroes, etc., and some notable historic Cuindlis personages, ancient to modern (highlighted in boldface).

It does not do all of these things well yet, as a lot of information is missing on numbers of Scots, Irish, and Scots-Irish immigrants to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the West Indies; among other deficiencies, like lack of sufficient coverage of religious history (Covenanters, the Killing Time, etc.). Some things are too subtle for a timeline, e.g. analysis of the disportionate number of Scottish male deaths in the World Wars, etc.

If you have a timeline item to add, please get in touch via the Forums, or use the Contact form.

Ca. 850,000 BC: Paleolithic or Old Stone Age hominins (early humans) first arrived in what are now the British Isles (then part of the European mainland), though they left and returned at least seven times in response to climatic changes.
Ca. 40,000 BC: Beginning of intermittent visitation of Britain by Paleolithic, anatomically modern, migrant humans (Homo sapiens sapiens). The first evidence for Scotland dates back to about 12,000 BC, but repeat glaciation may have wiped out earlier archaeolgical remanants (the last ice sheet retreated about 13,000 BC).
Ca. 31,000 BC: Beginning of intermittent visitation of Ireland by modern humans.
Ca. 25,000 BC: Earliest evidence of loom-woven textiles (flaxen), among the Upper Paleolithic inhabitants of Europe, from Spain to Russia – the Gravettian culture (genetically a mix of Western Hunter-Gatherer and Eastern Hunter-Gatherer peoples).
Ca. 12,000–10,000 BC: Ireland became an island separated from Britain (then connected to the European continent by the Doggerland land bridge), after partial melting of the North Polar ice cap.
Ca. 10,500 BC: Establishment of continuous human (Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age) habitation of Ireland possibly this early.
Ca. 10,000–8,000 BC: Establishment of continuous human habitation of Britain (earliest evidence in Scotland so far is around 8.500 BC).
Ca. 9,000–7,000 BC: Domestication of sheep. The earliest surviving samples of woven woollen cloth date to ca. 4,000–3,000 BC in the Near East, and the earliest found in Europe (in a Danish peat bog) to ca. 1,500 BC.
Ca. 9,000–5,000 BC: The Doggerland land bridge between Britain and the European mainland slowly submerged after the end of the last ice age, with Britain becoming permanently an island by around 6,500 BC.
Ca. 7,000 BC: Establishment of permanent human habitation in Ireland is certain by this period.
Ca. 7,000–3,000 BC: Neolithic farmers from Anatolia (in modern Turkey) gradually migrated across Europe, genetically blending to differing degrees with, but mostly culturally replacing, the original Mesolithic population (termed the Western Hunter-Gatherers, and representing the descendants of post-Gravettian archaeological cultures like the Magdalenian and Solutrean). Archaeo-genetics demonstrates this farming population had not only reached Britain by 4,000-3,000 BC and Ireland by around 3,000–2,000 BC but was also, in substantial but not majority part, ancestral to modern-day populations in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (with Celtic culture being a later and eventually dominant admixture, a superstrate, as it was in continental Gaul and Iberia). The Victorian-era hypothesis that invading Celts simply replaced the original indigenous population is not borne out by archaeology and genetics. Little is known of the language or other perishable culture of these agricultural peoples, called the Early European Farmers or Old Europeans, though the theory that they were the introducers of Indo-European languages (the Anatolian Hypothesis) is not well-accepted. Their ancestors had become genetically distinct from the Western Hunter-Gatherer population during the last ice age (43,000–24,000 BC), and from the Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer population (probably acenstral to Indo-Europeans) in the 23,000–13,000 BC span, though with later re-admixture.
Ca. 3,500–1,800 BC: The Isles were colonized again from the continent (Britain mostly from Central Europe, then Ireland from Iberia and probably Britain) by peoples of the continental Bronze Age; it was still the Neolithic or Late Stone Age in both islands in the earlier part of this date range. These arrivals included the Únětice and later Bell Beaker cultures, associated with the spread in Europe of Proto-Indo-European language(s), first brought probably by the ancestral Yamnaya or Western Steppe Herder (WSH) folk of the Caspian–Pontic Steppe. The Yamnaya/WSH were ancestrally an admixture of Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers (from Eastern Europe to Siberia), the latter itself a blend of mostly Ancient North Eurasian (Siberian) with some Western Hunter-Gatherer, probably mostly descendants of the post-Gravettian archaeological culture called Epigravettian. Along the way, Yamnaya/WSH commingled with the existing populations (Early European Farmer and vestiges of Eastern and Western Hunter-Gatherer), forming descendant cultures like Únětice and Bell Beaker, whereby Indo-European languages, religions, and other culture became dominant in most of Europe comparatively quickly, though with a combination of herding/pastoral and agricultural lifeways. (This is the well-accepted Kurgan or Steppe Hypothesis.) These settlers were in majority part ancestral to most modern European populations, including Britons and Irish, and were responsible for more of this ancestry than Early European Farmers (except in isolated pockets like Sardinia and the Basque country) or Western and Eastern Hunter-Gatherers. A less relevant Neolithic population were the Scandinavia Hunter-Gatherers (derived from Western and Easter H-G), and partially ancestral to natives of modern Scandinavia and the Baltics; but they did not colonize the Isles, and their genetics were well-diluted with later admixtures by the period of the Middle Ages invasions in the area of our interest by Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Danish, and Normans (Franco-Nords).
Ca. 2,500 BC: Beginning of the Bronze Age in Britain.
Ca. 2,400 BC: Beginning of the Bronze Age in Ireland. The population of both Ireland and Britain in this epoch is generally taken by scholars to have been still pre-Celtic, though perhaps mostly or entirely Indo-European by then, linguistically and culturally speaking, despite significant Old European ancestry.
Ca. 2,100–1,000 BC: The oldest tartan-patterned twill cloth ever discovered is dated to this period. It was found among the grave goods of the Tarim or Ürümqi Mummies (including the “Cherchen Man”), Caucasoid (light-haired, round-eyed) people buried in the Tarim Basin, in what is now the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of western China, southeast of Kazakhstan. The material, woven with up to 6 colours and requiring a sophisticated loom, is remarkably similar to that found later in Hallstatt, Austria, and has been taken to suggest that tartan may have been a common tradition throughout western Eurasia going back to prehistory, though this is by no means proven yet.
Ca. 1,600–1,200 BC: The Tumulus culture of Central and Eastern Europe developed, characterized by a warrior society, burial mounds, and hillforts. Generally accepted as Proto-Indo-European speakers ancestral to the later Celto-Italic grouping.
Ca. 1,300–750 BC: The Urfield culture, successor to Tumulus, characterized by quality bronze metalworking and fortified hillforts (and a decline in burial mounds) spread throughout Central and later Western Europe. The generally accepted view is that it also spread or reinforced Indo-European languages, including Proto-Celtic, Proto-Italic, and Proto-Hellenic.
Ca. 1,200-600 BC: The Hallstatt culture, generally considered Proto-Celtic, gradually emerged from the Urnfield around the upper Danube and Rhine in Central Europe. Spanning the continental late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, the Hallstatt spread westward and eastward (at least as a material culture), throughout much of Europe. In the west, they gave rise to the (more firmly Celtic) La Tène culture by 500 BC. Whether Proto-Celtic language and material culture developed and radiated together is subject to debate, especially since the 2000s, with increasing evidence for the language group having developed in Iberia to spread east, even as arts and technologies were transmitted westward. (This is the “Celtic from the west” hypothesis.)
Ca. 1,200-300 BC: The earliest preserved tartan-type cloth in Europe, a plaid-pattered, two-colour twill, dates to this period, and was discovered in the Hallstatt salt mines archaeological site near Salzburg, Austria.
Ca. 1,000–500 BC: The best-accepted date range for [Proto-]Celtic-speaking peoples settling the British Isles, in multiple waves from what today are Spain, Portugal, France, and the Low Countries, in the late Bronze to middle Iron Age. Though some estimates (dependent on the Anatolian Hypothesis) would push Proto-Celtic as far back as 3,000 BC, deep in the continental Bronze Age and insular Neolithic, the better-accepted theory is that this started later in the continental Iron Age.
Ca. 1,000–500 BC: Also the estimated era of the divergence of Proto-Celtic into some distinct language groups, the ancestors of Gaulish, Celtiberian, and the Insular Celtic language subfamilies of the British Isles. However, this date range is subject to considerable dispute. A strong piece of evidence for this happening in the continental Iron Age, the later portion of this span, is that the Celtic languages all have closely cognate words for ‘iron’, which they should not if the languages differentiated before the spread of ironworking in Western Europe.
Ca. 800 BC: Comparatively late beginning of the Iron Age in Britain.
Ca. 500 BC: Even later beginning of the Iron Age in Ireland. At least one iron weapon has been found there that is earlier (dated roughly 800–650 BC), but could have been an import. Speakers of Celtic languages had surely arrived in Ireland by not later than this, and somewhat earlier in Britain, though in neither case was this an apocalyptic invasion, but a gradual blending through trade, migration, localized tribal dynastistics, intermarriage, and other cultural diffusion and integration.
Ca. 500 BC: Earliest surviving example of twill-weave (i.e. tartan-style) cloth from Scotland dates to around this time. It was found during excavation of the Oakbank crannog (ancient lake village) on Loch Tay. Waterlogged, the sample did not retain any vegetable-dye colours, so it is unknown if it was originally multi-coloured tartan.
Ca. 500–100 BC: The La Tène culture, an outgrowth of the Hallstatt, flourished in Iron Age Western and Central Europe, spreading distinctively Celtic art and society as far away as Scotland and to a lesser extent Ireland. The western La Tène peoples were definitely Celtic-speaking, but the eastern ones are uncertain (material culture and language do not necessarily go together).
Ca. 60–30 BC: Diodorus Siculus (a Greek-Sicilian of the Roman Republic), in his Bibliotheca Historica, described continental Celts (Gauls) as wearing clothing that was “astonishing: … brightly coloured … checkered/striped in design, with separate checks/stripes close together and in various colours”, and seems to be describing tartan or something very similar to it, though Latin he used lacked separate words for ‘striped’ and ‘checked’. He wrote that the Gauls wore shirts, trousers, and cloaks.
Late Antiquity – 6th century AD: Ireland was dominated more or less entirely (apart from a possibly Pictish area in northeast Ulster, and few other possible British colonies) by Gaels, speakers of Goidelic Celtic language – albeit of mixed genetic backgrounds. While at constant war between many fractious minor kingdoms and regional dynasties (sometimes called clans, or by the Irish Gaelic term finte, singular fine, among other terms), they had a shared culture, mutually intelligible language, etc. Gaelic culture was firmly established throughout Ireland by no later than the 1st century AD, probably by waves of migration from Iberia (today Spain and Portugal) over at least several centuries. The prehistory of the British Isles is subject to considerable academic debate, though generally believed to have been Celtic or proto-Celtic for many centuries prior, perhaps well back into the Bronze Age, though the Iron Age is better-accepted. Whether the entire region of the Isles had earlier been uniformly Goidelic (Gaelic), or Brythonic (Brittonic), or divided, or the distinction not yet existing, remains a matter of competing hypotheses.
Late Antiquity – 9th century AD: The native Picts or Priteni, after whom Britain is named, ruled most of what is now Scotland, mostly holding off for many centuries against invasions by Romans, Irish, Anglo-Saxons, more southerly Britons (speakers of Brittonic Celtic languages), and Vikings, until absorbed by the 10th century AD into the Gael-dominated Kingdom of Alba (later Scotland). Written Pictish does not survive, and the nature of the language remains uncertain, though it is generally accepted as Brittonic. The Picts may have also held a foothold in north-eastern Ireland, a population called the Cruthin or Cruithne in a realm named Dál nAraidi (later subsumed by the Gaelic overkingdom of Ulaid).
Ca. 2nd–1st centuries BC: Tribes of Belgae (who may have been ultimately of Germanic origin, though Celtic-speaking by this period) moved into southern Britain from Gaul (modern-day France), and acted as allies of the continental Gauls against the Roman Empire; this attracted Rome’s negative attention toward Britain.
1st century BC: Roman pressure on the contintent drove more Gauls into Britain, in turn causing iron-wielding Britons to move northward into what is now Scotland (in a region known as Alt Clut, later Strathclyde), largely as a conquering aristocracy among a population still dominated by Bronze Age lifeways (though still broadly Celtic).
55–54 BC: Two failed attempts by Julius Caesar to invade southeast Britain. This effectively marked the end of British prehistory or antiquity and of the Iron Age in Britain, and the beginning of the Classical or Romano-British period.
43 AD: Roman conquest and beginning of occupation of most of Britain (Provincia Britannia).
1st century: Roman writers again repeatedly referred to the Gauls as wearing striped or chequered clothing. Latin lacked clearly separate words for the two concepts, and it is unknown whether this referred to tartan or to simply linear-striped cloth.
122–128: Construction of Hadrian’s Wall in what is now Northern England, to defend Roman Britain from incursions by the Picts; it was followed in 142–154 by the Antonine Wall across what is now the Central Belt of Scotland. Folklore sometimes has it that the plated-leather skirts of some types of Roman armour (e.g. the lorica segmentata and lorica squamata) worn by soldiers at these fortifications inspired Pictish (and perhaps southern Briton) immitation in the form of cloth kilts, but in reality there is no sure evidence of kilt-wearing in Scotland until the late 16th century. Before kilts (and after, for that matter) it was common for Scottish men to wear trews (woolen trousers) and/or knee-length tunics. The “Roman kilt” idea is not so daft as it may seem when one considers that it is commonly believed (though not entirely proven) that the bagpipe, originally of Middle Eastern origin, was disseminated throughout Europe by the Roman army.
2nd century: Some recorded tribal names in the Romano-British period (in sources including Ptolemy and Juvenal, sometimes drawing on earlier writers like Tacitus) can be seen to suggest movement of populations between Britain and Ireland, e.g.: Irish Fir Domnann and British Dumnonii and Damnonii, groups called the Brigantii in both areas as well as in Alpine Gaul, the Fir Bolg of Ireland and Belgae of French Gaul and southern Britain, and groups called Menapii in both Ireland and French Gaul. While this has sometimes been taken to suggest an abortive Roman invasion of Ireland with Brittonic and Gaulish auxiliaries (perhaps in support of a deposed Irish king, as an ally valuable to Rome), or separate non-Gaelic tribal movements perhaps considerably earlier, there is no firm evidence, and the names could simply be coincidental, especially as some of the Irish ones are not attested until pseudo-histories of the High Middle Ages, and some earlier ones were taken from travellers’ tales then altered to suit Greek and Latin.
2nd–4th centuries: Fragments of Common Brittonic first appear in writing (commingled with British Latin). No complete documents or inscriptions survive in this early ancestor of Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Cumbric, and probably Pictish.
3rd century: The earliest preserved example of tartan cloth in Britain dates to this period. The “Falkirk tartan”, a simple chequered pattern of natural dark and light wool (closer in make to tweed than modern tartan), was discovered in 1933 in Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland (an area that was part of Roman Britain, south of the Antonine Wall, when the cloth was new, and it was found with Roman coins; this demonstrates that tartan was not confined then to Pictland).
217: The surviving fragment of a statue of Roman Emperor Caracalla, once part of the triumphal arch of Volubilis, depicts a Pictish/Caledonian prisoner wearing tartan trews (carved then inlaid with bronze and silver alloys to give a variegated appearance).
4th century or earlier: The Irish (called Scoti or Scotti in Latin, a name first attested in the late 3rd century) raided and sometimes settled on the west coast of Roman Britain, from Wales to southern Scotland. Mounting evidence suggests this had actually been going on since the pre-Roman era (and perhaps in both directions, with British coastal settlements in Ireland).
4th century: The earliest surviving written form of Primitive Irish or Proto-Goidelic (ancestral to Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic) dates to this period, in the form of ogham, a system of linear runes on stone, though could be a century or more older (used earlier on wood and other perishable materials). Irish ogham stones throughout western Wales attest to the extent of early Irish colonization in that area.
Ca. 400: Beginning of the Early Medieval historical record in Ireland (i.e., the end of Irish prehistory and of the Irish Iron Age).
Ca. 5th century: Approximate date of tartan cloth found in Norway, and held today at the Museum of Stravenger.
410: End of Roman occupation of Britain.
432: St. Patrick (a British former slave of pagan Irish raiders) returned as a missionary to Ireland and played a key role in the spread of Christianity there.
446: The Anglo-Saxon invasion of what is now England began (building on a Germanic foothold in the south, of mercenaries recruited by the Romans toward the end of their tenure). The Arthurian legendary cycle is set during this time period, which marked the end of the Classical / Romano-British era of British history and the start of the Early Medieval era, also known as Post-Roman or Sub-Roman Britain.
5th–8th centuries: Dál Riada or Dál Riata, a Gaelic kingdom of Scoti rooted in the north-east of Ireland (specifically in the Glens of Antrim north of Lough Neagh, in what was then the overkingdom of Ulaid), spanned the North Channel of the Irish Sea and claimed substantial parts of what today is western Scotland from the Picts, beginning a long process of Gaelicization. The kingdom was not always Gaelic-controlled, however, especially after 637; it came to be controlled by Pictish king Óengus mac Fergusa (r. 729–761); the later Pictish king Caustantín mac Fergusa also placed his son Domnall on the throne of Dál Riada (r. 811–835). While later Medieval chronicles suggest, in “heroic” terms, that Dál Riada was established with a sudden invasion, archaeological evidence does not support this idea, and instead shows Gaelic settlement in western Scotland since a bit before the Roman conquest, making it likely that the invasion story was created to tie then-current dynasties in the area to legendary or mytho-historical figures of Ulster. The people of Dál Riada and Ulaid more generally arose from the Iron Age Dáirine or Darini of Ulster and Munster, believed to be a branch of the Érainn or Iverni, after whom Ireland (Eire, Hibernia) is named.
563: St. Columba (originally an Irish prince of the Cenél Conaill, a branch of the Northern Uí Néill of Ulster) founded a monastery on the island of Iona (Inner Hebrides, Scotland), granted to him by King Áedán mac Gabráin of Dál Riada. Iona became a center of learning and a base for Christian missions in Scotland and beyond.
575: St. Columba negotiated an alliance between the Northern Uí Néill and Dál Riada at Druim Ceit near present Derry/Londonderry. A result of this pact was the freeing of Dál Riada from the overlordship of Ulaid, allowing Dál Riada to focus on acquiring territory from the Picts.
577: The Britons lost key towns and lands to the Anglo-Saxons, throughout what it is now southern England, after the Battle of Deorham, in the West Country. In the 6th century, the Germanic presence in south Britain had reached a crisis point due to importation of significant numbers of Anglo-Saxon mercenaries by various British minor kings and warlords (following the practise of the earlier Roman governors), to use against their neighbors and against the Irish and Picts, in exchange for land.
6th–10th centuries: The Uí Néill dynasty ruled northwest and parts of east-central Ireland, and supplied an outsized number of Ireland’s (sometimes disputed) high kings. Ulster’s distinctiveness from the rest of Ireland began at least this early.
Ca. 6th century: Common Brittonic dialects had developed into separate “Neo-Brittonic” languages: Old Welsh, Old Cornish, Old Breton, Cumbrian, and Pictish. These were all distinct from Insular Celtic’s Goidelic branch, which had not yet split into separate varieties of Gaelic.
Ca. 600: By this time, Anglo-Saxons controlled most of what today is lowland England.
7th century: Anglo-Saxon speakers of the Northumbrian dialect of Old English settled in what is now south-eastern Scotland. Their speech and writing (with commingling influences from Gaelic and Danelaw Danish, later Viking Norse, southern Middle English, and Norman French) developed into the Scots language in later centuries.
637: Battle of Moira (Magh Rath) and Battle of the Mull of Kintyre: High King Domnall II of Ireland (originally from the Cenél Conaill kindred of the Northern Uí Néill), successfully defended against his foster-son King Congal Cáech of Ulaid (originally of the Dál nAraidi kindred) who was supported by King Domnall Brecc of Dál Riada. Direct consequences included that the Northern Uí Néill dynasty dominated the north of Ireland (for nearly 1000 years, until the Flight of the Earls); and weakened Dál Riada for a time lost possession of Scottish lands back to the Picts.
Mid-7th century: The Anglo-Saxons by now had come to control most of what today remains England, and rapidly dominated the entire region culturally.
684: Synod of Whitby, though initially confined in jurisdiction to Northumbria, signalled the end of Ionan or Columban or “Celtic” Christianity as distinct from Roman Catholicism, with the adoption and spread of Roman Catholic dogma, calendar calculation, tonsures, etc. (However, an argument is also made that most of these changes had already been adopted throughout Ireland and southern Britain, so northern Britain’s Ionan separatism was already probably doomed.)
706–24, 728–32: Nechtan (or Naiton) mac Derilei of Dál Riada was also King of the Picts, starting a long series of intermingling between and joint rule of the two populations – prefiguring the establishment of the merged Kingdom of Alba in 900.
713–24: Cuindles (or Cuindless, Coinndles) of Connacht was the 17th Abbot of Clonmacnoise in Uí Failghe (now Offaly, Leinster, Ireland). He was the earliest person by this name in surviving records.
724 gravestone of the abbot, reading
“Or[oit] ar Chuindless“, ‘Pray
for Cuindless’, in Old Irish letters
732–61: Oengus I or Óengus mac Fergus (in Pictish something like Onuist map Vurguist), King of the Picts, took over also Gaelic Dál Riada. This was one of many times the control of these lands switched hands, between lineages that were already closely intermarried.
Ca. 793–1066 (or 1169, depending on reckoning): The Viking Age, during which Norse raiders and eventually settlers played a formative role in various regions of Ireland and Scotland as well as the Isle of Man (and England, and France). Viking influence was particularly strong in what today are eastern Ireland and west coastal Scotland, including Galloway in particular (the name of which means ‘Norse-Gaelic’), the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man (as well as Orkney and the Shetlands, which never had a Gaelic culture, only Pictish and then Norse). Viking raids (beginning in 795 in both Ireland and northern Britain) and later larger invasions had a strong impact on Gaelic kingdoms, leading to the rise of regional power centers and political instability. Viking coastal colonies were used for deep inland raiding (with shallow-keeled ships able to navigate rivers); they established an inland base in Ireland at Limerick in 812 via the River Shannon, and there were by 837 at least 60 Viking ships at a time using the River Boyne.
838–49: Permanent Viking settlement of Dublin (later the Kingdom of Dublin) on the River Boyne, part of a series of Norse coastal port colonies at river mouths (another was Waterford in 853, at the confluence of three rivers). Also the beginning of a wave of Norse–Gaelic assimilation and intermarriage; the Vikings were somewhat integrating into Gaelic society in some areas within the century. (Their impact was not always in the north, east, and Limerick; Norse genetic markers are common among today’s Galway population as well.) The Ivar dynasty (Gaelic: Uí Ímair) established in Dublin soon came to control the islands from the Hebrides to Mann (the Kingdom of the Isles), the west coast of Scotland, and even York in England for a while. It also supplied two or more “queens of Ireland” (actually queens of multiple parts of Ireland) and possibly a queen of Norway.
839: Vikings invaded what is now northern Scotland and exacted quite a death-toll, including among the leading Gaelic and Pictish families, leading to a short period of instability in the region until Kenneth MacAlpin.
Ca. 843–1286: The Kingdom of Alba (a merger of Dalriadic and Pictish lands and crowns) covered what is now most of Scotland; Kenneth MacAlpin (Cináed mac Ailpín), r. 843–858, is often regarded today as first king of a unified Alba (not yet called Scotland), though sometimes this honour is accorded to Constantine II, r. 900–943, and some southern parts of the modern country were still part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde until the 10th or 11th century. Kenneth was certainly at least king of a united and increasingly Gaelicized Pictland (formerly often divided into separate kingdoms like Fortriu and Cait), as were his successors Donald I (Domhnall), Constantine I, and Áed – the House of Alpin.
865: The Great Heathen Army, a coalition of Scandinavian forces, sought to not raid but take over much of England (then divided into four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms), in a 14-year campaign culminating in the Battle of Edington with the English nominally victorious.
886: The Anglo-Saxons united under a single king, Alfred the Great, who negotiated a treaty with the Vikings in England, under Guthrum (conqueror of East Anglia), forming the Danelaw in 886. In exchange for nominal loyalty to the English crown, it subjected to Danish law and settlement most of eastern and somewhat northern England (south of Northumbria), from modern Greater London through Yorkshire. The Danelaw lasted roughly two centuries before full English assimilation.
900–943: Reign of Constantine II (Causantín mac Áeda) of Alba, sometimes considered the first king of united Gaelic and Pictish Alba, rather than the earlier Kenneth MacAlpin. Regardless, his reign played a major part in the Gaelicization of Pictish lands (primarily through church reform). The terms Scots (Latin Scoti and Scotland (Scotia) first began to be applied to what is now all of northern Scotland during this era (instead of referring sometimes only to the Gaelic people of Dál Riada in the west, though much more often instead meaning the Irish). These terms would later become more associated with the Lowland speakers of the Scots language after it developed from Northumbrian Old English. The term Scotia Minor had already been in some use (with Scotia Major or Maior, or just Scotia, then meaning Ireland).
911: Rollo, a Viking, became Count of Rouen and founded the realm (later duchy) of Normandy (‘Northmen-land’) in what today is northern France, as a result of a peace treaty with King Charles III of West Francia. “Norman” as a unique socio-political identity was largely forged by Richard I of Normandy in the 960s. The Normans would later have an enormous impact on England, Scotland, and Ireland starting in 1066.
Ca. 943–954: Malcolm (Màel Coluim) I of Alba is believed to have annexed the Brittonic kingdom Strathclyde at least as a client state; it was not fully absorbed until the 1070s.
Ca. 950s–960: Scotland annexed Edinburgh and the surrouding Midlothian area from Northumbria (who in turn had taken it in 638 from a Brittonic kingdom, Gododdin, who were earlier the tribe Votadini). Edinburgh became the principal royal burgh of Scotland early in the 12th century, and has remained under Scottish control except for brief periods (1291–1314, 1333–1341) during wars with the English.
980: The Battle of Tara, in which the Irish Gaels under High King Máel Sechnaill II retook the Kingdom of Dublin for a time from the Vikings.
999: The Battle of Glenmama, in which a Gaelic alliance of the forces of Máel Sechnaill II and Brían Boru, king of Munster, again defeated the Dublin Vikings who this time had aid from the fractious Gaelic forces of Leinster.
Ca. 1000: Thurgot or Turgot, Prior of Dunham and Bishop of St. Andrews (the most powerful abbey in Scotland at the time), wrote of the “multi-coloured clothes” of the Gaels, and seems to have been referring to tartan.
Ca. 11th century: The name Scotia was increasingly used (sometimes without Minor) to refer to Alba instead of Ireland, though some confusion remained, and various period sources (especially on the continent) still meant Ireland by this name. In the Scottish sense, it referred sometimes to the lands north of the Forth and sometimes the entire territory ruled by the king of Scots. The longer Scotia Minor (and Scotia Maior for Ireland) persisted, even to the time of Robert the Bruce in the early 14th century. Some level of conflation of the Gaelic-speakers of Scotland with those of Ireland, as all Erse or Erische, persisted even into the Georgian era.
1002: Æthelred II of England razed much of the Danelaw in the St. Brice’s Day massacre, in retaliation for Denmark’s continued raiding of English territory.
1002: Brían Boru (Brían mac Cennétig) of the Dál gCais kindred of Tuadh Mumhan (Thomond), king of Munster and then annexing Leinster and Dublin, became high king of Ireland, ending centuries of the position being dominated by the Uí Néill, and actually bringing most of Ireland under his control, unlike predecessors in the formerly largely ceremonial title. An annal entry for 1005 called him Imperator Scotorum, ‘Emperor of the Irish’ (or perhaps ‘of the Gaels’, depending on interpretation, though he had no possessions in Scotland or the Isle of Man).
1002–13: King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark repeatedly raided and invaded England to avenge the St. Brice’s Day massacre, and in 1013 wrested the kingship of England from Æthelred II, albeit only for five weeks.
1014: The Battle of Clontarf, in which Irish High King Brían Boru defeated a Norse–Gaelic alliance, though at the cost of his own life and the lives of his male heirs. This Gaelic victory is traditionally seen as freeing Ireland from partial Viking rule and frequent raiding. However, it was arguably more of an Irish civil war between the high king and the sub-kings of Leinster and Dublin, and both sides had significant “Viking” forces, who were really Norse-Gaelic, from Irish port cities under Brían’s control, and on his enemies’ side from the Isle of Man and Orkney (though with some native Scandinavian commanders, including the famed Bróðir and Óspak). Picts from the Mar tribe participated on the winning side, and foreshadowed a later long tradition of Scottish mercenary work in and migration to Ireland.
1014 Battle of Clontarf depicted
by Eoghan Ó Neachtain in 1905
1016–42: England was ruled by Nordic kings (Cnut or Canute, Harold I, then Harthacnut/Hardicanute) as part of a broader North Sea Empire.
Ca. 1016–1018: Battle of Carham, an alliance of Alba and the Cumbric kindom of Strathclyde, against Uhtred the Bold, the earl or minor king of Bamburgh, with the Scots and Cumbrians victorious. It is traditionally seen as when Scotland permanently annexed the Lothians and the Borders counties, though there has been some dispute about it among historians since the 19th century. (Aside: Contrary to a popular TV show’s fiction, Uhtred was not a Danish mercenary for the English, but from an Anglo-Saxon family who controlled Bamburgh from the beginning of the 10th century.)
1042: Nominally Anglo-Saxon rule of England was restored, under Edward the Confessor (whose mother was Norman, and who was a half-brother of Harthacnut).
1066: The Norman Conquest of England, under William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and later King William I of England. Greatly changed England and even its language. Led to the eventual expansion of Norman (Franco-Nordic) influence into Scotland and Ireland.
1070s: Roughly the modern extent of Scotland was achieved as a single realm, with the final absorption of the former Cumbrian kingdom Strathclyde, which was then granted by Alexander I of Scotland to his brother, who was to become David I.
Late 11th century: King Malcolm III of Scotland organized a race (to select a royal messenger) that is sometimes seen as ancestral to the modern Highland games events.
Ca. 1100: The Pictish language, long in decline, finally went extinct, replaced by Gaelic in the north and a northern form of early Middle English (not yet the Scots language) in the Lowlands.
Early 12th century: Norman French supplanted Gaelic as the high-register, courtly language of Scotland for some while, and had a loanword influence on both Scottish Gaelic and the dialect that would become the Scots language.
1124–53: The Davidian Revolution, in which the reign of David I of Scotland introduced Normanization of government, imposition of feudalism over traditional clan organization (in the Lowlands) through land grants to Norman and Anglo-Norman knights, the foundation of monasteries, regional markets, and burghs (organized towns, starting with Roxburgh and Berwick, then Stirling, Dunfermline, and Edinburgh among others), and other societal changes. David had earlier been Prince of the Cumbrians (in a territory now south-central to south-east Scotland but then separate from both Alba and England, as was Galloway); he was also one of the seven earls of England, and a landholder in Normandy. A protegé of Henry I of England, David used the latter’s military might to take the principality of Cumbria in 1113 (against resistance by his brother, Alexander I of Alba), and after Alexander’s death the throne of Alba, though not without a decade-long conflict with a rival (and nephew). He brought many Normans and their lifeways with him, replacing his opposition. A number of prominent Scottish clans and families of Norman, Normano-Flemish, Normano-Breton, and Anglo-Norman origin date to this period and bit later, including Balliol, Bruce (de Brus), Comyn/Cumming, Crawford, Fraser, Gordon, Graham, Menzies, Montgomery, Murray, Ramsay, Stewart/Stuart/Steuart, and Sutherland, among others (and some of mixed Gaelic–Norman–Norse heritage, including Grant and Kerr).
1165–1214: Reign of William I “the Lion” in Scotland; marked by English immigration to the burghs and an influx of early Middle English language into the Scottish Lowlands, which eventually coalesced with extant dialects there into the Scots language, which would come to supplant Gaelic in this area by the 14th century.
1169–77: The Anglo-Norman Invasion of Ireland (beginning with the landing of knights in Wexford), under Henry II of England and his military commander Richard “Strongblow” de Clare, initially at the invitation of an Irish regional king as military allies, but turning rapidly to full-scale conquest of much of the island. This lead to a period of English influence and colonization in Ireland, including the establishment of Norman feudalism; the gradual erosion of Gaelic, clan-based power; and the beginning of anglicization of Gaelic names. The invasion established the Lordship of Ireland, which at its late 13th to early 14th century peak encompassed about 2/3 of Ireland. Ireland was essentially divided into Anglo-Norman and Gaelic areas, though with the fomer generally as overlords of Gaelic chieftains and minor kings. Fitz- and de names in Ireland (FitzHugh, de Burgh, etc.) are of Norman origin, as are various other common Irish surnames (Lynch, B[o]urke, Walsh/Wall[s], Clare [when not derived from the placename], Joyce, Morrissey, Power[s], Wo[u]lfe, Cusack, Tyrrell, etc.). Norman genetics in Ireland are most concentrated in the east and southeast.
12th century: Cumbric, a Brittonic language closely related to Welsh and spoken in what is now southern Scotland, went extinct.
13th century: Scottish gallowglass mercenaries (gallóglaigh ‘foreign warriors’) began a centuries-long practice of moving to Ireland, primarily from the Western Isles and Scotland’s west coast (especially Argyll). They settled on land grants and became permanent members of the Norse-Gaelic clans of Ireland, but often kept their names. The first group arrived in 1258–1259, and there were at least 59 such contingents by 1512. In 1569, a single group of incoming gallowglass consisted of at least 1,200 men, perhaps as many as 5,000 within a few years. Any given conflict might see gallowglass units raised (usually as heavy infantry) from both Northern Ireland and the Scottish Islands and Highlands. Use of gallowglass forces declined after the 1601 Irish loss of the Battle of Kinsale, but continued into the 1640s. Gallowglass also served in continental armies, sometimes in quite large proportions (e.g., see Gustavus Adolphus in 1631, below).
1215: The Magna Carta was signed in England, laying the foundations for the concept of constitutional law, influencing later Scottish and Irish political development.
1237: The original Treaty of York, between Alexander II of Scotland and Henry III of England, established a new border between the two countries – a clearly defined one for the first time – which has remained almost unchanged to the present. (It also reduced the size of the original English counties of Cumberland and Northumberland, by ceding some of their territory to Scotland.) It was the end of the southward expansion of the Kingdom of Scotland (other than the unrelated acquision, for a time, of the Isle of Man from Norway in 1266). Not to be confused with the second Treaty of York in 1464.
1263: Battle of Largs, between the forces of Alexander III of Scotland and Haakon (or Håkon) IV of Norway (who hoped to retake the west coast and islands that had been the Norse-controlled Kingdom of the Isles). The Scottish victory effectively ended the Norse invasions of Scotland, though this was not formalized until 1266.
1266: Treaty of Perth, between Alexander III and Magnus VI of Norway, in which Norway ceded the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to Scotland, and Scotland ceded Shetland and Orkney to Norway.
1286: The death of Alexander III plunged Scotland into a lengthy succession dispute, and provided Edward I of England an excuse for meddling and an eventual invasion.
1292: John Balliol, a Normano-Scottish noble, was elected (over 12 other claimants) by nobles as King of Scots, after an interregnum. For much of his reign, he was basically a coerced and undermined near-puppet of Edward I of England, and was forced to abdicate in 1296. Scotland was left without a king until 1306.
1295: The Auld Alliance was formed, a mutual aid treaty between Scotland (under John Balliol) and France (under Philippe IV), especially against the English.
1296: Edward I of England invaded Scotland and forced the Scottish nobility to swear allegiance to him, marking the beginning of English domination of Scotland (and Scottish resistance to it).
1296–1328: First War of Scottish Independence; Scotland defended (eventually successfully) against English invasion.
1297: Rebellion against England under William Wallace (“Braveheart”, though he was not called this in historic sources) and Andrew Moray. Culminated in the Battle of Stirling Bridge.
Ca. 13th–14th centuries: Middle Irish slowly began to fork into the modern Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic languages, a process not complete until around the 17th century.
Early 14th century: Ó Cuindlis became established as a family name in Connacht (west-central Ireland) by no later than this period.
1306: Robert the Bruce became King of Scotland. He was actually Normano-Scottish; the name was originally de Brus.
1314: Battle of Bannockburn: Bruce’s Scottish forces defeated those of England’s Edward II. This was effectively the end of the First War of Scottish Independence (the formal end came in 1328).
1315–17: Widespread famine in Europe, including Ireland and Britain.
1315-18: Scottish invasion of Ireland by Edward Bruce (brother of Robert) allied with some of the native Irish (Gaelic) lords against Anglo-Norman occupation; these supporters declared Edward the new High King of Ireland. The war was not ultimately successful (Bruce’s forces were defeated at the Battle of Faughart), in part due to the ongoing famine which made supplying an army difficult; but it wreaked much havoc for the English. It also involved the movement of some 6,000 to 10,000 Scots into Ireland, mostly Ulster.
Ca. 1310s–20s: O’Neills of Tyrone brought many Scottish gallowglass mercenaries to Ulster to fight the English, during reign of Robert the Bruce. Many remained there.
1320: On April 6, the Declaration of Abroath was written by Robert I and Scottish barons, addressed to Pope John XXII. It defended Scottish action in the First War of Scottish Independence, asserted the antiquity of the Kingdom of Scotland, and denounced English invasion attempts. The document is widely believed to have inspired the American Declaration of Independence. April 6 is now the date of Tartan Day in the US and Canada.
1326: The Auld Alliance between Scotland and France was renewed.
1328: Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton formally ended the First War of Scottish Independence, largely in Scotland’s favour, with England recognizing the country’s independent sovereignty.
1332–57: Second War of Scottish Independence; Scotland again slowly repelled an attempted English invasion (successful in part because of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, plus England becoming embroiled in the Hundred Years’ War with France from 1337). Conflict more or less ended with the Treaty of Berwick. Scotland was destitued by the war (which included civil war between the forces of David II and the pretender Edward Balliol, son of John), but remained independent until the Treaty of Union in 1707.
1333: The Anglo-Norman English lost control of Ireland west of the River Shannon.
1337–1453: The Hundred Years’ War between the English and French dynasties drew English military away from Gaelic areas.
1342: Death of Domnall Ó Cuindlis, a chronicler in Uí Mháine (present-day Galway and Roscommon, Ireland).

[Image:Stylized scribe with book, bordered by Celtic knotwork, from ancient Irish manuscript]

A medieval Irish scribe as depicted
by medieval Irish scribes, from
8th-century Book of Mulling

1346–53: The Black Death (bubonic plague), which reached Ireland in 1348 and Scotland in 1349, causing widespread death and social disruption. The effect in Ireland was so calamitous that English control there shrank back to the Pale, the fortified area surrounding Dublin, with surviving Gaels reasserting control over the rest of the island. In Scotland, at least a third of the population died. Plague returned many times over the next century.
Ca. 1350–1500: The Gaelic Resurgence or Gaelic Revival in Ireland. Hiberno-Norman landholders outside the Pale were (when they survived) assimilalted to Gaelic language and life to such an extent they were later described as “more Irish than the Irish themselves”. (This period is not to be confused with the 19th-century Gaelic Revival movement.)
1355: A comparatively early mention of tartan is recorded, in the ledger of John Lord of the Isles, who expensed “one pair of tartan trews”.
1366: The Statutes of Kilkenny were enacted in Ireland, aiming to prevent cultural assimilation between the Anglo-Norman settlers and the native Irish. It attempted to forbid Gaelic and Anglo-Norman intermarriage, suppress the use of the Irish Gaelic language, and ban traditional Irish modes of dress. It was never successfully enforced, even within the Pale. At this period, Ireland was effectively divided into three areas: The Pale (an English-controlled region centered on Dublin); Leinster and Munster, ruled by loyal Anglo-Irish; and Connacht and Ulster, ruled by Gaelic chiefs with only token obedience to England.
1371: The first of the Stuart dynasty (AKA House of Stewart), Robert II, came to the Scottish throne. A grandson of Robert the Bruce, he earlier was the 7th hereditary High Steward of Scotland (thus the name) and a guardian of Bruce’s son, David II, who had become king while still a child.
1380: Chaucer mentions bagpipes in The Canterbury Tales; this is the first unambiguous written reference to bagpipes in Britain, though they possibly dated throughout the island to the Roman era.
1395: First recorded instance of a formal clan system in Scotland, with the establishment of the MacGregor clan. However, Gaelic society on both sides of the Irish Sea is believed to have been at least loosely clan-based going back to the early medieval period.
1398–1411: Murchadh Riabhach Ó Cuindlis was a scribe in Uí Mháine, working on Irish manuscripts that survive to the present day, including the Book of Lecan and An Leabhar Breac.
14th century: Some Spanish paintings depicted cotehardies (medieval long and long-sleeved tunics) of tartan cloth, which might have been locally made or Scottish imports.
14th century: Scots clearly emerged as a distinct language in the eastern Lowlands, having developed and diverged (e.g. with Gaelic loanwords) from early Middle English, and with its roots in Northumbrian Old English and the later Anglo-Danish of the Danelaw in Yorkshire.
Ca. late 14th – early 16th centuries: Scots gradually became the higher-register (courtly, literary, and governmental) language of most of Scotland, with Gaelic surviving mostly in the Highlands and Islands.
Ca. 1400: First certain attestation (in period artwork) of the bagpipe in Scotland.
1444–63: Cornelius Ó Cuinnlis was Catholic bishop of Emly then Clonfert, in east Co. Galway, Ireland.
1455–85: The Wars of the Roses in England (also affected Scotland and parts of Ireland through troop conscription, political instability, etc.).
1464: The second Treaty of York, between James III of Scotland and Edward IV of England in 1480. This was followed by a 1474 treaty, centred on marriages that would buy a truce until 1519, but that fell apart, and the 1464 treaty was broken by Edward IV with an military build-up and invasion in support of Scottish pretender in 1480–82.
1471: John, Bishop of Glasgow, and treasurer of King James III of Scotland, recorded ordering tartan cloth to be used in attire for the king and queen, demonstrating that at least this early, tartan was in use by the gentry not just by “wild” Highlanders. (It is also notable that he wrote in the Scots dialect, not in courtly Latin, which could suggest a more general positive change in attitude toward native traditions.)
1480–1482: Edward IV of England built up military forces at the Scottish border, then in June 1482 launched a land and naval invasion of Scotland, in support of the pretender to the Scottish throne, Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany (brother of James III) who had, in the so-called Treaty of Fotheringhay, pledged allegiance to England and against the Auld Alliance, and declared himself King of Scotland. England failed to install him, and eventually withdrew, with concessions such as renewed noble-marriage-related agreements from James III, but not until after acquiring Berwick, which has remained English to the present.
1492: Chrisopher Columbus reached the Americas, starting a new era of global exploration and colonization that would eventually lead to the large world-wide Gaelic diaspora (among many other consequences).
1496–97: James IV of Scotland twice invaded northern England in support of a pretender (ultimately failed) to the English throne. The insecurity of the Anglo-Scottish border effectively forced Henry VII of England into the Treaty of Ayton with Scotland in 1497, the Treaty of Perpetual Peace in 1502, and arrangement of marriage between James IV and Henry VII’s daughter Margaret in 1503. The marriage meant that the only thing standing between the Scottish king and the English succession was the future Henry VIII of England, who at this time was an heirless prince. This commingling of the Scottish and English royal lineages had important consequences in 1603.
Late 15th century: By this period, socio-cultural conflict between the Germanic- and Celtic-language groups in Scotland (with the former poltically and economically dominant, the latter increasingly confined to the Western Isles, Highlands, and southwestern Lowlands) had led to the divergent form of Middle English spoken in Scotland being renamed Scots (or Scottis) and speakers of it adopting the name the Scots (in various spellings, including Scottis again and Scotch) for themselves, when it had originated in a Latin epithet, Scoti, for the Gaels. The Gaelic population and their language in Scotland were then called Erse or Eris[c]he (‘Irish’ literally but indicating more generally ‘Gaelic’) in Scots and Middle English, and little distinction was made between them and the actual Irish of Ireland. This use of Erse and variant spellings would perisist into the 18th century. Later, the term the Scots took on a more national than ethnic character, though Scots remains the primary name of English’s Germanic sister-language in the region (some specific dialects are known as Doric and Lallans).
Ca. 1500: The English word tartan was in use by this period (imported from Scots, in which it was attested to at least as early as 1355). Its origin is debated, but it is most likely from Gaelic tarsainn ‘crossing over’, ‘across’, in reference to the pattern. A French origin from tartarin or tiretaine (‘Tatar cloth’, meaning mixed linsey-woolsey material) has also been proposed.
Ca. 16th century: Irish kerns (ceithern, singular ceithernach), a class of militia footmen (dating back to at least the 13th century) who served as light infantry to the gallowglass heavy infantry, were frequently depicted in surviving period artworks (e.g. by Albrecht Dürer) clearly wearing the léine (plural léinte), often with light armour or a short doublet (ionar) over it. The léine had been worn for many centuries in Gaelic lands, and some have suggested it may have been ancestral to the kilt, as the garment was also known in the Scottish Highlands. A long tunic, it was often heavily pleated, usually woolen (sometimes linen or even, among the gentry, silk), and dyed saffron-yellow, or some other solid colour including red, brown, green, or black, or occasionally striped. It was worn belted so that it fell to the knees, forming something of a kilt-like skirt under the belt. It was a unisex garment and could be worn with or without trousers. The sleeves were narrow at the top, wide at the elbow, and open at the forearm (and at least in this period rather pendulous). The term léine (in various spellings) goes all the way back to Old Irish records of the 6th century, but it would be foolhardy to assume that the same garment was worn unchanged for 1000 years, as the term more generically just means ‘shirt or tunic’. Modern, tailored léinte remain in use, in lieu of kilts, in the uniforms of some Irish pipe bands today.
1500–1655: Radiocarbon date range of the earliest surviving sample of “true” tartan in Scotland; the “Glen Affic tartan” is not a simple cheque pattern, but a complex four-colour tartan made with natural dyes like indigo and woad, and was discovered in a peat bog at Glen Affric, about 19 miles west of Loch Ness.
Ca. 1513–21: Pope Leo X declared that the name Scotia was to be the exclusive right of Scotland, which helped draw to a close use of the name in reference to Ireland. (The pope’s intervention in this matter had at least the effect if not the intent of enabling Anglo-Scottish takeover of Irish-founded monasteries on the continent.)
1531–34: The Protestant Reformation began in England, with a series of acts of Parliament declaring that “this realm of England is an Empire” and severing Church of England ties to Rome, declaring the king the “only supreme head of the Church of England”, which renounced papal authority under Henry VIII in 1534.
1534–35: The Silken Thomas Revolt or Kildare Rebellion in Ireland. Had several consequences, including being a factor in the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, the establishment of the Royal Irish Army (a standing English army on Irish soil), and the imposition of “surrender and re-grant” policy, under which Irish clan chiefs operating under traditional Gaelic law and inheritance rules were forced to give over their territories to the English crown and then were given back control of the land if they swore fealty to the king and agreed to adopt English common law and the feudal and primogeniture systems.
1534–36: The Reformation in Ireland established the Church of Ireland (an offshoot of, and beholden to, the Church of England), with Protestant bishoprics overlapping and competing for adherents with Catholic ones. The CoI still survives today as a minority denomination (but the dominant Protestant one in the Republic of Ireland, while Scottish-imported Prebyterianism dominates in Northern Ireland).
1538: The Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland recorded purchases by the tailor of King James V of materials for a “short Highland coat”, of a “Highland sarkis [shirt] of Holland cloth”, and of “Highland tartan for hose” (which may have meant trews), demonstrating that Highland garb was in at least some demand by the Scottish nobility of the period.
1540s–1600s: Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, under Henry VIII and later Elizabeth I then James I (VI of Scotland). Established the Kingdom of Ireland in 1542 as a secondary realm of the kings and queens of England, and lasted to 1800. One side effect of the re-conquest was Henry VIII’s renewed ban of traditional Irish dress, including the léine.
1550s: Privately organized British “plantations” (colonies) were founded in Ireland in counties Laois and Offaly. Others followed into the early 17th century in Wicklow, Longford, and Leitrim. It is unclear how many of the settlers were Scottish and from what parts.
1560: The Reformation in Scotland, and establishment of the Church (or Kirk) of Scotland, under the Reformation Parliament. Many Catholic churches and cathedrals were unfortunately ruined, while others were more sensibly taken over as Presbyterian establishments.
1569–73: The First Desmond Rebellion in Ireland.
1567: The Catholic Mary Queen of Scots (incidentally a fancier of tartan) was forced to abdicate in increasingly Protestant Scotland and flee to England, bringing to an end the Stuart monarchy and beginning a period of political turmoil.
1570s: Another private British colony was established in east Ulster (Northern Ireland today). Presaged but usually not included in accounts of the Plantation of Ulster (1606–1641).
1579–83: The Second Desmond Rebellion in Ireland. Its failure led to more English-imposed social changes, including replacing Gaelic brehon law with English common law, and supplanting clan-elected chieftainships with primogeniture-inherited feudal positions (baron, earl, etc.), that spelled the end of the Gaelic clan (fine) societal system in Ireland.
1580s: Another private British plantation in Ireland was organized in Munster.
1581: The Scottish academic George Buchanan wrote that the Highlanders used tartans that were regionally distinct and that they had done so for a long time.
1588: The Spanish Armada was defeated (with the help of an immense storm) by the English off the coast of Ireland; surviving Spanish ships sometimes received succour in Ireland and Scotland, depending on where they foundered. Later side effects included increased English control and the expansion of the plantation system in Ireland.
1592: Red Hugh O’Donnell (Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill) in Ireland became Chief of the Name of the O’Donnell dynasty and Lord of Tyrconnell, after escaping a five-year imprisonment in Dublin. Over successive years, he instigated rebellions against the English (and English-allied fellow Gaelic chiefs), both within and aside from the Nine Years’ War of Ireland. Like his martially active mother, Fiona MacDonald, before him, he relied heavily on gallowglass mercenaries from the Hebrides (mostly) and Highlands. Called “redshanks” in this period, for their ruddy dress, they were described in 1594 as wearing “mottled garment[s] with numerous colors hanging in folds” (probably tartan belted plaids or “great kilts”).
1594–1603: The Nine Years’ War of Ireland or Tyrone’s Rebellion. (Not to be confused with the Nine Years’ War of 1688–1697.)
1597: the Fife Adventurers with royal backing from James VI of Scotland set up a Lowland Scots colony on the (Gaelic) Isle of Lewis; reinforced in 1605 and 1609, but ultimately unsuccessful. Nevertheless, this (along with similar de-Gaelicization efforts in Kintyre, Uist, and Skye) was something of the blueprint for later Scots and English colonization of Ulster.
Late 16th century: By this period at the latest (probably considerably ealier) the breacan an fhéilidh (literally ‘wrapped tartan’) or féileadh mór (lit. ‘large wrap’), commonly called the “belted plaid” or (later) the “great kilt” in English, was the typical base garment of Highland dress, and remained so until the mid-18th century. The great kilt is not a tailored garment, but essentially a blanket-like span of cloth wrapped around the body and gathered manually into loose pleats, and belted at the high waist, forming a skirt of kilt material below, with the rest of the material typically being pinned at the shoulder (it could also be wrapped around the upper body or even drawn over the head in inclement weather). The sporran (leather pouch worn at the front of the kilt) also dates to this period. The female version of the great kilt (a longer garment, going to the ankles rather than the knees) is the earasaid. The earliest recorded certain reference to great kilts dates to 1574. The oldest surviving example of a belted plaid dates to 1822, and has sewn-in belt loops for fast pleating. The oldest surviving example of an earasaid dates to 1726. Great kilts fell out of fashion after the introduction of the tailored “small kilt”, but still exist today, primarily reserved for high-formal dress.
Early 17th century: O Clerigh’s Life of Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill says that Irish soldiers (kerns) distinguished Scottish redshanks men in their midst by their “mottled cloaks of many colours … their belts were over their loins outside their cloaks”, which appears to be a reference to the great kilt or belted plaid, and is also evidence that tartan was not in regular use among the Irish of the period.
Early 17th century: Kilts in Scotland that were made of solid colours rather than tartan were attested in period writings; solid-colour kilts were not exclusive to or invented in Northern Ireland (where they were popular from the mid-19th century).
1603: Union of the Crowns, in which James VI of Scotland became also James I of England and Ireland, and the three kingdoms merged in a personal union under this monarch, though otherwise remained essentially separate in many ways until 1707. Nevertheless, the union began a period of closer political ties between the three realms.
1603–1760: Formation of the Independent Highland Companies, militia units raised from the Highland clans by the British government to keep the peace in the region. These were the progenitors of the later Highland regiments.
1606–41: The overall period of the Plantation of Ulster, the settlement of British (including Scottish) families into what today is Northern Ireland.
1606–7: Notable Scots (Presbyterian) settlement in Ulster began, including in Antrim and Down.
1607: Flight of the Ulster earls – the earls of Tyrone and Tryconnell fled to continental Europe, after the Nine Years’ War of Ireland, leaving much of Ulster open to seizure (“escheating”) by the British crown and then colonization. This marked the end of what was left of the old Gaelic aristocracy in Ireland.
1607: Founding of Jamestown colony in Virginia, in what today is the United States. It was the first successful permanent British colony in North America, established 13 years before the Mayflower pilgrims.
1608: O’Doherty’s Rebellion in Ireland. Resulted in more Ulster land being confiscated by the British crown, in what was then Coleraine now Derry/Londonderry.
1609: Highland and Island chiefs of Scottish clans were forced to largely accept the Statutes of Iona, a de-Gaelicization effort of James I & VI. It was the beginning of the end for the Highlander way of life. It included a mandate for children of the gentry to be educated in English in England; the injection of Protestant ministers into the Highlands and Hebrides; outlawing of the bards and other bearers of traditional Gaelic language and culture; disruption of Highland trade in whisky; banning of firearms and hunting by commoners; institution of a network of inns that would provide free quarters and provisions to British troops and gentry; criminalization of harboring fugitives from the English; and imposition of a new system of relationships between landholders and tenants, by rewarding compliant chiefs with charters that formalized their personal ownership of clan lands under British law. Seen as something of a blueprint for how the Plantation of Ulster would proceed.
1609: James I & VI’s formal Plantation of Ulster began, in Donegal, Derry/Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Cavan, Armagh.
1609: Founding of the first successful British colony in the West Indies, at Bermuda. Much early British and Irish immigration was to the West Indies rather than North America proper (thus, e.g., the strong influence of Irish English on Jamaican and related dialects).
1610: The first permanent, non-seasonal British settlement in what is now Canada was established in Newfoundland, though there was already a significant population of seasonal trappers and traders, and the French had permanent settlements in Nova Scotia since 1605 and Quebec since 1608.
1618–48: The Thiry Years’ War in Europe, indirectly impacting Gaelic societies through trade disruptions and political instability.
1622: By this year, there were 6,400 British males living on Ulster Plantation lands, of whom 3,700 were Scottish, with a further 4,000 Scottish men in Antrim and Down (about a total settler population in NI of 19,000).
1624: The Independent Highland Companies began wearing great kilts as part of their uniforms.
1630s: By this decade, about 20,000 British males lived on Ulster Plantation lands. Most of the Scots were from SW Scotland and the Borders counties. McCandlish/McCandless is not among the known names of families moved there during the Plantantion, but these records are woefully incomplete, recording only 422 names out of thousands.)
1631: A German engraving of this year is the oldest surviving artistic depiction of Scottish soldiers in tartan great kilts – worn a variety of ways, with wide flat bonnets (caps) clearly ancestral to the Balmoral style. One figure wears trews, but in a puffy “pantaloon” style that is not commonly found in other illustrations. The men, mercenaries in the service of Gustavus Adolphus (Gustavus II of Sweden) in the Thirty Years’ War, are armed with muskets, bows, and a long sword. Three of the four figures are shod, one barefoot.
German engraving of Scots soldiers of the Thirty Years War in tartan kilts, 1631
1633: Raising of the first Scottish regiment of the British Army, the Royal Scots (Royal Regiment of Foot), a Lowlands regiment (Highlands regiments would not exist until 1739).
1639–53: The Wars of the Three Kingdoms, civil wars in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Ulster Scots were on the losing side (against Cromwell’s New Model Army) in 1648–50, providing an early reason to emigrate out (e.g. to North America, though some probably back to Scotland).
1641: Irish Rebellion of 1641, in which Irish Catholics rebelled against English Protestant rule; marked the beginning of the Irish Confederate Wars. After the rebellion, most of Ireland came under the control of the Irish Catholic Confederation.
1645: The Great Plague of 1645.
1646: Publication by the Church of England of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the standard of doctrine (after the Bible) on spiritual and church-governance matters of mainstream Anglicanism (including Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland) and of the majority of Scottish Presbyterian bodies, and influential on many other Protestant denominations not of a Continental (e.g. German Lutheran) character. A modification of it, the Savoy Declaration of 1658 (which merged in elements of the colonial Puritan and anti-Presbyterian Cambridge Platform of 1648) has served a similar purpose for Congregationalists, Independents (in the British ecclesiastical sense), and some break-away Anglicans, while various evangelical Protestant churches are not connected with it (but when British- rather than Continental-derived, often do use the Cambridge Platform). While the Westminster Confession is embedded in mainstream Scottish (and thereby American and much other) Presbyterianism, the associated Larger Catechism and Shorter Catechism produced with the Westminster Confession were not adopted by Presbyterians, only Anglicans and split-offs therefrom.
1649–50: English interregnum after execution of Charles I; the “three kingdoms” became a dictatorial republic (formally, from 1653, the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland) under Oliver Cromwell.
1649–50: The Cromwellian or Parliamentary Conquest of Ireland, by the forces of the English Parliament under Oliver Cromwell. As punishment for the Rebellion of 1641, most lands owned by Irish Catholics were confiscated and given to British plantationers, with forced resettlement of many Irish Catholics to the west of the country.
1649–51: The Scottish Royalist revolt for Charles II, suppressed by English forces under Cromwell again; the Battle of Dunbar and the Battle of Worcester both went poorly for the Scots. Scotland was put under military occupation, and a line of fortifications sealed off the Highlands (source of much of the Royalist manpower).
1650: The English (and thus Scottish and Irish) monarchy resumed with the Stuart Restoration of Charles II; Cromwell retained his command of the military.
Ca. 1671–1734: Lifetime of Roy Roy, who was to become a romanticized Highland folk hero, mostly due to fictionalized accounts of him in 1723 (when he was still living) and in 1817.
1688: the Glorious Revolution (Catholic James II & VII deposed in November of that year by his Protestant daughter Mary II and her husband, William III of Orange – “William & Mary”, who ruled jointly). Led to consolidation of Protestant power in Scotland and Ireland.
1688–97: The Nine Years’ War or War of the Grand Alliance, between France and the Grand Alliance of England, Holy Roman Empire, Dutch Republic, Spain, and Savoy. (Not to be confused with the 1594–1603 Nine Years’ War of Ireland.)
1688–91: The Williamite–Jacobite war in Ireland (a side conflict of the War of the Grand Alliance), in which the Protestant William of Orange defeated the Catholic James II, culminating in the Battle of the Boyne and the Treaty of Limerick, leading to a Protestant ascendancy in Ireland for some time. The war resulted in around 100,000 deaths, counting famine and sickness. Presbyterians in Ulster (mostly Ulster Scots), though on the winning side of this conflict, were nevertheless excluded from power (along with the losing Catholics) by Anglicans, providing a reason to emigrate to North America and elsewhere.
1688–92: Jacobite uprising in Scotland in support of James II (another side conflict of the War of the Grand Alliance). The rebellion was eventually suppressed after the Battle of Killiecrankie (Rinroy).
1691: The Scottish clan chiefs were ordered to swear loyalty to William & Mary by 31 December of that year. Failure to comply by MacDonald of Glencoe (MacIain) was what led to the 1692 Massacre of Glencoe by the Earl of Argyll’s Regiment of Foot under the command of Campbell of Glenlyon (source of treating Campbell as a “bad name” in parts of Scotland).
1695: The Penal Laws were enacted in Ireland, which imposed severe restrictions on Catholics and other non-Anglican groups, and led to widespread poverty and emigration.
1690s: Another wave of Scottish immigration to Ulster (tens of thousands) due to a Borders famine. Despite some emigration back out, over 100,000 Ulster Scots Presbyterians were in Ulster in 1700.
Late 17th – early 18th centuries: By this period, some regional uniformity of tartans is believed to have been achieved, with particular tartans being associated with particular islands and inland districts. However, the 1703 A Description of the Western Islands in Scotland makes it clear that inhabitants of a locale were not dressed alike as if in uniform; rather, the setts and colours of tartans varied from place to place (i.e., any given area might have several characteristic tartans or styles of tartan).
Late 17th – early 18th centuries: The modern, tailored kilt developed. Known in Gaelic as the fèileadh beag (lit. ‘small wrap’), anglicized as “filibeg” or “philabeg” and later called the “small kilt” or “walking kilt” in English, it is basically the bottom half of a great kilt, with the pleats sown in permanently. It was popular in the Highlands and northern Lowlands by 1746. A 1768 letter by an Evan Baillie claimed (and others, like the controverial Hugh Trevor-Roper, have since uncritically repeated) that the design was invented in the 1720s by an Englishman from Lancashire, one Thomas Rawlinson, as a less cumbersome outfit for his Scottish labourers in Invergarry. However, there is no evidence at all of this in Rawlinson’s detailed papers, and there is counter-evidence of short-kilt wearing by Highlanders possibly as early as the 1690s (though perhaps without sewn-in pleats). Regardless, the tailored kilt was adopted by Scottish regiments; civilian usage was common by the early 19th century. The earliest surviving example of a small kilt dates to 1792.
Ca. 18th century: Irish, Scottish, and Manx Gaelic, once mostly mutually intelligible (all having developed from the Middle Irish of ca. 900–1200), became distinct languages. Earlier, Gaelic in Scotland had often been referred to as Erse (i.e. ‘Irish’) in Middle English.
1703: The Laird of Grant summoned Clan Grant to what appears to have been a contest of arms, a precursor of the modern Highland games events.
1706–07: Treaty and Acts of Union; formed a single Kingdom of Great Britain, under Queen Anne of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Also resulted in a single parliament for England and Scotland. As one reaction to this, tartan was for the first time adopted by Lowlanders in large numbers, as a symbol of defiance of the union.
1710–75: More than 100,000 Ulster Presbyterians of Scottish origin left for America in this date range (see details below). It was the largest British migration to North America in the 18th century. The bulk of British Isles immigrants to American colonies were from Ulster (about 150,000 to 200,000 in that date range), Scotland, and English Borders counties. The Ulster ones mostly went to Pennsylvania and western Virginia, and the Carolinas, thence southwest to the South, Ozarks, Appalachians. One large group went to New Hampshire.
1710: By this year, despite some emigration out, Presbyterians in Ulster had quickly gone from a semi-oppressed 20% to a majority, up to 50,000, accounting for about half of the newcomers (most of the rest were English).
Ca. 1712: Earliest known portrait that shows a small kilt.
1715: The ’15, the Jacobite revolt for James Francis Stuart (“James III”), in which mostly Scottish supporters of the exiled Stuart dynasty attempted to overthrow the new Hanoverian-English monarchy; the Scots were ultimately defeated at the Battle of Sheriffmuir.
1715: After the ’15, the Disarming Act (formally the Highlands Services Act 1715, in effect in 1716) prohibited Highlanders and some other Scots from possessing “warlike weapons”, including the traditional Highland dirk. This resulted in the confiscation of large numbers of weapons, and resulted in the Scots having comparatively antiquated weaponry by the 1745 uprising, but was not effective in generally disarming them all.
1717: The Indemnity Act 1717 pardoned all the surviving Jacobite rebels except for Clan Gregor.
1717–75: At least 275,000 emigrants from the British Isles arrived in North America, mostly from Ulster, the Scottish Lowlands, and Northern England, especially to the Applachian Mountains across what are now Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, western Maryland, Mississippi, New York state, North Carolina, Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and western Virgina (including what became West Virginia); some also into what is now Ontario (then Upper Canada). A consequence of this was a strong influence of Scottish English, and the Scots-Irish English and Ulster Scots dialect continuum, on Appalachian and Ontario English.
1725: The Disarming Act was reinforced with more legislation, but still not very effective.
1725–29: There is some evidence that by this date-range of the re-raising of the Independent Highland Companies, they may have come to wear the first official uniform tartan, to avoid association with any particular district or clan. As Scottish regiments multiplied in later years, their distinct tartan uniforms became a precursor to the idea of clan tartans (which appeared by the early 19th century).
Ca. 1730s–40s: John M’Candlish was Provost of Whithorn in Wigtownshire.
1730–1830: Lowland Clearances – tens of thousands were re-settled in purpose-built agricultural villages; many instead moved to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and northern England; or emigrated, mostly to Canada.
1732: The First Secession, the beginning of a series of Presbyterian schisms away from the established Kirk of Scotland, over various doctrinal and administrative disputes. This secession formed the Associate Presbytery, then other splits in 1747, 1761 (Presbytery of Relief), 1773 (Relief Synod or Relief Church), followed by re-merger of some of these factions in 1820 and more in 1847.
1739: Ten of the Independent Highland Companies were merged into the Earl of Crawford’s Highland Regiment, or “Black Watch”, numbered the 43rd Regiment of Foot (later 42nd). This was the first true Highland regiment of the British Army. It was expanded in 1881 by amalgamation with another unit. Various other Highland regiments were to follow, eventually distinguished by separate tartans; the regiments were raised principally to send fighting-age men away from Scotland and into combat in India, North America, and elsewhere. The use of Highland garb by these regiments marked the beginning of “institutionalization” of the kilt; its use in military uniforms did much to preserve it over the coming centuries, and to standardize kilt length, sporran usage, and other elements of now-traditional kilt attire.
Ca. 1744: The Balmoral or Kilmarnock bonnet (the more beret-like of the traditional Highland caps) is clearly illustrated, complete with ribbon cockade and small toorie (pompon), in a painting of Highland soldiers in great kilts and tartan hose. A portrait of Jacobite general Lord George Murray from around the same time shows a similar cap, in black. The Balmoral developed from the larger blue bonnet or scone cap, the everyday headwear of civilian Scots (which in turn had derived from the medieval flat cap). In the period discussed here, there is no clear dividing line between the blue bonnet and the Balmoral.
1745–46: The ’45, the Jacobite rising for Charles Edward Stuart (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”); sought to restore the exiled Stuart dynasty to the British throne. The first significant engagement was the Battle of Prestonpans; rebel forces reached as far south as Derby in England. Their eventual defeat would lead to later suppression of Highland clan systems and Highland culture. Highland dress had become integral to the Jacobite identity by the ’45 (including kilts and “suits” of tartan trews and coats, commonly with the blue bonnet or Balmoral bonnet, which were not clearly distinguishable yet).
Advance of the Highlanders at Prestonpans (1745)
from British Battles on Land and Sea, 1873
1745–46: The Act of Proscription was drafted and enacted. It was a restatement of the Disarming Act, with greater penalties, with the goals of disarming and punishing the Scots, especially the Highlanders. It also proscribed clan gatherings and (see below) Highland dress. The act was repealed in 1782.
1746: Battle of Culloden; England defeated Scotland; end of the Jacobite uprisings and further erosion of the Highland clan system and way of life.
1746: After Culloden, the Dress Act or Disclothing Act (passed as part of the Act of Proscription but not in effect until 1 August 1746) made the male wearing of Highland dress, including the kilt, illegal north of the Highland line, except in the British army and among the landed gentry. This infuriated Scots nationwide, as it applied equally to Jacobites and British loyalists, and inspired great outcry in prose, poetry, and song. Contrary to popular belief, it did not ban all tartan, or bagpipes, or Gaelic. The act was repealed in 1782. Enough time had passed that kilts, trews and tartan coats, and plaids (as wraps or as great kilts) were no longer ordinary dress even in the Highlands, but a resurgence adopted them as something of a symbolic national Scottish attire, against the “Saxon” dress of the English; this was popularized further in 1822.
Mid-18th century: The noun kilt entered the English and Scots languages, referring to the garment; it derived from a 14th-century verb in Northern English and Scots, to kilt, meaning ‘to tuck up, to gird, to hang’, ultimately from a Norse word for ‘skirt’.
1750–1860: Highland Clearances – some continuing to 1886 (Crofter’s Act) after the Highland Land League and so-called Crofters’ War of the 1880s. First phase ca. mid-18th century. Second phase ca. 1815–20 to 1850s. Mostly affected the north and west Highlands and the Hebrides. Highlanders and Islanders moved to the coast, the Lowlands, North America (more Canada than the US in this period), and Australia. Especially: Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, parts of Ontario; the Carolinas.
Ca. 1750–1800: Between 12,000 and 20,000 Scots relocated to the West Indies.
1756–63: The Seven Years’ War.
1756–1815: Highlands men were recruited in large numbers into the British Army and sent to fight and die in foreign wars; estimates range from 40,000 to 75,000 in this time period.
1761: The Second Secession, the schism that formed the Presbytery of Relief (in 1773 the Relief Synod or Relief Church) as another split-off from the established Kirk of Scotland. This body partially merged into the United Secession Church in 1820, and most of the remainer merged with USC in 1847 to form the United Presbyterian Church, then with others in 1900 to form United Free Church of Scotland (itself mostly united with the Kirk again, after reforms, in 1929).
1761: A group of Ulster immigrants to New Hampshire moved on from there to Nova Scotia. Around the same time, a Highland regiment garrison in New Brunswick began attracting Scots settlers, who increased by thousands of loyalists during and after the American Revolution.
1761–63: James Macpherson’s “Ossian” poems were published to international popularity, and were influential on the development of the Romantic movement and the late 19th-century Gaelic Revival, despite later proving to be forgeries (Macpherson had claimed they were translations of medieval works).
1772: Many Gaels went to Prince Edward Island.
1773: 200 more came from the Highlands to Nova Scotia.
1775–83: The American Revolution.
1780s: Gaelic immigration to the US resumed after the American Revolution, especially to Pennsylvania and New York.
1781: The earliest known organized pipe band competition was arranged by the Royal Highland Society of London, at the Cattle Tryst in Falkirk.
1782: Ireland gained parliamentary independence from England in the Constitution of 1782.
1782: The Act of Proscription was repealed and the Dress Act with it, on 1 July. With Jacobitism no longer an actual threat of civil unrest, it was viewed with a sense of nostalgia, which commingled with “noble savage” idealism about Highlanders, and romanticism of things Gaelic, leading to a resurgence of tartan and kilt wearing, and the founding of various Highland Societies and Gaelic Societies to promote this idealism. It is believed that at this time, Highland games events in some form resumed from whatever undocumented folk traditions had preceded them. Little is known of the games until the 19th century. Today, 1 July is the date of International Tartan Day in Australia and New Zealand.
1783: More Scottish loyalists left the US for Ontario and Nova Scotia.
1788: British penal colony founded in New South Wales in present-day Australia.
1789–99: French Revolution, which along with the American one sent shockwaves through European monarchies (and the peoples subject to them).
1790: The first US census showed a full 12% of the population to be of significant Scottish or Scots-Irish descent (today it is estimated in the 2–5% range).
1790s: By this decade, there were about 400,000 Americans of Irish descent, half from Ulster; and Cape Breton Island was almost entirely Gaelic-speaking (Scottish), while many Catholic Highlanders moved to Prince Edward Island to escape post-Culloden religious persecution.
1794: Formation of the Glengarry Fencibles corps by Alexander Ranaldson MacDonell of Glengarry. This unit is commonly believed to have introduced the Glengarry bonnet to Highland attire (an adaptation from the standard “side cap” military bonnet of the period), but this is actually disputed, as period illustrations are not clear (the Glengarry may really date to 1841).
1795–1803: The British came to control Cape Town in what is now South Africa.
1798–1803: Rebellions in Ireland and the Newfoundland Colony, organized by the Society of United Irishmen, inspired by the American and French Revolutions, and with military support from France. The Society was actually founded by Scots-Irish Presbyterians and later swelled by Ireland’s majority Catholics, as both groups had reason to oppose control by Anglican English. The rebellions were swiftly repressed.
Early 19th century: Believed to be the period of the adoption of the first clan tartans. The idea was not intitially popular, but took off in 1822. Before clan tartans, clan members were usually identified by the color of the ribbon or cockade on the bonnet, and in at least a few cases by the type of plant sprig stuck into the cockade.
Early 19th century: The Balmoral became an official Highland regiment military uniform cap. It was replaced in the mid-19th century in most Highland regiments by the Glengarry bonnet, and retired completely from British military use in 2006, but remains in more popular civilian use with Highland dress than the Glengarry, and remains official uniform gear of several Canadian Highlanders units today. Typically black or navy blue, it is also available in muted green or red to better go with some kilts, and can also sometimes be found in bright colours (even white) for Highland dancer outfits.
Ca. late 18th century: Demise of Scottish Gaelic in Galloway (the Galwegian Gaelic dialect), though small pockets of use might have survived there until the 19th century.
Ca. early 19th century: The Highland regiments’ “kit” of kilt, particular jacket styles, sporran styles, bonnet forms, footwear, etc. became standardized, and largely set the style of what passed into civilian usage to the present day. This is the reason the regulation, Sherrifmuir, and Prince Charlie jackets have a rather old-timey appearance, while the more elaborate pipe band constuming has the look of antique military uniforms. Modernization of actual military duty uniforms in the 20th century had virtually no effect on the by-then-traditional nature of Highland formalwear (even among military pipe bands).
Ca. early to mid-19th century: the modern Highland games developed. Their exact history is not well recorded. Perhaps the most famous is the Braemar Gathering and Games, formally organized in 1832 by the Braemar Royal Highland Society; it is traditionally attended by the British royal family since Queen Victoria, and has had permanent dedicated grounds since 1906, attracting around 12,000 spectators annually.
Ca. 1800–25: Glasgow’s population boomed from 70,000 to 170,000 in a single generation.
1801: Act of Union, which merged the parliaments of Ireland and Great Britain. It marked the end, for over a century, of Irish independence but was also the beginning of modern Irish nationalism.
1803: 800 Highlanders relocated to Prince Edward Island, and another large group that year came to PEI from the Isle of Skye.
1803: British colony founded in Tasmania.
1803–15: Napoleonic Wars.
1803: Castle Hill Rebellion in Ireland, organized by Society of United Irishmen.
1806: British regained control of Cape Town; it was ceded to Great Britain at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.
Ca. 1806: The Black Watch or Old Campbell tartan was adopted by Clan Campbell, as so many of its men were already wearing it as a regimental uniform. This may have been the first informal clan tartan.
1810s: Australian transition began from penal to civil colonization in New South Wales.
1811: More Highlanders came to Manitoba.
1812–15: War of 1812, between the United States and Canada (then British North America).
1815: The Highland Society of London (founded 1778) solicited the Scottish clan chiefs to furnish the society with samples of clan tartans. As these largely did not exist yet, it spurred several clans to adopt specific tartans as official (often selecting one from among portaits of old clan chiefs, adopting a regimental tartan, or in other cases inventing new ones). Some did not respond and remained without clan tartans until later in the 19th century or even into the early 20th.
1815: By this time, Scots and some Scots-Irish (mostly farmers) were one of the three major ethnic groups in the Maritimes, and a Canadian dialect of Scottish Gaelic was the third-most-spoken language in Canada in the mid-19th century.
Ca. 1815–45: a pre-Famine wave of emigration from Ireland, guestimated at 250,000 to 1.5 million between these years. A fairly conservative estimate is that around 500,000 Irish and Scots-Irish arrived in the US in this range.
1815–70: Approx. 50,000 Scots moved to Nova Scotia alone between these years, due to late Highland Clearances and destitution that followed.
1815–1915: This century saw some 13 million Scots arriving in the US, 4 million more in Canada, and another million and a half in Australia.
1817: The Celtic Twilight or Celtic Revival, a period of rewewed (if romanticized) interest in things Celtic and Gaelic, began in earnest with the publication of Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott (followed by Waverly in 1822), which popularized a romantic image of the Highlands. Scott also founded the Celtic Society of Edinburgh in 1820. By some definitions, the Celtic Revival is still ongoing.
Ca. 1818: Organized British immigration to southern Africa began.
1819: William Wilson & Sons of Bannockburn (main tartan weaver for the British military since around 1770) produced a catalogue of “perfectly genuine patterns” from the Highlands, recording over 200 setts. These tartans were numbered or given fanciful names, and not associated with any particular clans. (This was not the first of the Wilsons catalogues, but this one survives largely intact.)
1820: “The 1820 Settlers”: around 4,000 colonists from Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales arrived in southern Africa, especially the Eastern Cape area.
1820: United Secession Church (in long form, United Associate Synod of the Secession Church) formed by union of several of the 18th-century schisms away from the established Kirk of Scotland (from the First Secession and its aftermath). Those merging included the Associate Presbytery and many congregations of the Relief Church, but not the Free Church of Scotland. Further unions were to happen in 1847, 1900, and 1929 (the last being the majority back into the Kirk of Scotland, after reforms).
1820s: Probably time of adoption of the best-attested the McCandlish coat of arms, crest, and motto (first published in a heraldic source book in 1830).
1820s–1841: Irish (especially Ulster) seasonal workers in Britain shot up in number from around 7,000 per year to 58,000 in a generation. In 1841, some 126,000 Irish-born people lived in Scotland, making up about 5% of the population (much higher in Galloway and Glasgow, e.g. 16.5% in Wigtownshire).
1822: “The King’s Jaunt”: King George IV’s visit to Scotland (the first monarchical visit in 171 years) became a large public affair marked by tartan pageantry, largely at the instigation of Walter Scott’s Celtic Society. The Hanoverian king himself wore full Highland regalia, and caused quite a fad of “tartanry” (in a population that by this period was about 90% located in the Lowlands). The event led to sudden demand for tartan cloth and made it effectively the national dress of all Scotland, not just the Highlands and Islands, and even inspired kilt-wearing among social elites of continental Europe. Many clan-specific tartans were created and adopted around this time, an “invented tradition”.
Portrait of George IV in Highland dress
by David Wilkie. The king’s 1822 visit to
Scotland set off a wave of “tartanry”.
1825: The Cockburn Collection of tartan samples was completed (begun possibly in 1810 but more likely 1815) by Lt.-Gen. Sir William Cockburn; he recorded 56 samples (some of them duplicates) and many were assigned names, probably after prominent invididuals. Those that are today used as clan tartans generally have completely different names, sometimes more than one, in the Cockburn Collection.
1825–1914: In this span, some 1.84 million people left Scotland for non-European destinations; more than half the people born in Scotland emigrated out during this period. About 44% went to the US, 28% to Canada, and 25% to Australia or New Zealand.
1827: Britain claimed the entirety of Australia, and colonization (primarily coastal) increased throughout the century.
1831: James Logan published The Scottish Gael, a romanticized work that inspired some commercial weavers to invent a number of “clan tartans”.
1836: The first known Highland games event of the United States (and of North America) took place in New York.
1840s–60s: Queen Victoria often dressed her sons in kilts, further popularizing the look.
1840: Britain declared sovereignty over New Zealand, after unofficial “trickle-in” settlement since the 1770s by European (and North American) missionaries, traders, whalers, and others. The next year, it was declared its own colony, separate from the administration of New South Wales (Australia).
1841: By this year, some 4.8 percent of the Scottish population were working-class Irish immigrants.
1841: The Glengarry bonnet (which might date to 1794) was very certainly in use in 1841, adopted by the pipers of the 79th Regiment of Foot. It rapidly was adopted by most other Highland regiments, besides the Black Watch, and eventually became the standard British undress military cap for all units from 1868 to 1897. It is today the standard cap of all units of the Royal Regiment of Scotland since their amalgamation in 2006.
1842: Publication of the Vestiarium Scoticum, purportedly a 16th-century manuscript on clan tartans; now known to be a forgery, it nevertheless caused a resurgence of interest in the Highlands, clans, tartan, and kilts, and established many of the “official” clan tartans still in use today, including of various prominent Lowlands and Borders families who were restyling themselves as Scottish clans (but had never been part of the Gaelic clan system).
1843: The Great Disruption (or Third Secession) and the establishment of the Free Church of Scotland, the largest of the sectarian splits away from the presbyterian Kirk of Scotland. The schism was led primarily by Thomas Chalmers and Robert Smith Candlish, seeking primarily the selection of ministers by the people rather than by the crown, and the independence of the church from the latter with regard to doctrine and other spiritual matters.
1843: By this year, there were over 30,000 Scots and Scots-Irish in New Brunswick alone. Until 1850, there was organized movement of Scots to Canada, as part of the Clearances.
1844: Publication of another highly dubious work, The Costume of the Clans, which purported to reveal a number of “clan tartans” without any evidence behind it. Many of the proposed tartans were nevertheless enthusiastically adopted, as happened earlier with the Vestiarium Scoticum.
Ca. 1845–55: The Great Famine in Ireland. First major potato crop failure was in 1846, and 1846–52 was the worst of it. Produced an estimated 2–3 million refugees and 1 million deaths. The emigrés mostly went to the US, Canada, and Australia, but many also went to Britain, some 75,000 to Scotland (7.2% of the Scottish population at that time).
1846–61: Highland Potato Famine; peak famine from 1846 to roughly 1856; after-effect emigration was due to destitution.
1847: The United Presbyterian Church of Scotland formed by union of the entire United Secession Church and most of the remainder of the Relief Church that had not already merged into USC. UPC was to become the third-largest denomination in Scotland in its heyday, but merged completely into the United Free Church of Scotland in 1900.
1848: The Young Irelander Rebellion.
Ca. 1850s: Irish Nationalists, especially in Scotland-influenced Ulster, began wearing kilts (in solid colours rather than tartans) as a symbol of Gaelic identity. They were also adopted by some of the Irish regiments of the British army, and were also poular among participants in the 19th-century Gaelic Revival; today they are not generally associated with nationalist (i.e. anti-British) causes. Popular colours include saffron yellow and black, as well as both green and orange which often indicate Irish nationalism or British loaylism respectively (especially within Northern Ireland, where this colour-signalling is common for various forms of dress). They are regularly available in other colours, like red, grey, and purple. Some modern Irish tartans also exist, both regional and for specific families, but these are recent commercial products and are rarely endorsed by families in Ireland, being intended for marketing to Americans, etc. (Historically, some Irish chieftains had access to imported Scottish tartan, but there is no evidence they were used for kilts or that there were Irish clan tartans.) Irish kilt black-tie formalwear includes a so-called Brian Boru jacket (and waistcoat), a variant of the Highland Prince Charlie coatee but with shawl collar, chain closure, and round buttons.
1851–99: Another 900,000 Irish and Scots-Irish came to the US. Many had also been coming directly to Canada for some time as noted above.
1857: McCandless Township was incorporated, in north-central Pennsylvania.
1859: Wilson McCandless became a judge of the US Federal Court of the Western District of Pennsylvania.
1861: Margaret Ann McCandless of Northern Ireland published Arthur, or The Choirister’s Rest in London.
1861: David Colbert McCanles was killed by “Wild Bill” Hickok in Nebraska.
1863: The first Highland games of Canada took place in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
1866: Establishment of the Scottish Highland Gathering and Games in Pleasanton, California, which has become the largest such annual gathering in the world in terms of spectators (reaching nearly 50,000 in 2015).
1866: John Candlish became Member of Parliament for Sunderland, Durham, England.
1866–85: The Fenian raids, rising, and bombing campaigns, in Ireland, Canada, and the UK; organized by the Fenian Brotherhood.
1867: William “Buck” McCandless elected to Pennsylvania State Senate; later, state Secretary of Internal Affairs, 1875.
1871: The Cowal Highland Gathering was established, in Dunoon, Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It was by no means the first Scottish games event, but today it is the largest in the world in terms of number of competitors (around 3,500 annually, with about 23,000 spectators).
1872: James Smith Candlish became Professor of Systematic Theology at the Free Church College in Glasgow, Scotland.
1879: Potato blight returned to Ireland as the Famine of 1879.
1879: The British consolidated power over most colonies in southern Africa after the Anglo-Zulu war.
Ca. 1880s: The late-Victorian solidification of upperclass men’s dress into defined “day”, “white-tie formal”, and “black-tie semi-formal” outfits also resulted in the establishment of the various different informal, formal, and semi-formal Highland dress “kits”. The more formal jackets, worn with white tie or with a jabot (lacy ascot), are the Sherrifmuir, regulation, Montrose, or Kenmore doublets, while the Prince Charlie coatee and the Argyll jacket are worn black-tie (sometimes also the regulation doublet and Braemar jacket are used for black-tie). All of these are worn with a matching waistcoat (vest), though the Prince Charlie can also be paired with an evening belt (cummerbund). In modern times, the Argyll jacket (the most similar to a modern “Saxon” sport jacket) is also informally often worn with a regular necktie, and sometimes without the waistcoat; same goes for the rather militaristic-looking day doublet (based on the early-20th-century British Army coat), and the other less common day-wear jacket styles Crail and Braemar.
1880: Clan Originaux was published in Paris by J. Claude Fres. Several more purported clan tartans were adopted by clans from this work.
1880: First Anglo-Boer War – the British essentially lost, and Boers retained, for a time, self-rule in the South African Republic (Transvaal), i.e. much of what today is South Africa.
1881: The “Black Watch”, the Royal Highland 42nd Regiment of Foot, was merged with the Perthshire 73rd, to form the modern Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland, today part of the Scottish, Welsh and Irish Division. It is the most famous of the Scottish regiments, and its tartan (one of the earliest regimental ones adopted as a uniform), is one of the most popular tartans, a dark version of what was later called Old Campbell.
1887: John MacGregor McCandlish became the first president of the Society of Actuaries, Scotland.
1899–1902: Second Anglo-Boer War, at the conclusion of which the British Empire absorbed the South African Republic and the Orange Free State.
Charge of the Highlanders (an Anglo-Boer War scene)
by Frank Algernon Stewart, 1900
Late 19th – early 20th centuries: The Gaelic Revival, a literary, artistic, musical, sporting, and general cultural renewal of interest in things historically considered Gaelic (especially but not exclusively Irish).
Late 19th – early 20th centuries: Concurrently, the Scottish Renaissance and Irish Revival began, a flowering of modernized Gaelic literature, music, visual art, politics, and language preservation that is still ongoing.
Eary 20th century: By this era, virtually all Scottish clans had adopted at least one clan tartan.
1900: Formation of the United Free Church of Scotland, by merger of most of the Free Church of Scotland (established 1843) and the United Prebyterian Church of Scotland (estd. 1847). Merger negotiations had previously been attempted in 1863, 1873, and 1896.
1906: A pipe-band competition was added to the Cowal Highland Gathering, and may have been the first major organized event of this sort since 1781. It remained the premier such competition until the 1947 institution of the World Pipe Band Championships.
1907: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and New Brunswick (not yet part of Canada) became self-governing dominions.
1910: British and Boer colonies in southern Africa were united as a self-governing dominion, the Union of South Africa.
1912: McCandlish Hall was constructed in Straiton, South Ayrshire, Scotland.
1914: S. C. “Jack” McCandless was signed as an outfielder to the major league baseball team Baltimore Terrapins (Federal League).
1914–18: World War I.
1916: The Easter Rising in Dublin, in which Irish republicans staged an armed insurrection against British rule. The beginning of the Irish War of Independence.
1919: Patrick Dalmahoy McCandlish of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of British Empire) and was made the Assistant Quartermaster-General for the British Army.
1919–22: The Anglo-Irish War, or War of Irish Independece. Ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Partition of Ireland, which led to the creation of the Irish Free State in the south (with dominion status, like Australia, et al.), and Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom in the north.
1920: Timothy Quinlisk, an Irish Brigade member who informed to the British, was executed by the Irish Republican Army.
Ca. 1920s: In a peak of Scottish emigration, some 363,000 left Scotland for the United States in a single decade.
Ca. 1922: James Sutton McCandless was Imperial Potentate of the Masonic organization Shriners North America.
1925: William Leslie McCandlish became chairman of the presigious Kennel Club (UK), the original dog breeders’ and fanciers’ organization.
1926: Formation of the British Commonwealth of Nations (formalized in 1931 and again in 1949) and the beginning of British de-colonialism.
1927: Coleraine Football Club was co-founded in Northern Ireland by John (Jack) McCandless.
1929: The majority of the United Free Church of Scotland merged back into the established Kirk of Scotland, after negotiations in 1909 and 1919–20 and parliamentary acts in 1921 and 1925 disentangled the Kirk and the state, including independence in spiritual matters, and the establishment of the General Trustees to manage the Kirk’s endowment. This effectively reversed the schism of the Disruption of 1843. (A small independent UFC continues to exist, but is shrinking; it was the first in Scotland to permit female ministers, in 1929, and to have a woman as Moderator, in 1960.)
1933: Veteran player Billy McCandless began a long second career phase of football (soccer) management across Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, first with Ballymena F.C. in Northern Ireland.
1933: Link McCandless (Republican of Hawaii) elected to US House of Representatives.
1936: Benjamin Vaughan McCandlish became US Naval Governor of Guam.
1937: Ireland declared itself an independent country, but was still considered a British dominion by the UK. This political conflict did not resolve until 1949.
1937: Cdre. Byron McCandless became commanding officer of the US Navy Destroyer Base, San Diego, California (where a street is now named after him).
Late 1930s: The first mass-produced, affordable books of clan tartans with colour plates were published (The Clans and Tartans of Scotland, Robert Bain, 1938; The Scottish Clans & Their Tartans, W. & A. K. Johnston, 1939) and many more would follow. These did much to cement the idea of clan tartans in the public imagination, as well as to consistently anchor particular tartans to particular clans (most of which had no chiefs, while some with chiefs had not made “official” proclamations as to their clan tartans). Various tartan works dated back to the mid-Victorian, but had been expensive speciality volumes (and often contradicted each other or contained errors).
1939–45: World War II.
1944: Cmdr. (later RAdm.) Bruce McCandless I took command of the US Navy destroyer USS Gregory, shortly after being awarded the Medal of Honor.
1945: Brig. Gen. John Edward Chalmers McCandlish became Deputy Adjutant-General of the British Army of the Rhine.
1945–present: Acceleration of British de-colonialism.
1947: Establishment of the World Pipe Band Championships, by the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association.
1949: Republic of Ireland Act, which declared Ireland a republic and ended the country’s status as a British dominion; Ireland left the British Commonwealth of Nations.
Mid-20th century – present: The rise of interest in Celtic culture and even a pan-Celtic social identity has led to enthusiasts adopting kilts and creating (mostly regional) tartans beyond Scotland and Ireland in the “Celtic nations” of Wales, Cornwall (now part of Devonshire, England), the Isle of Man, and Brittany (now part of Armorica, France), as well as in formerly Celtic areas including Northumbria in England, Galicia and Asturias in Spain, and as far away as Austria. It is surely no coincidence that all of these areas have long retained their own distinctive bagpiping traditions, and that pipe bands are probably involved in the kilt and tartan interest. Similarly, there are many kilt wearers, as well as new regional and military tartans, among the Gaelic diaspora in the United States, Canada, and Australia, with these places also retaining a tradition of Scottish games and piping events, which notably ramped up from the 1950s onward.
1960s–1990s: “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, a period of sectarian conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities. The Troubles mostly ended with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
1967: James Conlisk Jr. became head of the Chicago Police Department.
1969: John Louis Conlisk became Professor of Economics at University of California San Diego. His work has been influential across multiple fields, including ecological science.
1970: Woodwind and horn player Paul McCandless co-founded the jazz band Oregon, with Ralph Towner, Glen Moore, and Collin Walcott.
1971: Launch of the US Navy destroyer escort/frigate USS McCandless (in active service 1972–1994).
1983: Al McCandless, Republican of California, elected to US House of Representatives.
1984: Navy pilot and NASA astronaut Capt. Bruce McCandless II took the first untethered spacewalk with a jetpack.
Bruce McCandless II’s untethered
spacewalk, 11 January 1984
1987: The first “Tartan Day” celebration was inaugurated in Nova Scotia, Canada. By the 1990s, it spread throughout Canada and to the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and since then to other countries including Argentina and France, and Scotland itself.
1990s–present: A fashion niche has been filled with the development of the contemporary, modern, fashion, or utility kilt, an informal modern adaptation (in various divergent designs) of the traditional Scottish style but of simpler construction, usually made of cotton or a poly-cotton blend (but available in everything from leather to corduroy). They typically feature pockets (thus “utility”) and may be worn with or without a sporran. They are usually in solid colours, though some are in tartan, or a hybrid mix of tartan and solid panels. Traditionalists, of course, detest these “pseudo-kilts”, but they are growing in popularity especially among the younger generations, even in Scotland (though the majority of their wearers and manufacturers are in the US and Canada). Also in this time period, a type of contemporary “sport kilt”, often worn with athletic shorts underneath, has become popular in women’s sports, especially lacrosse and field hockey, but is increasingly supplanted by the more streamlined “athletic skirt”.
1992: American traveller and do-it-yourselfer Chris McCandless starved at his makeshift homestead in the Alaskan wilderness; his misadventure is the subject of the 1996 documentary film Into the Wild, and several books.
1997: Scottish referendum for a separate parliament from that of England; passed by a 3/4 margin. The Scottish Parliament convened in 1999 for the first time since 1707.
2014: Scottish independence referendum (“Should Scotland be an independent country?”), in which the “No” vote won, but at a very narrow 55.3%.
2019: Louise Candlish won “Crime & Thriller Book of the Year” at the British Book Awards for her novel Our House, adapted into a TV series in 2021.
2023: As much as 20% of the population of New Zealand claim Scottish descent; around 15% in Canada; between 8% and 9% in Australia; about 2.7% to 4.5% (depending on survey), including Scots-Irish/Ulster Scots, in the US. For Irish descent: over 20% of Americans claim it; Canada comes in at 14%, Australia around 7% to 10.4%; figures for New Zealand were not readily available.

Sources

It should be noted here that experts are not always in agreement on dates, especially with regard to prehistory. The science, especially in archaeogenetics, is improving all the time, making for narrower estimates in later publications. Where sources conflict, the solution in this timeline has been to present their differing estimates as a range (which may be narrowed in later edits, if an old estimate is conclusively shown to be faulty). In a few cases, sharply conflicting hypotheses that have divided academics on a question are treated in separate bullet points, but with cross-references.

Moffat, Alistair; “Wha’s Like Us?”; The Scots: A Genetic Journey; 2nd ed.; Edinburgh: Birlinn; 2017; pp. 216–243.
Ryan, David (writer/director); Sweeney, Maurice; Wilson, Les; Delaney, Bob (co-writers); After Braveheart, two-part documentary; BBC / RTÉ / Caledonia TV / Tile Films; 2015.
Hendry, Lisa; “First Britons”; Human Evolution; London: National History Museum; 2017; https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/first-britons.html
Mills, Josie; “Migration Event: When did the first humans arrive in Britain?”; Researchers in Museums; University College London; 24 February 2019; https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2019/02/24/migration-event-when-did-the-first-humans-arrive-in-britain/
Chen, Min; “A Tattered Scrap of Fabric, Unearthed from a Peat Bog in the Scottish Highlands, Is the World’s Oldest Piece of Tartan”; ArtNet News; 7 April 2023; https://news.artnet.com/art-world/glen-affric-tartan-worlds-oldest-va-dundee-2279782
McKay, Gabriel; “Scotland’s oldest tartan discovered by researchers”; The Herald; 26 March 2023; https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23412939.scotlands-oldest-tartan-discovered-researchers
Thompson, J. Charles; So You’re Going to Wear the Kilt, Revised 3rd Ed.; 1989; Arlington, Virginia: Heraldic Art.
“The Oldest Tartans in (pre)History”; USAKilts.com; 2018; https://usakilts.com/blog/the-oldest-tartans.html
“8 Oldest Tartans in History”; Oldest.org; 2021; https://www.oldest.org/culture/tartans/
Kross, Sharon L.; “Materials for King James V’s Highland Clothing”; Historical Scottish Clothing Project; 2003; Medieval Scotland; http://medievalscotland.org/clothing/refs/james5highland.shtml
Purser, John; “The chequered history and myths of Scotland’s tartans”; The National; 23 April 2020; https://www.thenational.scot/news/18401788.chequered-history-myths-scotlands-tartans/
Purser, John; “Was it really an Englishman who invented the kilt?”; The National; 1 May 2020; https://www.thenational.scot/news/18421695.really-englishman-invented-kilt/
Beard, Ellen L; “When Tartan Was Not Fake: The Disclothing Act in Gaelic Song”; The Bottle Imp, Supplement 8B; June 2022; Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literature; https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2022/06/when-tartan-was-not-fake-the-disclothing-act-in-gaelic-song/
Newsome, Matthew; “Who Says Tartan is Just for Scots?”; Albanach; 17 July 2016; https://albanach.org/who-says-tartan-is-just-for-scots-d218dba179ae
McGann, Kass; “An Léine Crioch – The Irish Léine in the 16th Century”; Reconstructing History; 27 February 2008; https://reconstructinghistory.com/blogs/irish/an-leine-crioch-the-irish-leine-in-the-16th-century
MacDonald, Peter Eslea; “Act of Proscription 1746: The Tartan Ban – Fact or Myth?”; ScottishTartans.co.uk; March 2021; http://www.scottishtartans.co.uk/Act_of_Proscription_1746_-_The_Tartan_Ban_-_Fact_or_Myth.pdf
MacDonald, Peter Eslea; “A 1745 Era Highland Suit”; ScottishTartans.co.uk; January 2022; https://www.scottishtartans.co.uk/A-Jacobite-Era-Highland-Suit.pdf
MacDonald, Peter Eslea; “The Cockburn Collection”; ScottishTartans.co.uk; February 2023; https://www.scottishtartans.co.uk/The_Cockburn_Collection.pdf
Johnson, Kevin (dir.); Men in Kilts: A Roadtrip with Sam and Graham, season 1, episode 2; 2021; Sony Pictures Television / Boardwalk Pictures / Great Glen Company / Starz.
“Official Position on Clan Campbell Tartans”; CCSNA.org; 2018; Clan Campbell Society (North America); https://www.ccsna.org/clan-campbell-tartans
Banks, Jeffrey; De la Chapelle, Doria; Tartan: Romancing the Plaid; 2007; New York: Rizzoli; ISBN 978-0-8478-2982-8.
Armstrong, Fiona Kathryne; Highlandism: Its value to Scotland and how a queen and two aristocratic women promoted the phenomenon in the Victorian age; 2017; University of Strathclyde; pp. 80, 167, 172, 254, 260; https://doi.org/10.48730%2F2m47-md74
Mackay, Thomas; “Tartan Week 25th Anniversary”; The Scotsman; 14 April 2023.
Kirk, William; “The Scottish People”; in Hay of Hayfield, John (ed.); Tartan Tapestry: An Anthology of Scotland, Past, Present, Future; 1960; Glasgow: William Maclellan; pp. 19–27.
Hay of Hayfield, John (ed.); “List of Dates Important in Early Scottish History”; Tartan Tapestry: An Anthology of Scotland, Past, Present, Future; 1960; Glasgow: William Maclellan; p. 36.
Stokes, Whitley; Strachan, John (eds.); Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus: A collection of Old-Irish glosses, scholia, prose, and verse, Vol. II; 1903; Cambridge University Press; pp. 286, 382.
Petrie, George; Stokes, M. (ed.); Christian Inscriptions in the Irish Language, Vol. I; 1872; Dublin: Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland; pp. 12, 18, 85, plate IV.
Tagliamonte, Sali A.; Roots of English: Exploring the History of Dialects; 2012; Cambridge University Press; pp. 22–23 (in ePub edition).
Whitehouse, David; “Woven cloth dates back 27,000 years”; BBC News; 14 June 2000; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/790569.stm
“Irish DNA Decoded: 6,000 Years of Surprising Ancestry”; The History Hub; September 2024; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDqnW9Mu-G0; accessed 15 October 2024.
Key Wikipedia articles relied upon (several of which I have improved while working on this timeline): 1820 Settlers; 1907 Imperial Conference; 42nd Regiment of Foot; Act of Proscription 1746 Ancient Roman military clothing; Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain; Arisaid; Auld Alliance; Australia; Bagpipes; Balmoral bonnet; Bath curse tablets; Battle of Carham; Battle of Clontarf; Battle of Deorham; Battle of Largs; Battle of Moira; Battle of Tara; Belgae; Bell Beaker culture; Belted plaid; Black Watch; Blue bonnet (hat); Braemar; Brian Boru; Brigantes; British Empire; British Iron Age; Brodir and Ospak of Man; Bruce campaign in Ireland; Bruce McCandless II; Caucasus hunter-gatherer; Celtic Languages; Celtic Revival; Celts; Celts (modern); Cherchen Man; Church of England; Church of Ireland; Church of Scotland; Clan Mar; Common Brittonic; Connachta; Constantine II of Scotland; Cowal Highland Gathering; Cromwellian conquest of Ireland; Cruthin; Cumbric language; Dál nAraidi; Dál Riata; Damnonii; Danelaw; Darini; David I of Scotland; David I as Prince of the Cumbrians; Davidian Revolution; Declaration of Arbroath; Disruption of 1843; Dress Act 1746; Duchy of Normandy; Dumnonii; Early European Farmers; Eastern hunter-gatherer; English invasion of Scotland (1482); Fir Bolg; Fir Domnann; First Secession; Flight of the Earls; Free Church of Scotland (1843–1900) Gaelic Ireland; Gaelic revival; Gaels; Galloway; Gallowglass; Galwegian Gaelic; Glengarry; Glorious Revolution; Goidelic languages; Gravettian; Great Famine (Ireland); Great Highland bagpipe; Hallstatt culture; Hiberno-Roman relations; High King of Ireland; Highland Clearances; Highland dress; Highland games; Highland Potato Famine; History of the British Isles; History of Ireland; History of Ireland (1169–1536); History of Scotland; History of the kilt; History of the Scots language; Hugh Roe O’Donnell; Independent Highland Companies; Irish Army (1661–1801); Irish clans; Irish clothing; Irish Confederate Wars; Irish diaspora; Irish language; Irish Literary Revival; Iverni; Kern (soldier); Kilt; Kingdom of Alba; Kingdom of Ireland; Kingdom of Scotland; Kingdom of Strathclyde; La Tène culture; List of Irish uprisings; Lordship of Ireland; Lowland Clearances; Manx language; Middle Irish; Military history of South Africa; Monarchy of the United Kingdom; Nechtan mac Der-Ilei; New Zealand; Nine Years’ War; Nine Years’ War (Ireland); Norman invasion of Ireland; Óengus I; Ogham; Old Irish; Oliver Cromwell; Origins of the Kingdom of Alba; P-Celtic; Pictish language; Picts; Pipe band; Plantation of Ulster; Prehistoric Britain; Prehistoric Ireland; Prehistoric Scotland; Presbyterianism; Primitive Irish; Proto-Celtic language; Protohistory of Ireland; Redshank (soldier); Reformation; Relief Church; Robert II of Scotland; Robert Smith Candlish; Roman Britain; Rulers of Bamburgh; Scotch-Irish Americans; Scoti; Scotia; Scottish Canadians; Scottish clan; Scottish diaspora; Scottish Gaelic; Scottish Gaelic Renaissance; Scottish names in Ulster; Scottish Renaissance; South Africa; Spanish Armada; Statues of Iona; Surrender and regrant; Synod of Whitby; Tarim mummies; Tartan; Tartan Day; Tartanry; The Pale; Thomas FitzGerald, 10th Earl of Kildare; Treaty of Berwick; Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton; Treaty of Limerick; Treaty of Perpetual Peace; Treaty of Perth; Treaty of Union; Treaty of York; Treaty of York (1464); Tumulus culture; Uí Ímair; Uí Mháine; Uí Néill; Ulaid; Únětice culture; United Free Church of Scotland; United Presbyterian Church (Scotland); United Secession Church; Urnfield culture; Vestiarium Scoticum; Viking Age; Visit of George IV to Scotland; Wars of Scottish Independence; Western hunger-gatherer; Western Steppe Herders; Williamite War in Ireland; World Pipe Band Championships; Yamnaya culture.
And attempt was made at generating some line-items with ChatGPT, but the results were so poor they all had to be replaced.

Like everything else on this site, this timeline is released under the Creative Commons CC-By-SA 4.0 license, so you are free to re-use the content, including removing entries that don’t suit your purposes, as long as you credit this original page as a source for the content.

Last modified 2024-10-25 by SMcCandlish.