Bonnie Prince Charlie's Tartan
Tradition
relates that the Bonnie Prince left his tartan plaid
with Donald Campbell when he left Scalpay. One story
says he was soaking wet after his boat journey and Campbell
gave him dry clothes. Another version tells that the
Prince, when strolling near Ard an Asaig, noticed one
of Campbell's cows stuck in the bog and proceeded to
rescue the animal singled handed. His clothes were soiled
in the process, necessitating the need for a change.
(It is also related that the animal was later sold for
£2,10s, an unheard of price for a cow in Harris at that
time).
The tartan in question had been given to the
Prince by Catriona MacDonald, when he took shelter with
her and her husband, Angus, at Borrodale, Ardnamurchan
after his flight from Culloden. In recent years fragments
of the tartan were discovered at various locations and
have been reconstructed to create a modern cloth in
the same design.
In
1987, the curator of the National Museum of Scotland
was asked to authenticate a piece of tartan from the
archives of Stoneyhurst College, a Roman Catholic School
in Lancashire. Along with the cloth was a piece of paper
stating it was a part of the kilt left by Bonnie Prince
Charlie on the Island of Glass on April 30th, 1746.
Another scrap of the cloth was in the West Highland
Museum in Fort William. Eight years of detailed research
pieced together the pattern and analysed the dyes used.
As the research was being completed, a fragment of the
same tartan with an identical note was sent to the team
by a family in Southampton. The tartan is blue-green
with red, black and yellow stripes. The original kilt,
it is said, was torn up and pieces distributed among
loyal supporters of the Prince.
Local tradition, however, recounts that a descendant
of Donald Campbell, from Kyles Scalpay, used the ancient
plaid to pay off his slate in a local hostelry. .
