The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [133]
As Claire explains to Roger in Dragonfly, Dougal gave the boy to a family who had recently lost a new baby to smallpox. This would have been the reasonable thing to do, since the mother of the dead child would be able to feed the adopted child (no formula in the eighteenth century). And, as per the common custom of the times, the family gave the adopted child the same name as that of the child they had lost—William Buccleigh MacKenzie. Claire didn’t know this from her own experience, since she had left Leoch before Geillis was (presumably) burned. She did, however, later learn the names of the parents to whom Dougal gave the child (when Dougal visits her in Paris)—and in the process of checking out Roger’s family tree [Dragonfly], would have been able to confirm the dead child/adopted child replacement by means of baptismal records, as these would show both baptisms in the same parish, with the same parents, no more than a few months apart.
Allllll right. Now, look at the relevant part of the genealogy that the Reverend wrote out for Roger. See William Buccleigh? He’s the changeling. That is, he is not the son of William John MacKenzie and Sarah Innes; he is the illegitimate son of Geillis Duncan and Dougal MacKenzie, who was given to William and Sarah to raise. Since the Reverend Wakefield naturally wouldn’t have known this (he may have known—from the baptismal records—that the child must be adopted, but would have had no way of knowing who the true parents were), William simply appears in the family tree as William and Sarah’s son.
Notice also the name of the woman whom William marries—Morag Gunn. Now, you, the reader, have not seen this name before, but Claire certainly has— and remembers it. In Dragonfly, she prepares for her quest in part by having Roger’s family tree researched. Owing to circumstances, she will have paid particular attention to the changeling and whatever can be found out about him, so it’s not surprising that when Roger asks her much later [Drums], she recalls Morag’s name.
The important point here is that William Buccleigh is Roger’s direct ancestor. Likewise, Geillis Duncan is Roger’s direct ancestor (as is Dougal MacKenzie). If one of these people (or anyone else in this family tree) were to die without having children, that would naturally eliminate all the descendants below them on the chart—including Roger. Hence Claire’s concern [Dragonfly]; if Geillis doesn’t go back and get burned at the stake, she doesn’t produce William Buccleigh either—so does Roger cease to exist?
OKAY. NOW, in Voyager, we don’t deal directly with the questions concerning Geillis, but she and her connections with Roger are mentioned, just to keep events in mind for her surprise appearance toward the end of that book. Look. See? There’s that genealogy chart again, still tacked to the corkboard in the Reverend’s study.
Then we reach Drums of Autumn. Now we make a Big Hairy Deal out of Roger’s antecedents, in several different places. We mention Geilie and her son (William Buccleigh, remember?), and Roger takes down the genealogical chart with a fair amount of ceremony, as the final act in clearing out his (adopted) father’s study. Later, when he takes Brianna to the Celtic Festival, he reminisces about the Reverend, and about his family tree, telling the anecdote about his great-grandmother Oliphant and her “bonny lad,” Jeremiah—in the process, getting it across (or so one would think), that a) Jeremiah is an old family name, recurring several times in the family tree, b) Roger’s father was named Jeremiah (called Jerry for short), c) Roger’s own middle name is Jeremiah, and d) his mother called him “Jemmy” for short, as a child.
Now, the point of all this is to make the readers more or less pay attention when they