We're Baaa-aack!

Keith and I are back in Hong Kong after the most wonderful holiday.  Have a great many stories to blog and intend to get onto them straight away after I download the photographs.

Scary how many photographs we've both taken. I'm predicting a systems collapse but fingers crossed that doesn't happen.

Anyway, you'll be hearing from me soon.  Hopefully later today.

In the meantime, we now know ever so much about the Reiver Clans of lowland Scotland, and we've bought the magnificent book "The Steel Bonnets" by George MacDonald Fraser so we'll know a lot more once that is devoured.

As you know, this trip was meant to be finding out about the Reiver Clans, and since I know so many folks with Reiver surnames, if you're interested there are websites currently going up if you're interested too. 

Here's a good one to get you started: http://www.nwlink.com/~scotlass/border.htm#BORDER%20NAMES

And what makes this so interesting is that this history has never been written up before. George MacDonald Fraser started wondering why there appeared to be a hidden history behind so many border Scots songs, poems, stories and family histories that he decided to look into it, and discovered an entire world out there that no one knew anything about so wrote a definitive book ("The Steel Bonnets") about his discoveries, and now everyone is jumping on board. 

There is so much to come to terms with here, so despite this all ending in 1606, it still has to be dealt with.

Oh, and another bit of very interesting unwritten history is to be found in the Heroes Exhibition in York.  There's a young man whose skeletal remains they have given pride of place right inside the entrance.  He died nearly 2000 years ago in York, carries battle wounds and was clearly killed by a blow to the back of his head done by an axe, although there is nothing about him to indicate he was a warrior. From the forensic evidence, he looks like he was a farmhand.  Anyway, they found him reverently buried alongside over 400 other people - who all looked like farming families - all killed with swords and axes - but he's the only one who looks like he attempted to protect the others. There is a current investigation into this event since there appears to be no explanation and no history to support this mass murder.  And what makes it so particularly strange is the reverent burial of these 400.  What on earth could have happened to make it so?  It doesn't make sense for marauders to massacre and then bury with respect, yes?

Other stuff?  Well, that'll have to wait.