Mahala Scott Wren with her descendants
It’s a cold, blustery Saturday evening, rye bread rising and everyone in the house torpid. For the first time this year, I had a
day with nothing on the schedule. Almost every Saturday has been taken up with
our final move into the new building, which was turning into Zeno’s move for a
while there. Two weeks ago, however, thanks to an awesome team, we completed
the last of it. A few tweaks here and there, and that was it: we have our
collections 100% under one roof for the first time in decades.
So Gene went birding and I stayed asleep this morning. After a late
rise, I came in here, looked out the window and there was a peregrine falcon on
the telephone pole. It flew past so close that I could count its primaries.
Apparently, it was the best bird of the day, and I didn’t have to leave the
house or even put down the tea. We leave for the annual crane trip in 4 weeks,
weather permitting, so I'm birding in slothful comfort while I can.
I’ve signed up for a community education class to learn Lakota 101. I have
no illusions that I will ever be a fluent speaker, or even a Tarzan-level speaker, but I’m fascinated by the
language and the culture of our Lakota friends and colleagues here. This should
give them much amusement. It's nice to give your friends something to laugh at.
I’ve been catching up on a number of things—grant applications, plans
for the next few months, rearranging the sewing space—and indulging myself by
spending a little time with the genealogy project. Lately I’ve been mired in
fractious medieval relatives, if they are in fact relatives, which some of them
appear to be multiple times over. Genealogy is not a good pursuit for those who do
not wish to untangle the results of intermarriages between cousins. The on-line
resources are not as useful as one could wish when one is trying to determine
if a relative is a direct ancestor, a cousin, or both. I seem to keep running
into “both.” The Brits in particular seem to have a cheerful lack of boundaries
here. I’ve been known to yell at them
when the family trees start looking like kudzu.
The names fascinate me. I’ve been keeping a loose list of Names You
Just Never See Any More. Here are a few from the files. These are all my relatives,
if I’ve done this correctly, so I am not presenting this in a mean-spirited
way. Quite the opposite—I’d like to see some of these in use again. Note: “Some.”
- Adeliza
- Antiocha (Hawkwood—may be one of the best names in the family)
- Clorinda
- Dulcenia
- Bertrade
- Egidia
- Rohese
- Eschyna
- Fluvia
- Hawise
- Mahala (occurs 6 times in the files so far)
- Osburga
- Permelia
- Telethia
- Petronilla
- Pinthy
- Rothais
- Leuca
- Frethesanda
- Kynion
- Littleberry
- Green Berry (Moon and Savage)
- Zilphia
The virtues: Comfort, Deliverance, Pleasant (Moon—another great name),
Charity, Please, Increase, Rest, the lovely Rachel Obedience Rosebloom, and my
particular favorite, Thankful Shears, which I will use as a business name if
this quilting thing takes off.
The British lines tend to taper off in the 10th century unless Vikings are involved, in which case the lines can go back in time several more centuries. Say what you will about their pillaging--they kept good records of it.
There are no fewer than 8 women named Martha Patsy. I am finding out that Patsy was a
common nickname for Martha, as Polly and Molly were for Marty and Sally was for
Sarah. I am not sure how you get Patsy out of Martha. This goes back at least
as far as Thomas Jefferson’s daughter and seems to be an American thing.
But my new favorite relative’s name is Devorguilla, or Dervorgilla, which
sounds like a 1950s creature feature but is actually a Latinization of
Dearbhfhorghaill. Of course it is. It’s supposed to be much easier to say.
Right. I've also found a Derbforgaill later on, when consonants were harder to come by, apparently, so it was not a one-time thing. Gaelic cannot be harder than Icelandic or Lakota, can it?
And the best name (twice) in the online hints is one I can’t really cite as a
name, but has to have a killer story behind it. Ghilo DePinkney of Scotland is
linked to the following records:
Father: Ghilo DePinkney (980-1030)
Mother: Agitated Lady of Scotland
(980-1030)
Spouse: Agitated Lady of Scotland
(1021-1130)
This is for real. I am not sure what this means, but somebody must have found it
difficult to live with somebody. Maybe somebody was too close to somebody else’s
cousins. It gets cold in Scotland. Agitatedly yours, sys
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