Literature Review: Old Irish and Highland Dress by H.F. McClintock

This is the first installment of what will likely be an ongoing series of literature review posts. They will include my notes, impressions, questions, and other musings on books that I read for my research. While they are primarily for my own use, perhaps you will find them useful in hearing about various resources that are available.

Hoo boy, this one will be fun. For anyone who read my thesis (available here), you may have noticed a conspicuous lack of reference to the works of Mairead Dunlevy and H.F. McClintock. This was not an accident! In my research, I noticed that many of the articles available on medieval Irish dress referred to one or both of these resources and even those that didn't refer directly to them used remarkably similar language and made very similar arguments as those that did. It seemed like a lot of the current research referred back to these sources in some way. One of my original goals when writing my thesis was to see what other resources were out there, which is part of the reason why the title includes the phrase "Re-Examining the Evidence." I simply wasn't satisfied with the current body of available knowledge, and particularly the tendency to go back to just a handful of sources. While I ran out of time to examine Dress in Ireland for my thesis, I was able to obtain Old Irish and Highland Dress (1943), the definitive book by H.F. McClintock that discusses Irish dress from the BC era to around the 1700s (if my memory serves me properly). Due to my area of interest and expertise, I primarily reviewed the section on early Irish dress, not the more recent styles.

To say the least, I was disappointed. Sure, it presented some evidence and made an argument, but it fell into the trap of looking at the first millennium CE as a relatively static period. A major source of its evidence is a single version of the Tain bo Cuailnge and the garments described therein. While many of the Irish epics were written down circa the 8th century CE, these were by no means new stories. Ireland has an ancient oral tradition and its storytellers have a long memory. Even today one can find renditions of the old epics as recorded from people who learned them from other storytellers, not from books[1]. By McClintock's logic, someone who read a book written in the 20th century that was a collection of Irish epic tales could rightly conclude that people in Ireland in the 20th century were likely wearing something similar to what is described in the tales, assuming no other evidence were available. That is to say, the average Irish person in the 20th century would be wearing a leine, a brat, and a gold or silver brooch among other garments. This is the heart of my objection to McClintock's work: an entire millennium is nothing to be overlooked. While these stories might depict dress in the 8th century, I find it more plausible that they depict the strongly Celtic dress and culture of a much earlier time, i.e. the first century BCE, an era that has produced many more artifacts of metalwork and even clothing that more closely resembles what the Tain describes[2]. This website, while not a spectacular source, gives a good overview of early Celtic clothing, though I would argue against the use of a separate top and skirt in the female peasant's outfit. Notice that the time period given for those styles starts at 600 BCE and ends in 100CE, much earlier than the 8th century CE.

That's about all I can say for Old Irish and Highland Dress. It covers quite a bit more material, but since my focus is on pre-Norman Irish dress, I'm going to leave the bits on later dress up to your own interpretation. I also had the book through interlibrary loan and had to give it back over a year ago, so I don't remember much detail for the parts that weren't directly relevant to my thesis. I will say that I thought McClintock did a better job of documenting his assertions for the later styles, but he tends to reference English sources. It is well-known that there was a tendency by the English to view the Irish as barbaric, so I would take what the English say about Irish dress with a big ol' grain of salt.

If you are interested in doing further research on early Medieval Irish dress, I won't discourage you from reading this book. It is, after all, a staple reference for Irish dress and I would consider it an important book to read. However, I see many flaws in its evidence, methods, and assertions and I would recommend reading it more to understand where many of our current ideas about Irish dress came from, rather than an actual resource to enhance your knowledge of Irish dress itself.

[1] Colum, Padraic. A Treasury of Irish Folklore: the stories, traditions, legends, humor, wisdom, ballads, and songs of the Irish people / edited with an introduction by Padraic Colum. 2nd rev. ed. New York: Bonanza Books : Distributed by Crown Publishers, 1983, c1967.

[2] Vassar's Website with text of the Tain bo Cuailnge