As many of you know, there are two different tartans for each Irish county, designed by two different mills. House of Edgar (Macnaughton Ltd.) of Perth, Scotland has a range of Irish county tartans, and Morton Mills of Yorkshire, England, has their own entirely different range of 'Irish County Crest' tartans.

Theoretically, the 'Crest' tartans use the same colours as the crest or coat of arms of the corresponding Irish county, and I have read comments in another thread saying that the colours of the House of Edgar range are purely random (but maybe not, as you will see).

One of my kilts is in the House of Edgar tartan for County Cork. Somewhere we also have a Cork City FC soccer shirt that I bought for our son, but which now only fits his sister. Trust me, that's relevant.

I was searching eBay for enamel pin-on badges of the County Cork crest, when I realised a curious fact. The colours of these badges are red, yellow, blue and green, the same colours as my kilt in County Cork tartan. So if the House of Edgar County Cork tartan matches the colours on the county crest, which it apparently does, that means that the Cork County Crest tartan by Morton Mills, which is actually supposed to match the colours of the county crest, doesn't!

Morton Mills use the colours red, yellow and orange to represent the County Cork Crest in their tartan. These colours don't match the enamel pins of the County Cork crest on eBay. However, from memory it seems that the soccer shirt we have may bear the same crest but in those colours, or at least without any blue or green. Bear in mind here, though, that the soccer club represents only Cork City, not County Cork as a whole. AFAIK both crests show a ship sailing between two towers.

So what is going on here? Did Morton Mills mistakenly use colours that represent Cork City, or even Cork City FC? Perhaps someone who actually lives in the old country would have more idea, but I'm merely London Irish, and now I live in the USA.

Talking of soccer tartans, my favourite club, Arsenal FC, who are based in North London where there are lots of Irish, have a registered tartan 'for Scottish Arsenal fans' as they say. It's not bad looking. It's mostly red, which is to be expected as their 'strip' (uniform in US speak) is red and white, and as well as red and white it has yellow (the colour of their 'clash' shirts for playing teams that wear red) and it has some sort of violet shade in there for reasons unknown.

The only things I have seen online in the Arsenal FC tartan, unfortunately, are a collar and lead for a dog, LOL! We don't even own a dog. There may be some here who at that point would go out and acquire a dog, but our cats wouldn't like it.