To Find a Cuckoo Bird

Whispers of Jura, and the joys of island living

The Isle of Jura is an island in the outer Hebrides of Scotland, famous for its Jura Whiskey and population of deer that greatly outnumber the permanent residents. The word whiskey actually comes from Scottish Gaelic for water - 'uisge' pronounced the same as English 'whiskey', and the Gaelic word for whiskey is actually 'uisge-beatha' literally 'water of life', which says a lot about how the Scots view their drink! The word Jura comes from the Gaelic 'Diùra', which in turn comes from an Old Norse term for 'deer island', referring to the approximately 6000 native deer.

In place of Grandpa's family, my Dad and I matched to many Scots, over half had some links to the Isle of Jura. I'd never even heard of this island, but now I can spot it on the map instantly. One person of note, who may be my ancestor or at the very least a relative of my biological grandfather, was a Gaelic writer and poet known affectionately as 'The Bard of Jura", his name was Domnhull McEachern in his tongue, but this becomes anglicised (i.e. in its English form) as Donald McKechnie. Most of my Jura DNA matched had links to these McKechnies.

But none were close enough matched to Dad or I to clearly point to a particular branch of the McKechnie family.

What happens when a population of people are confined to a small space for generations upon generations?

A lot of inbreeding. A lot.

It seems Dad and I relate to almost everyone with descent from the Isle of Jura. In fact, there's a particular segment of dna on chromosome 1 that appears in almost every person with ancestry from Jura in the last few hundred years. Is my biological grandfather from Jura himself? Or is there more to the story?

I also have ancestry on my mother's side from the island of Bermuda. Yes that Bermuda! And the situation here seems quite similar, I DNA match to most people with ancestry from Bermuda, even though it was my 2x great grandfather who came from there.

It's clear from that islands, small isolated villages and groups of people have more in common DNA-wise than most other close-knit groups of people. This definitely threw a spanner into the works, sending me on wild goose chases that don't quite seem to lead anywhere!