Irish county tartans?

Nolanger

Do Irish counties display their tartans? Are they used anywhere in Ireland?

http://www.house-of-tartan.scotland.net/irish/Tartan.asp?secid=31#item

P. Breathnach

We don't have county tartans. A commercial concern in Scotland designed them as a marketing trick to sell stuff to gullible Americans.

MajorMax

Tartan is not Irish, it's barely Scottish.

"Tartan, as we know it today, is not thought to have existed in Scotland before the 16th century. By the late 16th century there are numerous references to striped or checkered plaids. It is not until the late 17th or early 18th century that any kind uniformity in tartan is thought to have occurred."

dubhthach

Indeed if anything you would have more likely have seen saffron coloured clothing (mantle/shirt etc.) in both Scotland and Ireland.

See the following pictures from Connamara in the 1920's.

owenc

dubhthach wrote: »

Indeed if anything you would have more likely have seen saffron coloured clothing (mantle/shirt etc.) in both Scotland and Ireland.

See the following pictures from Connamara in the 1920's.

Whats this! :eek: Did the families were colours to represent their families? Did all do this??

dubhthach

owenc wrote: »

Whats this! :eek: Did the families were colours to represent their families? Did all do this??

Well I don't think there was any family specific at this stage, if you read accounts saffron seems to be most common colour in medieval Ireland/Scotland (Highlands). As mentioned though you do start seeing mention of Tartans in Scotland from the 17th century onwards.

The woman in those photos are just wearing fairly standard clothing for Connemara at the time.

Here's some colour photo's also from Connemara/Galway in 1913

owenc

dubhthach wrote: »

Well I don't think there was any family specific at this stage, if you read accounts saffron seems to be most common colour in medieval Ireland/Scotland (Highlands). As mentioned though you do start seeing mention of Tartans in Scotland from the 17th century onwards.

The woman in those photos are just wearing fairly standard clothing for Connemara at the time.

Here's some colour photo's also from Connemara/Galway in 1913

Awk rite ok so then they didn't have colour coded clothes then. :mad: That would've been interesting to look at to see what my families ones were like. Although i don't think they dressed like that i think they had different clothes.

dubhthach

Well in those photos you are looking at "Relics of a bygone era" where in Connemara (which was fairly poverty stricken at time) you had survival of items of material-culture to a later period. In this case homespun fabric died with Saffron.

The outfits mighten have had exact same design as earlier but it's an evolution of the same tradition. By the late 19th/early 20th century you would have seen it only restricted to most remote parts of the island. Connemara in many ways is prime example of that. The fact that the area of Cois Fharraige is still Irish speaking can be seen in part due to the isolation that helped preserve language and culture during the 19th century.

owenc

dubhthach wrote: »

Well in those photos you are looking at "Relics of a bygone era" where in Connemara (which was fairly poverty stricken at time) you had survival of items of material-culture to a later period. In this case homespun fabric died with Saffron.

The outfits mighten have had exact same design as earlier but it's an evolution of the same tradition. By the late 19th/early 20th century you would have seen it only restricted to most remote parts of the island. Connemara in many ways is prime example of that. The fact that the area of Cois Fharraige is still Irish speaking can be seen in part due to the isolation that helped preserve language and culture during the 19th century.

Yes that is fascinating the style looks very poor but the material looks very strong. I think most of the people here wore suits most of the time (well by looking at photos). And yes that area sounds very old fashioned it must be weird seeing people speaking irish all the time and not english.

dubhthach

owenc wrote: »

And yes that area sounds very old fashioned it must be weird seeing people speaking irish all the time and not english.

Why would it be? No different then seeing people speaking French all the time if you were in part of France tbh

MajorMax

Anyone interested in Irish people from the last couple of centuries should visit
The National Museum of Ireland
COUNTRY LIFE
Turlough Park, Castlebar, County Mayo
It's very instructive

Enkidu

MajorMax wrote: »

Anyone interested in Irish people from the last couple of centuries should visit
The National Museum of Ireland
COUNTRY LIFE
Turlough Park, Castlebar, County Mayo
It's very instructive

Went there recently, absolutely fascinating place which manages to avoid feeling twee.

sanbrafyffe

i seen a tv documentary one night and they said that they got the idea of the skirt as a kilt by the irish thAt had travelled there centurys ago .they used to wear those type skirts in the pics above

dmcronin

St Finbarr's Pipe Band wear the so-called Cork tartan. That's the only instance I've seen any of the county tartans worn here.

Dionysus

MajorMax wrote: »

Tartan is not Irish, it's barely Scottish.

"Tartan, as we know it today, is not thought to have existed in Scotland before the 16th century. By the late 16th century there are numerous references to striped or checkered plaids. It is not until the late 17th or early 18th century that any kind uniformity in tartan is thought to have occurred."

There's something about the British Army using tartan as a recruiting mechanism in eighteenth-century Scotland and in the process almost single handedly inventing tartan as the "Scottish" symbol we now know. In particular, in 1725 the British Army decided to use tartan as a means to secure recruits in the highlands. Here's one source for this.

This writer, while acknowledging the British military origins of tartan as we know it today, says the earliest known use of the word tartan is from 1538, although the word's meaning then was quite different. He further states that tartan was banned by the British in 1745 but the ban was lifted in 1782 - 'the reason the ban was lifted was as an inducement in the recruiting of Highlanders into the British Army!'.

Grudaire

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do remember hearing that some of the Islands (Aran) had specific patterns for their families that were used in the wool jumpers.


One of the main reasons was that it was a fishing community, and was a method of distinguishing bodies that got washed up

Fuinseog

P. Breathnach wrote: »

We don't have county tartans. A commercial concern in Scotland designed them as a marketing trick to sell stuff to gullible Americans.

tradition has to start somewhere and its not just 'gullible Americans' who are interested in tartan patterns.

how old do you think the county colours you see at GAA matches are, surely a marketing ploy by the GAA to sell stuff to gullible culchies.

Fuinseog

Cliste wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do remember hearing that some of the Islands (Aran) had specific patterns for their families that were used in the wool jumpers.


One of the main reasons was that it was a fishing community, and was a method of distinguishing bodies that got washed up

some women used certain patterns because that is how they were knitted in the family. the symbols do not have any real meaning.

Grudaire

Fuinseog wrote: »

some women used certain patterns because that is how they were knitted in the family. the symbols do not have any real meaning.

Hmmm, decided to google it. Wikipedia (ureliable as it is, and this article is particularly un sourced) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aran_sweater says I'm wrong on the pattern being used to identify sailors.

Although it does have a blarb about patterns - Is fiú é a léamh!

P. Breathnach

Cliste wrote: »

Hmmm, decided to google it. Wikipedia (ureliable as it is, and this article is particularly un sourced) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aran_sweater says I'm wrong on the pattern being used to identify sailors....

The real weakness in the claim about the geansaí being used to identify the bodies of Aran fishermen is that serious fishing from Aran didn't get going until about the 1890s. Before then, the Claddagh fishermen from Galway pretty well prevented others from fishing in Galway Bay.

Late in the nineteenth century, five boats from Arklow, with their crews, were brought to the Aran Islands to teach the locals how to fish.

The Arklow fishermen, however, had their own geansaí, with variations in style according to who knitted them. They were used to identify bodies of men lost at sea.

[My principal source is a book rather than an online resource: The Fishery of Arklow, 1800-1950 by Jim Rees.]

Grudaire

Very interesting, as I said it was only a rumour I had heard. From my Secondary school Irish teacher....

Opelfruit

It is accepted that the Aran jumper was copied on an original style worn by fishermen from Guernsey. I wondered how it got from the Channel Islands to the Aran Islands. The Arklow connection clears this up.

P. Breathnach

Opelfruit wrote: »

It is accepted that the Aran jumper was copied on an original style worn by fishermen from Guernsey. I wondered how it got from the Channel Islands to the Aran Islands. The Arklow connection clears this up.

Only partly: it was fishermen who went from Arklow to Aran, and not their wives. Mind you, the women of Aran did not come to knit in the manner of the Arklow women, who made the geansaí in one piece.