- published: 05 Aug 2008
- views: 495291
The kilt is a knee-length garment with pleats at the rear, originating in the traditional dress of men and boys in the Scottish Highlands of the 16th century. Since the 19th century it has become associated with the wider culture of Scotland in general, or with Celtic (and more specifically Gaelic) heritage even more broadly. It is most often made of woollen cloth in a tartan pattern.
Although the kilt is most often worn on formal occasions and at Highland games and sports events, it has also been adapted as an item of fashionable informal male clothing in recent years, returning to its roots as an everyday garment.
The kilt first appeared as the great kilt, the breacan or belted plaid, during the 16th century and is Highland Gaelic in origin, a full-length garment whose upper half could be worn as a cloak draped over the shoulder, or brought up over the head. The philibeg or small kilt, also known as the walking kilt (similar to the modern kilt) was invented by an English Quaker from Lancashire called Thomas Rawlinson sometime in the 1720s for the use of the Highlanders he and Ian MacDonnell, chief of the MacDonnells of Inverness employed in logging, charcoal manufacture and iron smelting, for which the belted plaid was "cumbrous and unwieldy".
The Scottish people (Scots Gaelic: Albannaich), or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse. Later the Normans also had some influence.
In modern use, "Scottish people" or "Scots" is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, family ancestral or genetic origins are from within Scotland. The Latin word Scotti originally applied to a particular, 5th century, Goidelic tribe that inhabited Ireland. Though sometimes considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also been used for the Scottish people, though this usage is current primarily outside Scotland.
There are people of Scottish descent in many countries other than Scotland. Emigration, influenced by factors such as the Highland and Lowland Clearances, Scottish participation in the British Empire, and latterly industrial decline and unemployment, resulted in Scottish people being found throughout the world. Large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. There is a Scottish presence at a particularly high rate in Canada, which has the second largest population of descended Scots ancestry, after the United States. They took with them their Scottish languages and culture.
Actors: Richard Chamberlain (actor), Buddy Bregman (composer), William Witney (director), Margia Dean (actress), Peter Falk (actor), Terence de Marney (actor), Gene Corman (producer), Jeff Richards (actor), Peter C. Johnson (editor), Robert Earle (actor), Gina Petrushka (actress), Dorothy Cottrell (writer), Felix Ramirez (miscellaneous crew), Jerry Mitchell (actor), Philip Rosen (actor),
Genres: Crime, Drama,