Old King Cole, Great-Grandpa

A note on sources: Although I am not sourcing this work rigorously, I am only accepting connections that are non-controversial among two or three (unauthoritative) Internet sources, mostly One World Tree($), Wikipedia, and Jamie Allen‘s pedigree. If any of these sources differ, or indicate more than one possible mother (or father) of an individual, I am not including any of them in my data. If you want to be more speculative, here is a site that traces from Charlemagne all the way back to Adam(!)

Old King Cole

The English nursery rhyme, “Old King Cole was a merry old soul …” has been traced by scholars to as early as the third century C.E. (or AD). One of several possible rulers the ditty may refer to is a certain Coel (Latin: Coilus I), a king of Britons who lived from about 85-170 C.E. The Britons were a Celtic people, one of several inhabiting the British Isles before the Roman occupation.

Well, this particular Coel fellow was a willing vassal of the Roman Empire; indeed, he spent much of his youth in Rome. More on that later. Moving forward from King Coel, we find that his daughter, Athildis of the Britons, married Marcomir IV, king of the Franks. By this political matchup, Coel became an ancestor of that “other” Frank, Charlemagne, 26 generations later. Thus for me and all my relatives, “Old King Coel” is our approximately 62nd great-grandfather.