The notion of "reading" a tartan is something that you run into every now and again at the Highland Games.

There used to be one fellow running around claiming that ancient Ogham messages were hidden in the tartan setts, and that he could, quite literally, "read" the message hidden in your tartan.

The long and short of it is that this is complete nonsense. There is no intrinsic meaning in the tartan designs. The fact that this tartan has red and the other has blue, or how wide the stripes are, have absolutely no instrinsic meaning.

Now, with modernly designed tartans, people do often select colors, and sometimes even patterns, with a specific meaning in mind. However, that will be a meaning particular to that individual tartan. Just because blue represents the Blue Bonnet flower in the Texas state tartan does not mean that it represents the same thing in any other tartan.

So, if you find any site on line claiming to be able to read the hidden meanig in the tartan, I'd ignore it and move on. :-)

Aye,
Matt