Meharg, a name cursed since the 1500s; blame it on the Archbishop of Glasgow

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You're gonna love this!

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A distant relative, who I just discovered and who writes columns for the Times-Journal in a town near Ontario, Canada, says the whole Meharg family name is "cursed." No, really. This guy, Bob Meharg, says he's discovered that since the 1500's, we've been under a black cloud placed there by the Archbishop of Glasgow.

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My distant and unknown relative, Bob, has discovered that our family hails from a blood-soaked region along the border of Scotland and England he describes as once being in the "grip of feud and organized gangsterism." Trust me, Bob says, this was bad stuff. And it was made that way, largely, by a bunch of murderous clans known as the "border reivers," whose only major contribution to English culture was the word "blackmail."

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These "goons" (Bob's word) thought nothing of sacking and looting a farm or neighboring clan. Now, right in the thick of all of this were our ancestors, who at that time went under the name of Graham.

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The Grahams, he says in a bit of understatement, were so good at their business that they brought a "certain amount of ill will." Thus, they were savagely persecuted by the English king of the day.

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But that was just the beginning of the Grahams' problems. The Archbishop of Glasgow issued a tirade which, in part, went like this: "I curse thair heid and all the haris of thair heid; I curse thair face, thair ene, thair mouth, thair crag, thair schulderis, thair breist, thair hert..."

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Only a Scot could come up with something like that. But it worked. It became so unhealthy to be a Graham that many of them, at the behest of one smart family member, decided to change the name to avoid further attention. In a blaze of inspiration, he put the letters backwards, from Graham to Maharg and later to Meharg.

 

Then, in an equally bright move, a branch of the family ran off to the peace and safety of Northern Ireland.

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It all makes so much sense now. In a trip to Ireland a few years ago, I found a Meharg near Dublin who said he (we) had many relatives in the Belfast (north) region. In fact, he said, there is a section of Dublin called "Meharg Corners." 

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So, there you have it. Should bad things happen to any of us Mehargs, we can blame it on the Archbishop of Glasgow. 

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My thanks to Bob Meharg for this story and use of his descriptions which fall dangerously close to plagiarism, but then stealing stuff from one's neighbor sorta runs in the family don't you think!

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