Aran Sweaters for the Irish

[Jack Daw]

I wear a button-down shirt under mine, too.

[beloitpiper]

Mine is rather itchy, so I wear a collared shirt under mine.

[Dan R Porter]

So my sispision was correct. I think I will pass on a aran then. One other question, is a Aran the same as a "Jumper?"

And is it okay to call it a "Crochet Sweater?" haha

[WARPIPER]

Funny thing about the sweaters is that it is more an American thing than an Irish thing. All of my Irish friend (In Ireland) have trouble understanding the wooley thing they say that they are not that common in Ireland. Much like corn beef and cabbage it is a irish-american thing. I do love then though.

[beloitpiper]

Funny thing about the sweaters is that it is more an American thing than an Irish thing. All of my Irish friend (In Ireland) have trouble understanding the wooley thing they say that they are not that common in Ireland. Much like corn beef and cabbage it is a irish-american thing. I do love then though.

Well, they're not worn in Ireland any more. Back in the 20's all the way to the 70's (maybe 80's?) they were worn around Galway.

[piperdbh]

I plan to make myself one of these sweaters out of my much-mentioned llama wool yarn. It's naturally white and really soft.

As far as perpetuating a myth goes, it is true that the "Clan Sweater" is a recent invention, but what if the chief of a particular clan authorized one particular sweater pattern to be the "official" sweater of that clan? Wouldn't that make it just as much a clan symbol as our tartans and cap badges? I don't kow if any chiefs have done this, but it would be interesting to know.

I remember seeing a comedy skit once about some folks who were "reading" a sweater that had washed up on shore. They "read" the story of cables out loud, just like Timmy could translate Lassie's barks and the brothers could interpret Flipper's clicks and squeaks. I'm not doing it justice describing it, but I remember it as being terribly funny.

[Jack Daw]

And, for Scottish food, we in the U.S. haven't begun to see deep-fried Mars bars or deep-fried pizza, yet, at the Highland games. At least I haven't.

[O'Callaghan]

What gives the lie to this is, for example, they rightly say that O'Callaghans come mostly from Munster, but the Aran islands aren't in Munster, or even close. Look at a map. Why would there be a design for a name that isn't local? That said, there may be designs that genuinely correspond to local surnames from the Aran islands, although these may not necessarily be them!

However, some few Irish clans do exist. The Irish Records Office once kept track of the succession of about 20 clan chiefs, although they have stopped doing that. The reason they quit was apparently not that it's unconstitutional to recognise titles of nobility in Ireland, even though it is, but because of an alleged conman pretending to be the McCarthy Mor, i.e. the Great McCarthy, or chief of the McCarthys.

The chief of the O'Callaghans is referred to simply by the title of the "The O'Callaghan" (note that there is not, and cannot be, a definite article in my user name here), and there is a current chief. He lives in Barcelona, Spain! He is also a "Don", i.e. he is both a Spanish and an Irish noble.

There are a dozen or two Irish family tartans (horribly expensive special orders unless you happen to be a Murphy), but most of them don't correspond to recognised clans (I don't think Murphy was ever recognised by the IRO as a clan, for instance), and probably fewer than half the recognised Irish clans have a tartan. Ironically, this resembles how it was in Scotland at one time, including the actual number of recognised clans being quite low, but now it seems like almost every Scot has a clan and a tartan!

The Callaghan tartan is not strictly a clan tartan as would be understood in Scotland, in the sense that it has not been recognised by our chief AFAIK. It was just designed, very recently I might add, by someone called Peter Callaghan, who I understand says that anyone of the name can wear it.

[Dan R Porter]

What is a jumper?

[TNKiltedWolf]

What is a jumper?

From what I understand it is a pull over sweater. Different land, different nomenclature. In Germany they call it a "Pulli" (as in pull over your head).