DUBLIN — An ancestry test carried out on the Book of Kells has found that the manuscript is almost entirely from Kells.
The test was arranged in the way families across the diaspora arrange these things every Christmas. A kit was ordered, the form was filled in, and the box was posted off. The only difficulty was the sample. Nobody is allowed to swab a Gospel book, so the genealogy service, a fictional outfit invented for this story, worked from what it had: the name on the cover, the ground where the monastery stood, and the record of the Book being sent out of Kells in 1653.
The results came back within the month, in the usual cheerful colours. Origin: Kells, Co. Meath, by a distance. Dublin: no ancestry detected. Under Dublin there was a short note in smaller type: "Recent residence only. Arrived in the 1660s."
A fictional composite of the genealogy service's analysts, people who spend their days telling Americans which county their surname came from, said: "We've never had a cleaner result. Usually there's a bit of everything. This one is Kells, Kells and more Kells. Dublin shows up the way a long hotel stay shows up. It isn't family. It's an address."
The report also offers the feature every ancestry customer knows: a list of close relatives. For the Book, the list is long and every name on it is local. There are matches on the main street, matches out along the Navan road and matches in families who have lived beside the old monastic site for generations. Beside each one is the familiar green button: Connect.
A fictional composite of Kells people who opened the results on a kitchen table said: "It says we're its closest living relatives. We knew that. It's nice to have it in writing. Now somebody tell the people minding it."
The holding side has been sent a copy. A fictional composite of the kind of office that receives such things, standing in for no named person, acknowledged the report and filed it under "heritage interest." The phrase suggests something you look at on a wet afternoon. It does not suggest family. It certainly does not suggest a return.
That is the trouble with ancestry, from the holder's point of view. Ancestry is not sentimental. It does not care how long something has been kept, how well it has been lit or how many people have queued to see it. It asks a single question, where did you come from, and for this Book the answer never changes.
The diaspora understands this better than anyone. People fly in every summer to stand on the ground their families left. They don't come because their great-grandparents lived well somewhere else. They come because this is where it started. A fictional composite of a returning visitor from abroad, the kind who arrives with a printed family tree and a list of graveyards, said: "I did my test and it sent me to Meath. The Book did its test and it sent it to Meath too. I got on a plane. The Book is still waiting for someone to let it travel."
Trinity refused loans of the Book in 2000 and again in 2011. Kells is not asking to borrow its own relative for a weekend. It is asking for the family member to come home.
The results page ends, as these pages always do, with a suggestion. "You have a close match in Kells. Would you like to send them a message?" The Book can't press the button. Kells has pressed it for it. The message is short, and it has been sent before: come home.
The town is waiting for a reply. It has kept the kettle on, as families do, for a relative who left in 1653 and has not been allowed back since.