Hodden

Both are a thick, coarse, fulled homespun cloth typically made of natural undyed wool of the vari-coloured Northern European short-tailed sheep breeds.

Hodden (lachdann) was common to all clans: a symbol of class and status mandated by Celtic and Gaelic custom and Scottish law from prehistory until 1698.

They brought with them their oral customs and traditions, fortunately written down by Christian monks in the 8th century, as the Brehon Laws including the Senchus Mor, a tract on status.

Resurrection in the form of a tweed mixture cloth came in 1859 on its selection by the Commanding Officer of the London Scottish Rifle Volunteers (LSRV).

The ancient proto-Celtic culture was very status conscious, continuing concepts of the Indo-European peoples that migrated from the Middle East to Europe in the third millennium BCE.

Gaelic (Goidelic) ‘breacan’ and the Welsh (Brythonic) ‘brychan’ both describe a cloth or garment that is ‘flecked, mottled, speckled or piebald’.

[5] The breacan / brychan was a winter or foul weather garment for gentry, nobility and royalty in both cultures in addition to general purpose clothing for the peasantry.

Prior to the industrial revolution, homespun fabrics, were cheaply made of necessity because of the time constraint of the process combined with the uncertainty of what, and how much colour, would be attained from the few sheep permitted to be raised by a peasant.

There is a long trail of custom and law for Scottish dress codes mandating the undyed cloth of lachdann and hodden for the common people.

[8] That British laws of status were in use early on can be shown by the legend of the Welsh Thirteen Treasures of the island of Britain, written in the 8th century, of the magical red cloak of Padarn Beisrudd (supposed grandfather of Cunedda (c. 600 CE), a war leader of the Britons against the Angles).

“If a well-born man put it on, it would be the right size for him; if a churl (a peasant), it would not go upon him.” The invading Gaels brought with them the Brehon Laws including the Senchus Mor, a tract on status.

The presumed earliest peasant dress code (possibly 5th or 6th century CE) in the Senchus Mor states for sons in fosterage of other families: "Black, and yellowish, and grey, and blay (OED: pale, pallid, wan, lacking in colour.

"[9]The common people – the poor and rural peasants, artisans and lesser tenant farmers – probably formed 85% of the Scottish population into the late 17th century.

One law was that a man forced by poverty to dispose of his inheritance of land was to wear grey or white clothes reflecting his new lowered status.

[12] As the Scottish royalty and nobility during the Wars of Independence (1296-1357) predominately had Anglo-Norman ancestry, values, and possessions (Bruces, Comyns, Balliols, all had lands in northern England and Scotland) the early English dress code (37 Edw.

"After independence, these early dress customs or codes were then enacted in medieval Scottish law in 1458: "No labourers or husbands wear any colour except grey or white on workdays and on holy days only light blue, green and red.

The various peoples that settled in northern Britain in the period 1000 BCE to 1000 CE brought with them their animals, in this discussion their sheep and their natural colours of wool.

Over time, the interbreeding produced a dominant, but now extinct, vari-coloured breed called the Scottish Dunface whose closest descendant is believed to be the Shetland sheep.

It is for this reason, and to save the trouble of dyeing; that these poor people in the Highlands propagate black, and russet, and brown and other coloured sheep, more than in any country where the wool is regularly brought to market.

For comparison to Anderson and written 40 years later, James Logan (1831), wrote in The Scottish Gael: "Throughout Scotland, more particularly in the Northern Highlands, the cloth was made of the undyed wool, the white and black being generally appropriated for blankets, or plaids, and for the upper garments, the gray for hose and mits for the gudeman.

The Statutes of Iona (1609) and the Privy Council Acts (1616) promoted the Scots language that forced the Anglicized word hodden to replace the Gaelic lachdann.

First, the term is believed to be a loan word into the Scots language from Old Frisian / Mid-Dutch hoed-en (= guard, protect) and Low German houd-en.

The industrial revolution in spinning and weaving, combined with improved sheep breeds producing significantly increased white-wool availability, made homespun hodden uneconomical.

A quick history of the modern rediscovery and development of hodden grey starts with the invasion scare / panic of 1859 that made obvious the need for a substantial home defense force to supplement the regular British army and militia.

Again, Lord Elcho objected: “… of all the God-forsaken dress for soldiers red coats with white pipeclay belts was the most so; a better target no marksman can wish for than men thus clothed”.

In this period, the LSRV and its descendants, commonly titled the London Scottish, progressively switched to darker versions of hodden, such as the 1895 pattern Elcho grey of a claret-brown and white wool mixture[24] shown here, as field trials demonstrated better variants suitable to modern warfare in Europe.