Che Guevara - Cuban? Argentinian? Irish?

            

Che Guevara was born Che Lynch on 28 June 1928 in Argentina, to Celia de la Serna y Llosa and Ernesto Guevara Lynch.

 His name "Che" is short for Chancho (pig) due to his bathing habits, or lack of, he was nicknamed "Stinker".Due to his father being half Irish, he could have played football for Ireland.

Contrary to the image we all have of Guevara, in his youth he was quite the geek. He loved playing Chess and even entered local tournaments.

While Guevara is best remembered for his actions in Cuba, he was actually born in Argentina to wealthy parents and he never became a Cuban citizen. When he was born, his father said “the first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels.”

After he was murdered by Bolivian troops backed by the CIA, a military doctor amputated Che’s hands. Bolivian army officers transferred Guevara’s body to an undisclosed location and refused to reveal whether his remains had been buried or cremated. The hands were preserved in formaldehyde to be sent to Buenos Aires for fingerprint identification. (His fingerprints were on file with the Argentine police.) They were later sent to Cuba.

"I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting."

Che Guevara 

More abot Che Guevara can be found at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara

The Brahan Seer

           The Brahan Seer - Scotland's Nostradamus 

In September 2013 we went on holiday to the Old Fisherman's Cottage in Avoch on the Black Isle. We returned there again on 20 August 2016 .

The cottage is one mile away from Chanonry Point where the Seer was burned to death for witchcraft in the 17th Century. The Brahan Seer also called Coinneach Odhar or Kenneth Mackenzie, worked as a labourer at Brahan Castle and was able to see into the future by using an Adder Stone which was a stone with a hole in the middle.

A prediction he made was to led to his downfall – that the absent Earl of Seaforth was having sexual adventures with one or more women in Paris – seems likely, but of course was highly outrageous to Lady Seaforth, as it cast her husband in a scandalous light and heaped embarrassment on her. This led to an unfortunately unforeseen sequence of events on the Seer's part, leading to his barbaric murder at Chanonry Point, when he was allegedly burnt in a spiked tar barrel, on the command of the Earl's wife, Lady Seaforth.

The photograph below shows The monument to the Brahan Seer which was erected at the place where he died.
(Updated, as it appears now in August 2016).

Also often visible at Chanonry Point are Dolphins at play.

                                         The Prophesies

The Seer was at one time in the Culloden district on some important business. While passing over what is now so well known as the Battlefield of Culloden, he exclaimed, "Oh! Drummossie, thy bleak moor shall, ere many generations have passed away, be stained with the best blood of the Highlands. Glad am I that I will not see that day, for it will be a fearful period; heads will be lopped off by the score, and no mercy will be shown or quarter given on either side." It is perhaps unnecessary to point out how literally this prophecy has been fulfilled on the occasion of the last battle fought on British soil. There are several other versions of it from different parts of the country, almost all in identical terms.

When it becomes possible to cross the River Ness dry-shod in five places, a frightful disaster will strike the world.’ (Fulfilled. A fifth bridge was built in the last few days of August,1939. Hitler invaded Poland on September 1st.)

The day will come when long strings of carriages without horses shall run between Dingwall and Inverness, and more wonderful still, between Dingwall and the Isle of Skye.’ (Fulfilled by the coming of the railway 1860-1897.)

The day will come when the Mackenzies of Fairburn shall lose their entire possessions, and that branch of the clan shall disappear almost to a man from the face of the earth. Their castle shall become uninhabited, desolate and forsaken, and a cow shall give birth to a calf in the uppermost chamber in Fairburn Tower.’ (The last of the Mackenzie line died unmarried in 1850. The castle fell into ruin, and a cow calved in the tower, 1851.)

He also foresaw another disaster for the native Scots when he said that sheep shall supplant men and Scotsmen would "head south" and emigrate to all corners of the world and leave their home behind. In the 18th century, the Highlands were drastically depopulated when the British ordered that giant sheep farms be established, ending the small "crofts" that had been the standard of rural Scotland for centuries. The "clearances" led to many Scotsmen emigrating to America, Canada and Australia.

He also foresaw days when "horrible black rain" would fall from the sky. This may refer to radioactive fallout of some kind or perhaps a disaster in the North Sea oil fields near Scotland. 

More about the Seer can be found at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahan_Seer

R.I.P. the Kirky Legend

               R.I.P. Kirky Legend - Passed away on 14 July 2013         

This is a rather unusual post for me, in that it is about a man I saw every day (for about thirty years) until about a week ago, Jim Rae.

Jim looked like a man of the road, with his tattered oilskins, large rubber galoshes and a huge backpack.

Whenever I went into the Village he was always there, striding along the road with his peculiar loping gait, or standing at one of the bus stops.

He wasn't homeless though, he apparently lived in a modern appartment near Townhead in Kirkintilloch .

Goodbye Jim, you will be sadly missed.

A Tribute Page has been established on Facebook  at  https://www.facebook.com/pages/RIP-Kirky-Legend/398575646920819?hc_location=stream

Photographs are courtesy of that Page.

Please note that the organiser of the Kirky Legend Facebook page has arranged to have a collector, or collectors at the Kirkintilloch Canal Festival on Saturday 24 August to raise a fund to pay for a monument to Jim Rae.

William Beckford - An Enigma

                                William Beckford 1760-1844     

I first became aware of William Thomas Beckford when I read his Arabian/ Gothic novel  Vathek in the 1960s. Then, as now I had a fascination for the weird and wonderful. Vathek was orignally written by him in French.

 William Beckford,was born on 1 October 1760, the son of William Beckford and Emma Hamilton, and as a young man he was believed to be the richest man in England with a fortune, then, of one million pounds.

His achievements were many, he was a Novelist, a Poet and a Composer, having studied under Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He had an art.collection which included works by Raphael, Bellini, Claude and Caneletto  
He also built Fonthill Abbey and the infamous Lansdown Tower (Beckford's Tower), the tallest structure in England at the time.

The Tower, however was very badly constructed, and had to be rebuilt. He also constructed a pleasure garden,known as Beckfords Ride which he used to walk each day with a dwarf servant and his four dogs.

By the time he died, on 2 May 1844, his fortune had dwindled to £100.000.

Further information about Beckford can be found at   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomas_Beckford

The Kennedy Clan was Irish - True?

                                                               
                                                     John F Kennedy

                         The Kennedy Clan was Irish - True ?

Wrong, the Kennedy Clan originated in Scotland, and were originally of Pictish/Norse stock, with origins in Scotland's Western Isles. In the 11th and 12th century, their Homeland was in and around Dunduff Castle, near Carrick in Ayrshire.Their later Clan Seat was Culzean Castle near Turnberry. Among their enemies in Scotland was the Bruce Clan led by King Robert the Bruce. They left Scotland in the 12th and 13th centuries to settle around Tipperary in Ireland.

Sartre's Roads to Freedom - The Mystery of the BBC's Lost Tapes.

Just over 43 years ago the BBC first aired a dramatisation of Jean Paul Sartre's Roads to Freedom Trilogy.

The first episode was shown on the 10th of April 1970, and the last episode was shown on 27th December 1970 (my 20th Birthday.

The series starred Michael Bryant as Mathieu Delarue, Daniel Massey as Daniel Sereno, Rosemary Leach as Marcelle, Clifford Rose as Jacques and Simon Ward as Philippe.

It seemed likely that the BBC wiped the tapes, despite the series being nominated for several awards.  

For years the BBC cloaked the existence of recordings in secrecy, leading to the belief that no recordings existed. This year a few hundred people were privileged to see the whole series screened at the British Film Institute in London. It sold out.

Just after, its director James Cellan Jones wrote:
"I directed Roads to Freedom for the BBC in 1970. It had some faults but was one of the best things I've ever done; it was repeated on BBC2 in 1976/7. It was shown at the NFT on May 12th & 13th, 2012 to full houses at both sessions. This was entirely due to Marcus Prince of the BFI who persuaded the BBC to lend them new copies.

I would love to see this show broadcast again and was encouraged by the enthusiasm of the NFT audience who I advised to write to the BBC requesting a retransmission or the publication of of it on DVD."

The series was last shown in 1976/77 and the last episode was shown the week before I bought my first VHS Video Recorder. 

At the moment the fragment  below is all that exists of the series on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CjPeap6Xyo

A Petition to bring back the series can be found at  http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/bbc-s-roads-to-freedom-1970.html

Hitler and Eva Braun Escaped Berlin and died in South America in 1962

A new book claims Adolf Hitler faked his death and escaped from Berlin and travelled to Argentina with Eva Braun in 1945.

Grey Wolf - The Escape of Adolf, by British authors Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan says Hitler and Braun had two daughters before Hitler died in 1962 at the age of 73.

"They refute the widely accepted view that the Fuhrer shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, and Braun committed suicide by taking cyanide," Britain's The Daily Mail reported.
"Instead, they claim, there is 'overwhelming evidence' to suggest that the couple escaped at the end of the Second World War for a new life in a Nazi-controlled enclave in Fascist Argentina."
"The book also claims American intelligence officials were complicit in the escape, in return for access to war technology developed by the Nazis.

"It also says that skull fragments thought to be those of Hitler currently held by the Russians are actually that of a young woman under the age of 40. Hitler was 56 when he died."

A film will be released early next year.

For further information go to http://www.greywolfmedia.com/