TIDBITS 10/26/03

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The British Soldier Revisited

Good day folks,
An old friend--Hale Sweeny--dating back to the time Tidbits first
began ... decided to help me in what he considered was clearly my
moment of need. Below is his response--practically un-edited--
to my Brit of last week. The man is a gem. Enjoy.

Ben

You devil.... Only YOU would publish a picture of a British soldier
and say that you know NOTHING about it!!! That is issuing a challenge
to all your subscribers to beat you at your own game... and find
something... no no ... everything about that small piece of metal and
paint and gems!!

I didn't identify it but I learned a lot!! Here goes with what I
found:

#1. The item represents a soldier from a time after the union of
England and Scotland. See link to the history of the King's flag.
(Google search "English flags")

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Ba...0/suframe.html

The uniform is Scottish - identified by the kilt, the sporran, and the
tartan sash. Now there were some 'English Scottish' regiments and
some Irish regiments who wore the kilt, , and I'll come back
to this a little later. The sash over the right shoulder and the fact
that the sash is a tartan sash most likely means that the figure is a
commissioned officer. The pattern of the tartan would identify the
regiment, assuming that the maker of the figure strove for
authenticity.

The color of the blouse is somewhat strange. It seems to be gold or a
light yellow. After extensive searching, I did find one picture of
an officer of the Gordon Highlanders in a white blouse - but
the tartan is all wrong. This does show that the officers sometimes
did have white dress blouses, and since the tartan is all wrong, it
strongly suggests that your figure was NOT a member of the
Gordon Highlanders. (ref: http://www.regimental-art.com/gordons.htm )

The tartan sash could be a great identifier of the regiment. This
assumes that the person making the figure made it as authentic as
possible. There were not that many regiments. The tartan on your
little Brit appears to have a red background, with blue or green
stripes and thin white borders on the stripes.

It is hard to see details of your figure, but it seems sure that the
tartan sash and the tartan pattern in the kilts is the same, and
somewhat identifiable: the background is red, with blue or green
stripes (in two directions) bordered by thin white stripes. The
problem is that there are scads and scads of tartan designs. Not to
the Internet this time, but to my library for a book showing tartan
patterns: (The Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland, by Sir
Thomas Innes of Learney) and from this I picked out several your
tartan cold be:Stewart, Royal #108 -- seems VERY close to the
tartan on your Brit.
MacGregor #84 also close
Hay #36 close. but not as close as the above
Drummond #22 closer than Hays
I'm not sure that any of these are the tartan your Brit is wearing,
but of them all, the Royal Stewart is the closest.

Now in the above, I looked at all the tartans of the families and
clans. What I really need is a similar book on the tartans of the
Scottish regiments (e.g.: The Clans, Septs and Regiments of the
Scottish Highlands by Frank Adam) which I do not have in my library.
The need for this is shown in the following quote from
http://www.tartans.scotland.net/tart...regimental.cfm :

"Some later regiments evolved a tartan from elements present in the
tartans of their founders. For example, the 79th Cameron Highlanders
used elements from MacDonald and Cameron designs, being the brainchild
of Alan Cameron of Erracht."

That is all I've found, so far. But I just started. There are
literally dozens of websites devoted to toy soldiers, with some of
them about the person who makes and paints them. I am thinking about
sending your little Brit to one of them who specializes in Scottish
soldiers, asking him if he can identify the Regiment, and also if he
knows of someone who made gem encrusted toy soldiers. Till later (do
you know more now that you did before? Almost all came from the
source of all knowledge -- the 'Net!!!) (smile)
Hale


For those of you who are new to this thing called Tidbits...may I
direct you to my home page at www.tyler-adam.com where you will scroll
down the left side menu till you get to the area that says Tidbits
Graphics ... and then click on the link that says: Brit ... where
you'll see an image of a soldier of mystery.

And there ya have it.
That's it for this week folks.
Catch you all next week.
Benjamin Mark

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