CLSNA' LamontCentral Forum

I don't know how many of you are acquainted with the music of Dougie MacLean from Perthshire, but no doubt you've heard the Song Caledonia - he wrote it and many other wonderful songs.

Here's part of an article I found on the Ulster-Scot Forum about Genealogy, and it lists the Lamonts as one of the antecedent clans of Dougie MacLean.


bit old but worth reading


Wha dae ye think ye are?
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/feature … 5476659.jp
Scotland has what are widely considered to be the best public records and research facilities in the world, with websites such as Scotland’s People, which includes the General Register Office’s resources. Picture: Jon Savage

Published Date: 21 July 2009
By Jim Gilchrist

DOUGIE MacLean may be best known for his anthem Caledonia, but another song from his prolific output contains the lines "I'm talking with my father, he's talking with his son, / And I don't need to look any further for the one I have become…"
Later this week, however, the Perthshire based singer-songwriter does indeed look much further, as he goes public with his family history at the International Genealogy Festival, which opens at Strathclyde University today.

As well as MacLean, the Glasgow-born BBC Newsnight presenter Gavin Esler will o turn the limelight on his Ulster Scots and German Lutheran ancestors. Both are taking part in a four-day programme of lectures, workshops and introductory sessions on the "nuts and bolts" of genealogy, all of it open to the public. The event is the university's contribution to the Scotland's Year of Homecoming, and a recognition of how widely popular family history has become over the past decade or two.

Any genealogical revelations – or unlooked for skeletons in family cupboards – will be revealed at two sessions hosted by BBC broadcaster Janice Forsyth today (Esler) and Friday (MacLean), and will be broadcast at a later date on BBC Radio Scotland's Radio Café. Dr Bruce Durie, director of the university's genealogy course – possibly the only professional postgraduate course of its kind – who has been working on MacLean and Esler's family histories, agrees that, "as composer of Caledonia, the anthem of Homecoming, it's particularly apt that Dougie MacLean is tracing his roots."

As many of his songs suggest, MacLean is an artist who is particularly rooted in his Perthshire and wider Highland background. He lives and has his recording studio in the former village primary school at Butterstone, outside Dunkeld, which he and his father both attended. He knows the lie of the land and its ancestral voices, and it comes as no surprise to learn that he has done some family research of his own in the past. "I'm fascinated by it all," he says, "and over the years I've done a fair bit of work on it myself, or as much as an individual can, so it's really exciting to get involved with the professionals to fill in some of the blanks."

MacLean's father and his Gaelic-speaking grandfather both worked on Perthshire estates, and while Durie is keeping any revelations about his star subjects' genealogies close to his chest until the festival, he says the singer's Highland connections go way back: "Dougie's antecedents are in Argyll and the West Highlands on one side, and Ross-shire on the other, with a sprinkling of family from Northamptonshire. They were Gaelic-speaking and intimately connected with the land – shepherds, gamekeepers, agricultural labourers, and they knew the sweep of the landscape and the turning of the seasons that run through his work today. Their names – MacLean, McGregor, Menzies, MacDonald, Campbell, Lamont, McIntyre – are virtually a roll-call of Highland clans."

And as a performer who once rolled a vintage "wee grey Fergie" tractor on to the stage of the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, as part of his Rural Image Celtic Connections extravaganza, MacLean is clearly steeped in his heritage – although whether or not a musical gene runs through his family tree won't be revealed until Friday.

MacLean, who will take the stage in Holyrood Park this weekend at The Gathering, is philosophical about any surprises. "I've had a chat with Bruce Durie, and he's taken it on a good bit more from where I got, but he hasn't told me yet. My family were all rural folk, so they probably didn't get up to anything spectacular, though I asked him to make sure there's no sheep stealing," he laughs. "But really, I think it will be fascinating."



• The International Genealogy Festival is at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, from today until Friday. For further information, see www.strath.ac.uk/homecomingscotland or tel: 0141-548 4147

SO FAR as investigating family history is concerned, Scotland boasts the best maintained public records and research facilities of any country in the world, and much is now accessible online. However, start your search by speaking to relatives and consult any family documents available. When looking for basic information about when and where your forebears lived, elderly relatives are worth talking to before you go online.

Essential sites include Scotland's People www.scotlandspeople.gov.ukwhich offers records of births and deaths from 1855 to 2006 and marriages from 1855 to 1933, plus births and baptisms, banns and marriages and deaths and burials from 1538 to 1854, as well as a searchable database of Scottish wills and testaments from 1513 to 1901.

The National Archives of Scotland www.nas.gov.uk holds land and probate records for Scotland, including wills, and parish court and kirk session records from 1550 onwards, addressing family law, poor relief, education and more.

The recently opened Scotland's People Centre at the east end of Edinburgh's Princes Street combines the resources of the General Register Office for Scotland, National Archives of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon. For more details, see www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk

Local archives, libraries and family history societies are also indispensable. There is also a useful introduction on the UK & Ireland Genealogy website: www.genuki.org.uk