I wouldn't be here if there hadn't been some hanky-panky at Muirhead Farm near Larbert, Scotland

(Yes, in this blog we learn what the hired help does when the boss isn't looking.)

I consider myself primarily Scottish (since my last name is Cairns), but I'm really 1/4 German, with the other 3/4 divided unequally among English, Welsh, and Scottish. My clan is Robertson, or Clan Donnachaidh (which I cannot pronounce but would like to be able to).

 

My grandpa Cairns, Thomas Graham Cairns, occasionally told us that his mom, Agnes Graham Robertson Cairns, told him we were descended from King Robert the Bruce, III, of Scotland; this descent was through her side of the family, and as Grandpa tells it, his dad didn't like the story and his mom would only share it when he wasn't around.

I don't know if it's true, but I do believe that Grandpa Cairns and his mom believed it was.There are Bruces and Robertsons scattered throughout that branch.

My Grandpa Cairns said his mom Agnes could bake on a wood stove the best cherry pie you ever ate; depending on how old Grandpa was when that memory was created, it could have been Chicago, or a number of small towns in Canada, like Barrie, Ontario, (where the Cairnses originally emigrated[1]), but Great Grandma Agnes's skills in the kitchen were surely learned in Stirlingshire, Scotland, which seems to be the region that side of the family comes from.

Grandpa's father died when Grandpa was a boy, in his teens, I believe, but old enough by that time to be working. His father fell out of tree while picking apples, broke his back, and slowly wasted away in a hospital. Grandpa said it was a very hard to watch him die slowly that way. I would like to have asked more about what a hospital was like in those days, how often he visited, wisdom his father left him, that sort of thing. But I could tell that even after all those years, he was uncomfortable with the memory.

I understand.[2]

Despite my heritage, I've poorly understood the political complexity of The British Isles, which is the politically correct term for the geographical region that includes Great Britain and Ireland.

While working on copy for an international foods area of my company's website, I did some research. This is an excellent and short video:

The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained

More here.

[1]
As it happens, my Grandpa Cairns's father, Alex, was born illegitimately in Bannockburn, Scotland; he took his mom's last name, "Cairns," and was raised by her brother, his uncle David. David moved to Canada with little Alex, and Alex’s biological mom Janet stayed in Scotland. Alex apparently used the last name "Wilson" occasionally, his biological dad's last name, but after a trip back to Scotland to see his mom, he returned to Canada and kept the name Cairns for good.

(The name "Wilson" still shows up a lot in my family, however, including my dad's middle name.)

There's a lot more to it, of course, but that's the gist. Had things been different, perhaps I'd have been a "Wilson" and living in Scotland, which, nearing the fuzzy end of the lollipop as I am, sounds kind of nice. (Apologies to Marilyn Monroe).

As it happens, the Wilson that lent his sperm to my gene pool ended up marrying a domestic servant, and great-great-grandma Janet married a hammerman (a metal worker or blacksmith ). Janet was also a domestic servant, and the man she married, Joseph Sharp, a laborer, so it doesn't seem there was any class embarrassment.

However, when Alex went back to Scotland to visit his biological mom Janet, he certainly met or learned about the Wilson side of his DNA, and for whatever reason settled on "Cairns" as the name he wanted to keep.

It may be Great Grandpa Alex didn't like all that King Robert the Bruce stuff because any talk of ancestors may have revealed more about his own past than he liked.

It's interesting to look back and realize I wouldn't be here if there hadn't been some hanky-panky between Janet Cairns and Alexander Wilson at Muirhead Farm near Larbert, Scotland. There's a similar story on my mom's side regarding a brown-eyed gardener who played a mean fiddle, but that one's not documented far as I know.

Aren’t you glad you read footnotes?

[2]
Dad asked Mom before he died if we thought we had good childhoods. I told Mom that yes, of course, we did, but I couldn't bring myself to tell Dad that without breaking down.

Next time.

Besides, he knows my heart now.

Started: 2012-02-23