Reggae With Bagpipes?

Historian James Cant is exploring whether the fair-skinned residents of Treasure Beach, Jamaica, descend from Scottish sailors whose ship sank offshore in the 1830s.

Cant, piecing together what might have happened from oral history, speculates: "The Scottish sailors - perhaps understandably - decided that settling in this area and marrying beautiful Jamaican women was preferable ... . So they stayed, they settled and they married - thus giving so many of the people of Treasure Beach their distinctive features."

"Dialect, in particular, will be fascinating to look at and I expect that much of the dialect in Treasure Beach will be linked back to the kind of Lowland Scots' dialect that was spoken in Scotland two hundred years ago." [Link]

Animated Ancestors

The Glasgow City Council has added Scrooge McDuck to its list of famous Glaswegians.

[A spokeswoman said:] "We have carried out some research and were delighted to discover that Scrooge McDuck hails from Glasgow."

McDuck's nationality is obvious given his surname and his lugubrious Scottish brogue, but his hometown remained a mystery. But an obscure US comic called The Life And Times Of Scrooge McDuck, published in 1996, depicts the eponymous web-footed hero growing up as a humble shoeshine boy in Glasgow, which is shown as a grey metropolis of smoking chimneys and cobbled streets. [Link]

In case you're interested, here's the Duck family tree. Like mine, it has its share of loons and coots.

Oh So Scottish

A marketing firm has come up with the most Scottish names possible by giving "Scottishness" points to forenames and surnames.

For men, it is Murdo MacRitchie and for women, Angusina MacEachen.

A real Murdo MacRitchie, a 71-year-old retired sailor who lives on the Isle of Lewis, said: "It's just my name and I've got to live with it."

There are no Angusina MacEachens on the electoral roll. [Link]

A Balkan Scot

A semi-finalist in the Eurovision Song Contest is from Montenegro—once part of Yugoslavia—but claims Scottish heritage. Stevan Faddy says he descends from Crusader William Faddy.

Speaking about his Scottish roots, he said: "We still have the family coat of arms and other memorabilia, even though it was hundreds of years ago. We also have a Scottish flag at home.

"We don't know much about our original ancestor other than his name, although we know the family goes back more than 1,000 years. My ancestor that settled here was supposed to have been on his way home after the Crusades with King Richard and seems to have fallen in love with the land, and a local woman. It is a lot more sunny than Scotland, I am told." [Link]

Polish Plaid

Poles living in Scotland now have their own tartan, which incorporates the red and white of the Polish flag.

"I want to buy a kilt because I am living in Scotland," Sebastian Flasza, owner of Rock and Roll Tattoo and Piercing in Edinburgh, told The Times of London. "But I am a Polish Scot. I feel this represents me. Oh, aye."

Poland and Scotland have a long common history. Bonnie Prince Charlie, the ill-fated Stuart heir, was half-Polish, and there is also a myth in Poland that Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity movement, is descended from Sir William Wallace, the Scottish nationalist executed by the English in 1305. [Link]

The Philippines' Only Piper

Roy Espiritu lives in Manila, but descends from the Macgregors of Scotland. He spent £400 for a set of bagpipes six years ago, then discovered that none of his 87 million fellow Filipinos knew how to play. Fortunately, he was able to find a tutor online.

Roy, who has never been to Scotland, is so proud of his Highland roots that his son six year- old Cholo is already practising on the chanter.

He added: "To be honest, he doesn't really like my playing much. And my wife Cheryl - well let's just say she tolerates my playing." [Link]

Cat Phobia Rampant in Scotland

Scotsman.com has an article today on Scottish clan mottoes, the best of which is given in a caption:

The motto of the Clan MacPherson with its modern-day translation urging its clanspeople to "Touch not the cat without a glove". [Link]

The MacBeans are even warier of felines, urging us to "Touch not the cat without a shield."

More animal insights may be found here, such as "The eagle does not catch flies," "Flying, I despise reptiles," and "Dinna waken sleeping dogs"—surely a variant of the perennially popular "Never wake a sleeping baby."

The Name is Welsh Just in Case

Based on the origins of local surnames, the Isle of Barra has been declared the most Scottish place in Scotland, Ripley the most English place in England, and Llangefni the most Welsh place in Wales. Researchers also tallied up foreign names, and discovered a cluster of Dutch names in Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys, Wales.

The town's county councillor, Timothy Van Rees, may have a slightly Dutch sounding surname but insisted he had Welsh roots. In fact he said he couldn't understand this link at all.

He said, "We are a tiny town of 700-800. I can't think of any Dutch people here. I've been a councillor for the town for 25 years and I've never noticed it"

There was a possibility that the preponderance of Dutch names came from Dutch farmers who bought land near Llandovery and Carmarthenshire in the past.

But Mr Van Rees, whose says his own surname is Welsh, admitted it was sometimes mistaken for Dutch.

"My family descends from the Vans of Monmouthshire. Van is a Welsh name. The difference in Dutch is that it's spelt with a small v and in Welsh it is a capital v." [Link]

What a Beautiful Chest—I Mean Crest

Stephanie Ogilvie at the Roanoke Times has some skeletons in her closet: the kind of skeletons that make genealogy worthwhile.

Our ancestry is Scottish, and the Ogilvie clan crest is — and I'm not making this up — a naked, buxom woman chained to an iron cage.

Classy.

Then there's the transvestite tightrope walker.

Apparently my grandmother was the youngest child of an American-style Von Trapp family (a la "Sound of Music"), and they traveled the South during the Great Depression, singing and performing circus tricks. Her father just happened to dress as a woman during his daring act.

Well, this explains a lot. [Link]

The Grass is Always Greener in Ireland

A third of United Kingdom residents suffer from "plastic paddy syndrome," according to a recent survey. There is no known cure.

The survey, commissioned by Rankin Selection Irish Breads, found that nearly half of all English, Scottish, and Welsh people would prefer to be Irish.

Welsh emerged as the least popular with only 13% choosing it, while English was just in front with 14%. Scottish came second with a modest 29%.

A mutual love between the Irish and Scottish was also revealed with 58% of Scottish people choosing to be Irish and 72% of Irish people opting to be Scottish. [Link]

Men in Kilts Not to be Mocked

From The (Glasgow, Scotland) Sunday Herald of Sept. 25, 2005:

‘Twee?’ Perhaps, but Tartan Days should be celebrated

By Senay Boztas, Arts Correspondent

THEY might inspire a hearty round of jeering in Scotland, but Tartan Days around the world should not be mocked, according to the author of a new book on the Scottish diaspora.

James Hunter, director of the centre for history at the prospective University of the Highlands and Islands, has made a plea for Scots to respect the diverse ways in which their distant relatives celebrate their Scottishness.

[snip]

But he believes that many people unfairly pillory Scots descendants in countries such as America for celebrating their ancestry with Tartan Days and Highland Games.

“We think that if these people dress in kilts and go to Tartan Days, they are off their heads, but they are as entitled to their view of identity as we are to ours,” he said. “If you tried to organise a Tartan Day in Scotland, I don’t think many people would turn up.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

". . . how canst thou say to thy brother, 'Brother, let me cast out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the caber that is in thine own.'"

Modern-Day Braveheart: Death March Not So Bad

From Telegraph.co.uk:

700 years on, a funeral is held for William Wallace

By Sally Pook
(Filed: 24/08/2005)

There was little of William Wallace to bury after he was strangled by hanging, released near death, drawn, quartered and beheaded.

His head was placed on a pike on London Bridge and his limbs displayed across Scotland to serve as a terrible warning.

Seven hundred years later, a symbolic funeral service was conducted for the Scottish rebel leader in London yesterday, close to his place of execution.

[snip]

Tied to horses and stripped naked, he was dragged for six miles through the city in 1305 to a site next to St Bartholomew's church in Smithfield, where he is commemorated by a plaque dedicated to his "immortal memory".

[snip]

Colin Hay, 32, a youth worker from Perth, who walked the death route from Westminster to Smithfield, said: "It was the easiest six miles of my life. I didn't feel it. We were walking for a purpose, in honour of Wallace."

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

The Simpsons' Secret Scottish Subtext

From The Scotsman of Aug. 16, 2005:

Scots abroad create a heritage of profits

JIM GILCHRIST

BRAVEHEART: myth or historical realism? That's the question faced by Robert Sproul-Cran, co-founder and chief executive of Tartan TV, an Aberdeen-based company which makes shows to satisfy the insatiable North American appetite for all things Scottish - especially the desire to trace their roots back to the "old country".

[snip]

So, the Aberdeen firm enlisted the unlikely aid of hugely popular cartoon series The Simpsons.

[snip]

"They've got this character Groundskeeper Willie, who is bearded and all "och-aye the noo", and he's supposed to be the archetypical Scot. The joke is really that, with names such as Simpson and Burns (the arch-industrialist character), about half the other characters are of Scottish background."

[snip]

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What about Apu Nahasapeemapetilon? Doesn't sound Scottish to me.

J. K. Rowling: Pureblood, Half-Blood, or Mudblood?

From The (Glasgow, Scotland) Sunday Mail of Aug. 14, 2005:

JK'S SECRET SCOTS FAMILY

Writer in hunt for lost relatives

By Donna White

HARRY POTTER author JK Rowling has secretly traced her Scottish roots.

Adopted Scot Joanne, 40, believes she is the great-granddaughter of a pioneering doctor from Arran.

Dugald Campbell, who died aged 82 in 1940, moved from his Scots home to Hawaii, where he helped to create a national health service in the 1890s.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]