Children of The Mist

            We swim in a sea of history. Our present is a point in time that has an endless past, and an endless future. It is at some point in the 17^th century that my tale exists. This tale is of a people called “The Children of the Mist.” Thinking of a family connection to history, I can recall a story my Grandmother once told me. It feels necessary to state that it’s been a few years since I’ve heard it; she also explained at the time that dealing with centuries of past ancestry is a pretty inaccurate sort of science. So I cannot guarantee that this story is perfectly valid. In the same way, I’d like to think of my recollection of this experience as a sort of folklore of my family that my Grandmother started: it is not necessarily 100% accurate, but is rich in myth and lore.

            So, the story of the Children of the Mist is one of the MacGregor clan. The MacGregors were supposedly one of the oldest clans in Scotland, but politics were never quite favorable to this family. My Grandmother claims a distant relation to one of these MacGregors, specifically Rob Roy MacGregor. The abridged version of this story is that in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, the MacGregor clan fell into disfavor with the monarchy of the era, and were deprived of their lands and wealth. It went so far as an extermination order being created. Being deposed of class and position, the clan found their way into the hills and countryside, continuing to live off of the livestock and crops from random farms. The MacGregor clan gained notoriety, and the name “The Children of the Mist” because they used the fog as a cover to hide them as they stole what they used to survive.