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There need be little doubt that the costume would be modified to military exigencies on the raising of the Highland regiments between the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. The kilt of those days appears to have been more “cutty,” giving greater freedom to the limbs than now, when it ought to touch the knee-cap, and its wet edge may cause sore rubs on unhardened skin, as poor John Brown found when, for once in a way, sent out walking in his philabeg livery. The sporran, used as a pouch, may originally have been an apron for decency’s sake, and took its present showy form in military trappings. Rob Roy’s is said to have been armed with a pistol that would go off in hands trying to open it without knowing the trick. A “snuff-mill” is mentioned as one of the appendages in Georgian days. The broad bonnet, apparently a Flemish importation, belonged to Lowland as well as Highland Scotland; its ornamental border of dice is said to come from the fesse chequée in the Stuart arms, and to have been introduced as a Cavalier distinction from the plain blue bonnets of the Roundheads. All over Scotland, too, was worn the plaid, now shrunk in military use to little more than an ornament of the “garb of old Gaul,” but in its full size capable of mantling the body from head to heels. The ostrich plumes of Highland regiments are, of course, modern excrescences, yet developed from the feathers that marked the rank of chief and duinewassal. The ribbons behind the bonnet are vain survivals of appendages which had a practical use in tightening or loosening it, and might be drawn down as ear-flaps. But the clansmen of old time probably went bare-headed, as barefoot but for thin brogues of hide, that made no pretence of being waterproof, and soon wore out upon metalled roads. Your wild Highlandman was sure to carry a dirk, like a butcher’s knife, with as many other lethal weapons as he could come by; and if he had no buskins in which to stick his skene-dhu, he might keep it handy in his sleeve or a fold of his plaid. Silver buttons, Stewart of Garth says, were worn by those who had them, with the purpose of providing means for a decent funeral in very probable case of need. As to the gewgaws that now go with this dress, they must have been very exceptional when Burt describes a Highlander’s plaid as commonly fastened by something like a fork or a skewer. The same writer dwells on bare limbs frequently disfigured by itch as a most unromantically displeasing feature of a costume which he, for his part, found “far from acceptable to the eye.”