Probably the best thing our ancestors did was make the decision to leave the home fires and go to the New World, either forced or by choice. Their descendants are better off then if they had stayed put. Of course that's my opinion.

To the one who sent to all their grandfather's memoirs, way to go!

Being the only child, of an only child, of an only child, I yearn for relatives, for kin. The clan/games gathering is a big picnic, hopefully all will feel it as a family reunion. The role the clan society now serves as is to preserve the clan history, genealogy, and accomplices of the clan members. And I've seen a time or two where the clan society rallied around a member who was in a hurtin' way. A rare thing indeed, but I wouldn't depend on it.

To me the Clan system died in Scotland at the end of the Jacobite era, then came the Highland clearances. As for Ireland, it was two hundred years earlier with Henry VIII and his "surrender & re-grant" program that began in 1543 A.D. Part of the agreement was giving up the Gaelic way of dress, language, music, religion, etc. Then a hundred years later came Oliver Cromwell who made sure that no child could trace who his grandfather was in documents and thus stand up and rally the clan around his banner.

Ya, today's clans are a romantic re-invention. Even some of today's chiefs could care less. At first I was sucked into all the romantic opinions, but being interested in history I went searching for myself and learned a lot along the way about what is truth and err. But without those societies and those like them, I'm afraid that in later generations we will all be just one society without a remembrance of history, or at least some would have it this way. I do like what one Irish chief said about charging membership, "We [newly formed society] are not going to charge for what is one's birthright." And what a visiting Scot said to me on discovering in a park near his hotel, "Thank God for ye Yanks! (Scottish diaspora descendants) For when the traditions of Scotland are gone, they'll still be around here."

And the beauty of it all today, you can choose to be a part or not.