Arms and the Red Hand of Ulster – 2nd in a small series

Sometimes I end up with so much egg on my face, you could scrap it off and feed the starving masses, or at least satisfy an undiscriminating family pet. It is part of what comes from being a solo researcher. At the best of times, when I wander off the well trodden path, I find unexpected treasures; other times there is the aforementioned egg. 

You don’t have to dip your toes very deeply into research about Sir Thomas Jackson to know that he was fiercely proud of his Irish heritage and felt a profound connection to his homeland in South Armagh. Nor, do you have to go very far in learning about Ireland to hear about the Red Hand of Ulster.

It is just that putting the two of these things together when decoding the symbolism included in Jackson’s Armorial Bearing, well, just lets say that is one of those egg on face times. I have to confess that I even waded in and made mention of the significance of this connection when I gave a talk in Monaghan a few years ago. Thankfully, the audience was kind.

Armorial Bearings of Sir Thomas Jackson - granted 1902

When I first saw the original parchment version of the arms granted to Sir Thomas, my eye immediately leapt to the red hand in the upper left hand corner of the shield. From my place of ignorance, I was convinced that I knew why it had been put there: another instance of Sir Thomas’ expression of his Irish pride – perhaps even an instance of his family’s connections with political subversion. I subsequently learned two important things about the Red Hand of Ulster in Armorial bearings.

Firstly, it seems that since 1922 all new and reconfigured Baronets in Great Britain use the Red Hand of the O'Neills to indicate they are recognized as Baronets in North Ireland as well as in other parts of Great Britain. The use of the red hand in a family crest is not indicative of an Ulster heritage, or being on any particular side of the sectarian struggles, only that the peerage is recognized in the North of Ireland.

One of the best written versions of the Red Hand of Ulster and its place in Irish mythology is told by Derek Lundy in The Bloody Red Hand: A Journey Through Truth, Myth and Terror inNorthern Ireland. I bought my copy in Dublin in 2006, where the same book was titled Men that God Made Mad. Both titles are a perfect fit. I subsequently met Derek at a wedding on Saltspring and discovered that not only is he a fine writer, but he is also a fine musician and a motorcycle aficionado – an obsession he shares with my husband.

Lundy tells two versions of the story. In the first, an Irishman named O’Neill has teamed with Viking raiders, is seeking plunder and is in one of several longboats fast approaching the shores of Ireland. The deal is that the first man to touch land with hand or foot wins all: land, booty, women, slaves – you name it. In the second version, the two rivals with similar goals in mind, are representatives of two Scottish clans: The MacDonnells and the O’Neills. In both versions, the key protagonist is about to lose to unnamed others who are a few paddle strokes ahead. In each version, this is so unacceptable that the protagonist severs his hand with one swift sword blow and throws it ashore onto the sand before anyone else can make the leap. Each version has the freshly amputated victor claim the bloody hand for their family crest – the O’Neill’s family crest in the first version and the MacDonnells of Antrim in the second.

Of course, Ireland being the land of storytellers, there are several other versions of this tale. I have also found that it is quite common that the teller will be absolutely convinced that he is in possession of the only correct version. 

Just to complicate things even further, the red hand was also a symbol for the son of an ancient Gaelic Sun God as well as being a symbol in church iconography of the open right hand associated with the early Christian God. That alone should tell us a lot about both the tenacity and shape-shifting qualities of such myths.

The second thing that I learned about the Red Hand of Ulster and its use in Armorial Bearings is that it is important to be clear about when to use the left hand and when to use the right hand. If you are designing an Ulster flag, you need to be sure that the red hand is a right hand; if you are crafting Armorial Bearings for baronets or the Irish Society, it is a left hand. It’s a way of keeping you on your toes – even when you are sober.

The Red Hand of Ulster's a paradox quite,

To Baronets 'tis said to belong;

If they use the left hand, they're sure to be right,

And to use the right hand would be wrong.

For the Province, a different custom applies,

And just the reverse is the rule;

If you use the right hand you'll be right, safe and wise,

If you use the left hand you're a fool.

Going back to the myth, whether it was a left handed man who cut off his right hand, or a right-handed man, I don’t know. The myth is also silent on how he managed to drop the knife, pick his severed hand up off the gunwales, and then toss it ever so deftly and definitively. Perhaps whoever it was, he was ambidextrous, not unlike the way that such stories often are in Ireland.

For more on Sir Thomas JACKSON see: Wiki

Crests and Coats of Arms – 1st in a small series

Family crests need to be taken with a grain of salt. They stand on a foundation not of absolute truth, but on a foundation of a kind of truth that I call an as if truth. They were often used in preliterate times as banners to identify various sides in the midst of battle, and then became part of the economic system where the eldest son inherited the farm. They were often used as a kind of shorthand for tracking where important people belonged, and hence determined inheritance.

The as if part of all this is the implicit assumption that the eldest son is actually the biological heir. The truth is, of course, frequently other than that. The percentage of under-the-cover paternity events is small, some say about 1%, but the multiplier effect of this over generations is considerable. DNA tests are beginning to shed new light on this.

Even in families such as mine, who have old photos of an ancestral g-g-g-grandmother decked out in a lace Presbyterian cap and posing with her bible in her lap, well, such things happened even in families such as this. The effect on the biological validity of family trees is substantial enough that the only meaningful use of family crests, aside from pride, is to indicate the family line that people believe they belong to.

Being human, having a workable story is good enough for most of us. After all, we tend to rely on lots of as if to make sense of the world. For example, our legal system functions on the basis that it makes sense to assign individual guilt or innocence, even though we know full well that culture, economics, gender, genetics and a whole slew of other factors make this somewhat meaningless. Not that I would advocate throwing out our entire legal system simply because it stands on the clay feet of as if. It is like democracy - we haven’t come up with anything better yet.

A second important fact to understand about family crests is the way that they get created and how decisions are made about what elements to include. It is a bit like sausage making. It might feel more ennobling to simply enjoy the end product without seeing how it was created. At least, in many cases this is true.

I was at a literary event in Sechelt a few months ago, chatting with novelist, Theresa Kitchkan and told her about my curiosity about a sheldrake which was included in Sir Thomas Jackson’s crest. Was it because he was related to other Jackson families who had sheldrakes in their family crests? One of Theresa’s sons works with the Canadian Heraldic Authority, and few days later, he set me straight on a few things. At the same time, he quite reasonably diminished my hopes for using family crests to solve the question of which line of JACKSONs mine might reasonably think that they belong to.

My guess is that you are correct about the sheldrake being a reference to earlier Jackson arms, but it does not necessarily imply a direct connection to any particular Jackson line.  It is a very common practice in heraldry to use particular symbols or colours to indicate that individuals share a surname even if they are not closely related to each other.

Obviously, the little that I know about heraldic traditions and conventions would fit into a thimble. That being said, when I served on Mission City Council back in the late 1980s, I did have a brief inside look at one example of how arms are designed – at least in Canada. 

District of Mission, BC, Canada - Coat of Arms

It was a fairly new thing for municipalities to have municipal arms, and Canada’s Chief Herald, Robert Watt, paid us a visit with his rough draft of what Mission’s first Coat of Arms might look like. He had paid close attention to our history and therefore the elements that would be suitable for us, and had come with a draft proposal. As I listened, it became clear to me that there was something of a cookie cutter element in heraldry, but also that Watt was not a cookie cutter kind of guy. He wanted to know: What did we think? What did we want?

Since Mission as a town had begun as a Catholic mission run by the Oblates, the cross that Watt had placed in the center of the shield made total sense, but I asked it if could be a less generic kind of cross. He asked if I had something particular in mind. Sure, I said, take a look at the steel crosses in the cemetery up at the Abbey.  Well, he did, and as a result you can see the specific kind of cross used by the Oblates etched in gold and superimposed on the background of a larger green cross. This was a design that was new to heraldry. We broke new ground.

Watt was also kind enough to consider the addition of strawberries. For me, this was a nod to the pre-WWII farmers, many of whom were of Japanese extraction. Unfortunately, their farms were all seized after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and they were shipped off to internment camps, and never properly compensated for their losses. Their history is part of what I remember when I look at the strawberry flowers included at the base of the shield.

The story of Mission encompasses many cultures, and many narratives, and so it is more than appropriate that crowning the District of Mission arms is a Sto:lo canoe with a sprig of salmon berries. A few years after these arms were completed, an excavation was begun beside a rock in a place known as a sacred transformer site in Sto:lo mythology. It didn’t take long before the archaeologists unearthed an ancient longhouse with elements around it dating back to 9,000 BC.  Until then, all that we knew of the settlements was through stories. Now, there was also the scientific evidence to back them up

All of which is why I am still holding out hope. I still do not know which line of JACKSONs our family connects to, but I do have the stories, and I also have this darned sheldrake like a hook in my mind. It is clear that I’ll have to keep on digging.

Chaster Creek Farm

My brother Struan in his market garden July 4th, 2011.
Photo credits: Sara Brown

The Global and Mail recently had an article: Local FoodMovement Goes National.   This significant new development is piggybacking on the growth in popularity in eating locally and in season. How often is it that something not only feels right, but tastes right?

July 4th - and looking so robust.

 My brother Struan and his wife Sara have been an active part of the local food movement since they moved up to the Coast in the mid 70s. Their first major food garden was at their home on North Road. The soil there was so rock hard that you could damned near hear it laughing at them when they ran a rototiller over the surface of their first planned garden plot. In the end, it was a jack hammer that did the trick. That and years of manure from their chickens, cows, horses, goats and whatever other animals they also raised on their land.

About three years ago, they sold the old place and bought sixteen flat acres on Payne Road. The soil here is perfect, rich and deep. In no time at all, Struan and Sara were up to their old tricks – providing produce for their family, extended family, friends, and anyone else that happened within hailing distance. They canned, froze, pickled and dried anything that could be saved this way. Clearly there was enough produce coming out of their new farm for them to set up a booth to sell the extra.  This was so successful, that they expanded and are now known as Chaster Creek Farm 

Genuflecting amongst all the goodness.

Brandon, who now works with Struan and Sara and also lives on the farm, grows lettuce which you can buy at the Gibson’s Marketplace IGA. The two local IGAs have been great this way. They also sell certified organic greens from Tracy & Martin Kiewitz of Henry Reed Produce. It is wonderful food. I have been buying Henry Reed produce since I moved up to the Coast a little over a decade ago, and plan to continue buying from both them and Chaster Creek – after all, I am absolute rubbish when it comes to being a gardener. Dunno why. Temperament, maybe.  

Garlic Scapes - picked July 5th, 2011

A couple of days ago, Struan cut a bag full of garlic scapes for me. Now here is a mystery. We have this whole eat local approach soaring in popularity amongst restaurants these days. Items such as spotted prawns are the new hot thing to order in restaurants in the spring, and rightly so. So where are the garlic scapes on Lower Mainland restaurant menus? Where are the recipes in the newspapers? I haven't seen them.

Struan's approach is to cut the tough part of the tops off them and sauté them for use in  dishes such as Chinese vegetables. Done this way, they have a mild garlic flavour with a texture not unlike like green beans. I make a pesto with them, with walnuts, Parmesan cheese and olive oil. It works well in a pasta sauce, with sometimes a little cream, or else it can also be mixed into yoghurt or sour cream to make a dip, or even simply spread on toast and topped with an egg. How can you go wrong?

To go with our pasta tonight, we will also enjoy a bag of Chaster Creek Antioxidant Health Mix Greens. I bought them at the IGA because it was convenient. I like this mix because it has lots of red lettuce in it. red lettuce not only tastes good, but it also has 100% more antioxidant compounds than other lettuce varieties. You can see a graph about the antioxidant levels of lettuce – I am not making this up. Pas de surprise, the old standby - iceberg lettuce - is at the bottom of the antioxidant heap. 

Mmm, Mmm - life is good. Then after supper, it is off to the Gibsons Legion for music – played by Struan, Bruce and Martin. It seems to me that it is not only food, but also music that can and should be “eaten” locally. 

Brown Brother’s Blues

Nobody does Rolling Stones covers like my brothers. They play them full of edge, and piss and vinegar, and whatever else needs to be added to the mix to make them soar. They also play covers of tons of other musician’s tunes, as well as a fist-full of songs they have written themselves. I don’t know what kind of mix the three of them will be playing tonight at the Gibsons Legion, but I can guarantee you, the place will be packed, people will be up on their feet dancing, and the bartender will have to hop-to in order to keep up with it all.

Martin - circa 1977

Thirty five years have zipped past us since the two youngest Brown brothers first started playing together in a band in Gibsons. The girls went wild, and the boys were all envious. For a while, they toured through the Western provinces, but after several stints of this, real life intervened. Once parenthood entered the picture - well, real jobs had to begin. Not that this means that the boys have ever quit dishing out the music.

On Struan's 50th birthday in 2004, the Brown Brothers played at the old Pen Hotel up on Highway 101 - days before it actually burned down. They also played at the venerable Wakefield Inn before it was leveled. Upscale housing has since been built on the land where the Wakefield had been the watering hole of legend for decades. Much has changed.

When you check out the state of the ceiling, it is not hard to understand why the Pen Hotel burned down. In fact, it is hard to understand why it hadn't happened sooner.

The last time I heard my brothers play was a few months ago - April 30^th:

Bruce has the perfect rock n roll voice, and also lays down the foundation for the tunes with his utterly reliable base guitar.

 

Martin not only plays lead guitar, but also makes them. Band members who have bought his guitars in the past include musicians with Blue Rodeo, 54-40, Sarah McLachlan, Bare Naked Ladies .... The list goes on.

Struan who adds improv riffs on the harp,  is also one hell of a gardener - I will write a piece about his garden - maybe right after I finish this piece.

Friend Pete Kerbis is one of the best drummers I have ever had the pleasure of listening to - famous or not.

 Of course, as the older sister, by about a decade, I remember the the three yet-to-be musicians way back when:

Bruce, Martin & Struan in the late 1950s.

 Too much fun.