Geneology - What's yours?

[ChattanCat]

We really shouldn't get too wrapped up in legitimising our clan connections. Genealogy is one thing, but trying to connect patronymics to specific clans is quite another. There was a time in the 19C when writers and root-finders, all excited about the new romantic Victorian image of Highland Scotland, went off and rustled names from all over the map.

Whether you investigate your past is your decision. I have and enjoy the history and knowing what,where and when I can trace my past fathers.

[ThistleDown]

For sure, Wallace. What I was trying to say was that genealogy is a science and it can be hugely frustrating for anyone if he mixes that up with sept-attachment. There's a heap of evidence supporting a Cattenach origin in Badenoch, and probably Lochaber, even before they appeared in Dee-side/Don-side in the early 15C (see my post 22 in this thread). That makes your attachment to Clan Chattan a foregone conclusion. But for someone with the name Gow, for example, the lists claim it to also be of Clan Chattan. There was a family named Gow in Badenoch, but the name is simply Gaelic (gobha) for smith and most glens had one of those. How frustrating for a Gow to spend years believing he is a Macpherson, only to successfully trace his ancestry to Argyll or Caithness!

[ChattanCat]

For sure, Wallace. What I was trying to say was that genealogy is a science and it can be hugely frustrating for anyone if he mixes that up with sept-attachment. There's a heap of evidence supporting a Cattenach origin in Badenoch, and probably Lochaber, even before they appeared in Dee-side/Don-side in the early 15C (see my post 22 in this thread). That makes your attachment to Clan Chattan a foregone conclusion.

That is some great information. Do you have a source that you can share?

[ThistleDown]

That is some great information. Do you have a source that you can share?

One source? No. Nobody has written 800 years on the Cattanachs (or could), to my knowledge. Visit the sites I suggested in #22 of this thread, or somehow get a copy of AM Mackintosh's "The Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan" (1880, edited and privately republished 1903), or the "Kinrara MS" in Latin of about 1670 (this might be translated and published in English in 2009 or 2010, with luck), but the best source of all: spend time in Badenoch and hear the tales, the legends, the myths -- wonderful! If you decide to do that sometime very soon, I'll introduce you to some Cattanach folk. You will buy the rounds -- all but one of them, mind you -- so be prepared. But you will have a smile on your face for days afterwards. And then you will enter that dazed period while you struggle to recall all that you have heard and subconsciously learned.

That's not genealogy, of course; it's social anthropology and living history. In the meanwhile, keep working backwards in time until the two meet.