Letter: Unravelling the Aran sweater

Sir: Peter Costello (letter, 18 September) is quite correct in quoting from J. M. Synge's The Aran Islands when he relates that 'the younger men on Aranmore (Inishmore) have adopted the usual fisherman's jersey'.

However, if Mr Costello refers to pages 86/87 of my book Irish Knitting (A & C Black, 1991), the fruit of five years of research into this subject, he would find that Synge's descriptions only go part of the way in unravelling this fascinating Irish textile enigma.

The fisherman's jerseys Synge refers to were actually just the ordinary stocking-stitch garments knitted in handspun bainin or imported navy factory-spun wool worn by seamen all around the Irish and British coasts at the turn of the century. Although bodies could well have been identified from one of these hand-knitted garments, they would not have been the elaborately patterned sweaters for which the Aran islands became famous only after the mid-Thirties.

Liz McCallum (Letters, 14 September) accurately cites the American origins of this 'traditional Irish' craft, although the true story of two homesick Irish women dating from the Irish Atlantic migration at the beginning of this century is, I feel, no less a touching or romantic tale than the 'lost in the mists of time' myth I dispel in my book.

Yours faithfully,

ROHANA DARLINGTON

Poynton, Cheshire

21 September