Sometime around the 1980s, maybe, a rough, yellow-tinged piece of fabric, slightly larger than a placemat, was pulled from a peat bog in Glen Affric, Scotland. The cloth is a swatch of tartan, the fabric associated with Scottish kilts, featuring the telltale interlocked stripes of various sizes and colors. (The term also applies to the pattern, which many know as plaid. But not all plaids are tartan, and to add to the confusion, in Scotland a plaid is a long piece of tartan that is pleated and wrapped around the…
