Practical Highland history

[regshoe]

Fandabi Dozi's Youtube channel, about wilderness survival and historical crafts and practices in the Scottish Highlands, is a really excellent resource for my fandoms, as well as being fascinating in its own right. I highly recommend checking out the videos if you've not come across it before! And I wanted to recommend one recent video which is of especial relevance. He's testing out the claim made by Edward Burt in his Letters from the North of Scotland that Highlanders sometimes deliberately wet their plaids when rolling up in them to sleep outdoors, because it actually kept them warmer in cold weather. Burt was very probably one of the sources D. K. Broster used in writing The Flight of the Heron, and she repeats this claim:

But Ewen, without stiffness, declined, saying that a wet plaid was of no consequence, and indeed but kept one the warmer. Some, he added, and the Englishman gasped at the information, wrung them out at night in water for that reason.

(chapter 1.6)

But of course historical sources—and perhaps especially outsiders like Burt, who may misinterpret or misunderstand things, or just be lied to—are not necessarily reliable... It's really cool to see a practical experiment of a historical statement like this, and the video is lots of fun!

Watch on YouTube