Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

I always got told stories about my birth origins: something more fantastical and something that my mother used as an ammo when she wanted to get under my skin.

Found under a Cabbage Patch

Another frustrating moment during my early childhood was each time I would ask my mother the question, “Where did I come from?”

Of course, she would automatically say, “We found you under a cabbage leaf.”

This would result in the guffawing of all those present as I stood there annoyed and embarrassed. Of course, my mother thought this was a great joke, since ​​I was actually born on a farm. However, it wasn’t funny to the child-me. To be truthful, I also don’t know why I kept asking even when they gave the same inside joke for an answer.

Born a Sassenach

When my mother wanted to belittle me, she would often say I was a sassenach, which is a derogatory Scottish term for an Englishman (as I was born in England, unlike my parents, and two of my older brothers who were born in Scotland). 

When I was a child, I can remember that my mother was fiercely proud of being Scottish (after moving to England!). Perhaps she had never heard of the old joke ‘only two great things come out of Scotland … ‘single malt scotch and the road to England’. I wish I had known this joke back then because I could have used it to get back at my mother’s lame cabbage leaf and sassenach jokes. 

However, when I was a little older, I started responding to the accusation of being a sassenach with the fact that Cumberland, where I was born, used to be ruled by the Scottish king Malcolm I in the Middle Ages; but was eventually lost to the English. To make things worse, historically speaking, centuries later in 1745, the English Duke of Cumberland, nicknamed ‘The Butcher’, defeated the Scots at Culloden who were led by my ancestor, Alexander MacGillivray of Dunmaglass, the chief of Clan MacGillivray.