Famous Tartans Trivia Quiz

Answer: China

A mummy known as "Cherchen Man" was discovered in 1978 wearing cloth leggings that, surprisingly, had survived all this time, perhaps due to the dryness of the desert area in western China. These leggings had a design that was not unlike tartan. Archaeologists were surprised that in such an area they found the remains of someone who was of European descent rather than east Asian.

The design on the leggings was reminiscent of designs found in Austria.

Answer: Antonine Wall

The Falkirk Tartan was found near the Antonine Wall, a turf wall built on stone fortifications behind a ditch up to five metres deep. Built on the narrowest land across central Scotland between the rivers Forth and Clyde, it was intended to be the new northern frontier of the Roman province of Britannia.

However, it was short lived, as building began about 142 and the wall was abandoned less than 25 years later. All that hard work for so little, yet parts of the wall survive almost 2000 years later.

Answer: A local area

It is likely that particular designs of tartan came about when individual weavers developed their own styles using local plants and berries as sources of colour. These were used by people in their own localities, whether a village, a glen or an island. As some of these areas were homelands of families (or clans) they gradually became associated with these family groups.

Answer: The Black Watch

The name the Black Watch is believed to originate in the dark colour of its tartan and its duty to watch over the Highlands to keep the clans from fighting each other and to reduce crime. Its first formation was of six companies of men from clans loyal to the British government: Campbell, Fraser, Grant and Munro.

When in 1739 four additional companies were formed they became a regiment. In 2006 it was one of six regiments to be merged as the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

Answer: Battle of Culloden

After the failure of the third Jacobite rising in thirty years the British government tried to break down the clan system. Jacobite clan leaders forfeited their lands and the Dress Act of 1746 forbade men and boys to wear kilts or plaids which were regarded as military dress.

It is often claimed that the Act banned tartan, but that is not strictly true. However, by banning the clothing that usually featured tartan it was not worth the weavers' time to make tartan cloth. As a result its use faded away until after the repeal of the legislation in 1782 and the beginning of the growth of a romantic movement which idealised the Highland past.

Answer: Sir Walter Scott

Scott made a huge drama of the first visit by a reigning monarch to Scotland since the seventeenth century. A highlight of the celebrations was a Grand Ball which Scott called a "Highland Ball" and demanded that the Scots peers in attendance wear Highland dress. The King, who was famously obese, ordered his own kilt in colours that would later be called "Royal Stuart" (ironic since it was the Stuart dynasty which had tried to dethrone his own). The kilt provided was embarrassingly short, resulting in the king wearing flesh coloured "pantaloons" under it to avoid displaying too much leg.

This visit was the origin of the symbolic link between Scotland as a whole and the Highland tradition, including the tartan, a link further promoted under Queen Victoria.

Answer: The Tartan Pimpernel

Caskie, who became minister of the Scots Kirk in Paris in 1938, had to flee the city as the Nazis advanced. While living in Marseilles in the south of France he used the British Seamen's Mission as a refuge for Allied troops and other Britons, and organised an escape route to Spain through which more than 500 troops were able to be repatriated. In 1943 he was arrested and sentenced to death by the Nazis but was saved by a German military padre who appealed to Berlin for him; he spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp.

His nickname was a play on Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel" who in her story had performed a similar service for aristocrats during the French Revolution.

Answer: Polyurethane surface used for athletics tracks

Tartan Track is the trade name of a polyurethane surface developed by 3M for use in track and field athletics. Though a brand name, it has become a generic term for all such tracks. It is also used widely as a safe surface in children's play parks.

Answer: The Bay City Rollers

Formed in Edinburgh, the group was first successful in 1974 and went on to take the British charts by storm. Two years later they did the same to the USA, their young, fresh look drawing reactions from young teenage girls not unlike those that greeted the Beatles a decade earlier. Among their huge hits were "Shang-a-Lang", "Give A Little Love" and a cover of the Four Seasons' song, "Bye Bye Baby".

As so often with teenage sensations, they were not always popular with the older generation. When I was a young teacher in a Scottish secondary school in 1975 the Head Teacher banned the pupils from wearing tartan in the Rollers' style as he felt it brought down the tone of the school!

Answer: Commonwealth Games

Following a national schools competition the design of Aamir Mehmood, a pupil at Shawlands Academy in Glasgow, was chosen as the tartan of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The design included blue, white, yellow and red checks against a green background.