Saturday, October 20, 2007

Lost and Found

You know that phrase "it was there right under your nose all the time". I had one of those moments today.

I have been looking into the genealogy of King Harold II or more specifically, his father Wulfnoth, this week. I have managed to find out quite a bit about the ancestry of Wulfnoth - however, much was speculative and I didn't have the primary sources at hand which I needed to shed light on the matter. All roads came rather haltingly to a dead end, so to speak.

And then I checked my email. And what do you supposed I had sitting there in the Inbox for the past week, which I filled, unread, into a folder marked "Anglo Saxon Geneaology" - yep - Wulfnoth's pedigree.

One might be forgiven for thinking that my own "research" into this (which covered barely one week) was rather half-arsed. Well, maybe it was; and then again, maybe it wasn't.

Anglo-Saxon genealogy is a newish area for me - at least as far as creating a line of descent going back more than one or two generations. When dealing with my "medieval women" I have tended to focus on their immediate parentage to within, as I said, one or two generations back. Going back further, say eight or nine generations, was not something I had considered - it would, I felt, make their story too long in the telling.

So, there you have it - well, rather - I had it sitting there in front of me for the best part of a week.

I think my temporal lobe is on vacation .....

2 comments:

Elizabeth Kerri Mahon said...

Hi Melisande, just found your blog through another site. I too have a blog called Scandalous Women, about some of history's most fascinating and notorious women. I'm going to add your site to my blog list.

Melisende said...

Thanks for the link - I will return the favour!!

It's great to see such an interest in the women of history - saint or sinner, princess or peasant, their lives all make for such wonderful reading.