Illegitimacy, a term which thankfully no longer holds any force in Scots law and not much more in Scots society has always been very common in Scotland - well before the famously permissive 1960s. In farming communities in particular it was so common for couples to wed when the Bride's pregnancy was well established that one wonders if this was deliberate!

In these communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, having a baby before marriage was not the social disaster for a girl that it often proved to be after "the war."

Up the Noran Water,
In by Inglesmaddy,
Annie's got a bairnie,
That hasna got a daddy.
And some folk say it's Tammas's,
And some say it's Chay's;
An' naebody expec'it it,
Wi' Annie's quiet ways.

Up the Noran Water,
The Bonnie little mannie,
Is dandled an' cuddled close
By Inglesmaddy's Annie.
Wha the bairnie's daddy is,
The lassie never says:
But some think it's Tammas's,
An' some think it's Chay's.

Up the Noran Water,
The country folk are kind;
An' wha the bairnie's daddy is
They dinna muckle mind.
But oh! the bairn at Annie's breist,
The love in Annie's ee --
They mak me wish wi' a my micht
The lucky lad wis me.

Shy Geordie -- Helen B. Cruikshank (1886-1975)

An Accident - or a Scandal?

Why did attitudes to extra-martital pregnancies change? Scottish Forebears are not sociologists but we're as happy to air our notions in the pub as the next person.

Perhaps as in earlier times the church forced Robert Burns to sit on the infamous "Stool of Repentance" after fathering an illegitimate baby, "society" was desperate to get people - and especially young women - back under control after the license of the war years.

It's certainly true that public opinion inthe 40's 50's and 60's did not look upon unwed mothers with anything like the benevolance of Geordie and those nice folk up the Noran water.

Scottish Forebears thank goodness for progress!

The Missing Fathers

On the birth certificate of a child born out of wedlock, no note is taken of the father's name. Unless an expensive paternity suit was raised and won by the mother, if a child's father chose not to acknowledge it, the mother's word was not enough and she could not have his name included.

Thus the fact that no father is noted does not mean that the mother did not know or would not say who the child's father was. It means the father was not willing - or as often today, was not asked - to sign.

Without this documentary evidence, there is often no way that Scottish Forbears can trace the male line of such children. It's certainly frustrating and means that most of us end up with some "gaps" in our family trees.

Morna J. Findlay.