My friend Bill from Arkansas doesn't simply keep track of his ancestors; he travels far and wide to pore over civil and parish records of his great greats and his family tree has a rich set of branches indeed.
I was greatly amused the other day of his tale of an Irish priest who took it upon himself to protect the reputation of unnamed illegitimate children from centuries back in his parish. Bill had gone to County Kilkenny to track down a great-grandmother and was told he would not be allowed to see the church records because he might reveal information about illegitimate births. Bill then added that he had had a similar experience in Germany where the records actually showed the birth of a "Hurensohn" (son of a whore). Bill, being a generous sort, speculated this might have been just the normal word of the day for illegitimate, and perhaps didn't carry the sting later generations might read into the term. The German language, after all, can be quite direct. My grandmother had no trouble designating the outhouse we had to use back in the dark ages as the "Scheisshaus" - the shit house.
As for the"son of a whore" designation, I can only speculate, of course, but since I don't know a soul who gives a hoot whether somebody born 150 years ago was legit or not, his protest does make me sit up and take notice. How almost delightful. How quaint.
But what's this priest's game? He could, of course, be being straight with folk and telling the truth - that he honestly feels an obligation to protect parishioners' reputations. But one cannot fail to take note of his inclination (instinct?) to cover up potential scandals. How very clergy-like of him, the little voice in my head says. It's also possible he's just got an overly inflated view of his job and likes to show his power by not letting you have what you're asking for. That's a real possibility, since he did give in in the end and let Bill have a look at potential evidence of shame and disgrace.
Another thought this tale brings to mind is the evidence of the means the church has to maintain social control, how it wrested control away from civil authority to determine who is married and who is not, thus assuring that money would flow more readily into church coffers from people wanting to grease the skids and get on with it.
There is, of course, another possible explanation for making an issue of legitimacy, and that is a simple inclination to think and act bureaucratically, and this time I mean without really considering any moral reason for posing the question. Many people inclined to keep the world in order, when they find blanks, earnestly believe those blanks must necessarily be filled in whenever and wherever possible.
Back in 1960, when I went abroad to study, no sooner was I assigned to a room in a Lutheran dormitory in Munich than the house-mother informed me that I needed to register my residence with the police. As a born-free American, this seemed like government overreach, but I was still barely twenty and in no position to stand up to what seemed like a police state obligation. A German police state, no less. It was still years before the Vietnam War and I had no idea that people sometimes protested authority, so I found the local gendarmerie and got in line. The place was crowded and I had to wait my turn to appear before a police officer sitting high and mighty at a counter I could barely see over.
Name? he asked me.
Date of birth?
I told him I was born on May 14, 1940.
Legitimate or illegitimate?
I will remember that question as long as I live. "Ehelich oder unehelich?"
I went home and immediately wrote my mother and father a thank-you note for marrying before I was born.
Why did they need to know that? I was just doing my duty and registering my residence, so that the police would know where I lived. Why did they need to know?
A clue to the reasoning came in the very next question, after I mumbled "ehelich," (the word glosses in English to "marriagely" by the way), looking at all the people standing around me within earshot.
"Where were you on September 1, 1939?"
With this question the interrogation moved from surprising to almost sinister.
If I had had my wits about me, I would have answered, "In my mother's womb." Didn't the idiot just hear me say I was born eight months after that date?
But I wasn't thinking; I was simply being dutiful and answering any and all questions the policeman was putting to me. And he, obviously, was not much of a deep thinker, either.
Somebody informed me that in those days, merely fifteen years after war's end, they were still keeping track in Germany of where everybody came from. Tons of people - we called them "DPs" - displaced persons - had poured across the border when Russia grabbed the eastern part of Poland and Poland followed suit and took a huge chunk of Germany in restitution for the misery Germany had inflicted on them. Including the plot of land my Tante Frieda's relatives had buried the family jewels in, by the way, but that's a story for another day.
My point is just that here was an official simply going down the list of questions his job required him to ask in case anybody in authority ever needed to come find me.
There are so many times when people wish for "the good old days." I never do. I would, of course, love to go back in time - provided, of course, I could take the knowledge I have in my head today with me. What an opportunity it would be to right wrongs and avoid missed opportunities. But then there are those occasions like this when you remember that one could be labeled illegitimate and have that fact entered on your public records. I'll stay right here in the present, if it's all the same to you.
When I was a kid I had a great uncle who was a farmer in Nova Scotia. When he didn't like people, he didn't call them SOBs or bastards, as we did in Connecticut. He called them "sons o' whores."
That's what my friend Bill found on these church records as literal designations for children born out of wedlock. Never mind that some poor servant girl had to submit to the lust of her employer and bear any children that came of the moment. She got to be called a whore, to boot. And have that designation entered next to her name in the public record - sometimes even upside down, to rub it in - for some casual passer-by generations hence from America to discover one day.
Sometimes things really do get better.
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