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There are mysterious ties to our ancestors, I believe. I am a rare person who loves bagpipe music and I have Scottish ancestry. Some of my ancestors originated from France. They were Huguenots driven from France and a group of them settled in Ireland and adopted a new surname from the area they settled. So that is right now a big brick wall to piercing the French lines. I find genealogy endlessly fascinating.

The Ancestry DNA project has me at 31% Scot, 29% Welsh. The Welsh language is interesting to me. I've completed the Duolingo course. I started into Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic and found the Scots Gaelic suited me better. Fewer dialects as well. I have a beginner's chanter for bagpipe practice. It's a little "off" because you can't articulate the airflow in a bagpipe or associated chanter. It's constant airflow from the bag. Notes are separated with "embellishments". I need to order some better reeds for my chanter. It has plastic reeds that sound awful.

BTW, last night was Robert Burns night. No haggis or IRN BRU was available locally.

My Scottish ancestors came to the US via North Carolina. It turns out that my wife also has Scottish connections to survivors of Culloden. If I have any kind of bucket list, it includes a visit to Scotland and a return to Wales. An aspirational goal is to speak only Welsh while in Wales.