Our origins revisited
I have speculated here from time to time on our Raitt origins and the material I have put on the Raitt DNA pages discusses our origins and our to some extent. Something I read recently prompted me to revisit the famous Declaration of Arbroath, drawn up in 1320. And I was astonished, for here it confirms (or, more correctly, predates) what much later writers (such as Stephen Oppenheimer in his book The Origins of the British) have written about where we came from – travelling up the coast from the Basque region.
“….we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. It journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage peoples, but nowhere could it be subdued by any people, however barbarous. Thence it came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to its home in the west where it still lives today. The Britons it first drove out, the Picts it utterly destroyed, and, even though very often assailed by the Norwegians, the Danes and the English, it took possession of that home with many victories and untold efforts; and, as the histories of old time bear witness, they have held it free of all servitude ever since. In their kingdom there have reigned one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, the line unbroken by a single foreigner.”
It would appear that if you are Scottish, you are probably descended at least in part from people who lived in Scotland at the time of the Roman invasion nearly 2000 years ago (and probably long before that) – a mixture of Gaels (Scots), Picts, Britons, Norse and Angles. The centre and Eastern parts of Scotland, in particular, were the ancient stomping grounds of the Picts. These lands include those of Angus and the Mearns (where our named Raitt ancestors later resided) and it is illuminating to read in the New Statistical Account of Scotland for Forfar and the Mearns (dated 1833) that “It has been remarked, that the people of Angus, as well as that of Aberdeen and the Mearns, are in many respects different from the rest of the Scottish nation. These counties having been the chief part of the Pictish kingdom, it is probable that they retain the greatest share of the characteristics of that peculiar people.”
Now, of course, the Raitts were there many centuries after the Picts disappeared from history – but through intermarriages of the Raitts who came from Nairn with the local inhabitants, then Pictish genes no doubt have continued on down the line. It is such a pity we cannot, with certainty, go back further in time than two or three centuries to know who exactly our ancestors were. I have recently pushed back my maternal (mtDNA) line a couple of generations to around 1690 in Angus – but since the date and place of birth and the parents of the lady in question are not known, then the trail ends there at the moment. My paternal (yDNA) line definitely goes back to around the 1730s, probably to those known Raitts of St Vigeans/Arbroath in the 1690s, in all likelihood to the Raits of Hallgreen in the Mearns in the 1500s, and quite possibly to the de Rathes of Rait Castle in the 13th century. Of course, proving it is another matter and anyway even those earliest ancestors are still many generations away from those who they are descended from. Frustrating!
Monday, 16 April 2012