How I wish that ancestry.com had been available when we were homeschooling our children! This weekend, I took some time out and verified the family history info I collected years ago when visiting various record offices in London. The records and other family histories at the ancestry site confirmed what I have - and provided some new links. Most went nowhere, but one line was truly fascinating! Of course, I'm very proud of being a Celt. The Cornish - like the Welsh, Irish, and so on - are not English, and we are the original Britons. Well, it turns out that I am descended from the ancient kings of Cornwall, Wales, Brittany, and Ireland (four of the six Celtic nations). This is because the king of Wales would marry a princess from Ireland, or the king of Brittany was marry a princess from Wales. And, because the Celts used the patronymistic naming convention, they are mostly 'ap' (son of) or 'ferch' (daughter of). Some of the names are truly wonderful: Einydd ap Gwrddwfm, Cwrrig Goruc Fawr, Rhodri Molwynog. More than that, if the records can be believed (and they are part of several quite distinguished family trees), I am descended from the mother of St. Patrick of Ireland and - most fascinating of all - Uthyr (in English, Arthur King of the Britons). What more could a Celt ask for? Anyway, the point in writing is to convey the excitement this caused among my now grown-up children. Can you imagine how much more excited they would be if they had discovered this as part of a homeschool project? You could never do this in public school, yet it's such a valuable part of who we are.
well, my kids want to join the ancestry . com thing and I want to avoid it totally, they do not know I was adopted. I do not know the name of the birthfather....... and I hated all that stuff whenI was growing up ............. its even harder now.... but its just NOT the right time to tell the kids.
I have a family member that does geneology avidly. He was able to trace my line back and found I am a direct decendent of Julius Ceasar! I looked it over with him and it was pretty amazing. There are several Kings of England that I decend directly from as well. I can't remember their names off the top of my head but I think it would be awesome for my kids to get involved in family history.
Steve, it's not even my family and I'm excited about it! I love history and I'm fascinated by geneology. I'm going to share this with my kids since we are currently studying these various groups origins.
That is very exciting!! Maybe occasion to learn some of the old tongues! Those names are beautiful, but I wish I knew how to pronounce them
I shared some of my initial results with my brother, who has a 9-year-old son. You can be sure he'll be at the library at the first opportunity to read history books about some of these people - especially Arthur and St. Patrick. Also, I now have a direct line to show we're descended from Queen Boadicea, queen of the Iceni. The Arthur link is fascinating. I've seen the records that show how some of the descendants from that line were born in Tintagel castle in Cornwall. Today, it's a ruin in a wild cliff, but it's known as King Arthur's castle. Of course, while Arthur was a real person, there's a lot of legend around him and who he actually was (generally assumed to be one of the last of the Romans). That has to be factored into this genealogical line, but several pieces of circumstantial evidence support it. That part of the family line, if it's indeed valid, goes through Arthur's mother but not his father. There's a legend that Arthur's father raped Arthur's mother while she was married to another man - who was soon after killed. This is consistent with the family record as far as I can verify it - so maybe the legend is true (if not the part about Merlin giving the father a potion with the power to rape the woman). As it happens, I'm quite familiar with the life of Arthur and the various legends around him, but my adult children, and my young nephew, will be doing a lot of reading for sure. This may be the value of genealogy, providing the interest needed to dive into history. PS - here's the remnant of the castle today. Usually, the water is not that calm!
In Welsh (and Breton and Cornish), 'w' is a vowel pronounced rather like the French 'u'. 'Y' is also a vowel, usually pronounced rather like a soft 'u' or 'i'. 'dd' is a letter not found in English and it's pronounced as a hard 'th' (as in 'than'). So, Einydd ap Gwrddwfm would be pronounced something like I-nith ap goorthoom. The language sounds quite different - as this link shows.
This topic has reminded me of an interest I've always had in nursery rhymes. Mostly, they are about events in history that were "politically incorrect" to mention in regular conversation so they were laughed about in rhyme. The example on my mind right now is "Old King Cole", the merry old soul, who was a real person in history. The Roman town in Britain called Colchester is named after him (and he's part of my family tree!). My favorite story concerns "Sing a song of sixpence" and "Little Jack Horner". They relate to the same event in history. Henry VIII fell out with the established church and started to dissolve the monasteries. One of the largest, in Glastonbury, had kitchens said to rival the king's own, so the abbot became nervous. He arranged to have a large pie made. Under the crust was not food but the deeds to 24 manor houses owned by the monastery - offered to the king as a gift/appeasement. A clerk named John Horner was given the task of taking the pie to the king as a Christmas gift. En route, he stole the deeds and gave the king an empty pie. The king was furious, executed the abbot, dissolved the monastery - and 24 manor houses remained in the possession of the Horner family for centuries. Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie (the deeds) When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing. Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king. The king was in his counting houses counting out his money (from the monasteries!) The queen was in the parlour eating bread and honey (bearing no child had displeased the king) The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes (Ann Boleyn, the king's mistress, entered through the servant quarters) And down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose (no idea what this means!) Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Christmas pie He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said "what a good boy am I." History gives these rhymes and entirely new meaning, doesn't it?
I've always been fascinated with how nursery rhymes were politically incorrect moments in, what is now, history! One of my favorite things to do is bring that fact up in normal conversation when nursery rhymes are discussed for whatever reason. The shock and disbelief on people's faces when you start to unravel some of the rhymes never fails to amuse me! I didn't know the Jack Horner one and I only knew the first half of Sing a Song of Sixpence. My favorites to "reveal" are usually Mary Mary Quite Contrary (referring to Bloody Mary and how her "garden" [cemetery] grew and the tools [flower names] she had used to torture those who displeased her) and Ring Around the Rosie (the Bubonic Plague).
Dr. Foster went to Gloucester in a shower of rain. He fell in a puddle right up to his middle and never went there again. This relates to a journey made by King Edward I from London to Gloucester. He fell off his horse while crossing a ford, threw a hissy fit, and rode back home to London. The rhyme gave local residents an excellent way to laugh at the king. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty DUmpty had a great fall. All the kinds horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again. King Charles I was very short, so the rhyme ridicules him about this. Of course, he was executed by Cromwell and couldn't be put back together again. Baa Baa Black Sheep refers to taxes on farming. One for the master (a third went to the king), one for the dame (a third went to the church), and one for the little boy who lived down the lane (what was left to the farmer after taxes). The oldest known rhyme is 'Rock a bye baby on a tree top', which relates to the Celts' practice of putting babies in a hammock, strung between trees, to get them to sleep while keeping them out of harm's way. Most nursery rhymes have meaning, which brings them to life. And this is what family history does too. Instead of being dull writing or repetitive indoctrination in a textbook, history suddenly becomes real and something children want to study! Now that I know that one of my ancestors (through two separate lines) is Dafydd Gam ap Llywelyn, the Battle of Agincourt has new meaning to me and my children - since, on the battlefield, our ancestor saved the life of Henry V at the cost of his own. We can even read Shakespeare in a new light, because Fluellen was based on Dafydd Gam. Fluellen: "If your Majesty is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps, which your Majesty knows, to this hour is an honourable badge of the service, and I do believe, your Majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy's day". King Henry: "I wear it for a memorable honour; for I am Welsh, you know, good countryman."
