Clan Mackenzie Tartans, Clan Mackenzie Society of Scotland and the UK Web Site (original) (raw)

**Earliest Known Date:**1778
Earliest sample certified at the Highland Society of London:- Signed by Mrs Mackenzie of Seaforth, 1816
Earliest Recorded Source: Wilson's pattern book, 1819
Status: Public Register of All Arms and Bearings, 1949
Type: Symmetrical

The Mackenzie Tartan

by James Scarlett, CMS Magazine 1995

It would be easy to dismiss the Mackenzie tartan as being simply a regimental pattern - it has also been known as "MacLeod and Seaforth" from MacLeod's Highlanders (H.L.I.) and the Seaforth Highlanders - which has been adopted by civilians of the Clan that produced the Regiments, but there is usually more to tartan than appears on the surface and much interest can be derived from delving below it; there will be no harm in asking where the military tartan came from.

Mackenzie Modern Colours

There is a body of evidence which strongly suggests that the original tartan of the Highland Independent Companies was a simple blue, black and green check to which each of the Company Commanders added coloured over-checks to distinguish his own Company. By 1733, this had been superseded by a tartan common to all the Companies, still a blue, black and green but now with a red line, edged with black centred on the blue, and some other colour on the green. We know that, later on, the Grenadier Company of the 42nd Regiment wore this tartan with the red line repeated on the green and that Lord Loudoun's Highlanders used a yellow line on the green; we do not know what colour, if any, was used by those soldiers of the 43rd/42nd who were not Grenadiers, but my conclusion is that there was such an over-check and that it was probably black. According to General Stewart of Garth, who was a historian even if he did not always get things precisely right, the new Regimental tartan for the 43rd was arrived at by removing the distinguishing coloured lines from the tartans of the Companies and combining what remained; on the face of it, this would leave us with the plain basic design, but if we move on one stage and remove the red line from the common tartan, we are left with a pair of black lines which, if moved to the outside of each alternate blue square, gives us the Black Watch tartan as it is today. That is not the only way that the tartan could could have come about. There is a Grant tartan that was around late in the eighteenth century (though its actual age and origin are unknown) which has, in addition to red and yellow over-checks, a pair of black lines appear around the edge of the blue square. "Yer pays yer money and takes yer choice!" But there seem to be no very good grounds for the commonly held view that the Black Watch tartan is actually an old Campbell set, though perhaps it is descended from one.

42nd Black Watch

To this base the later Highlands regiments, the Gordons and the two Mackenzie formations, the Seaforths and the H.L.I., again added coloured over-checks, yellow for the Gordons and red and white for the others; some who claim expertise in these matters, and I do not, say that the latter are the colours of the uniform jacket facings. That is one story. Another could easily be built upon the existence of a MacRae tartan, an extension of the familiar Hunting MacRae, which is, in essence, Mackenzie with blue and green reversed. If this, and not the shorter version, is the correct one, it is indubitably old (D. W. Stewart claims it as a relic of "The '15") and, bearing in mind the old affinity between the MacRaes and the Mackenzies, it might have inspired the red and white over-checks in the latter tartan; alternatively, if it is the short form that is the genuine one, the Mackenzie tartan could easily have inspired the longer version. The study of tartan is full of imponderables like this, and the best we can usually do is to arrive at the framework, it cannot be called a skeleton because there are precious few bones to be found, and then keep an eye open for discoveries that may confirm or modify it. Unsuspected relics do make their appearance from time to time; only a few years ago a length of late eighteenth century hard tartan plaiding in a previously unrecorded pattern was found in the roof of a house in Bexhill-on-Sea.