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The Aran jumper

The Aran jumper is cream-coloured, heavy and covered in cables, and it is usually sold as an ancient garment. It is not ancient. Most knitting historians date it to the early 20th century. The stories about clan patterns and drowned fishermen were added later still.

How it actually happened
  1. 1890s–1900s: Fishermen's ganseys reach the islands
    The Congested Districts Board set out to improve fishing on the islands, and fishing families from elsewhere in Britain and Ireland came to train the islanders. They brought their knitted guernsey (gansey) jumpers, which had stitch patterns, usually only on the yoke, and were made of fine wool. Aran women made their own version with thicker local wool, patterns all over and saddle shoulders. Mary Burke adds, after Elizabeth McCrum, that returned emigrants also brought knitting patterns back from Boston.
  2. 1930s: Sold in Dublin
    Vawn Corrigan dates the adult Aran jumper as we know it to 1932, when the reformer Muriel Gahan commissioned one. In the 1930s Gahan sold Arans in The Country Shop, her Dublin outlet for Irish crafts. Cleo in Dublin and Ó Máille's in Galway sold them in the same decade.
  3. 1940s: The first printed patterns
    The first commercially available Aran knitting patterns were published in the 1940s by Patons of England.
  4. 1950s: Tourists, Vogue and export
    Exports to the United States began in the early 1950s, and Vogue ran articles on the jumper. Burke links the boom to the duty-free shop at Shannon (1947) and the growth in American visitors. P. A. Ó Síocháin organised an instructor to teach islanders to knit to standard international sizes and commissioned Seán Keating to illustrate the brochures. Digby Morton showed Aran-inspired knits in London in 1955.
  5. 1960s: The Clancy Brothers
    The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem wore Arans on stage in America, including on The Ed Sullivan Show. Demand grew faster than knitters could supply it. By 1963, according to Burke, one Galway firm was supplied by more than 500 home knitters.
  6. 1970s: Out of fashion
    Synthetic clothing and higher wages for knitters cut the market. Burke cites a 1973 survey in which some tourists found Arans ‘bulky and unfashionable’.
What gets said, and whether it holds
Stitch names and their meanings (later lore)

These meanings come from 20th-century writing, mainly Heinz Edgar Kiewe's The Sacred History of Knitting. They are not recorded island tradition. The stitch names are real; the symbolism was added later.

Quick answers
How old is the Aran jumper?

Most knitting historians date it to the early 20th century, after the Congested Districts Board brought fishing families with gansey jumpers to the Aran Islands. Vawn Corrigan dates the adult jumper as we know it to 1932.

Did Aran families have their own patterns?

There is no evidence for it. The idea, along with most of the symbolic stitch meanings, traces to Heinz Edgar Kiewe's book The Sacred History of Knitting, which historians of knitting have rejected.

Were drowned fishermen identified by their Aran jumpers?

That story seems to come from Synge's 1904 play Riders to the Sea, in which a drowned man is identified by his hand-knitted socks and a count of their stitches. Neither the play nor Synge's notes mention an Aran pattern.

What do the stitches mean?

The usual meanings (moss stitch for growth, honeycomb for plenty, and so on) are later lore, mostly from Kiewe. They are not recorded island tradition.

Elsewhere on the site
Irish islands County Galway Irish writers Myths about Irish history Irish symbols
Sources

Have an Aran jumper knitted in your family, or a pattern passed down? Tell us.