The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-06-14
MYSTERIES OF GENEALoGY.
Kruger Descended From Rob Roy
and Edward VII From Irish king.
From London Truth.

Kruger Descended From Rob Row
ANA Edward VII From Irish King.
From London Truth.
I received the other day a letter
tending to prove that Mr.. Kruger is
of the blood royal of England and
might, under circumstances which we
must all hope may never happen, be-
come claimant to the British throne
The write founded his argument on
the alleged descent of Mr.. Kruger
from Rob Roy, who was descended
from Edward III of England
This has led another genealogist,
writing from the Celtic Fringe to
send me an elaborate table showing
that King Edward traces his descent
from Dermot McDorrogh. King of
Leinster. Dermot McDurrogh, as CIV
cry schoolboy knows, married his
daughter Eva to Richard, Earl of Penn
broke, from whom was descended Rob-
ert the Bruce and the Stuart Kings Of
Scotland and England. This may be
interesting, but, as the Cambridge
wrangler said of the "Iliad," l do not
quite see what it proves, unless it be
that King Edward VII has a claim
to the allegiance of Irishmen which
Mr. Kruger can never aspire to.
Some years ago L had a little pass
age at arms with a gentleman who
was prepared to prove the royal de-
scent of almost any man in the street
for payment of $40 down. When |
limited some doubt of his bona fides
he called upon me and showed by a
fairly plausible argument that almost
everybody has ropal blood in his veins.
If he only knew it.
When l,or
hand, that you had two grandfathers
and two grandmothers, eight ances-
tors in the previous generation, six
teen in the generation before that,
and so on, and on the other, that as
you go back the population of the
country decreases-at the time of the
Conquest it was probably not a tenth
of what 1t is noW-you can easily see
that the present inhabitants of these
islands could not all be supplied with
ancestors unless the same people were
used over and over again. Each an
cestor must in fact, do duty for so
many descendants that the proba bill
! ity is that we all of us have a great
many of them in common. That is
why the majority of people have royal
progenitors somewhere in the dim Wis
ia of the past 1 expect therefore,
that if we came to look into it we
should find as good claims to the Eng
fish crown as Mr.. K. This reflection
cannot fail to bring comfort to many
of my readers.
While writing this 1 remember a
/ curious illustration of the ramifca-
tions of the genealOgies. A friend of
mine once told me that in a Dorches-
tershire village near him there was a
family of agriculturalial laborers
bearing the name of Percy and claim
ing kinship with the Duke of Northum-
berland. They had a traditional rec
ord of their descent from some Percy
who had settled in WesseX many gen.
erations ago. My friend has a por-
trait of the very last descendant of
this line of Percys-an imposing-look-
ing old yokel in a smock frock and
tall hat. There are other cases of
aristocratic families ending in a line
of agricultural laborers, and in Wes-
sex, too. The genealogy of the D'Ur-
berville family in Mr.. Hardy's Tess"
! is l believe, founded on fact.
| All this is quite new to me- and may
possibly be to my readers-at any rate,
on this side of the Tweed. We Sas-
senachs, who have no history before
| the comparatively modern date of
| Hengist and Horsa, are deplorably ig-
norant of the antiquity of the Celtic
Fringe. After ALL the story of the in
| vasion of Spain by Malcolm, or, in the
| spelling of the period, Malcham, the
Moabite and his "brither Scots" and
the birth of the first MacAlpine the
grandson of King Solomon, is an af-
| fair of yesterday beside the family
| history of the MacPhersons:
Pharison had a son
Who married Noah's daughter,
And nearly spoilt the Flood
By drinking up the water.
Which he would have done
1, at least. believe it
Had the mixture been
Only half GlenliVet.