granted tartan rights

[redmond]

i have recently been informed that there are six old irish family septs which were granted the rights to coats of arms and plaid patterns which rival in age and prestige to their peers. is anyone able to offer any clarity regarding this ?or would it be useful to contact the chief herald of Ireland office to gain any/all information. it is causing some minor arguements between some friends of mine

[Monkey@Arms]

i have recently been informed that there are six old irish family septs which were granted the rights to coats of arms and plaid patterns which rival in age and prestige to their peers. is anyone able to offer any clarity regarding this ?or would it be useful to contact the chief herald of Ireland office to gain any/all information. it is causing some minor arguements between some friends of mine

I'm no expert, but I thought I read that there was no such thing as either septs or tartans in Irish heraldry?

Best regards,

Jake

[Standard]

Sounds like for a question of this nature it might be best to go straight to the authorities on the matter and skip the speculation. Doubley so if there is an argument involved as they seldom seem to be abated unless one can confidently state an authority figure's opinion in the matter. Just my 2 cents for what it's worth.

[The Wizard of BC]

If you look in some of the other threads in this section of the forum you will find that Coats of Arms are Granted to an individual and not to families.
The Irish Tartans are a very recent development. They are not usually associated with families but with counties.
For an authouritative source may I point you in the direction of our own Matt Newsome. He is curator of the Scottish Tartans Museum and his personal blog is full of the information you are seeking.

http://albanach.org/index.htm

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

i have recently been informed that there are six old irish family septs which were granted the rights to coats of arms and plaid patterns which rival in age and prestige to their peers. is anyone able to offer any clarity regarding this ?

The Irish Office of Arms has never granted or registered a tartan. The arms granted by the Irish Office of Arms are the personal property of the individual to whom the grant is made, and to the descendants of that individual per the terms set forth in the letters patent.

In the past the position of the Irish Office of Arms has been that so-called Irish tartans are in all probability of no great antiquity, and most likely date back to the 19th century at best. While tartan was worn at various time in Ireland, as a statement of fashion, it never developed the clan connotations that it did in Scotland. The So-called "county" tartans have no official standing and seem to date from relatively modern times.

I hope this clears up matters for you and your friends.

[Tattoo Bradley]

of fashion, it never developed the clan connotations that it did in Scotland. The So-called "county" tartans have no official standing and seem to date from relatively modern times.

There's no "seem" to it when it comes to the "Irish County Tartans." It is a fact, readily available information, that they were developed as fashion tartans. Polly Whitering (sp?) developed the most recent group. The "Crest" group was from someone else, but not "much" older.

[Morris at Heathfield]

The Irish county tartans were designed by Polly Wittering of the House of Edgar during the mid-1990s. The Irish county "Crest Range" tartans were designed by Viking Technology Ltd. at a later date.

Irish septs are different from Scottish septs. An Irish sept is equivalent to either a Scottish clan, or to a branch of a clan, such as the "MacDonalds of Clanranald", or the "Campbells of Breadalbane".

I have no idea what six Irish septs are referred to in the original post in this thread, but Ireland is not really my main area of interest. *shrug*

[Highland Logan]

Here is a good link on the problems in Ireland with Chiefs and Clans... and sept is the Irish Gaelic word for clan, and was used in the 18th century in Scotland to reconize a smaller family connection to a larger clan, as there was no such word.

Frank

[auld argonian]

Your post had me thinking...and I'm by no means an expert on this history but it's questions like yours that get many of us thinking and reading and speculating and, whether any of the conjectures prove to be right or wrong, we still manage to learn a lot.

Initially it occurred to me that these might be some of the families that went to Ulster in the Plantation (my ancestors among them) but a little thought led me to the conclusion that that wouldn't be the case. Most, if not all, of the Scots who were "planted" were Lowlanders and the main "plantings" were done in the early 17th Century. Seems like these folks bringing any tartan with them is way unlikely. The whole Coats Of Arms thing is a can of worms that comes up often on the forum...search the forum for some of the threads on that topic.

Sorry that I can't contribute anything helpful to your query but remember that while you may not be able to prove it correct, finding out that it isn't correct would be as important a history lesson as proving it is.

Best

AA

[macwilkin]

Your post had me thinking...and I'm by no means an expert on this history but it's questions like yours that get many of us thinking and reading and speculating and, whether any of the conjectures prove to be right or wrong, we still manage to learn a lot.

Initially it occurred to me that these might be some of the families that went to Ulster in the Plantation (my ancestors among them) but a little thought led me to the conclusion that that wouldn't be the case. Most, if not all, of the Scots who were "planted" were Lowlanders and the main "plantings" were done in the early 17th Century. Seems like these folks bringing any tartan with them is way unlikely. The whole Coats Of Arms thing is a can of worms that comes up often on the forum...search the forum for some of the threads on that topic.

Sorry that I can't contribute anything helpful to your query but remember that while you may not be able to prove it correct, finding out that it isn't correct would be as important a history lesson as proving it is.

Best

AA

Actually, there was some tartan in Ulster, namely the "Ulster tartan", which was found in a peat-bog back in the 1950s:

The find consisted of a woollen jacket or jerkin, a small portion of a mantle or cloak, trews or tartan trousers, and leather brogues. This was the style of clothing worn by men in those parts in the 16th or early 17th century.
Archaeologists from the Ulster Museum were invited to analyse the discovery. A block of peat containing fragments of the clothing was examined by Mr A G Smith of the Department of Botany at Queen’s University, revealing a high concentration of pine pollen. Scots pine had been introduced into Ireland in the 1600s. The likelihood was that the tartan cloth was at least that old.

Peaty loam destroys flesh and bone while preserving fabrics like wool and leather. No body was found, though it is possible that the site marked a grave.
Audrey Henshall from Edinburgh’s National Museum of Antiquities examined the woollen cloth, which had been well preserved. Its reddish brown staining was due to its being buried for hundreds of years in peat. The trews had been made up from tartan woven in the Donegal style, in strips varying in width and distance from each other. The remaining items were also subjected to rigorous analysis.
Audrey Henshall concluded that while the mantle was Irish, the trews almost certainly originated in the Highlands. The logical explanation was that tartan cloth woven in Donegal had been exported to Scotland. There the material had been made up into tartan trews, which was the fashion in the Highlands.

-- http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/tartanandkilts.asp

Regards,

Todd