County Cork tartans and Arsenal tartan

[BoldHighlander]

I have now found a wide range of stuff, including kilts and fabric, in Arsenal Football Club tartan, at www.internationaltartans.co.uk

Interesting site, however they make it sound like the Scottish Tartan Museum in North Carolina is now defunct!! (below)

The Scottish Tartans Society, including its branch and museum in North Carolina, which was at one time universally recognised as the unofficial 'authority' on tartans, is now defunct.

http://www.internationaltartans.co.uk/health-warning/

I think that'd be news to Matt!!!

Also:

Scots mercenaries were in great demand for their fighting prowess. Thus tartan cloth was not an uncommon sight in countries throughout Europe, and in many cases became part of local dress.
For example, during the Kalmar Wars between Sweden and Denmark, an army of 550 Scottish mercenaries passing through the Gubrandsval valley, in what is now Norway, in 1612 en route to Sweden in 1612, were routed by local farmers. Their plaids of tartan cloth became woven into the local ‘bunad’, a traditional costume which survives to this day. There are also tartans woven for women’s dresses in Sarna in Norway which are probably derived from tartans worn by Scottish soldiers who fought in Sinclair's expedition to Norway in 1738-40.

There is also a Dutch tartan, which is a Mackay tartan woven in the colours of the Dutch flag, which dates back to the 300 soldiers who fought in the Netherlands for Gustavus Adolphus in 1631.

http://www.internationaltartans.co.uk/national/

Okay, first the Sinclair "Raid"/Expedition was in 1612, *NOT* 1738-40. It was the failed expedition ambushed in Norway that they mention above:

The Scottish Expedition in Norway in 1612

Sinclair's Club of Otta - learning from the Battle of Kringen 1612

Also, they are wrong about the Dutch Mackay tartan. This tartan does *NOT* date back to the Thirty Years War, and is in fact of more recent origin woven in honor of the connection between the Scottish & Dutch Mackays. During the Thirty Years War the Mackay Regiment was described wearing a tartan that (color wise) corresponds to the dark green /blue & black Modern Mackay tartan seen today.

The Dutch MacKay is a tartan designed in 1965 by the late John Cargill, for and registered with the Scottish Tartan Authority, (formerly the Scottish Tartan Society), in honor of the significant roll of the “Dutch Mackays” in Clan and Dutch National History. There are in fact two Dutch tartans, the standard and a dress tartan which switches the thin orange line with an azure, a blue wide line with a white and a thin white line with a red. These tartans are based on the official Clan Mackay tartan and are in their National colors of orange, black, azure and white, with the above changes in the “dress” version.

They really need to get their facts straight