December Seminar: The Ancestors in (my) Druidry

[ElementalBeing]

Wow, that was some seminar, DJD. Thank you.

For me, my interest in ancestry started when I was feeling disillusioned with some of my present day family - not a brilliant start really, but have now lived nearly half my life in Cornwall, the "land of my fathers" and feel so much more in tune with the "spirit of place" here.

[DJ Droood]

Wow, that was some seminar, DJD. Thank you.

thank you!

[Donata]

Very impressive seminar! thank you!

I'm only sorry I can't test my father's line. He and his brothers are deceased, as is my only brother.
I will send for the kit for my mother's line.

My parents ancestors come from different countries so it would have been interesting to have both... sigh.

BB
Donata

[DJ Droood]

Very impressive seminar! thank you!

I'm only sorry I can't test my father's line. He and his brothers are deceased, as is my only brother.
I will send for the kit for my mother's line.

Thanks Donata! Are there any sons of your dad or his brothers you are close enough to to get a DNA swab? Their DNA "stuff" would be the same as your dad's.

[wolf560]

Very good article DJ..!!!

A lot of work went into this and I appreciate the effort and results.

One question; how much information came about from the DNA thing?

Thanks again

[DJ Droood]

Very good article DJ..!!!

A lot of work went into this and I appreciate the effort and results.

One question; how much information came about from the DNA thing?

Thanks again

Thanks!

The information from the DNA was interesting, in a "big picture" way...I know more about my "deep ancestory"...stuff like

Like I1a, I1c is believed to have originated during the Paleolithic, and to have taken refuge
from the Ice Age in Iberia. After wards, it spread into other portions of Europe,
especially The Low Countries, Germany and, possibly, the British Isles.

and

This haplotype may be Norse, Norman, Anglo-Saxon or even Flemish.
The hits are simply too far flung to suggest anything definitive.

So it is all about sample sizes and the information sort of trickles in and the picture very gradually focuses.

I've learned that not everyone with my family name has the same DNA profile..so they came from different ancestors...and there are many people with names that are not close to mine, but who have a very close genetic match, so I know we had a common ancestor, maybe 800 years ago, before surnames were common.

I think the tests are good for giving an overview, or answering specific questions, such as "Are Uncle Jack and Uncle Steve from the same dad" (assuming you can convince them to swab!), but they aren't a magic bullet that will crack open your family history.

[wolf560]

Thanks DJ,

We were hoping for something to solve a family debate but this probably isn't it.
Still very interesting all in all....

Our family question is as simple as it is complicated...
We know that we have both Scotch and Irish blood in our veins and we even know about when it all happened. Unfortunately the split in the name happened to a family name that is similar to ours at about the same time frame.

What it comes down to is slight but its still important to some of us.
Two family crests have been narrowed down to in our quest.
One with a dagger upright we expected to find based upon on Clan origination story.
Another with a boars head reclining which we believe is the same clan but decades later when we had another progenitor knighted for action in battle.

What we are trying to find out is whether or not the boars head event happened before or after the Irish clan partially migrated to Scotland. The two clans essentially reunited when both ended up living in the Appalachian Mountains centuries later.

Thanks again

[Huathe]

Mark,

You have mentioned North Carolina and the Appalachian Mountains in a couple of posts. Have you any connections with North Carolina or Appalachia?

[wolf560]

I'm visiting my kids in North Carolina right now.

Its where I retired back in 2002 and they elected to remain here and continue their education while I went out globe trotting....

My family history on my Fathers side is from Central/ Northern Virginia extending up into the Appalachians a bit.

My actual history extends on my Mothers side into Central America as well making for a very interesting family tree for ancestor worship.

[DJ Droood]

Our family question is as simple as it is complicated...
We know that we have both Scotch and Irish blood in our veins and we even know about when it all happened. Unfortunately the split in the name happened to a family name that is similar to ours at about the same time frame.

Scottish and Irish Dna is pretty much the same, except for a sprinkling of Viking here and there....mostly "R1b"...actually, most of Britain and Western Europe is R1b.

The tests are good for general family name research...say if your name is Mackay, or Mckay or McCoy, or Kay or some variation, you could get a test and then join an on-line "user group" that collects data on a specific family name, plus variations. http://www.familytreedna.com/public/MackayDNAproject/default.aspx So in the case of Mackay, the vast majority are classified as "subclade" R1b1b2, but a lot of the Macoys seem to be I1 (viking), but a guy named Kee seems to fit the "Irish" Mackay profile, so you might be able to dive to some conclusions, but personally, I think the data is still trickling in and you have to be prepared to update your theories constantly.

The closest match I have so far is 36 markers (meaning we probably have a common ancestor within 8 generations)with a guy from...oddly enough...North Carolina...who has an odd variation of our family name, but no obvious connection to the family, which came from New York. But this guy could trace his family in the Greensboro area to at least the early 1800's. I know I have an ancestor who campaigned with the British up and down the Carolinas in 1780. I wonder if this guy is from some long forgotten "war baby" branch of the family...so again, way more questions than answers, but good fun.

[wolf560]

Yes, the Irish and Scots are very seriously inter-connected.
My family line traces back through our Sept to the Campbell Clan..
...and we are still tracing it

(We spent several days at the Mormon Tabernacle open registry in Salt Lake a few weeks ago.... it was very illuminating indeed.)

Dal R'iadan is the Irish 5th century colony at Alba in western Scotland said to have (somehow) gotten possession of the Lia Fial (also known as the Stone of Destiny). This is the same stone known as the Stone of Scone which resides currently (supposedly) in the Throne of Scone in Westminster Abbey.

The story goes that one tuath from Ireland left to establish a colony in Scotland named Alba which later became known as Da Riada and eventually merged with existing Caledonii, Picts, Vikings, Danes, etc to become modern Scotland. Edward Longshanks is responsible for bringing the Stone of Destiny back to England so that he could show legitimacy in ruling over Scotland because he held possession of the stone.

[Huathe]

I'm visiting my kids in North Carolina right now.

Its where I retired back in 2002 and they elected to remain here and continue their education while I went out globe trotting....

My family history on my Fathers side is from Central/ Northern Virginia extending up into the Appalachians a bit.

My actual history extends on my Mothers side into Central America as well making for a very interesting family tree for ancestor worship.

Mark,

If you ever make it to Asheville, look me up!

[wolf560]

Asheville is AWESOME...!!!

We walked Grandfather Mountain and stayed at a park station nearby.
I have never had a more peaceful feeling than that.
I still have my twisted oak walking staff that I found up there.

I have no idea when we will be going back up there but we are definitely going back some day.
I will look you up my friend

[Huathe]

Mark,

If you ever make it back into the area, check out the Linville Gorge. It is located near Grandfather Mountain.

http://www.ents-bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=106&t=642

My post above has plenty of pictures!

H.E.

[DaRC]

Excellent seminar DJD I really enjoyed it.

My mum did (does) our family research she's done both her side and my dad's - although my dad's is a bit trickier as his family has always been more peasant / labourer based. Still it's funny how synchronicity works - just as she's working out that his family probably drifted down from northern Dorset (which raises the question of where did they start the southern drift) during the late medieval period I was busy investigating the start of Wessex in the early medieval period which archaeologists think had a similar pattern of movement from north to south.

One of the areas we've been concentrating more on recently is the family stories, rather than pure lineage, I find the stories more memorable and easier to pass onto my kids.

Once again thanks

[DJ Droood]

Once again thanks

Thank you!

[DJ Droood]

Geneticists at the Johns Hopkins University announced Monday that an estimated seven million people worldwide carry a distinctive genetic marker linking them to a single smooth-talking common ancestor.

According to the study, which analyzed blood samples from 4,000 participants in 17 countries, the lineage appears to have originated with a highly virile ninth-century Welsh nobleman known as Gwilym of Many Conquests.

"This is one of the largest diasporas known to have descended from a single progenitor," said head researcher Lawrence Ghilcrest, adding that DNA evidence now corroborates stories about the Welshman that historians once dismissed as myth. "To have propagated his genetic material so effectively, and across so much territory, we can only infer Gwilym was quite the charmer."

http://www.theonion.com/articles/7-mill ... smoo,2762/


Gentleman, I think our only shot at immortality is to become warlords. (although perhaps "conquests", in Gwilym's case, does not mean on the battlefield.)

[wolf560]

...our shot at immortality...

"To have propagated his genetic material so effectively, and across so much territory, we can only infer Gwilym was quite the charmer."

LOL...!!!

[Explorer]

Heh John,
I only now had time to sit back and read what you wrote and give it some proper attention. Good stuff

I always find it a very interesting subject, also because it is pretty hard to get yourself to be really honest about these things.
One of the beautiful paradoxes of druidry is that it both stimulates a meaningful awareness of our ancestry, and at the same time creates a web of 'celtic' fantasy about it. All of our direct ancestors where christians, so if we were to honour their spirituality and lifestyle to the max, then we would a be christians also.

I think that this awareness could remove the wannabe-celtic veils, along with the christian veils, and then let us look deeper. At our family and at bonds that go a bit more beyond spiritual and cultural indoctrination.
And I absolutely love the way you've decribed that. Combining DNA research with skrying your face in a mirror to access 'ancecstral memory'.
I haven't use that 'mirror' method before, but I've been contemplating pictures and fingerprints of my father and grandfathers. And I have noticed peculiar similarities in experiences when I 'went back' in different ways, sometimes very vivid, depending on which method I used.

My perspective is somewhat more local. I traced my ancestors back to the middle-ages right to the area where I live. There is no reason to believe that they came from far away in the previous millenia, so I regard the hill graves that are dotting this area as focal points for a more 'generic' connection to my ancestry, up to a point where they become the 'spirits of my blood'. I also wrote a song about that.
http://uilennest.net/sounds/SpiritsOfMyBlood.mp3

And at times this can become very tangible, even for a down-to-earth man like me who doesn't 'believe' in anything supernatural.
Last year I spend a night walking through the woods, without map, compas or anything electronic. Close to dawn i got lost in a thick fog, and in my exhausted trance-like state I called upon those ancestral spirits (strange how the ghostly silhouets of trees and bushes suddenly look so different then). I 'followed' the 'hints' and suddenly the fog cleared and I found myself on a hill surrounded by hill graves, looking over a sea of mist. Quite peculiar, because in the daytime these hils are hardly noticable because they are only few meters above the landscape.
And those experiences stick with you.

[Heddwen]

Hi, I just wanted to post here before it becomes archived. This fascinating subject can be explored in so many ways, I am compiling a 'patchwork' of stories from my lifetime and from the family elders in a creative writing autobiographical format which I hope to hand down to the family descendents.
I've read this seminar through many times I like the multifaceted approach with the DNA testing as I know that some of my ancestors travelled to the states and there are also links to cornwall, France (Hugenot) and the middle east.I try to honour this via the deities of those Lands including Christianity. I use sacred belly dance and storytelling as an expression of this and also Universal Dances of Peace.
I'm sure there is a high probability rate of some Gwilym activity in my past it wasn't unusual for the Welsh to have large families, so you never know.