Why the Clan Should Interact

There can be cited too many a reason for holding your hand for the first time, if you are of the Brun family stock.

First, it was agonized over some generations and so many decades since before 1900, why the Brun forebear came to Philippines and was by his lonesome. And why, after all that time, there were no evident relatives with whom to pray, spend Christmas, give to or receive gifts from, send letters, invite to a wedding, a christening or whatever else occasion there was.

It was a complete mystery from the beginning until this void talking space spoke of Bruns - so many of them, with the original ones having crests and heralds never even heard of since the time of our grandfathers who spoke of important and symbolic birds and other animals on their baby dresses. That was a wow, but perplexing all the same. What could be important with birds or animals? They're all of them everywhere.

Of course, there was the story of Bruns getting mighty pissed with Spaniards and Americans and vice versa and in the course of dispute, laying their lives honorably for the sake of their independent spirit. There was a puzzle about why Bavarians preferred to be on their own rather than lace the boots of German counterparts with their precious saliva. Our own fathers even proudly told of Bavarians being rebels, rebellious, but is that not being juvenile and childish after all? Again, that void talking space, explaining that and this, this and that, the conquest of that and the defending of this and without end, those stories flowed. Even more, adding to the bewilderment of the poor sots, whose fathers had to die without making the proper linking to the branches sprung from the same root of which they so affectionately made tall tales about.

One father had to die of a sudden incident, a traffic side swiping one, where the taxi driver, unconscionable up to this day, had not shown his face to the authorities for killing a Brun with no applicable decent reason in the commission of such act.

So the, before the dilemma goes on forever with the children of this present parents' generation not getting into the same confused or flustered state as their fathers or mothers, the birdbox's formerly secret name is broken out into the open and possibly someone will make the invite on one of these bright days to let us hold their hand.

May this void talking space do wonders then, so that the Bruns out there will learn of the people of the woodlands, highlands, eking out an existence not uncommon to theirs and longing to get word about long lost relations that sometimes are too embarrassing to mention to our own children for fear that they will never really believe (as we fiercely doubted our own fathers too before they died and left journals of their search in the municipal and city registrars of authentic Bruns who could be the missing members of our kind. The searches yielded only the names of the cattle rustlers and robbers that either married into, or simply adopted the surname for fear of arrests out of lives of crime.)

It is dared not to overly imagine the insanity our fathers had to go through trying to connect to something that can never be found (with the greatest exception of the void talking space). That would have been painful for sure, but at least it was merely something that the generation after them only read in the hidden journals and heard from their fantastic tales. Exceedingly hard to get connected with such triviality, until the yearning our fathers felt suddenly dawns upon us when we start having tots who ask where did we ever come from Poppa?

That, it is hard to tell them, God is truly the Maker of all things.

Like our fathers, we will never have been believed by the instant.

Our Clan

We are of the original Brun family stock. It is not ever known how our forebear came to the Philippines and made horse's saddles and other leather ware as well as brewed beverages, smoked meats and other preserves. Our elders also tell of good knowledge and hand for blacksmithing, but we are out of that as for now even when we know that craft is buried somewhere in our genes.

If there are any Bruns or Browns, Braun, and Bruins, or even with Bruno surnames out there, feel free to shoot an arrow with a message into this site of ours.

The target is this lion.of.the.woodlands@gmail.com, our birdbox that we have kept for years but have only announced at this time.

Our original stock comes from the south of Germany, Alemain or Deutschland as it were, and we were the independent minded brothers of the common Germanic people. We are called Bavarians or Bayerns.

Since a number of marriages happened in the past had bred the spread of our name, and while our forebears have fiercely defended our independent spiritedness, the Spaniards who came after us killed many of our kind. As much as we suffered deaths from the prison inmate-turned-guards-soldiers, our clan claimed many a life from their side. More, so much more than the numbers by which we were decimated. A good number of our people hid from the Spaniards for long periods - coming out only bearing names native to the Philippine country and staying with those names until this day, only to be hunted again this time by the Americans who had again faulted us for our free-mindedness. Those Americans that came in the recent past even had German names, but Germans and Bavarians do not exactly see eye to eye all of the time. So we killed Americans too, while they took many more than a few of our kind.

What is of interest is that while we, the original Brun stock have become Filipinos with Filipino names, have married into the local tribes, our relations by marriage or acquaintance (but shamelessly changed into our surname of Brun being wanted by the authorities for cattle rustling or any other crimes), have retained the beloved name of Brun. That is of no consequence to us, since the blood of Brun is what defines our clan and our own stock, even if we have mixed marriages with a large number of races - native Filipino, Fujianese Chinese, Spanish and several others. Some have even married Mindanao Muslims with Arabic stock.

So now, whether we are of the clans of Molabola, Pareja, Botictic, some being Algas and many others, we are definitely as Brun as our original forebears are. Some of our parents, although married only to the originals, curious as to what we are, have studied at the Goethe Institut to learn about Germany and Bavaria, as well as the Deutsche language.

There will be time to interact later, so for now, we end the brief introduction here. We repeat our call to our relatives from Germany, France, England, even the Cajun in the US, to shoot their arrows to our birdbox so we will learn of how you fare and we may tell of what we are and who we are now.

Auf wiedersehen, abschied für jetzt. Farewell for now meine sehr lieben Freunde - my well-loved friends in this void talking space.