"Modern Clans" Sorry I don't get it?

[Andy Proffitt]

You are comparing two different animals. One was, essentially, a family based unit for economic and military purposes, the other is a romanticized social club, for people who love their Scottish ancestry, history, etc.

The modern Clans are more like Rotary or the Elks than they are like their old namesakes. People join to make connection with other like minded/interested people who are their kin (whether they are or not). They can get together, dress up in a kilt, have a meal, talk about history and the like and think they are a clan. But few if anyone that belongs to one today feels any fealty to the Chief. No member of a clan is going to have taxes levied on him, or march off against the Campbells. That was the old Clan.

The Old Clan system you speak of is in the same state as Carthage, and was in the days of your Grandfather. It was done in on Drumossie Moor and buried by sheep. It lives only in books and the imaginations of members of the Modern Clans. So, if you want to, you can take it less serious and join an association.....or not. Membership in a Clan is no barometer of your love of your heritage.

[Pyper]

My G-Grandmother used to ask the guys, when they got to reminiscing, "Well if Scotland was so great, why did we leave?"

I'm a member of the Clan Macpherson Association (one of the largest in the USA). It's really just a social organization. We get together at the games, talk about things, share some food, and go home.

[MacBean]

I'd be interested in hearing which "small town outside of Inverness". Some of us hail from the same locale.

Night before last I was watching a documentary on building the Titanic. Some hearty souls in Belfast were remaking the prow section as a memorial, and making it the old way. They bent the steel ribs. They cut the steel plates. And the hammered in the red hot steel rivets. They even had a hat man (supervisor with bowler hat) who docked their pay for every mistake, or slacking. I think four men died building the Titanic. Their pay was miserable.

Imagine someone heating the rivets at the forge, and then throwing them, red hot, at you. They were hammered in by two men while a third man dampened the blows from the other side. As they cooled they tightened. If the work was substandard, the ship would leak. In the case of the Titanic, it seems something wasn't right with the riveting.

There's a very cool interactive web site on Building the Titanic here. The show was on National Geographic Channel. I'd never seen anything that drove home what it might have been like to work in the shipyards.

There are good videos at the above site worth viewing. Here is one for example: http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...ideos/10322_00

[SouthernCelt]

Pyper,

For a lot of us Scottish-Americans it was not our choice to leave. Our ancestors were forcibly transported to the new world and we never went back.
I've been to Scotland, had a great time and I'm willing to go back, unfortunately making a living takes priority.

[Gael Ridire]

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.

[O'Callaghan]

<snip>

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.

Thanks for mentioning Irish clans.

In the early 17th century, then chief Conoghor O'Callaghan tried to get all the clan's lands transferred to him by legal action, and mostly failed, but succeeded in getting the chief's lands transferred to his personal ownership, which under the English system of primogeniture (itself since abolished, even in England) was the same thing, but under the system of tanistry hadn't been the same thing atall.

He probably hoped that he could do what many (all?) Scottish chiefs had done, and turn his clansmen into mere tenants, but Ireland was under English law and Scotland was and is under (Roman-based) civil law. The clan system was based on the Brehon law, which no longer governed on either side of the Irish sea, making the traditional land rights of the clans no longer enforceable.

Then, when Cromwell came, the chief and his close family were forced off their land near Mallow, Co. Cork, but given land in Co. Clare, leaving the ordinary clansmen behind in Cork. So, they didn't become landless due to Cromwell (although others may not have been so lucky), but were merely split up and moved around, bad enough as that may be.

However, later on (18th century?) there was a ban on all Catholics from owning land unless they converted to Church of Ireland, only repealed in 1840, by when the damage would already have been done. The potato famine came right after that, and rather than being in any position to buy land, tenant farmers were largely forced to emigrate. My own forebears were sailors by that time, still in Cork, but a couple of them wound up in England by way of the Royal Navy.

There was a clan society based in Mallow, in the area where the clan lands had been, but AFAIK it is defunct, and I've no inclination to start a new one here in the US, only because it sounds too much like hard work, and not because of any dastardly dealings by Chief Conoghor O'Callaghan in the 17th century.

The line of chiefs in Clare died out, and succession passed to a line that had fled to Spain, now blessed with the title of Don as well as Chief. If there were a clan society I doubt if they would participate, and I am not sure whether they are in a line descended from the dastardly Conoghor or not. I'd be willing to bet that I'm not, though!

[Gael Ridire]

Interesting story. Is it worth trying to get one's clan society founded? I tried back in 1997, founded a society and met with the clan chief twice to discuss development. Two years into the project a fellow in California didn't like how our website was and went and founded a rival society and got the chief's support also. Not wanting two society's I folded. He ran the website for ten years, did the surname DNA project and found out he had the surname but not the DNA. He resigned, the chief saw that money couldn't be made and was going to fold it all up when another persuaded him to let him try. I then got a call to help the new one, and being a sucker I said okay. I believe one should know their history & if I can help make that easier then cool.

My experience is that only a few care. Folks may join but only be active for a year or two. It must be a labor of love for those involved, because again there's no money in it, no pat on the back, no recognition, and few really care. What I have done is created a blog & posting all my writing, research, etc., about the history of the clan, etc. It is all for free to those who are interested. http://houseofbrianboru.blogspot.com/

So it is up to you to decide what to do.

[Meggers]

I don't think I have a clan to research back to at all. My last name is a Scottish occupational last name and not tied to a particular clan, really. All my last name really tells me was the occupation of an ancestor forever ago.