Chattan Tartan

Clan Chattan

Clan Chattan is not a family but a confederation, the only structure of its kind in Scotland. Its member clans each keep their own recognised chief while standing together under a superior chief for mutual protection. At its greatest extent it is said to have numbered seventeen clans; the present Clan Chattan Association numbers twelve — Davidson, Farquharson, MacBean, MacGillivray, Mackintosh, MacPhail, MacPherson, MacQueen of Strathdearn, MacThomas, Shaw of Tordarroch, the MacIntyres in Badenoch and the Macleans of Dochgarroch. The confederation is named in the Gaelic genealogical manuscript known as MS 1467, and the chronicler Bower, writing about 1440, refers to it in 1429.

Tradition holds that in 1291 Eva, daughter and heiress of Dougal Dall, sixth chief of Clan Chattan, married Angus Mackintosh, sixth of Mackintosh, carrying the leadership to the Mackintosh line. The chiefs named before her belong to the seanchaidh tradition rather than to record, and the marriage itself long predates any surviving document that mentions it; the consequence is historical, the mechanism is tradition. Because the succession was held to have passed through a woman, the Mackintosh chiefs were for centuries styled Captain of Clan Chattan rather than Chief, and the leadership was repeatedly contested. In 1672 Duncan MacPherson of Cluny obtained a matriculation of arms as the only true representer of Clan Chattan, and the Mackintosh of the day successfully sued to have it reduced. After the death of the 28th of Mackintosh in 1938 the Lord Lyon held the two chiefships to have separated, and by order of 27 March 1947 recognised Mackintosh of Torcastle as 31st Chief of Clan Chattan, styled Head of the haill kin of Clan Chattan. The two offices have been held separately since. Sources differ on who holds the Clan Chattan chiefship today, and the Association’s own site names no current holder, so we will not state one.

The Chattan tartan

The Chattan sett has unusually good provenance for a clan tartan. It is recorded in two forms, one with a white overcheck on the red and one without: the first appears in the 1819 key pattern books of William Wilson & Son of Bannockburn, the second in the books of the Court of the Lord Lyon. Those are a primary commercial weaving record and an official one respectively, which is more than most clan tartans can show. Nothing about it comes from the Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842. No designer is recorded, which is what one would expect of a pattern recorded rather than designed.

A second and genuinely different sett, Chattan, Chief of Clan — also called Finzean’s fancy — was acknowledged as the clan pattern by Sir Aeneas Mackintosh of that Ilk in 1816, illustrated by Smith in 1850, and described by Logan as a very showy pattern. According to the Lord Lyon’s records it is reserved to the Chief of Clan Chattan and his immediate family, the chief’s own version carrying an extra white line. It is not cloth for the rest of the confederation, and we would not sell it as such.

A note on honesty: Ancient, Modern, Weathered, Muted and Dress Chattan are colourways of a single threadcount, not separate tartans, and the same pattern offered in several cloth weights is the same tartan again. No Chattan sett predates the commercial era — the earliest datable records are Sir Aeneas’s acknowledgement of 1816 and the Wilsons book of 1819, not the middle ages. The cat and the motto are a great deal older than any cloth.

Clan facts

References

1. Chattan tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Clan Mackintosh — The Clan Chattan Association
3. Clan Chattan — the confederation and its member clans
4. Chattan tartan — Kinloch Anderson