MacDonald of Clanranald (1914)

[figheadair]

Also, any idea what the bard meant by "The colours of the Clan Ranald tartan were crimson with carnation in the waft."

I get the crimson part, but since carnations come in many colours, what the heck does he mean here?

I always think of carnations as pink but I don't think one can tell too much from this description beyond the indication that that Clanranald's tartan (individual not clan) had a different shade of red in the warp and weft (waft). However, John MacCodrum would have been a Gaelic speaker in which case he would probably have used a combination of dearg/rudh/carnaid/flane/corcair that someone has later translated as crimson (deep red) and carnation (pink). Whether that was the case or MacCodrum spoke English too (unlikely) one still has to factor in the individual's subjective use of colour terms for particular shades. Wiki describes crimson as a deep, red colour noting that it was originally produced with the insect dye Kermes Vermilio whch is where we get the colour term vermillion from. Others might call this shade the less technical 'claret' or 'wine'. Now think about the Lindsay tartan in which the red is often described as claret or wine but which is (now) quite different from crimson.

We also have no idea how familiar MacCodrum (who lived in N. Uist) was with the Clanranald plaid, what he knew about weaving (if anything) and how the warp and weft can appear to differ under certain light conditions and perhaps most importantly, the fact that MacCodrum was a peasant bard and probably illiterate so one may have to factor in an intermediary scribe and thus the translation may be even more remote that MacCodrum's original meaning.