Recovering the Clan

King James VI decreed that the Clan Gregor be "altogidder abolished" in 1603.

The gentry were encouraged to hunt down Gregors who refused to change their surnames and a price of 1,000 merks - a fortune - was put on the heads of clan leaders, with 100 merks for other clan members.

Now, DNA technology is allowing the clan to bring its lost members out of hiding.

The DNA profile of a known descendent of the chief's line - the MacGregors of Glencarnoch - is being used as the benchmark for the vital tests. He is known simply by the codename Kit 2124.

And the council of the Clan Gregor Society has announced that it will admit to full membership of the society anyone who can prove they share 31 out of the 37 DNA markers in common with the main MacGregor bloodline profiler - irrespective of their surname. [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."

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]

Beware of the Eccentric Poet

Members of The Clan MacFarlane Society are painting their faces Braveheart-blue in preparation for a battle over an island in Loch Lomond.

Eilean-I-Vow—less poetically known as Cow Island—was claimed by Douglas MacFarlane nine years ago for about £500 after he'd traced the roots of the clan to that location and established that it had no official owner. Now the rest of the clan—a family of "notorious cattle raiders"—wants ownership.

The clan's descendants, who span the world, believe the ruins of a historic seventeenth-century castle are being further dilapidated by party-goers. By assuming ownership of the land, the society wants to preserve the relics, one of the last few remaining traces of the clan in the region.

Douglas is willing to give it up for the ever-so-reasonable price of £1 million. His wife Bernadette says, "I've e-mailed the society several times but never had a reply. I don't understand what they're trying to do." She concedes that the island has had unauthorized visitors, but "It's very hard to stop people coming over to the island."

"We thought about hiring someone, maybe an eccentric poet, to stay there, but we can't build anything on the land." [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]