True Irish national tartan?

[OC Richard]

There are two Tartans which are commonly mistaken.

The Irish National



And Ireland's National

Irish National was designed for House Of Edgar in 1996 by Polly Wittering as part of HOE's launch of a series of Irish tartans for every Irish county (all designed by Ms Wittering AFAIK). Many of Ms Wittering's "Irish" tartans are quite lovely. Though Irish National uses the colours of the Irish flag, her Irish county tartans seem to purely be designed to be attractive (the colours not corresponding to the county GAA colours for example). The rights to Irish National are owned by HOE.

Ireland's National is essentially the same tartan with a reversal of the white and yellow stripes (white becomes yellow, yellow becomes white) and was designed in 2005 by Tartan Web. In 2012 the rights to the tartan were acquired by USA Kilts.

About which is the "true" Irish tartan, as you can see neither has any tradition or history in Ireland, both being designed and produced by Scottish weavers.

They are popular tartans and I think it's nice when people know the history of the tartans they wear.

BTW the 1996 Polly Wittering "Irish National" tartan strikes my eye to be a simplification of the so-called Tara tartan (having any elements not white, yellow, black, or green removed)



https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/ta...tails?ref=4071

of which the book District Tartans has this to say:

"It has not been possible to establish a local connection in Ireland for the "Tara district tartan". Its thread count was noted in Clans Originaux Paris c1880. The tartan was then know as "Murphy". (The Tartan Register states that all of the purported Irish tartans in that book have been shown to have been Scottish.) The date of appending the name "Tara" is uncertain but it was ordered as such from The Kilt Shop (Edinburgh) in 1967.

Tara is a colour-change on MacLean of Duart which in turn is a variation of Royal Stewart."

Yes in all of the above tartans (Tara, Ireland National, Ireland's National) we see the white and yellow lines which appear on Royal Stewart. It's convenient because once you change the ground-colour of MacLean of Duart or Royal Stewart to green you have the green/white/yellow (substituting for orange) tricolour of the Irish flag etc.

As you can see Tartan Web's "Ireland's National" has elements of Ms Wittering's tartan and Tara; one could say it's a compromise between the two.

Personally if I were to choose from the above I would go with Tara 1) because it can be traced to the 19th century and 2) it's a more attractive design.