Click the tartan to view its entry in The Scottish Registers of Tartans which includes registration details, restrictions, and registrant information.
Unregistered tartans may link to one of the web's online design environments for similar information.
For any questions about reproduction of designs or weaving of these tartans, please contact the registrant directly or via this website.
Dracula Bites Night
“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”
~ Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897
Just because you’re one of the undead doesn’t mean you can’t be fashionably dressed for your guests! The Vampire tartan was designed with carefully chosen colours to maximize the tartan terror: Black - for the darkness of night associated with vampiric deeds; Red - for the colour of sought-after fresh blood; Midnight Blue - for the time of night to be especially cautious if in their dark realm; and Caput Mortuum - the puce colour of dried blood! In the quote above, from Bram Stoker's turn-of-the-century seminal novel, Count Dracula is referencing the eerie howls of his pet wolves as he guides an unsuspecting guest up the castle stairs. Stoker's novel shaped our modern image of the vampire, which regularly resurrects itself as a metaphor and obsession in pop culture. Songs like Bauhaus’s Bela Lugosi’s Dead, Neil Young’s Vampire Blues, Radiohead’s We Suck Young Blood, and My Chemical Romance’s Vampires Will Never Hurt You, capture the allure and menace of the undead. While it’s disputed, some scholars believe Stoker wrote parts of Dracula in 1895 while staying at Crookit Lum Cottage near Cruden Bay in Aberdeenshire, drawing inspiration from the foreboding Slains Castle for Dracula’s Transylvanian lair! Should you just be sporting a kilt this Hallowe'en Night, consider concealed carry in your sporran of the following apotropaics - items able to ward off revenants: traditional garlic, a mini bible, a vial of holy water, crucifixes, a rosary, silver, and perhaps in addition to a sgian dhu in your kilt hose, a wooden stake of ash, hawthorn, oak or aspen. Just in case! 🖤 💙 ❤️ 🖤 🧛♂️ ⚰️ 🦇 ✝️ 🩸
Although vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures, the term "vampire" was not popularized in the West until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western Europe from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The increased level of vampire superstition in Europe led to episodes of mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.
The European style vampire often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighbourhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance.
The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the highly successful publication of The Vampyre by John Polidori. However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula which is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provides the basis of the modern vampire legend and the gaunt, pale undead figure recognized today.
The Vampire tartan, designed by Carol A.L. Martin, employs carefully chosen colours to maximize the tartan terror:
-
Black - for the darkness of night associated with vampiric deeds
-
Red - for the colour of sought-after fresh blood
-
Midnight Blue - for the time of night to be especially cautious if in their dark realm .. and
-
Caput Mortuum - the puce colour of dried blood
Caput mortuum is a Latin term whose literal meaning is "dead head" or "worthless remains," used in both alchemy and as a pigment name.
For more fascinating facts about vampires, click the stylized book cover.