With regards to the clan tartans, Hobsbawm writes about this in his book The Invention Of Tradition where he cites evidence showing that the notion of specific weave-patterns being associated with specific clans occurred only after the invention of the Kilt, which was the brainchild of a Lancashire milliner (p21 in his book). This fashion development took hold in the mid-1700s, during the time after the final gasp of Scots military capacity, and seems to have formed a part of the "ritual of domestication" that subsumes supposedly exotic native cultural elements into a kind of Disneyesque version suitable for mass consumption.