Celtic Nations Day & St. Piran's Day 2022

 Gool Peran Lowen Onen Hag Oll! (Happy St Piran's Day One and All!)

It's Celtic Nations Day on 5th March, and for those of us in the Cornish Diaspora, it's also St Piran's Day. For us at home here, it's also our third consecutive one cocooning (we've been cocooning 2 years and a day today). Last year we went digital. This year we had hoped to maybe get together in a safe way with some friends, but it was not to be, so it's just us. 

We've had most of the afternoon in the garden. Our rescue hens now have their sandpit spruced up and topped up, as well as their swing re-strung ready for the summer, and one of our two potato planters is ready for us to plant up (we'll do that on St Patrick's Day as per). 

This morning, however, was all about the cooking preps.

My flaky pastry is chilling in the fridge, and my saffron buns have been proving most of the day.

Unfortunately I didn't have quite enough of my own saffron this time around, but I'm hoping that, if they do as well this winter as they did last winter, I'll be able to do them with all home grown saffron next year.

Our family Saffron Buns recipe has two modern branches. One here, and one in the States (carefully collected into the family's mixed Cornish and American Cookbook as collected by cousin Dorothy B). I love looking at the two alongside each other because you can really see which bits stayed the same and which evolved slightly and that kind of lends the voices of our ancestors and makes it feel even more like they're right there, despite having been cooking sometimes hundreds of years ago and opposite sides of the Atlantic.

To my knowledge, we don't have any in-family variants for vegan/coeliacs, but it's such a forgiving recipe (yours truly may have been known to use a little extra butter and make up the liquid in water when the milk went off once), I can't imagine it would be hard to adapt.
If you give it a go, shout me (dglaity1 on Instagram) and let me know

On the off-chance you're peckish and want to try your own, here's the Cornish, 'stayed at home' and the American variant recipes:

SAFFRON BUNS

* 1/2pt (300ml) Milk (Whole Milk)
* About 2tsp (.5g or thereabouts) Saffron strands
* 2oz (50g) butter

* 3¼oz (90g) clotted cream (I can do you a nice line in a clotted cream recipe if you're stuck for one)

* 1lb 4oz (550g) Flour (Bread Flour. We use mainly white if we have it, but wholemeal doesn't hurt it)

* 1 heaped tsp salt

* 2oz/50g sugar (I like brown sugar, but whatever you have to hand is fine)

* 2tsp (or 1 sachet) quick-yeast.

* 3oz (75g) raisins/currants/similar

* 1oz (25g) mixed peel

- I tend to just knock the oven on slightly if it's a really cool day as you'll need a really warm place for it to rise, so a low-lit oven from starting out until you set it to prove usually does the trick.

- Warm your milk through until hot, but not boiling. Stir in the saffron, butter, and cream. Set this aside for 15-20mins until it's hand-hot and properly yellow (should be proper sunshine in a jug)

- Put the dry ingredients (not the fruit) in a bowl. 

TIP: I tend to put the salt in first and the yeast in last. That way the one can't affect the other.

Make a well in the middle and gradually mix the now hand-hot milk mixture into the dry ingredients.

- When it comes together, knead it in the bowl for about 10 mins, adding in the fruit about half way through so that it incorporates.

- Set to rise in a warm place for about an hour (until it doubles).

- Knock back the dough on a floured surface per bread.

- Divide into 8-10 (if you've several children to feed, I sometimes go to 12) pieces and roll into balls.

- Leave to rise again on a baking tray for about half an hour.

- Preheat the oven (I heat it all the way then drop it down) to about 200C (at a guess, high-moderate for gas, but I'm not that experienced with gas).

- Bake for around 20mins until they're golden.

- Make the syrup while the buns bake. For the syrup, I use about 20z (50g) sugar to 3-4 tbsp water. Dissolve the sugar completely, then bring it to a boil for about a minute until it goes glossy

- Set the buns to cool and brush immediately with the syrup.

Serve: Either fresh and still warm (as is, or with clotted cream or butter as desired), or let them go cold and toast and butter them later.

~

1tsp saffron soaked overnight in 1/2 cup warm water

2 cups lukewarm water

1 yeast cake

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup lard or shortening

smidgen salt

1 cup raisins or currants

1/2 cup candied fruit (or more, as desired)

Flour (enough to make a soft dough)

In a bowl, mix together the lukewarm water and yeast. Add sugar, lard, salt, raisins, and candied fruit. Mix well, and then add enough flour to make a soft dough. Let rise until doubled in size. Knead down and fashion buns and place them into a 9 inch square baking dish or pan. Let rise. Bake at 325 degrees until done.

~

ANCESTORS

Our Celtic Family Lines we're remembering today for Celtic Nations Day (if any surnames match, do get in touch. I'm always up for comparing notes and DNA!):

CORNWALL (mostly South-Siders)

LAITY/LAYTY/LAYTYE

COLENSO

PERKIN/S

HOSKING

KITCHEN

ALLEN/ALLAN

EDDY

WOOLCOCK

COLLICOTT

PHILLIPS

OLDS

RICHARDS

WESTCOTT

THOMAS

WEBSTER

HARRIS

WATERS

CORNISH

SYMONS

MARTIN

WOOD

SENNAT

ROSEMORRAN

BATTON/BATYN
BERRYMAN
VEALE

CHURCH

WALES

de CLARE

de BEAUMONT

le ROGER
GRIFFITH
ap GWILYM

ap GRUFFYDD

Verch LEUAN

Verch MADOG

ap GRONWY

Verch ROBERT

IRELAND

McMURROUGH

Ní TUATHAIL

MAC MÁEL NA mBÓ

MAC DIARMATA

MAC GILLA PÁTRAIC

MAC DONNCHADA

MAC CELLAIG

Ní MORDA

Ní CAELLAIDE
MAC CARRACH CALMA

Tribute to Nancy

 This afternoon, coincidentally around the same time as Sean Connery, our Aunty Nancy died.

Nancy (née Laity), was born at the start of 1935, the youngest child of three born to Lily May Jacobs and William Henry Laity.

By 1940 William had deserted Anna and the children. Eventually he would have a second family with another daughter and three more sons, including my Dad.

Nancy and her sister Stella, were avid lovers of family history, genealogy, and Cornish culture. Nancy was, in fact, my first real life example that genealogy & family history are not only things that it is okay to like, but also that it was the kind of thing that real people could engage with.

Nancy once told me that she early on in her marriage to Jim she had started looking for the half siblings. The search proved fruitful and both Stella and Nancy were writing regularly with my Dad by the mid 90s.

We all attended the 'Great Laity Gathering' family reunion in Marazion in the summer of '97, arriving a day or so early in order to meet Stella, Noah, Nancy, Jim & Alison first.

Nancy & Stella the first day we met
Taken outside Stella's house in St. Blazey.

'Great Laity Gathering 1997'
Trip to St. Michael's Mount to see the
portrait of Dolly Pentreath
RH edge: Dad (in black), Sis (in white), Mum (in orange)
I took the photo. Walking between Stella & Nancy.

That trip was the one that consolidated that there would always be a family history & genealogy journey at some point during my life. Stella made a proper Cornish tea that first afternoon and from then, throughout the rest of her life until she entered nursing care, Nancy gave me first potted genealogy basics lessons, what 'vitals' are, how to record and read trees, primary documents, secondary sources and photographs. She even taught me about the fine art of graveyard hunting for dead relatives. Later she would go on to share more research tips & first her discoveries, then later, she shared mine with equal excitement. She was so encouraging from day one. I remember she said to me that first day, if I got good, perhaps I could join the 'family genealogy team', co-ordinated by cousin Russell in the states. I said I'd love to join in and research with her & she joked that maybe after she passed, a slot might come up for me. I've lived half in terror of that happening ever since. Nevertheless, it was a really motivating joke. She was an exceptionally clever woman.

We stayed in touch and another proud day, was when my eldest son was tiny and we were able to get down to Newquay, she made him his first taste of Cornish pasty and on the same day, taught me the family pasty recipe. 

We stayed in touch across the years, mostly sharing family & genealogy news. 
The weekend before my Dad died we spoke on the 'phone and she was so warm, loving and supportive. 

Mum and I saw her last in June 2015, not long before she moved into nursing care. Shortly after, with the help of cousin Russell, we made a discovery about the family tree that allowed us to push back one generation by using the Land Grants of Henry VIII in Cornwall. This also allowed us to unify some of the branches higher up and tidy off some loose ends. I wrote to her about it, but I'm not sure she was able for that kind of information by that time. Still, it felt the right thing to do to keep her included. I never did write to her about the DNA side of things. Mainly because I think by that time, it would have been a bit beyond her. In a parallel world though, it would have been so cool to look together over our shared DNA & chase down the people and the stories.

I will most remember her as a massive source of love and support. She didn't care about the circumstances of how we came to be related, but that we were family.
Tonight I am strolling again through the Laity side of the family tree. Retracing her steps and seeing what there could be out there that's new.

Sleep tight Aunty Nancy. You are so loved. xxx

2017 Looking backwards and forwards

Happy new calendar.

Wow - 2017. The year that not so long ago felt like it would never get here. Don't you just love time? It fascinates me endlessly.


Up until only very recently, I've had something of a funk with my genealogy pursuits.

That whole wikitree struggle I was having in the summer - that sapped a lot of my enjoyment and desire to do anything genealogical in company for really, most of the summer and autumn if I'm honest. 
However, with the help of a really lovely chap who's one of their senior bods, I managed to get things on the road to sorted out, so that's awesome.

One thing that's definitely come out of that whole experience: If your ged.com fights with their system the way mine did (and seemingly, several others too), then it turns out the important thing to know is, that the proper advice is: Don't panic and put everyone up then go back with sources, they'd much prefer if we all add up single individuals with their sources one at a time, even if that means it could take forever to get anyone up there.


Then, later into the Autumn, following a tip, I treated myself to a copy of the subsidies of land grants in Cornwall made by Henry VIII (I will definitely do a post on that resource at some stage this year - it's awesome). Together with cousin Russell (who's a 'proper' genealogist and one of my favourite relatives in the extended family) and a couple of others, we managed to push our Laity family lines further.

Up until now, the earliest we'd managed to find was Richard Laytye, whose son was baptised in 1563. Over the last three months we've managed to flesh that out with some sibling information, worked out how some of the main sections of the family intersect AND we've found and confirmed some information on his parents, so allow me to introduce my newly found 11th Great-Grandparents:

John Laytye b 1500 & Elizabeth 1505 - 1 Aug 1570

Given how the summer and autumn went, there hasn't been much new action in other lines. We're still searching to prove out or not the theories for the Hawley and Spencer lines, and my search for the missing time with William Hobbins continues to be unfruitful just now...
...and then, in a 'funny five minutes' as my Grandad would've said, a couple of nights ago, I started playing with one of those ''which in/famous person are you (vaguely) related to'' things while killing some time waiting for himself. That threw out a gateway in amongst Mum's Heeson branches that connected to the HOWARD family. Interesting in itself as we seem to have more direct Howard links in a different line that I was aware of. Since I was messing around killing time, in light of recent discussions with genealogy friends around where searches of branches can/do/must end, I thought I'd take a quick few minutes and (I must stress this is NOT sound genealogy and I don't recommend it as a methodology - it was fun though...) click around to see *POTENTIALLY* where could that line lead me.

Turns out, there's truth in that saying about never ask a question unless you're ready for the answer. My clicking adventure wandering through time along that potential line took me first to Rollo of Normandy.
- For those who, like me, don't watch ''The Vikings'', he was apparently the one who ended up taking his boat up the Seine (as you do) and demanding land from the King of the Francs. ...okay, so that puts my ''Bad Billy'' even more into perspective. 

It seems that things don't even stop there. - I estimate it'd take me at least 35 years to get all that lot properly researched and traced ...and that would be assuming I have a total personality transplant and don't get distracted with anything else at all, but if I were to be on-task enough that far, it seems that there may even be sagas etc that would take us back to roughly 100 CE. Weird huh?! - I can't decide how I feel about that potential yet. 

Back to 2017 then and there's just so much going on. Our wedding is set for later this summer so there's A LOT of new relations (to say nothing of whole new language and culture) coming along not so far over the horizon. Also, a first cousin just got married and my little sis got herself engaged to her lovely fella over the holidays, so our little bough of the family Oak is set to sprout madly!

There's just so much, so I figured I'd join up for 2017's 'blog a month' and have another crack at it, starting with a look back to this point last year and see what I can come up with for this year.

2016 Target:	2017 and beyond...
2016 Monthly blog challenge	Signed up again for 2017. Already have a post for Jan, so already doing better this year!
Sort out why my GedCom isn't being 'liked'/accepted by certain platforms.	Have that pretty much sorted out. It’s just TOO huge for some systems. I see more manual data entry in my future this year.
Continue working to copy all the existing ancestors across to all platforms (I currently have fragmented information spread across RootsMagic, GenesReunited, Family Tree Circles, GeneaWiki and various other places). In an absolutely ideal world, it would be great to have everything match absolutely, so that I can really work on pushing out to new generations.	Getting somewhere with WikiTree finally. So glad I made a note of the other places I’m behind on.
Update the paper tree when all the online ones are fixed	Yeah. Whenever that happens.
Figure out some kind of nice mounting system for the current paper tree so that we can display it properly.	I have this figured out too. To make it happen though, any one of three things needs to happen: * I get cast in something that makes serious money * I find a craft or genealogy customer prepared to pay me in a custom size piece of perspex * I meet an art or woodwork student prepared to take on the challenge as part of their coursework.
Finish off my four generations project for my licensing exam. - Shooting for sitting the May level 1 exam if at all possible.	I REALLY have to sit down and actually write this up. I’d love to shoot for the May sitting again, but realistically, that’s coming up FAST, and we’re getting married in August, so I guess I’m aiming at the November sitting.
Craft something involving my genealogy.	The MKAL for my shawl design on ravelry last year was really cool. This year I have to either finalise or kill the design idea I started last summer. I’d also like to do something else crafty that’s genealogy involved.
	Start to write a book on Bad Billy

What are your genealogy targets for 2017?