MacGregor of Glengyle
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern BRBRBR.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 6 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=2459
3 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1750 — MacGregor of Glengyle (register-of-tartans, record)
Woven on Deeside c.1750. A sample is in the McGregor Hastie Collection which can be found in the Scottish Tartans Society Museum artefact reference B18/6. Notes (May 2006) from Sir Malcom MacGregor of MacGregor, Chief of Clan MacGregor explains that the MacGregor of Deeside and the MacGregor of Glengyle are really one and the same. He has a specimen of this tartan (BLACK and red) which his grandfather obtained from Skeoch Cumming in 1922, who got it from an old woman in Nairn who said it was the tartan of the MacGregors of Glengyle whence her people came. The Chief said 'My father believed this to be correct, bearing in mind the history of the MacGregors of Deeside. The MacGregors transported to Aberdeenshire by the Earl of Moray who came from his estates in Menteith to fight the Mackintoshes in about 1624, were almost certainly MacGregors of Glengyle and would have worn that tartan. Another specimen of this sett is in the possession of Andersons of Edinburgh, believed to date from 1750. It is in red and blue colours as opposed to red and black. Red and black would be a logical extension of the Red and Black discussed above (#1504, original Scottish Tartans Authority reference) so why there is blue instead of black is a mystery.' - 1750 — MacGregor of Glengyle - 1750 (Clan) (tartans-authority, record)
"Woven on Deeside c. 1750" according to the SINDEX card STS collection No. MGH B18/6. No further details known. From a portion of a joined plaid C.1750. Samples in the Dunbar and Bonnar Collections. Colours said to be blue and 'old red'. Notes (May 2006) from Sir Malcom MacGregor of MacGregor, Chief of Clan MacGregor explains that the MacGregor of Deeside and the MacGregor of Glengyle are really one and the same. He has a specimen of this tartan (BLACK and red) which his grandfather obtained from Skeoch Cumming in 1922, who got it from an old woman in Nairn who said it was the tartan of the MacGregors of Glengyle whence her people came. The Chief said "My father believed this to be correct, bearing in mind the history of the MacGregors of Deeside. The MacGregors transported to Aberdeenshire by the Earl of Moray who came from his estates in Menteith to fight the Mackintoshes in about 1624, were almost certainly MacGregors of Glengyle and would have worn that tartan. Another specimen of this sett is in the possession of Andersons of Edinburgh, believed to date from 1750. It is in red and blue colours as opposed to red and black. Red and black would be a logical extension of the Red and Black discussed above (#1504) so why there is blue instead of black is a mystery." - undated — MacGregor (weddslist, record)
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Register of Tartans
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/register-of-tartans/data.csv
- data date
- 1750 (this record)
- licence
- Crown copyright
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Register of Tartans · Crown copyright
the living register — still published by National Records of Scotland - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Register of Tartans: 2459
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 450
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 450
Thread count
R/4 DB4 R28 DB28 R4 DB/4
One full sett is 136 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| DB | #082077 #082077 | oklch(30.0% 0.149 265.1) |
| R | #D60020 #D60020 | oklch(55.2% 0.224 25.5) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
ΔTartan
Threads
Variant
Sett
—
136
144
128
166
232
112
288
160
320
222
100
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s6/db1r1db7r7db1r1~x4/