My Lumsden links - Scottish estates, rebellion and highland flings!

On my paternal grandmother's side of the family, my grand-aunt Olive has "Lumsden" as her middle name, as does her grandmother (my great-great-grandmother), Elizabeth Lumsden Archibald, who was born in 1856 in Goulburn in the NSW southern highlands before moving up to the Tamworth area and married at 16!

Anyway, I always thought it was a bit weird and that it must have been a family name. So, I went searching through records, mostly to be sure fathers and mothers are who they are supposed to be, and hit a few dead ends.

Her father was John Duncan Archibald (alas, not of the famous Archibald art prizes fame), who was born around 1836 in Aberdeen, Scotland, and came to Australia from Scotland in 1854 on the "London" - he was listed as a saloon waiter, and gave his occupation as ship steward on Elizabeth's birth certificate.

His name combines his dad's surname of Archibald (or Archie) and his mother Catherine's surname Duncan. Catherine was born in 1797 in Auchindoir, Aberdeen, Scotland! And her mother is, lo and behold, Elizabeth (Betsy) Lumsden! Ah! So THAT's where it comes from!

And her father was Mathew Lumsden (my 6th-great-grandfather), and his father was Henry (Harry) Lumsden, the 10th of Cushie, Scotland. Harry was a Jacobite in the 1715 uprising, and he was banished to the "colonies" to Virginia, America on the "Friendship", in 1716 as a result and possibly had a bit of extra-curricular adventures over there, but returned to Scotland 2 years later, to marry Katherine Gordon and have three children, including Mathew.

Now it turns out that in Scottish folklore and music, "Harry of Auchindoir" (or Harry Lumsdale) is famously immortalised in the traditional Scottish song "My Harry Was a Gallant Gay," widely known as "Highland Harry". The song tells the story of Harry’s romantic escapades across the Aberdeenshire countryside (specifically mentioning Clatt and Auchindoir). Robert Burns later adapted the tune and chorus for a Jacobite-themed song in the Scots Musical Museum. The region's musical history is still celebrated today, with slow airs composed in the area, such as "The Lament for Sir Harry Lumsden of Auchindoir", still regularly performed on the fiddle and bagpipes.

Harry lived in Clova House, seven miles from Alford, Aberdeen, Scotland. The Lumsdens have lived on this estate from about the 1400s. Unfortunately, my 6th-great-grandfather Matthew was not the firstborn son, and so I have probably lost any claim to that!

Anyhoo, I can trace the paternal line all the way back to my 20th-great-grandfather, Adam de Lumsden, who signed (along with his son, my 19th-great-grandfather, Roger de Lummesdene) the Ragman Rolls - a document where the heads of nearly 2,000 Scottish noble landowning families were forced to sign oaths of allegiance (fealty) to King Edward I of England. Edward I had invaded Scotland and demanded these submissions to secure control over Scottish succession, and is very handy for historians and genealogists for tracing medieval Scottish lineages!

Interestingly, the word "Ragman Roll" is the origin of the modern English idiom "rigamarole", because the original lists were incredibly long, dense and tedious to navigate, the phrase came to describe any frustrating, overly-complex, or time-wasting process.