now worn, was introduced within the memory of persons still living. From this simple account of the Highland dress, it will be seen that it has in itself nothing peculiar to one country more than another; as the different improvements upon the manner of girding the loins, and trussing up a blanket, can hardly be called a _national costume_. The dress of the Romans began in the same manner, and went through nearly the same varieties of form; but, for a long time after the Romans left Britain, it can hardly be imagined, that the inhabitants of the more remote Highlands had either wool or cloth of their own produce. Scattered as their sheep, if they had any, must have been upon the mountains, they had no means of protecting them from the wolves; and they had not then patient industry enough to look after tame animals that could not take care of themselves. The names of the different parts of this dress are all conformable to what has been said above. The _feilebeg_ is, by the Lowlanders, called a _kilt_, from its having been _kilted_, _quilted_, or _trussed up_ under the girdle. The meaning of the Latin _toga_ is found in the Gaëlic _toga’_; in English, to _tuck up_, from the same circumstance; and a square _body-cloth_, still worn round the shoulders by the Highland women, is called a _tunic_, or _tonnac_. _Plaid_ (which is always misapplied in England), in its primary sense, means simply any thing _broad and flat_, and thence, a _broad, unformed piece of cloth_, and, in its secondary and modern acceptation, a _blanket_; in which last import alone it is now used by the Highlanders. The _trews_, or trowsers, formerly worn only by the gentry, and by the lower classes, after the _philibeg_ was proscribed by act of parliament, are so denominated, from the Gaëlic _trusa’_, to _truss up_, as they supplied the place of the end of the _feile_ which was _trussed_ under the girdle.[63] During the period following the Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England (1707), tartan plaids were worn in the Lowlands by all classes. The significance of this universal display of a simple article of dress consisted in the fact that its wear was regarded as a sort of sumptuary protest against the Union and the surrender of Scottish independence. Certain it is that up to the prohibition of the use of tartans and of the Highland dress by the Act of 1747 the tartan plaid continued in general use throughout Scotland. Many references to the prevalence of the habit in the Lowlands as well as in the Highlands might be quoted. One interesting contribution is that of Ramsay of Ochtertyre, who, writing in 1795 of the congregation of the Rev. John Skinner’s church at Linshart, in Buchan, observes:—