Please click here to leave an anniversary message (in any language you choose). You do not need to be a member of Lowlands-L to do so. In fact, we would be more than thrilled to receive messages from anyone. Click here to read what others have written so far.
What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Location: Roseburg, Oregon (USA)
Genealogy: Daughter also of Greggs, Dickinsons, Vains, Trues, and Farrars
owlands-L came into my life quite by accident while I was searching the Internet for Appalachian resources, and by extension, Scots-Irish. I am a first-generation “away” person, born in the late 40’s in Los Angeles to Appalachian farmers and miners who migrated from the heavily Scots-Irish corner of southwestern Virginia, northwestern North Carolina, northeastern Tennessee and southeastern Kentucky. I am also the last one standing! Poverty, illness and wars took their toll on our family.
In an effort to resurrect the roots I didn’t have sense to explore as a teenager when I had the resources at my fingertips, I’m delving into genealogy, the history of Appalachia and the language, and that naturally takes me to Ireland, Scotland, and beyond. It is comforting to see messages from Scots speakers using words I remember my grandfather using. I can hear again his rising intonation at the end of sentences ... “innit?” I hear my grandmother humming English broadside ballads in that odd, flat tone peculiar to those mountains (and perhaps Scotland?). So many memories I thought were lost to me.