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A special thanks goes to Cara Mayo Gruber for designing the Mark of the Scots exhibit in the Central Library downstairs display cases. I hope you all had a chance to see it. I had an opportunity to speak with Duncan Bruce, the book’s author, over Easter weekend. I mentioned the exhibit to him. He was thrilled to learn his book was the basis of the display and that there is continuing interest in his writing. He told me he is working on a book about the 100 most influential Scots. Something for us to anticipate.

This is the last issue of the Thistledown before fall. Have a wonderful summer. I hope you all will get out and enjoy some of the various Highland Games and Scottish events within driving distance of Hampton Roads.

Your aye,
Nancy

Visitors to these wells are immediately struck by the bizarre sight of cloth strips—and sometimes every conceivable item of clothing –hanging from nearby trees. Some of these offerings may be the result of youthful pranks, but others are undoubtedly the tokens left by sincre believers. Such wells still exist in Easter Ross at Munlochy, Cromarty and other places on the Black Isle.

In a wood on Culloden Moore outside Inverness, just a mile from the famous battle site, the modern Ordnance Survey map still shows the ancient well marked with a cross. It is variously known as St. Mary’s Well, the Well of Youth or simply the Clootie Well.

Associated with this well is the ancient festival of Beltane in early May. Until a few decades ago, bus loads of visitors would arrive on the first Sunday in May to drop in a coin or perhaps hange a wetted rag in the branches of a nearby tree. Today, although the ritual is fading, there are cloths hanging from trees, evidence that some still come to test its curative powers.

From The Bagpiper, May 2000, Newsletter of the St. Andrew’s Society of the Eastern Shore

John McCain’s own family’s researches have returned him to Glencoe, a territory famous for the attempted massacre of all its inhabitants, in 1692 on the orders of William III, the extremely unpleasant king then reigning in London. The story has been handed down as one concerning the “Macdonalds of Glencoe”, and indeed the victims were of Clan Macdonald, but as descendants of Iain Fraoch, bastard son of Angus Og and brother of John MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, they born the name MacIain. Their immediate Chief at the time of the massacre was designated “Mac Ian of Glenco” in the warrant King William signed. (Known variations of the spelling of MacIain today include McCain, MacKean, MacKane, MacKain, and MacKeen.)

The MacIains of Glencoe appear now to have no recognized chief, the clansmen giving their allegiance directly to Godfrey James Macdonald of MacDonald, Lord Macdonald of Slate, Chief of the Name and Arms of Macdonald. No one today bears the Glencoe arms (Argent an eagle displayed Gules surmounted by a lymphad Sable and in the dexter chief a hand Proper holding a cross-crosslet fitchee Azure). The badge the Glencoe clansmen bear is thus the badge of Macdonald of Macdonald. However, it is open to a claimant to petition to be recognized as MacIain of Glencoe, and perhaps one may yet appear. Perhaps John McCain himself may be in line. He currently has no arms and crest, but it appears he would have immediate grounds to petition as an indeterminate cadet of the unknown MacIain chief. (President Kennedy was granted arms by the Chief Herald of Ireland, and John McCain’s known ancestry makes him eligible for consideration by the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh.)

Any question about a MacCain tartan is difficult to answer. McIan’s famous 1845 print of a Glencoe clansman shows an unrecognizable tartan, and the different pattern in Ian Grimble’s 1977 book appears to have no authority. The Tartans Museum has an unknown tartan discovered in Glencoe—believed to be of local manufacture, but without documentation to support its origin—that is a plausible candidate.

However, it is possible to design a badge that accords with the history of the MacIains of Glencoe and honors the laws of heraldry. Accordingly, it is suggested that the crest could be the dexter chief charge in the arms (a hand Proper holding a cross-crosslet fitchee Azure), and this crest could be encircled by a strap-and-buckle to form the clansman’s badge. The chosen motto, “My hope is constant in Thee”, is a tradition Macdonald motto.

But who was Andrew’s father? The existence of a motto in a Scots family argues the existence of a coat of arms, and arms, “ensigns of nobility”, argue that the family is known—that it is, or has been, of some substance. But was the family originally Scots, or English, or Irish?

Martin Bond, representer of the Bonds of Creech Grange, noticed the publicity on the new James Bond film, and equating its title to his own family motto—– Non sufficit orbis—– wrote to the British The Daily Telegraph, to claim James Bond as a previously unregistered cadet. This claim then prompted the erudite editor of the new Burke’s Peerage to answer with a counter proposal, a family believed now to have died out, the Bonds of Peckham. He proposed that as the Peckham Bonds were Catholic and Jacobites, James Bond, the grandson of the 1st Baronet’s second son, James, who is known to have married and to have left issue, could have fought for Prince Charles in the Rising of 1745, stayed in Scotland and left descendants there.

This discussion is not new. Harry Pierie-Gordo of Buthlaw was a friend and colleague of James Bond’s chronicler when they were in Naval Intelligence together (1939-45), and from some pencilled and near illegible notes he left it appears that Andrew Bond’s arms, which his only son James inherited, were Argent on a chevron Sable three bezants and in dexter chief a crescent Gules all within a bordure chequy Azure and Or. Apart from the bordure, these are the arms of the Peckham Bonds.

But the bordure signifies bastardy. We know that Miss Moneypenny was once overheard saying, “You are a real bastard, James”, with more than usual intensity, but James’s parents were married, and even if this marriage postdated his birth, in Scots law he is most certainly legitimate. It can be deduced, therefore, that the bastardy came in at some time between the Jacobite James’s sons and the time of Andrew’s parents.

The Creech Grange Bonds bear Argent on a chevron Sable three bezants, and the Peckham Bonds bore Argent on a chevron Sable three bezants and in dexter chief a crescent Gules. That red crescent, although definitely a charge and not a brisure for cadency, suggests the line of a second son that branched off from the main stem a long time ago. Accordingly, it is possible that Martin Bond is justified in claiming kin with the celebrated secret agent, but we suspect that link is at a time before the present history of his family begins.

From The Feudal Herald, on-line version

The term Scotch-Irish is ambiguous because it does not mean people of mixed Scottish and Irish ancestry as the name seems to imply, but refers to the descendants of the Presbyterians from lowland Scotland who settled in Ulster—the northernmost province of Ireland in the 17th century—and subsequently emigrated from there to America. By the time of the first migration to America, many of these Ulster Scots had lived in Ireland for four generations or more and had become quite a different people from their Scottish forebears.

Whether you prefer to call you ancestors Scotch-Irish or Ulster Scots, millions of Americans—probably one in every 30—find them hanging upon their family trees. It is estimated that some 200,000 Scots went to Ulster and at least 2 million of their descendants made the move across the Atlantic. In the colonial period, Scotch-Irish played a significant role in the westward expansion of the frontier in Pennsylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas. They were also largely responsible for the early development of American Presbyterianism.

Scotch-Irish Presbyterian ministers came to America as early as 1683, but it was a combination of factors that created the great migration of the Ulster Scots to America in the 18th century. These included drought, rack-renting, diminished trade in woolen goods, depression and religious discrimination and persecution.

Rack-renting was simply a landlord’s raising the rent when a lease had expired. The common term of a lease in Ulster had been 31 years and was one of the great attractions that originally drew Scots to Ireland. Because of their long leases, the Scottish tenants had improved their holdings, extended cultivation into wastelands, applied new methods and become thriftier farmers. These farmers felt injured by raising of the rents and refused to accept what they considered an outrageous departure from tradition. Rack-renting had dire results in Ulster. Entire villages lost their Protestant element by migration to America.

When the fourth successive year of drought ruined the crops in 1717, more than 5,000 Ulstermen headed to America. There were five great waves of the Scotch-Irish migration to this country: 1717-18, 1725-29, 1740-41, 1754-55, and 1771-75. The major concentrations of Scotch-Irish people were in southeastern Pennsylvania, the Valley of Virginia and the Piedmont of the two Carolinas.

By the time of the American Revolution, probably nine-tenths of the Scotch-Irish in America lived in these areas. As early as the 1750’s, a chain of Scotch-Irish frontier settlements was sprinkled along the 700-mile length of the Great Wagon Road that ran parallel to the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Georgia. After 1782, the restless Scotch-Irish were in the vanguard of the move west.

Myra Vanderpool Gormley in the
Tacoma News Tribune
July 2, 1995

Radio Scotland will provide the Scottish Community world wide with music, entertainment, history, stories, special children’s programming, Gaelic lessons and several other services. They plan to broadcast via computer streaming and via short wave radio. Services will be broadcast live and also will be archived for later listening.

Musical programs will offer not only the old standards, but also contemporary music, and will offer a medium for new talent to develop and be heard. Listener contributions to story and history broadcasts are welcomed and also for poetry, essays, and other such topics. Programming will continue to grow and change in response to listeners needs. Please check out further information at http://hometown.aol.com/radioscotland/index.html. Also education and research services available at the the following website, serving Celtic communities worldwide: http://web2.airmail.net/samhradh/.

Edinburgh, Scotland (Reuters) A terrified Belgian tourist has asked that a stone he took home from an ancient Scottish burial site be returned to its rightful place, saying the souvenir had been haunting him.

Tourism officials in Scotland’s northern Highlands region said they receive the two pound (one kg) stone in the post with a letter from the unnamed tourist, saying that since he took it home his daughter had broken her leg, he had lost his job, and his wife had fallen ill. The tourist said he took the stone from the Clava Cairns rock formation, a site which dates back to roughly 2000 BC and contains the remains of several large burial cairns surrounded by stone circles. The prehistoric site is considered one of the most important and mysterious in Scotland.

“He apologized for taking it and said he understood if it all sounded a bit strange, but he traced the family’s bad luck back to when he took it,” reported Bob Hunter-Dorens, a staff member of the Inverness Tourist Information Center.

Suddenly, the scene froze in place and as the atheist hung in midair, a booming voice came out of the clouds and said, “I thought you didn’t believe in Me!”

“God, come on, give me a break!” the man pleaded, “Just seconds ago, I didn’t believe in the Loch Ness monster either!”

“Well,” said God, “Now that you are a believer you must understand that I won’t work miracles to snatch you from certain death in the jaws of the monster. But I can change hearts. What would you have me do?”

The atheist thought for a minute, then said, “God, please have the Loch Ness Monster believe in You also.” And God replied, “So bit it.” The scene started in motion again with the Atheist falling towards the ravenous jaws of the monster.

As the man fell, he saw the monster fold his claws together and heard him say “Lord, bless this food You have so graciously provided”.

thanks to Rita Hamilton

I will make a country of dark beautiful mountains, purple glens and rich green forests. I will give it clear swift flowing rivers and I will fill them with salmon.

The land shall be lush and fertile, on which the people shall grow barley to brew into an amber nectar that will be much sought after the world over.

Underneath the land I shall lay rich seams of coal. In the waters around the shores there will be an abundance of fish and beneath the sea there will be vast deposits of oil and gas.

“Excuse me Sire”, interrupted the Archangel Gabriel. “Don’t you think you are being a bit too generous to these Scots?”

“Not really,” replied the Lord, “wait till you wee the neighbors I’m giving them!”

thanks to Charlie Austin

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