Irish Kilt?

[Friday]

There's a very simple explanation for the difference in saffron colour. As a plant dye, it does not produce the same colour on different fabrics, and the Irish leine was made of linen, which has notoriously poor dye takeup. So saffron + linen = yellow, and saffron + wool = brownish orangey colour (which actually has a name, it's called 'ruggy' [spelling?]). Of course, modern kilts are dyed with synthetic dyes, not saffron, and cheap ones are not even made of wool, but they approximate the colour of wool dyed with saffron, and if you see someone dressed in a leine to represent the ancient Irish it will be yellow, although it's not dyed with real saffron either, although hopefully it will be linen.

I wonder if there may be some confusion between Irish using saffron (from the Crocus) to dye and using local plants dyes to produce a yellow (saffron) color?

Here is an interesting article giving both sides of the question

Also see article A Few Arguments on the Subject of Saffron


An article in Wikipedia on natural plant dyes lists a number of natural materials and plants that will produce a yellow color.Could the linen been dyed yellow using local material and the color name "saffron" applied to that color yellow?

Also see:
Saffron-dyed Leine