From: chris@dickinson.uk.net   
      
   On Monday, 23 April 2018 13:15:00 UTC+1, Doug Laidlaw  wrote:   
      
       
   > My wife's cousin, a Bernie, believed that their Bernies are descended    
   > from Wallace's affair with the princess depicted on Braveheart.  But    
   > Blind Harry's epic, the earliest "source," written 100 years after the    
   > event, says that the partner was the Queen of England, Edward's wife. To    
   > cap it all off, their Bernies are not Scottish, but Irish from Dublin.    
   > A movie needs a love interest.  There was an equally impossible legend    
   > that the ancestor was a sea-captain.  In his marriage registration, he    
   > is a merchant.   
      
      
   Are either examples so improbable?   
      
   Dublin is very much within range of the west coast of Scotland, both   
   physically and, I assume, genealogically.   
      
   I'm not sure that there is so much difference between a sea-captain and a   
   merchant. The master of a merchant vessel would have traded on his own behalf   
   as well as carrying merchandise for others - and, if his ship was taken into   
   government service in    
   wars against the Spanish, Dutch or the French, would have been proud to wear   
   the label 'Captain' (let alone such usage by the EIC).   
      
   Chris   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)