MJ's little flock

[BY Bob]

OK, I give up!

I owe chicken tax for starting this.

 

[Ribh]

"Bog bodies"? I'm not certain I know what that means.

I am going to owe a lot of chicken tax on this one.

The Irish & Britons & Scotti all practised religious rites involving water. So you will find swords, daggers, shields, torcs broken & put in water as sacrifices to their god/esses. Sometimes you will find bodies, like the most famous Lindow Man. As areas dry they become bogs rather than lakes or pools or rivers. I can't give you the exact science but the minerals & salts tan the skin & preserve the bodies.

Lindow Man was probably a human sacrifice: young, well groomed, well fed, healthy [possibly a druid]. The contents of his stomach contained a burnt porridge mix. His hair had been trimmed with scissors. He suffered the 3`fold death [hence why he is considered a sacrifice].

You can look him up on~line & a famous Celtic scholar has written a whole book on what was discovered about him. It is interesting reading if you aren't too squeamish.

Tax:

 

[MaryJanet]

Actually it's minerals in the bog water that turn the hair red.

Oh! The museum tour guide said they went in the bog with red hair! Wow. You expect more from museum tour guides.

 

[LozzyR]

Yes, but in your family's language tiny means >5'5" right?

Positively Lilliputian.

 

[RoyalChick]

So true...... but........ there are physical characteristics that are consistent. For example, GLWs had golden feathers. Orpingtons have single combs. Etc.

Vikings are tall........in general. I can't remember if Scots are tall or stocky. I thought it was the latter, in general.

Hold on, hold on. I was all for memorizing the physical characteristics of chicken breeds and was coming along splendidly, and then you all started throwing all sorts of craziness at me - like Leghorns not being white or even necessarily having floppy combs, and now I am breed-skeptic!
To answer the question - in the 18th Century the Scots were amongst the tallest folk in Northern Europe but they have shrunk and are now shorter than the English. On average of course. I assume that is secondary to deprivation, diet etc. but I don't know.

 

[MaryJanet]

Speaks well for the Barnvelder as a breed.

I'm pretty sure she's not a real Barnevelder though. Her legs aren't yellow and her eggs are very light brown.

 

[MaryJanet]

She's looking for a nest this morning so I guess her first post-broody egg is almost ready for laying

Yep! Ivy's egg has arrived along with another of Mary's.

 

[Ribh]

Oh! The museum tour guide said they went in the bog with red hair! Wow. You expect more from museum tour guides.

I suppose they could tell from DNA but every bog body I've studied has gingerish hair & my reading said it was from the minerals in the bog water, as did the card on the Danish bog body I saw in the Silkeborg Museum [Tollund Man]. Mind you, the research is changing things all the time as things get more sophisticated.

 

[Ribh]

Hold on, hold on. I was all for memorizing the physical characteristics of chicken breeds and was coming along splendidly, and then you all started throwing all sorts of craziness at me - like Leghorns not being white or even necessarily having floppy combs, and now I am breed-skeptic!
To answer the question - in the 18th Century the Scots were amongst the tallest folk in Northern Europe but they have shrunk and are now shorter than the English. On average of course. I assume that is secondary to deprivation, diet etc. but I don't know.

There's a terrible mix in Scotland slightly different to England & arriving @ slightly different times & affected by the Irish migration & the Irish had their fair share of Norse settlers as well. There is also a strange Spanish/French mix in there as well. It all gets very messy quite quickly.

My aunt, who was a terrible Romantic swore black & blue she could trace our ancestry back to Kenneth McAlpine. I don't think such a thing is @ all provable. It's a great story though.

 

[MaryJanet]

There's a terrible mix in Scotland slightly different to England & arriving @ slightly different times & affected by the Irish migration & the Irish had their fair share of Norse settlers as well. There is also a strange Spanish/French mix in there as well. It all gets very messy quite quickly.

My aunt, who was a terrible Romantic swore black & blue she could trace our ancestry back to Kenneth McAlpine. I don't think such a thing is @ all provable. It's a great story though.

My Nana swore Robert Southey was her great uncle or somesuch. When Ancestry.com came along, I traced her family backwards and his forwards and found no relationship. He was an ummm "generous" sort of chap though, so perhaps one of her ancestors was a housemaid who had a child he'd fathered and had never claimed. On the other hand, she was a profoundly dishonest woman so she may have been big-noting herself to get the upper hand among her acquaintances. One thing I can say with certainty, when I found and gifted her a book of his poems, she was mildly disappointed with the gift and never opened it, haha! Oh she was a horror