X Marks the Scot - An on-line community of kilt wearers.
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30th August 10, 10:15 PM
#6
I'll add an additional word of caution. People often dive into things head first, only to discover they're at the shallow end of the pool. As an "official" representative of a clan, family, or other group, people will often take what you say as gospel. There are many tales of people, so enthused about their Scottish heritage, that go and get "their" clansman's crest badge tattooed prominently (and permanently) on their body only to discover the link was tenuous at best.
While I have no such tattoos myself, I have a similar story. At a festival in Nova Scotia we were told by someone that the Swan family is a Sept of the Gunn Clan and only the Gunn clan. I was later gifted a couple of crest pins and a tie in the Gunn tartan, all of which I was quite glad to receive. I started studying the clan's history (including the long feud with the Keiths!) and really diving into it when it occurred to me that I hadn't seen a single mention of a Swan in all that reading.
Further research showed that the link of the Swans to the Gunn Clan founder was probably not accurate and that, had the genealogy been as stated, the clan would have been Clan Swan with the Gunns acting as a sept or being a separate clan altogether. It turns out that very few people with the surname Swan actually lived in Gunn territory, the name was added to the list of septs because Thurso had a large number of Swansons (who were probably descended from other Norse settlers and not from the Sweyn of Clan Gunn fame). It turns out that most Highland Swans would have been associated with the much smaller MacQueen clan (which makes sense since MacQueen possibly shares its root with the Swan surname).
Had the gentleman at that particular festival done his research, he at least would have known that Swans were also a sept of Clan MacQueen and could have mentioned that we'd need to do a bit of research to know exactly where our family belongs.
To this day I have relatives who insist we belong in Clan Gunn, though that now seems very unlikely.
The moral of that excessively long story? Tattoo removal is painful and expensive!
Last edited by Cygnus; 31st August 10 at 05:55 AM.
Reason: typographical error correction
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