My mother came from a prominent Maltese Italian family, on which Herself has given me a large, handsomely illustrated book. I am directly descended from a distinguished artist, draughtsman and lithographer, and also from a family member who devised a Romanized version of the modified Arabic in which Maltese used to be written, useful hard-working cats both.
I'm happy to be descended from them, but less so about my grandfather, one of three brothers. There was a sister too. The only one I ever met was a saintly Jesuit (he can't have been all that simple though, having been headmaster of a famous public school for 20 years). He regularly beat my father - no slouch - at chess. My father liked him and called him a 'wicked old man' for his chess skills. I had to learn to serve at mass for when he came to visit us. I liked him, but hated that in my squalid adolescence.
My grandfather was a kamikaze alcoholic who died at 48, and the third brother was frankly a bit of a toerag who then tried to seize his property (such as it was) from my sweet, incompetent grandmother, encouraged by his wife who was, er, not from a prominent family.
My father and my Irish uncle-by-marriage, a Dublin property man, combined forces to prevent that from happening. They were very disgusted by my great-uncle's behaviour.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Mon 5 Oct 15 at 14:58
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I thought this was going to be about the recent discovery that babies born by egg donation do contrary to expectation inherit some genes (or is it DNA - not sure of the difference?) from their host mothers, as well as from the donor.
So there is in fact some blood connection, hence the anecdotal accounts of children mysteriously looking like their unrelated mother may be true after all.
But all inheritance is weird and fascinating, and endless fun trying to claim credit or avoid blame for the characteristics of one's ancestors.
I've recently discovered that my mother's family, Liverpool merchants and shipowners in the 19th century, had interests in slavery.
Am I going to issue a public apology? No, certainly not. I have never been a slave trader, I didn't even inherit a sugar plantation on Antigua, so it's nothing to do with me. It's a fascinating piece of history, but I've got thousands of other ancestors, who must presumably have ranged from the saintly to the murderously evil, and I really can't be expected to trace them all and then in varying degrees atone for their actions, or alternatively bask in unmerited glory.
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I believe I read somewhere that a pregnant mother is actually changed slightly by the genes of the father of the child she's carrying also. My wife was a bit weirded out when we saw that article somewhere. Hasn't been discussed since.
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AC - I was actually born in Malta!
(King George's Merchant Seamen's Memorial Hospital, Valetta.)
My birth stickyfoot is in both Maltese & English, of course.
I briefly visited Malta, in late 1956 and have to confess I did not care for it. Much to arid and featureless for me.
OTH, I loved Cyprus, which was our location just before Malta.
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My Maternal grandmother was Malteese. Never met her as she passed away when my mum was 8.
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Whilst baring all, I must confess to being 1/4 Southern Irish from my mother's side, although she was born in Middlesbrough, to a through and through Yorkshire mother.
The rest of my heritage is outer London - Erith, then in Kent.
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I was based in Malta during 1962/3 ( Seventh destroyer squadron, Silema creek ). I returned on a holiday a few years ago, it has changed a lot. My jeans are in a drawer in the bedroom. :-)
Last edited by: Old Navy on Mon 5 Oct 15 at 17:25
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You are familiar with Straight Street, then?
Come inside Sailor/Commando!
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>> You are familiar with Straight Street, then?
>> Come inside Sailor/Commando!
>>
I know nothing. :-)
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I am fairly confident that as a young man my Parent's had a concrete Coal Bunker.
I am also confident that it had Erith cast into one of its panels. Just saying like. Any relation?
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I have absolutely no connection with either Erith or Malta...although I do like Malt Loaf...buttered with Cheddar on it.
Just saying...like.
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>> I am fairly confident that as a young man my Parent's had a concrete Coal
>> Bunker.
>>
I've got a concrete coal bunker. The previous people tried to sell it for £50. I said no thanks, take it away. So they left it anyway.
Is this a kind of class badge, one notch up from keeping coal in the bath?
Hard to better it really, unless one happens to own a coal mine.
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I can remember keeping coal in the bath AND in the cupboard in my bedroom as a kyd, this was in a council flat on the 4th floor - without a lift ... well done mum + 6 bubbies!!
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>> I was actually born in Malta!
I've seen it, from a ship in the Grand Harbour, but never set foot in the place (or wanted to especially). Nearly everything I knew about it was offputting.
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>> my mother's family, Liverpool merchants and shipowners in the 19th century, had interests in >> slavery.
>> Am I going to issue a public apology? No, certainly not.
One branch of Herself's family was a slave-owning lot, touch of the tarbrush there too as they say. It was quite normal at the time and no one turned a hair.
Other branches are Catholic puritan intellectuals and very decent Quaker-leaning elements.
Makes my combination of backward Arab Catholicism and agnostic Bristol Congregationalist look a bit jejune.
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>> The only one I ever met was a saintly Jesuit (he can't have been all that simple though, having been headmaster of a famous public school for 20 years).
I forgot to mention his Military Cross, awarded in the first world war for giving dying troops the last rites under fire in no man's land. He was Catholic chaplain for his regiment. I have somewhere his CO's letter of recommendation, a grubby bit of paper from the trenches. On the back the CO had scrawled in pencil: 'None more gallantly won'.
I loathed having to get up early to serve Mass for uncle Eli when I was 14 or 15. He didn't think that much of me, and I don't blame him, thinking back. My mother adored him, but adored her awful father even more. Funny things, families.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 6 Oct 15 at 01:40
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One of my great grandmothers was Maltese. My great grandfather Sid was a Londoner posted to Malta with the army, he met my great grandmother, and asked her father for her hand in marriage. Father didn't like the idea, so he told Sid that if he could swim from Valetta to Sliema across the harbour (they lived on the harbour front in Sliema) then he could marry her. He was assuming that Sid couldn't swim, but was quite wrong, Sid was a very strong swimmer and made it with ease.
Both of these great grandparents lived to 90-odd, and I knew them both.
Only visited Malta once, and, like Roger, wasn't too keen. Way too hot and arid for my tastes. And scruffy. Although it was charming to visit gran's house in Sliema and gaze across the bay, imagining the ginger-haired Sid powering across.
My Mum did some family research in Malta, she discovered that, despite the family's Italian name, they were Arab Maltese, and had changed their surname in order to climb the social ladder, bit like the Windsors I suppose.
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>> My Mum did some family research in Malta, she discovered that, despite the family's Italian name, they were Arab Maltese, and had changed their surname in order to climb the social ladder, bit like the Windsors I suppose.
The Maltese absolutely hate being told that their language is Arabic and they are Arabs. It's a religious thing. They like to think of themselves as Phoenicians. If you want to wind a Malt up, call him an Arab or (if you can) address him in classical Arabic. Stand back though, he's all too likely to have a small but sharp knife.
:o}
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I quite like Malta when it's not 42 degrees. Don't want to do much there anyway, just drink and eat and walk Valletta. Strange really. Been there 3 or 4 times, but guess unlikely to go again given the heat and advancing years! However Gozo is worth a visit.
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I spent a November week in Malta a few years back, came away thinking never again. Weather was agreeable, just the hotel was stuffed with oldies whiling away their lives - apparently the hotels are very cheap for extended stays at that time of year. And I thought, as an unkind generalisation, the whole island was a dump (parts of Valletta being the exception).
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My father, as a SNCO (Petty Officer or Chief Petty Officer - Engineering) was stationed in Malta in the mid 1930s. Due to the length of postings in those days it was an accompanied post, so my mother was with him.
As a relatively unsophisticated Yorkshire woman and with the moderate income enjoyed by my father she was overwhelmed by how far a UK service salary would stretch! She had a cleaning lady!
Social life was wonderful, of course, and until I appeared in late 1935, she had the time of her life!
She was always nostalgic and looked back on that time as probably the happiest of her life.
With terminal cancer in the late 1960s, her wish to re-visit those happy days was granted by my father taking her there for a last holiday.
BTW Cancer care in those 1960s days, even at The Royal Marsden was pretty poor - her only palliative relief (which did not work) was aspirin.
Painful to watch, as well as painful for her.
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>> bit like the Windsors I suppose.
>>
Warning - Axe-grinding in progress
:)
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Really? I thought I was just admitting that my own family are just as self-interested as that other well-known migrant family. Oh well.
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How many generations after your "immigrant" ancestor do you have to be before you are not migrant, 5? 10?.
My great grandmother came from Dublin, does that make me and my family Irish immigrants?
You really make yourself look more of a wally every time Al, unless, of course, you are stirring as usual
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We're all the product of migrants, cd, I shouldn't wonder. It's irrelevant really. My children's mother is a migrant, so they are more migrant-y than I am of course. Makes one a bit sensitive to the subject when there are folks out there who'd send 'em all home, makes one wonder what would become of one's family.
Walliness is in the eye of the beholder, if that's what you think that's fine. I find it funny how the other side of that debate is so prickly every time it's jokingly mentioned, seems a bit wallyish to me too. You can call it stirring if you like, I'm just joking really.
I'm enjoying the mixed metaphors of stirring and axe grinding at the same time, sounds lethal.
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>> Walliness is in the eye of the beholder
Absolutely, I wouldn't want to fall out over it
Walliness, to me, is bringing something into every conversation whether it belongs there or not
We all do it sometimes, just thought I'd give you the response you were looking for, probably wallyish in its own way :-)
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Hmm, I must be a Romani then. Distant ancestor of mine was expelled from the tribe for marrying outside it. (Some tribes do this to the present day). That's on my mums side of the family.
It's all silliness though, if you and your pal can trace ancestors back to the Norman conquest, you will be related somehow. Almost mathematically impossible for this not be the case.
My father's side of the family can be traced back to a particular area of Norfolk, and the family name is still moderately common there. And does appear in the Domesday book. So that makes me English then...
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>> How many generations after your "immigrant" ancestor do you have to be before you are
>> not migrant, 5? 10?.
I think by definition only the person who migrates can be a migrant.
Whether the settled descendants become natives depends on lots of factors, but basically how they are perceived by the pre-existing natives, and to a large extent how they perceive themselves and their willingness to integrate.
Some people take pride in retaining a loyalty or a feeling for their land of origin, others can't wait to ditch all that and become more English than the English.
Laurie Taylor recounted a good joke by Milton Shulman in his Goldberg series. Goldberg was very keen to become authentically English, so went to great pains to buy his suits, shirts, shoes etc from the right streets, and he remodelled his manners and voice impecably. In due course he appeared to have become English. But one day he was found with tears in his eyes. On being asked the matter, he replied "We lost India".
One can try too hard :)
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Mixed genes - Cliff Pope
