The language of the Highlands, the Gaelic, was totally different from that of the Lowlands, which resembled English. The dress of the mountaineers also differed from that of the Lowlanders. They wore a plaid or mantle of frieze, or of a striped stuff called tartan, one end of which, being wrapped around the waist, formed a short petticoat, which descended to the knee, while the rest they folded around them like a sort of cloak. Their feet were covered with buskins made of rawhide; and the usual head covering was a cap called a "bonnet." They went always armed. Their weapons were bows and arrows, large swords, poleaxes, and daggers for close fight. For defense they had a round wooden shield, or target, stuck full of nails, and their great men had shirts of mail composed of links of iron. The common men sometimes wore a jacket of leather, having plates of metal stitched into it, but usually had no armor. The Highlanders were divided into clans or tribes. All members of a clan supposed themselves to be descended from the same common ancestor, whose name distinguished them from other clans. Thus, one tribe was called MacDonald, which signifies the sons of Donald; another MacGregor, the sons of Gregor; MacNeil, the sons of Neil; and so on. They yielded unquestioning obedience to their chief, even when their submission to his orders implied disloyalty to the King. Each tribe had its own special territory, any invasion of which was punished as severely as though the foe had been of another nationality. Macaulay says of the sentiment that actuated them, "Their intense attachment to their own tribe and to their own patriarch, though politically an evil, partook of the nature of virtue. The sentiment was misdirected and ill-regulated, but still it was heroic. There must be some elevation of soul in a man who loves the society of which he is a member, and the leader whom he follows, with a love stronger than the love of life. It was true that the Highlander had few scruples about shedding the blood of an enemy; but it was not less true that he had high notions of the duty of observing faith to allies, and hospitality to guests." The Highlanders were continually at war with the Lowlanders. They did not regard their plundering raids upon the richer grounds of the Lowlands as robbery, but as rightful recovery of possessions which had been wrongfully wrested from their ancestors. The Lowlanders, equal in courage and superior in discipline, could not be easily overcome, and thus there was almost constant war or discord between them.