2:176, #480: Scottish Sexton

I've a new favorite song these days, "Loch Lomond," as sung by the accappella group, Stanford Fleet Street Singers. You probably are familiar with the phrase "you take the high road and I'll take the low road," but did you know the story behind the song? It turns out two Scots were captured trying to join the Jacobite Uprising of 1745 to support Bonnie Prince Charlie's bid for the Crown. One was sentenced to death while the other was set free. The song tells how the spirit of the one would take the "low road" of death and get to Scotland before the survivor walked the "high[land] road" back home. Youtube's got some great stuff regarding the story as well as some excellent renditions of the song.

I'm thinking that maybe my preference for flannel shirts is a genetic predisposition from my Scottish Murray roots that I get through my maternal grandfather's lineage that he traced back to a John Murray around 1835...Nope, you Reformed Knee Jerkers...not THE John-I've-got-a-compassionate-glass-eye Murray of Westminster Seminary fame!! Well, while watching "Braveheart" all 15 times, I figured one on my ancestors, who it turns out might have been Sir Andrew Murray according to one Murray Clan website, fought with blue face paint, while great great, etc. grandfather Sexton put down his shovel from burying the dead and joined up with Edward the Longshanks to invade Scotland.

Further research indicates the Murray Clan found its roots in the loins of Freskin de Moravia, a Flemish noble who helped cross pollinate the Highlands with some Bonnie Lassies of the Hills. Flemish folks are from around Flanders, Belgium which came out of Germanic tribes of the Franks and Celtic-Germanic Belgae; which goes to show that my ancestors would humpdy dumpdy with just about anybody! ;p So, along with my Scottish antecedents, I've got Gallic, Celtic, Russian, Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, and who knows what else.

So, as a Mutt American, I have a "lot of Gaul" as a Philly driver, love beans and Franks, know how to work the Angles on a problem, know how to put English on a cue ball, and get off Scot-free from my trespasses and sins in Christ.

Got heraldic shields and kilts?