July 2, 2008

Some ‘thong’ to think about

For a few brief moments last week I thought that this week I should write about how I never win anything when I buy lottery tickets.

You might remember that I wrote about the lack of success I had experienced over the past decade or so in tracking down the Irish ancestors of my own great-great-great-grandfather Daniel, despite having assembled quite a bit of information about the general history of the Shanl(e)y family.

Within 24 hours of writing that article, I “found” another ancestor, who may be the key. It turns out the William Shanly who was a member of the “Patriot Parliament” had two sons, not one, as I had previously thought. From what I have been able to see, this second son, fits perfectly as a potential grandfather for Daniel, even down to providing a reasonable explanation for Daniel to suddenly appear in England in 1813.

Even better, this second son, married the sister of the then Earl of Roscommon, so there has to be a decent chance that documentation exists from her side of the family.

How he made that catch I don’t know!

Our family had lost its fortune, so she certainly can’t have married him for his money. And as far as I can tell, he was at least 20 years older than her, so he doesn’t fit the “young hunk who swept her off her feet” image either!

At some point he did apparently manage to (somehow) get a commission in the British army, so perhaps she fell for the uniform. He was listed as “Captain” at the time of the wedding - I assume he was attached to one of the Irish regiments raised by the British army during the 1700s.

While I wasn’t able to find anything about them on the internet that would confirm or disprove a link to Daniel, given the family connections of his wife, I am very hopeful that my Irish contact should be able to find a lot more about them.

Unfortunately, while he is normally pretty prompt at replying, even if all he can do is ask me to wait while he checks things out, I haven’t heard back from him so far. I’m hoping he is just away from home enjoying his holidays with his family, and I’ll hear from him when he gets back.

It seems that once again I’m going to have to wait a bit longer to find out for sure whether I have the piece of the puzzle that I have been missing all along.

And maybe my luck isn’t in by enough to make buying a lottery ticket a worthwhile investment.

In the meantime, with summer here (sort of) I have been reminded of at least one notable linguistic difference between the United States and “down under”. Indeed, even New Zealand and Australia can’t agree on this one.

The first I ever heard of a “thong”, was when an Australian friend was talking to me about something Australians wear on their feet. In New Zealand, we call them “jandals”, and I believe here in the United States, they are known as “flip-flops”.

I think it was at the end of the 1990s when I found out where Americans wear their “thongs” - I can imagine that a lot of New Zealanders would love to tell their Australian counterparts to do the same with theirs!

I’m hoping that I’m going to get the chance to experience a July 4th party on Friday, work assignments permitting. July 4 is of course an American holiday, with nothing coming even close back in New Zealand.

But then, New Zealand didn’t fight a war to break away from the British Empire.

New Zealand does have (and I will explain these in a little more detail) a “Waitangi Day” on Feb 6, and a “Dominion Day” (which is so highly regarded it doesn’t show on my New Zealand calendar with “important dates” marked).

“Dominion Day” (a google search tells me) is the name given to September 26, the anniversary of the day New Zealand was granted dominion status within the British Empire in 1907.

That sort of means New Zealand became a country in its own right, independent of Britain but still part of it - the “independence you have when you don’t have independence”, I guess.

Regardless, its not important enough to be a national holiday.

Waitangi Day is “different”, pretty much in whatever sense of the word you want to use it.

Officially, it is the celebration of a (written - and that’s important to think about) treaty signed between the British, and the natives (the Maori) of New Zealand back in 1840.

In general terms it was vaguely designed as a peaceful settlement that would enable the early European settlers and the natives to live peacefully side by side.

However, given that the Maori didn’t have a written language, and few would have even spoken English at the time, you would have to ask what they thought they were doing putting their mark on a piece of paper with crazy drawings all over it!

This isn’t the place to run though all the “who ripped who off” arguments, although I would say that compared to the native populations of other parts of the world, New Zealand’s natives got a pretty reasonable deal. In most cases around the globe though, the “colonial powers” didn’t exactly set the bar very high!

But certainly in modern times, there seems to a lot of “creativity” applied to what was actually meant by the signatories on both sides when they signed the treaty, and “Waitangi Day” has become (for too many - the “rent-a-mob” brigade we used to call them) more an opportunity to protest against the “establishment” (be that government, police, or anyone else you want to have a go at) than a real celebration.

Given New Zealand’s steadily rising crime rate, that’s probably one anniversary they shouldn’t be trying to remember!

by FRANK SHANLY

frank@news-banner.com

Email Frank Shanly

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