Blair Tartan

Clan Blair

The name is from Gaelic blàr, a field or plain, and it attaches to land in several parts of Scotland — which is why there is no single Blair family. The earliest documented appearance is as de Blare, witnessing charters concerning Irvine in Ayrshire between about 1204 and 1211; one account narrows it to Alexander de Blare witnessing an agreement at Irvine in 1205. The tale that William I granted the barony of Blair to a Norman called Jean Francois is tradition with no charter behind it.

The central documented fact about the name is that there are two unconnected houses: Blair of Blair in Ayrshire, seated at Blair near Dalry, and Blair of Balthayock in Perthshire, whose castle near Perth is now a ruin. The Clan Blair Society states plainly that no common ancestor has been documented and no intermarriage between the two is recorded. Dated events are thinner than the romantic accounts suggest: William de Blare was Steward of Fife in 1235; the execution of Sir Bryce de Blair at the Barns of Ayr in 1296 comes largely from Blind Harry’s poem and should be treated as tradition, as should the knighting of Roger de Blare after Bannockburn in 1314. Two facts do bear on the chiefship: under the 1672 Act establishing the public register of arms, the Blair of Blair arms were never recorded; and William Blair of Blair died without an heir in 1732, ending the Ayrshire line of inheritance. A claim circulating widely — that in 1658 James VI ruled on precedency between the two houses — is chronologically impossible, since James VI died in 1625, and we do not repeat it.

The Blair tartan

A search of the Scottish Register of Tartans for Blair returns fifteen results, of which only two are Blair family tartans: Blair (reference 291) and Blair Dress (292). Everything else is a district, a corporate or a personal registration that merely shares the word — Blairgowrie, Blairlogie or Blair Athol, Braemar or Blair Atholl, Blair Estate, Blairmore House, four Blairgowrie golf course tartans, and others. It is worth saying clearly that Blair Castle at Blair Atholl is the seat of the Dukes of Atholl, who are Murrays; the place-name has nothing to do with the Blair family, and the Blair Atholl district tartan is not the Blair clan tartan.

The register gives the plain Blair sett no designer and no date. The best account of where it came from is that the Scottish Tartans Society extracted the threadcount from a hand-coloured tartan strip in James Mackinlay’s collection, made in the 1920s or 1930s, and that it is therefore a modern family tartan; the earliest recording date in the tartan literature is about 1963. Blair Dress (292) is a separate twentieth-century design by Dr Philip D. Smith Jnr, and a genuinely distinct sett rather than a recolour. No Wilsons of Bannockburn pattern, no Highland Society of London certificate and no Vestiarium Scoticum entry exists for Blair.

A note on honesty: Blair Ancient, Blair Muted and Blair Weathered are colourways of reference 291, not separate tartans. No Blair sett predates the commercial era, and in this case not even the nineteenth century — the earliest Blair cloth anyone can point to is twentieth-century work. There is no medieval Blair tartan.

Clan facts

References

1. Blair tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Blair surname history — Clan Blair Society
3. Blair heraldry — Clan Blair Society
4. Clan Blair tartans — ScotClans