Yesterday, I was transported back to childhood. My pie chart (the results of which I blogged about in my last post) took me back to a wonderland of imagination about my genetic background. Because I was firmly expecting more Western European and Iberian Peninsular results, the mix of Scandinavian and Irish really excited me. My imagination took me to Dublin, and to the wars fought there with the Vikings. Did one of my long ago direct ancestors sail there for war and end up marrying a local girl? Maybe one of my ancient family members wrote the Leabhar Cheanannais (Book of Kells), or one of the other early books Ireland is famed for? Perhaps I'm descended from Brian Boru?
Of course, none of that will be true, but it did give me a chance to daydream.
The pie chart was like getting a really nice free keyring when you buy an expensive car, or the plastic toy in the box of cereal - the one you waited days to get, eating breakfast you didn't even particularly like. Very unimportant in the scheme of the larger picture, but a very nice gift, nonetheless.
All my ancestry research so far has quite firmly kept my roots in Somerset. Not that I've minded that, as Somerset is one of the most beautiful, diverse areas in the world. Many of my direct ancestors came from The Quantocks which was the first area of outstanding natural beauty in the country. I love Somerset with a passion.
If you'd have asked what I expected to find before I took the test, I'd have said "Cut me in half and Somerset would be stamped through me like a stick of rock". I thought my percentage of GB would have been slightly higher with the rest made up from West Europe and the Iberian Peninsular (which are the two trace regions I have with 4% and 5% respectively).
The Scandinavian and Irish ancestry were the areas that surprised me the most. Not that they aren't welcome! They are, I am thrilled. I've looked at DNA maps of the British Isles and it seems quite unusual for the Scandinavian element to appear in the West Country (although not unknown, or even extremely rare).
I am yet to find a direct ancestor who wasn't from England, and I have over a hundred direct ancestors in my tree.
I feel like a child in a sweetshop this morning, not knowing where to start, which bit to unwrap first, in regards to my results. The ethnicity pie chart was the first thing I saw, thus the first thing to excite me. It wasn't the reason for me taking the DNA test though, just an interesting aside.
Have you ever made an unforgivable error on your family tree?
I did just that a couple of weeks ago, when I was researching at 2am. I found double entries for one family (in my favour, there are lots of branches, and they tended to have children with the same names as cousins) and decided to delete one branch to put the tree right. Sound okay so far? It made perfect sense at the time, to get the virtual shears out and prune. Problem was, I pruned the wrong branch - they were the ones who had all the links to my ancestors. I had them twice on the tree as we were related through more than one ancestor, and I've managed to do the tree quite a lot of damage (it is repairable, but will take weeks of nurturing to get it flowering again).
I'm never making the mistake of being ruthless in the early hours of the morning again. I will also be backing up the tree more frequently.
James Giles and Jane Rose were wed on 5 April 1815 in Ashbrittle, Somerset. The Yew Tree overlooking the Church is said to be England's oldest, at 3,000 years of age.
It would have overlooked my ancestors baptisms, marriages and deaths since the Church was built there in the 15th century.
There can be very little in genealogy more distressing than coming across family members who died in the Great War.
What comfort could be gained from a name carved on a local war memorial? A grave in another land near to where they fell, would have been too far away for a mother or young wife to take flowers. The thought of a filed filled with dancing red poppies, so lauded in poetry, would have to serve as a reminder. So the war memorial was the nearest thing to a grave that grieving relatives had.
When you find a mother who has lost more than one son to the battlefields, you wonder how they had the strength to go on.
Eric Bogle wrote the lyrics to the famous song Green Fields of France (also known as No Man's Land) in 1976. The words sum up the sadness of those fallen too young.
Well how do you do, Private William McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side?
A rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone that you were only 19
when you joined the glorious fallen in 1916.
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, William McBride, was it slow and obscene?
CHORUS:
Did they beat the drum slowly?
did they sound the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart are you always 19.
Or are you just a stranger without even a name
Forever enclosed behind some glass-pane
In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Well, the sun it shines down on these green fields of France,
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance.
The trenches are vanished now under the plough
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it is still No Man's Land
And the countless white crosses in mute witness stand.
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation that was butchered and downed.
And I can't help but wonder now Willie McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe them that this war would end war?
The suffering, the sorrow, some the glory, the shame -
The killing and dying - it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it's all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Did they beat the drum slowly?
did they sound the pipe lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?
I dedicate this to all in my tree who fell in war, and to those who were left behind to grieve for the soldiers who fought for our freedom from tyranny, in the hope there will be a day we wake up as a race and realise the futility of war and fight no more with our fellow man.
