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

Comments

[muccamukk]

That's really interesting, that he couldn't get it to work, and that like 30 Canadians popped up in comments to assure him it was a thing!

[regshoe]

Oh, I didn't read the comments! That's interesting that there are a lot of people confirming it can work. I suppose it depends exactly how you do it?—I did notice in the video they had a lot of trouble with the 'soaking' part described by Burt, but Broster talks about 'wringing out' the plaid, which would obviously avoid that problem.

[muccamukk]

I've made it a point to never live anywhere cold enough to try that kind of thing, but apparently oil rig workers and Korean War vets agree that if you can basically turn the outermost layer into an icy shell (not soaking the whole thing!), you're good to go. Though they didn't address the problem of rewrapping the plaid the next morning.

I also wonder about climate change. Scotland would've been more icy in the 18th century, would it not?

[regshoe]

Scotland would've been more icy in the 18th century, would it not?

I don't know exactly how much colder, but yes—partly because of modern climate change, but also because it was still the Little Ice Age.

[ysilme]

I really love this channel! It's also an excellent source for fantasy research if you're doing my kind of world building and such. *g* I haven't had leisure to watch his most recent vids but I'm always going to his channel first when I need to know more about some detail of anything related to what he does. I can imagine how terrific his findings must be for your fandoms! :o)
Another channel I mostly follow out of interest and fascinating talks about the subjects, but also research, is . Although it's Viking-centric, obviously, Jimmy is an archeologist doing his PhD and his subjects are always very carefully and thoroughly researched and presented in a very entertaining way. I find it really interesting also beyond my interest for Vikings, just for the sake of it.

[zero_pixel_count]

Fascinating video (I feel like I might have seen a different video from this person before, but I'm that faceblind I'm not sure...)

I made a tweed coat (as part of my LRP kit, I should put up a picture some time) and it is amazingly windproof and sort of situationally-warm - in that when it's cold, it's really warm; when it's temperate, it's not too warm because it breathes well. Every time we have challenging weather at events I come away thinking, it's amazing how good these materials and these garments are at handling the weather conditions they were, uh, originally developed for. (Really shouldn't be that suprising...) Like, a lot of people last weekend walking around with mud and water soaking up their skirts and trousers from long wet grass, and I'm like, yeah my socks are getting wet but everything above mid-calf is still dry.

(I kind of half disagree on what he says about linen as a base layer - I can see why he says it because there is that clamminess that eg: wool flannel doesn't have, but for me even very soft wool is too itchy to have against skin. I also have an Orenberg-style goat-down shawl and it has to be really cold before I can deal with it touching my skin.)

[regshoe]

Interesting details that are relevant to history and worldbuilding! And thank you for the rec, that looks like another cool channel :D

[regshoe]

That coat sounds lovely! I have a couple of home-made woollen things and they really are so nice, robust and comfortable and effective for keeping warm and dry (though the vegetation around here is too tall at the moment for knee-high woolly socks to be quite adequate protection against a soaking, as I have found on several walks :D ).

[sanguinity]

Oh, fascinating. And interesting about the comments on the video -- I do think it likely that a damp plaid is hugely different than a dripping plaid. Similarly with one that's gotten damp little by little, warmed by body heat as you go, versus one that you just drenched in an icy burn.

But mostly I'm amused by the possibility of Ewen winding Keith up. And if so, it suggests that there's a whole tradition of using this particular tall tale to wind up Southerners... XD

[regshoe]

Yes, it makes sense that that would be more effective! It's interesting that Burt says 'soak' (perhaps exaggerating, or exaggerated to) whereas Broster's description—Ewen's plaid wet gradually by the rain, other people 'wringing' them—suggests something more like 'damp' than 'dripping'. Of course, if this is an authentic historical practice then Broster might have had another, more accurate source for it!

[luzula]

I do enjoy his videos as well, but haven't checked in on them for a while! *opens this one in tab*

[regshoe]

I was just browsing them recently after not watching any for a while, saw this one and went, ooh, how relevant :D I hope you enjoy it, and do read the comments—there's lots of interesting further information there.