A hackle is a board set with sharp steel spikes for combing or pulling out hemp or flax to dispose the fibres in parallelism and to separate the long and the short threads. Research Hackle
The Black Watch (Watch or Highland Watch) was a British army force raised in 1729 to keep peace in the Highlands during the times of the Jacobite intrigue. The regiment was raised from companies employed to watch the Islands of Scotland and subsequently became renamed the Royal Highlanders and had the nickname of the Black Watch from the black tartan they wear. The Regiment's first blooding occurred in Flanders in 1745, in the War of Jenkin's Ear at the Battle of Fontenoy, where the French dubbed them 'Highland Furies'. In 1751 the Regiment was numbered the 42nd, The Gallant Forty Two. Seven years later the title 'Royal' was granted and it became the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment.
The Black Watch saw action in the Americas, most notably in Ticonderoga and the Heights of Abraham, and acquired its presentbadge and motto 'Nemo me impune lacessit' which refers to the Thistle and means 'nobody provokes me without being hurt'. In 1759 the red hackle, seen in the feather bonnets and worn by all ranks of the Black Watch, was first presented at Royston, in Hertfordshire.
During the Napoleonic Wars the Regiment fought at the Battle of Alexandria (hence the Sphinx and the word Egypt on its colours), in the Peninsula, including Corruna, and finally at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. Its 19th century battle honours include Alma and Lucknow, and in the 1860s Queen Victoria authorised the addition of the name 'The Black Watch' to the official title of the 42nd Royal Highlanders, a title which has become known throughout the world.
During the Great War, eleven Battalions of the Black Watch fought in France and Flanders, Macedonia, Mesopotamia and Palestine. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, former Colonel in Chief of the Black Watch since 1937 until her death, had two brothers and a first cousin in the 5th Battalion, another brother killed in 1915 with the 8th and a cousin killed serving with 4/5th. Armistice Day found the Regiment advancing across the very field at Fontenoy where the Watch had fought 173 years before. The French commemorated the stalwart assistance given to them in Champagne in 1918 by erecting a cairn on the spot where fell the body of The Black Watch soldier who advanced the furthest - 'Here shall flourish for ever the gloriousthistle of Scotland among the roses of France'.
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