There are reports of the wild Highlandmen running into battle after discarding their plaidies, wearing only long white shirts with the tails knotted between their legs. This description does sound very much like men charging into combat wearing only the leine, which would look like an extra long shirt. I can t. There is enough ambiguity in existent documentation that I can t point to a specific time and place and say Here it is, folks . There are people who use the term tartan and plaidie as meaning the same thing.
Nothing can be farther from the truth, the plaidie is just another name for the feile-mhor.
The tartan is a checkered pattern assigned to a specific clan. It is interesting to note that tartan is an English word, derived through the French tiretaine from the Spanish tiritana and means a light woollen material of any colour. As mentioned previously, most tartans date from the mid-19th Century courtesy of the Sobieski Stuarts. Some tartans such as the Black Watch may in fact date from an earlier period, but no one can say when it became associated with a specific clan or in this case, regiment. That the Celts like checkered patterns should come as no great surprise.