Old King Cole

If you can believe it, I began talking at a very young age. My Mom says my first full sentence (and it *is* a full sentence, lest you forget) was “NO!” followed closely by “GET IT”. All of which TRACKS cuz ya girl can be opinionated and bossy. Again, I’m hitting with the one-two punches of multiple *shockers* in a row. 

Growing up my aunt and my Nana lived together, and would often “kidnap” my brother and I for the weekend. Pretty much as soon as I began to use words my Nana taught me nursery rhymes. I’m not really sure why, but probably because she loves them and learned many as a little girl. She had an old record with nursery rhymes sung to cute lil tunes. I began singing them and begging to play that particular record. A record which, years later, I happened to find while rummaging through the recesses of a record store. The record has many songs I still sing to my kids - “Sing a Song of Sixpence” mostly, which was one of my favorites. Among the nursery rhymes I learned as a wee tot was Old King Cole, who was a merry old soul. And a merry old soul was he.

A couple of weeks ago my aunt, whose official family title is The Keeper of All Pictures Taken of Everyone Ever ™, sent me a link to an album of very old pictures of my Nana’s family from Boston, around the turn of the century. Among these pictures was a stunning woman who died far too young at the age of 37 in the year 1916. There was one photo in particular that grabbed my attention from around 1908 of 4 generations of Nana’s father’s family. I asked my lovingly-picture-hoarding aunt about the oldest lady in the photo because I was trying to connect the dots as to her identity for sure. She answered with “let me look at the written histories” - WRITTEN HISTORIES. Well that sounds like something I need to see. After sending multiple texts of pictures of these hallowed pages, she reminded me that these written histories trace all the way back to Constantine the Great. Immediately following, she sends me page 1 of that family tree (I say this because she has multiple lines mapped back really far). Not only did I see Constantine’s name, but his mother’s and his grandfather’s. At the very top was the name Coel Godeboc. I can’t imagine a more Welsh/Celtic name. I decided to Google the name and see what I got. Let’s just say I’m going to be doing a full research blog on this guy, but let me tell you what excited me about him…

By Unknown author - This digital image can be seen in its original context here.
This image is available from the National Library of Wales.
You can view this image in its original context on the NLW Catalogue, CC0, 

I learned that this was a British king and Lord of Colchester, who medieval legend says was the father of Constantine’s mother, Saint Helena. He lived around 300 AD in Essex. And he is famously, probably erroneously but who cares, the very king for whom the nursery rhyme Old King Cole is named. The one who “called for his pipe, called for his bowl, and he called for his fiddlers three.” Well as you can imagine, I flipped out. I’m texting my partners, I’m texting my brother, I’m losing my mind.

I’ve been singing about my great grandpappy since I could talk. Ain’t that something.

Genealogy, man.