Kirkin' o' the Tartan: A Scottish-American Custom From 1941

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The origin with Peter Marshall in 1941 is well documented. The story of secret post-Culloden blessings is not supported by any known historical source.

Peter Marshall

established Peter Marshall was born in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, in 1902, emigrated to the United States in 1927 and trained for the Presbyterian ministry. He became a celebrated preacher at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, and in 1947 Chaplain of the United States Senate. His life was the subject of the book and 1955 film A Man Called Peter.

The first Kirkin'

established In 1941, with Britain at war and the United States not yet in it, Marshall held a service at his church at which tartans were blessed, associated with raising support for British war relief. The ceremony was repeated and spread to other churches and Scottish-American organisations.

The ceremony

established In a typical Kirkin', members of clan societies carry their tartans, often as banners or sashes, in procession into the church, accompanied by pipers. The minister blesses the tartans and prays for those of Scottish heritage. The service often includes Scottish psalms and hymns.

established The anthropologist Celeste Ray, in her introduction to Transatlantic Scots (2005), describes one she attended on Tartan Day 2003 at the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As the local pipe band played "Highland Cathedral", members of the city's Scottish society processed down the aisle carrying pieces of their clan tartans. After a roll call of the clans, the congregation was reminded that, whatever their origins, all belonged to "Clan Dia", the children of God. The rest of the service followed the sedate pattern of the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, itself born in the Scots- and Scots-Irish-settled country of Tennessee and Kentucky. Ray dates its origin to 1802, when the Synod of Kentucky created the Cumberland Presbytery; the Synod dissolved that presbytery in 1806, and the independent Cumberland Presbytery from which the denomination grew was formed at Dickson, Tennessee, on 4 February 1810. The minister noted with some amusement that the event had been mentioned on the BBC the night before. Kirkin's are also held outdoors, notably at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in North Carolina.

established The custom has reached French-speaking Canada too. The folklorist Margaret Bennett, in her chapter of the same book, lists a Kirking of the Tartan as the climax of the Céilidh Week at Scotstown, in Quebec's Eastern Townships.

A soldierly service

shared In her chapter "Bravehearts and Patriarchs", Ray reads the Kirkin' as one of the most military of Scottish-American rituals. Processions are led by a piper who alternates hymns with martial airs, re-enactors often supply a uniformed presence, and the large tartan banners, now symbols of clan loyalty, are held up much like flags. The service is described as a rededication of tartan to God's service, and some participants argue that tartan was the dress of men marching to battle, so that the blessing links God's service with war. Ray also observes that blessing a manufactured object is unusual for Presbyterians.

shared The same argument kept women out. Ray found that the claim that only men had worn clan tartan to war maintained all-male processions at many Kirkin's into the 1990s, as it did at the Parade of Tartans at Grandfather Mountain, which women first joined in 1994. Several women told her they had been more amused than offended by their exclusion.

The myth

traditional A widely repeated story holds that after the Act of Proscription of 1746 banned Highland dress, Highlanders secretly carried scraps of tartan to church, where ministers blessed them at a given signal. No historical source supports this. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which supported the government, had no tradition of blessing objects, and the ban applied to wearing Highland dress, not to owning cloth.

established The religious map of 1745 makes the story even less likely. The historian Callum G. Brown, in Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 (1997), notes that Scottish presbyterians had long rejected Episcopal and Catholic ritual as "popery", and that Episcopalians were the mainstay of the Jacobite armies alongside Catholics. The presbyterian dissenters were firmly Hanoverian: bands of Seceders helped defend Stirling and Edinburgh in 1745 against what they saw as the "popish" and Episcopalian army of Charles Edward Stuart. Many Jacobite Highlanders worshipped in Episcopal or Catholic meetings that were themselves penalised after 1746. None of this alone disproves the story, but a picture of Kirk ministers secretly blessing tartan is hard to square with what is known of the Kirk's loyalties.

A modern tradition

shared Historians of the diaspora see the Kirkin' as a good example of how communities create new traditions to express identity. It is genuinely Scottish-American, rather than an ancient Scottish custom, and that is a story worth telling in itself. Ray writes that Marshall designed it during the Second World War as a service of prayer for all Britons, and that the stories of eighteenth-century origins attached themselves as it spread in the 1980s and 1990s. The historian Edward J. Cowan, in his chapter on Tartan Day in the same book, is blunter: he lists the Kirkin' among North American re-enactments that commemorate events which never happened, while defending the right of Scottish Americans to invent their own ceremonies.

shared The ceremony joins two things that emigrant Scots had long used to mark who they were. The historian Marjory Harper, in Adventurers and Exiles (2003), argues that until the end of the nineteenth century founding or joining a Scottish church was probably the main way Scots abroad acknowledged their origins, with Communion seasons, Gaelic sermons and imported ministers holding settlements together. Tartan came to the fore later, as the "tartanisation" of emigrant culture spread and descendants took up a more visible, sometimes invented, heritage. The Kirkin' fits that pattern: a twentieth-century ceremony that puts the later symbol, tartan, inside the older one, the kirk.

• The Kirkin' o' the Tartan began in Washington, DC, in 1941.
• Its founder was born in Coatbridge.
• Peter Marshall became Chaplain of the US Senate.
• The story of secret post-Culloden blessings is a myth.
• The ceremony is rarely held in Scotland.
• A Kirkin' in Chattanooga in 2003 reminded the congregation that everyone belongs to "Clan Dia", the children of God.
• Many Kirkin' processions excluded women until the 1990s.
• The Kirkin' is often held on or near Tartan Day, 6 April.

• Myth: After 1746 Highlanders secretly carried scraps of tartan to church to be blessed. No historical source supports this. The Church of Scotland had no tradition of blessing objects, and the ban applied to wearing Highland dress, not to owning cloth.
• Myth: The Kirkin' is an ancient Scottish ceremony. It began in Washington, DC, in 1941, and is rarely held in Scotland. Stories of Jacobite origins attached themselves as it spread in the 1980s and 1990s.
• Disputed: Who may take part. Many processions kept women out into the 1990s on the argument that only men had worn tartan to war. Women first joined the Parade of Tartans at Grandfather Mountain in 1994.