Reading the Highland Regiments

Anyone who falls for the Highland regiments quickly discovers that the shelf is as deep as the muster rolls. Between the regimental histories, the memoirs of kilted soldiers, and the archives that record their service, a reader needs a method as much as a list. This entry suggests both.

Where should a reader of regimental history start?

Start with the war you care about, not the regiment. The Highland regiments served in every British campaign from the Jacobite risings to the world wars, and the best histories anchor a regiment to its campaigns rather than reciting its battle honours. From the campaign history you work inward: the regimental history for the unit's own account, then the memoir or letters for the voice of the ranks, then the archive for the names.

Fiction earns a place on the same shelf. The Napoleonic regiments, the kilted 42nd and 92nd among them, march through the naval and military fiction of the period, and readers of the era's great series learn the army's habits alongside its navy's.

How do you trace a soldier rather than a regiment?

Names change the question. Once you have a man, a rank and a date, the records open: muster rolls and pay lists fix a soldier to a company year by year; discharge papers record his age, birthplace, service and conduct; medal rolls confirm the campaigns he actually marched in. The method is always the same: begin from the widest source that names him, then narrow to the muster that holds his company.

The technique is identical to the one used for the navy. The Quarterdeck Library, a reader's and researcher's guide built around Patrick O'Brian's novels and the records behind them, shows how a nautical research library reads logbooks, musters and memorials to trace a ship or an officer. Substitute regiment for ship and the same discipline works for the kilted battalions: which archive holds the series, how a muster is organised, and what a condition note means when you buy the printed version.

What should a collector look for in the books themselves?

Regimental histories were often produced in small editions for subscribers, so condition and completeness decide value. Check for the maps and plates, which are the first things removed by earlier owners; check the binding for the publisher's cloth rather than a later rebind; and note the edition, since many histories were revised after later campaigns. The bibliographer's vocabulary, edition, impression, state, provenance, is learned quickly and repays itself at every book fair.

For a general map of the regiments themselves, the list of Scottish regiments is a workable index: which units wore the kilt, which were raised where, and how the 1881 amalgamations folded the old numbered regiments into the names they carry now.

How does the register of tartans join the library?

A regimental history and a tartan register answer the same question from opposite ends. The history says what the regiment did; the register says what it wore. Tracing the sett that a battalion wore in a given year, government sett, band sett or a district pattern adopted later, is work for the explained structure of the Scottish Register, and the two researches meet in the uniform plates of the better histories.

That is the shelf's real use: each book is a reference for the cloth, and the cloth is the index to the books.

What order of reading serves the family historian?

For the reader with one ancestor in mind, the order is: identify the regiment from a photograph, a cap badge or a family story; confirm service in the medal and muster records; then read the regimental history for the years he served. The books turn a name on a discharge paper into a life: which battles his company stood in, what the battalion ate, wore and marched through.

The cloth completes the picture, and the ledger's other entries on the tartans index supply it.

Do not neglect the campaign atlas and the uniform plate. The regimental history without its maps leaves half the marches unread, and the plate is where the sett makes its appearance in print. A library built around a Highland regiment that skips the illustrated volumes misses the point: the kilt in the picture is the record of which pattern the battalion wore that year, and it is often the only dated witness a disputed sett has.

Price is the last practical question, and the honest answer is that the shelf is built slowly. The common regimental histories turn up affordably; the subscriber editions and the privately printed memorials command more. The collector who buys the standard history first and the rare volume later spends least and learns most, because the common book is the map that tells you which rarities are worth their price.