The Shepherd Tartan

This is doubtless one of the oldest tartans and it is not confined to any particular district in the Highlands or Lowlands. It has been associated with pastoral life, as the picture indicates It is usually composed of black and white, but sometimes brown is substituted for black. In the Highlands the housewives preferred to use wool from black sheep rather than dye the wool black, as it wore better and presented a finer shade. For dyeing black they used alder- tree bark—Gaelic, “ Rùsg Fearna, ” dook-root-Gaelic, “ Bun na Copaig , ” and water – flag root-Gaelic, “ Bun an t -Seilisdeir .” The infusion of the water- flag root is so dark that in some remote parts of the Highlands it had been used as a substitute for ink.