A HARRIS YARN by Alice Starmore

Prologue

Some time in late 2004 an item called The Harris Yarn Story went up on the knitrowan.com website. Someone sent me the link as they knew it concerned my neck of the woods and wanted my views. I had a look and found the text arresting, to say the least, for it appeared that the identity of myself, and my forefathers for centuries back, had been changed overnight by the Rowan yarn brand. Rowan's piece extolled the virtues of Harris Tweed, which they said was produced:

... on a small island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland - the island of Lewis, also known as Harris.

This little statement looks innocuous enough to the uninitiated, but it is guaranteed to raise the eyebrows and drop the jaw of any Hebridean who sees it. According to Rowan, Lewis is also known as Harris! Well, well, well.

How do I explain the sheer, staggering volume of ignorance embedded within those few words? Let me try. Imagine if, when writing about the north of England, I blithely stated, "Yorkshire, also known as Lancashire." If I wrote that then I would be metaphorically tarred and feathered - perhaps even literally too. And rightly so. Firstly I would be riding roughshod over English geography. Secondly, I would be sweeping away whole centuries of cultural, political and military history. The Wars of the Roses? Pure myth. Shakespeare's history plays, from Richard II right through to Henry VIII ? Pure fiction. In reality, Yorkists were just the same as Lancastrians. No difference between them at all - one big happy family.

The geographic, cultural and historical differences between Lewis and Harris are obviously not as widely known as those between Yorkshire and Lancashire, but they extend just as far back in time and are a vital element in the Hebridean story. The fascinating tale of the Macleods of Lewis and the Macleods of Harris is a rich seam of our history, full of incident and intrigue. The separate geographic status of the two islands was recorded long ago in the Atlas Nova published in Amsterdam by the Dutch cartographer Joannis Blaeu:

Lewis and Harray of the number of the Westerne Yles which two, although they ioyne be a necke of land, ar accounted dyvers Ylands.

That sentence was published in 1654, so it is not exactly a recent arrival to the public domain. Anybody who knows anything about the Hebrides knows that Lewis is absolutely not known as Harris. To suggest otherwise is a gross insult to the 20,000 people of the Isle of Lewis and the 2,500 people of the Isle of Harris. This clearly means nothing to Rowan Yarns, who tried to air their Hebridean knowledge and fell flat on their corporate backside. The question is, why was Rowan so anxious to establish immaculate Hebridean credentials when they have no connection with the place and lack even the most basic knowledge about us? The Hebridean phone lines were hot, but further questions were soon to arise.

From December 2004 onwards, the internet became liberally wallpapered with adverts for "Rowan Harris Tweed". There are too many instances to list. Shops in England, Scotland, Wales, Europe and North America were suddenly plugging this "new" product. Many can still be seen at the time of writing (1st June 2005): put Rowan Harris Tweed into a search engine and see. One of the most astounding statements came from upcountry.co.uk. They stated:

Harris Tweed
The product of a happy union between Rowan, designer Di Gilpin and the Harris Tweed Company...

It was time for jaws to drop yet again: this time, throughout the entire textile world. Harris Tweed is the most famous (and protected) trademark in the industry: Rowan is owned by Coats - one of the largest manufacturers of textile threads on the planet. Could it really be possible that Coats had acquired the vaunted Harris Tweed trademark? This was a massive piece of news and speculation was equally huge.

And who was The Harris Tweed Company? Note, it was not A Harris Tweed company but THE Harris Tweed Company. Which one did they mean? No-one could fathom it. The answer lay in a URL at the foot of the page containing Rowan's monumental gaffe. There it was: www.harris-tweed.co.uk. It was the web address of not one but a trio of companies: the very companies on which the Harris Tweed Authority has since served the writ. I know those companies well, for various reasons which will become clear later.

For now, I will recount just one of those reasons, and that is Harris Arran - the name of a yarn announced by Harris Tweed Textiles earlier in 2004. I laughed at the name when it first appeared. I obtained a shade card and there it was - not just Harris Arran but Harris Arran (TM). The people behind this were so ignorant of hand knitting yarn - and the map of Europe - that they confused Aran in Ireland with Arran in Scotland. At least, the connection explained why Lewis was suddenly also known as Harris. If Rowan had been getting its information from the Harris Arran clowns then the poor souls were bound to be geographically, culturally and historically challenged. Yes of course Lewis is Harris; just as Harris is Arran; Arran is Aran; black is white; two is four, and I (with apologies to the late Dorothy Parker) am Marie of Romania.

More geographic miracles in Part 1 of A Harris Yarn. Read on to find out why Harris is also Shetland.