More Than a Pattern

Family heritage, tartan, and the stories behind what we wear.

Some patterns never really leave us. They turn up in old photographs, wool blankets, the back of a wardrobe, and the shirts we reach for when the weather turns. We recognize them without remembering where we first saw them.

For me, plaid has always belonged to country life. It reminds me of my grandfather in jeans and a plaid dinner jacket or button-down shirt, dressed for an ordinary day rather than a special occasion. There was nothing fashionable about it. Those were simply his clothes. Maybe that’s why I’ve never thought of plaid as something that comes and goes with the seasons. It was part of everyday life long before it showed up in fall collections and shop windows.

But there’s another side to the story, one that reaches a little farther back.

A Name with a History

Our cottage was called Tullibardine. The name comes from the Murray family’s Scottish heritage and its historical associations with Tullibardine and Atholl in Perthshire. The Murrays of Tullibardine became an important branch of the wider Murray clan, and over the centuries the family became part of Scotland’s political, military, and cultural history.

We have tartan cups marked The Murrays, Tullibardine, their red, green, and black pattern a small reminder of that connection. They’re ordinary household things, the kind you take down from the cupboard without a second thought. And yet every so often I find myself wondering how a name from Scotland came to have a place in our home here in Ontario.

The history interests me, but I’m just as interested in what happens to these connections once families move away from where they began. A name might survive on a cottage sign. A pattern might end up on a favourite cup. Neither needs to be grand to mean something.

Plaid and Tartan Are Not Quite the Same Thing

We often use the words interchangeably, but there is a difference. Tartan is a traditional woven pattern of intersecting coloured bands arranged in a repeating design known as a sett. In Canada, plaid is the more familiar term for a wide variety of checked and intersecting stripe patterns, not all of which are traditional tartans.

The history of tartan is also more complicated than the idea that every family has worn one pattern for hundreds of years. Tartan cloth goes back a long way in Scotland, but the system of named clan tartans we know today took shape mostly in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I like that detail. Traditions don’t have to stay unchanged to be meaningful, and the way people preserve and reinterpret them becomes part of the history too.

The Murray name is associated with several tartan designs, including those connected with Tullibardine. It’s remarkable that a pattern of intersecting lines can carry a name across generations and an ocean.

From the Highlands to the Back Forty

The plaid shirt hanging by the back door of a Canadian household has a different story from Highland dress. Here, plaid became part of a practical wardrobe. Wool shirts, heavy jackets, and checked flannel made sense for people who cut wood, tended livestock, hunted, and spent their days between the house and the barn. The clothes had to be warm, comfortable, and hard-wearing. Looking fashionable usually came last.

My grandfather didn’t choose his plaid shirts to make a statement about heritage or style. He wore them because they suited his life. Years later, they’re among the things I remember most clearly.

I can appreciate fine Scottish tweed, a tailored wool coat, or the traditions of European sporting dress. I can just as easily appreciate an old plaid shirt gone soft from years of washing. They come from different places, but they share something I value: clothing with a purpose that doesn’t need to announce itself.

The Things We Carry Forward

I’ve been thinking lately about how much of our personal history lives in ordinary objects. An old camera. A piece of furniture. A photograph. A cup with a family name on it. Sometimes it’s a piece of clothing we connect to someone, even though the original is long gone.

Plaid falls into that category for me. It can be a grandfather who wore it every day or a Scottish name tied to a place called Tullibardine. It can belong to a country wardrobe, a formal occasion, or a cold Saturday when you have no plans to go anywhere.

I like the idea that some things can be useful and meaningful without being precious. A good wool shirt lasts for years. A favourite tartan scarf travels with you. A family name becomes the name of a cottage, and new memories gather around an old connection. Somewhere along the way, those things become part of our own story.

That’s what interests me most about heritage. Not only where something began, but what we choose to do with it now. Sometimes a pattern is just a pattern. And sometimes it reminds us of where we’ve been, the people we’ve known, and the things we’d like to carry forward.

Outside Looks Good On You™

Until next time,

Dana