Rattray Tartan

Clan Rattray

Rattray in Perthshire, near Blairgowrie, appears in record before the family does: William I granted Coupar Angus Abbey two ploughgates of land in the territory of Rattray between 1177 and 1204. The earliest dated person of the surname is Thomas of Rattray, knight, who with his wife Christina made an agreement with Arbroath Abbey on 2 July 1253 and appears again in January 1268. His father Alan is named in the Dunfermline Register between 1267 and about 1275, and Eustace, lord of Rattray, appears in Coupar Angus charters of December 1302. The birth and death dates given for Alan by clan societies, and the grant of lands by Malcolm Canmore, have no dated source behind them and are best treated as legend.

Sir Silvester Rattray served as ambassador to England in 1463 and Sir John Rattray was knighted in 1488. In 1516 Patrick Rattray was driven from the Castle of Rattray by the Earl of Atholl, and was murdered in 1533; the family moved thereafter to Craighall, which they held until it was sold in March 2010. Dr John Rattray attended Prince Charles Edward Stuart as his physician in 1745. The motte of the old Castle of Rattray was quarried away in the 1970s. The chiefship is the least certain part of the record. Lachlan Rattray of Rattray is generally named as 29th chief, but no dated recognition by the Lord Lyon could be traced, the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs does not presently list a Rattray, and a clan association names a 30th chief whom no other source supports. Note also that the feudal barony sold in 2010 is a title in land: a clan chiefship cannot be bought or sold.

The Rattray tartan

One Rattray sett is in general use: a green ground with black, red, blue and white. Its origin is not documented. A clan association gives it a register date of 1825, which would place it in the Wilsons of Bannockburn period, but no weaver and no pattern book is named and the date could not be confirmed; database entries showing 1969 are dates of recording. The same association’s claim that the Rattrays created their tartan on or before the eleventh century is simply untrue of any tartan whatever.

A second and quite different pattern, Rattray of Lude, is said to come from the Romanes and Paterson pattern book of about 1830 and to resemble MacInroy. That attribution rests on retail sources and has not been verified.

A note on honesty: Rattray Modern and Ancient are colourways of one threadcount, and entries under Rattray Family, or under the misspelling Rattay, are the same design recorded again. No Rattray sett predates the commercial era, and the earliest date anyone claims for one is the 1820s.

Clan facts

References

1. Rattray tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Thomas of Rattray, 1253 (Arbroath Liber no. 294) — People of Medieval Scotland
3. Baron yields castle after 500 years — The Scotsman, 29 May 2010
4. Members of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs