they have already written to Wilson at Bannockburn about the silk ribbons. If you should happen to see Mr Cadell, your noticing the work to him would be very obliging; and if you find my description of it sufficiently interesting to induce you to talk of it to your friends, and, above all, if you could notice it publicly at the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, and at the Highland Society, and Celtic Society, Border Club, &c., you would do more good in paving the way for its success than a thousand advertisements, and would confer a very great obligation on the Messrs Hay.[86] Sir Walter’s reply is dated 7th June 1829. That portion of it relating to the present subject is here transcribed:— I need not say I have the greatest interest in the MS. which you mention, in case it shall really prove an authentic document. There would not be the least difficulty in getting the Bannatyne Club to take, perhaps, 100 copies, or obtaining support enough so as at the least to preclude the possibility of loss to the ingenious Messrs Hay Allans. But I think it indispensable that the original MS. should be sent for a month or so to the Register House, under the charge of the Deputy Register, Mr Thomson, that its antiquity be closely scrutinised by competent persons. The art of imitating ancient writing has got to a considerable perfection, and it has been the bane of Scottish literature and disgrace of her antiquities that we have manifested an eager propensity to believe without inquiry and propagate the errors which we adopt too hastily ourselves. The general proposition that the Lowlanders ever wore plaids is difficult to swallow. They were of twenty different races, and almost all distinctly different from the Scoto-Irish, who are the proper Scots, from which the Royal Family are descended. For instance, there is scarce a great family in the Lowlands of Scotland that is not to be traced to the Normans, the proudest as well as most civilised race in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Is it natural to think that, holdin[g] the Scots in the contempt in which they did, they would have adopted their dress?... I could shew, I think, that there is no period in Scottish history when the manners, language, or dress of the Highlanders were adopted in the low country. They brought them with them from Ireland, as you will see from the very curious prints in Derricke’s picture of Ireland, where you see the chief and followers of the wild Irish in the ordinary Highland dress _tempore_ Queen Elizabeth. Besides this, where has slept this universal custom that nowhere, unless in this MS., is it even heard of? Lesley knew it not, though the work had been in his possession, and his attention must have been called to it when writing concerning the three races of Scots, Highlanders, Lowlanders, and bordermen, and treating of their dress in particular. Andrew Borde knows nothing of [it], nor the Frenchman who published