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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")
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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:
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) 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
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: "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
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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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