Читать книгу Quantum Evolution: Life in the Multiverse - Johnjoe McFadden - Страница 27

We all need to place our lives in some kind of historical context, to know where we come from. Ancestor worship is one of the most ancient forms of religion and the same craving finds a modern expression in the current popularity of genealogy. A relative of mine, John McFadden, recently traced our family back to one Cornelius McFadden. Cornelius owes his fame to being caught (probably around 1760) stealing a sheep on the island of Arranmore¹. Sheep stealers were hanged in eighteenth-century Ireland but the authorities could however show some mercy, since the sentence could be commuted for men with families. Fortunately for Cornelius, his wife Nancy was heavily pregnant so my great-great-great grandfather suffered the lesser punishment of having his ears cut off. His wounds bound, he and his young wife were placed on a raft and pushed out to sea on the ebb tide, with only a single oar. The pair rowed along the coast, finally beaching on the island of Innishirther – a rather bleak and inhospitable place, but uninhabited. They settled there and thrived, raising eleven children. Their descendants migrated to the mainland, giving rise to a long line of McFaddens, including eventually me. The punishment suffered by Cornelius is remembered in a Gaelic phrase, ‘Thug said Oidhe Concubhair air’ (roughly translated, the justice of Cornelius) that commemorates their cruel punishment.

The tale of Nancy and Cornelius gives me some connection with the past but a few hundred years are very shallow roots in a history of life that stretches back billions of years. To find more – truly ancient – roots we must dig deeper into the past.