While the traditional tartan kilt is seen generally as an icon
of Scottish culture, many people, especially Americans of Irish
heritage, also associate the garment with Ireland as that
nation’s “traditional dress”. The Internet has only heightened
this misconception with all sorts of claims for an ancient
pedigree for the kilt & tartan cloth. It is our hope that this
brief article will help set the record straight in terms of the
origins of the kilt as an Irish garment, as well as the
association of tartan with the Emerald Isle. THE IRISH KILT In
his book Life & Tradition of Rural Ireland, Timothy O’Neill
discusses the idea of the kilt as a form of Irish national
dress. Like other noted scholars such as Henry McClintock and
Kass McGann, O’Neill establishes the origin of the Irish kilt at
the end of the 19th century in the so-called “Gaelic Revival”
movements attempted to create a distinct Irish culture to
separate themselves from their English overlords. Suffice it to
say that most scholars of Irish dress agr