Well-nigh forgotten and rarely encountered, save in the old pattern-book or in the tartan collector’s museum, this design is early, though its origin cannot be fixed with any certainty. It has been supplanted by a comparatively modern pattern, known commonly as the Malcolm but occasionally as the Mac Callum, which is the ancient form of the name. The new scheme has existed some forty or fifty years at least, as the Editor has received from a lady in Skye a specimen in a portion of a silk dress her family has owned for about that period without knowing the name of the tartan. In the collection of the Highland Society of London (1822), in that at Moy Hall, and in every other important repository of the kind, the Mac Callum as here illustrated is ranked, and the Malcolm is wanting. It its believed that the family, having lost trace of the old sett fifty or sixty years ago, had the modern design prepared from the recollection of old people in Argyllshire; but, as has frequently happened in similar circumstances, the recovery of the original design shows that considerable deviation had been made.
XV. MAC CALLUM