The Highland garb as we have it to-day is a compound of three varieties, all of which were worn in the seventeenth century. There was first the dress worn by the gentry—a shirt died with saffron and a plaid of fine wool tartan, with colours assorted so as to give the best possible effect. Then there was the dress of the common people—a shirt, painted instead of dyed, with a deerskin jacket above it, and the plaid, not always of tartan, worn over the shoulders instead of belted about the body. The third variety was the trews, but this cannot be traced farther back than 1538. It probably came from Ireland, where it was the dress of the gentry from the earliest periods. The plaid proper consisted of a long piece of tartan carefully plaited in the middle and bound about the waist in large and very particularly- adjusted folds. While the lower part came down from the belt to the knees, the upper, after various wrappings so as to cover the whole body, was fixed to the left shoulder with a brooch, leaving the right arm at liberty. In wet weather the plaid was thrown loose, and formed a complete covering for the body. The headdress, when there was any, was a round, flat bonnet, the stockings were cut from the web of tartan, and the shoes were made of skin shaped in the best possible way to the form of the foot. The original of the sporran was a large piece of goat’s or badger’s skin profusely ornamented, which hung in front, and served as a pocket. There seems to have been a time, before the dress developed into its present form, when the belted plaid and the trews were worn together. In 1656 a certain Thomas Tucker, who reported on the settlement of the revenues of excise and custom in Scotland, says one of his collectors, in order to avert the antipathy of the natives to an exciseman, “went clad after the mode of the country, with belted playde, trowses, and brogues.” “In sharp winters,” says a writer of 1680, “they wear close trouzes, which cover the thighs, legs, and feet;” while at the Battle of Killiecrankie, in 1715, “there were several of the common men died in the hills, for, having cast away their plaids at going into battle, they had not wherewith to cover them but their shirts; whereas many of the gentlemen that instead of short hose did wear trewis, though they were sorely pinched, did fare better in their short coats and trewis than those that were naked to the belt.”