The whole people are fond and tenacious of the Highland clothing, as you may believe by what is here to follow. Being, in a wet season, upon one of my peregrinations, accompanied by a Highland gentleman, who was one of the clan through which I was passing, I observed the women to be in great anger with him about something that I did not understand: at length, I asked him wherein he had offended them? Upon this question he laughed, and told me his great-coat was the cause of their wrath; and that their reproach was that he could not be contented with the garb of his ancestors, but was degenerated into a Lowlander, and condescended to follow their unmanly fashions.[62] To the edition of the _Letters_ from which the above is quoted the editor appended some notes on the Highland dress, which, though open to criticism on many points, are sufficiently interesting to justify their insertion here:— The chequered stuff, commonly worn by the Highlanders, by them called _breacan_ (_parti-coloured_), and by the Lowlanders _tartan_ (Fr. _tiretaine_), is neither peculiar to Celts nor Goths, and is to be found, at this day, although not in such general use, among many of the Sclavonic tribes, who have no connection with either. The wife of every Russian boor, in the north-western provinces at least, who can make her such a present at her marriage (and it is often a _sine quâ non_), has a _tartan plaid_, which she wears just as the Scotish women, in our author’s time, did theirs: it is of massy silk, richly varied, with broad cross-bars of gold and silver tissue, and makes a very splendid appearance. That the Lowlanders had their _tartan_ from the _French_, at a time when it was fashionable in other countries, may be presumed from the _name_; and to imagine that the manufacture began among the Highlanders would be ridiculous.