The land-Its surface and divisions-Open land inseparable from the idea of fighting-Norse pennylands-Occupations and trades—Crime and punishment—Poverty-Disease—Rivers and streams-Ecclesiastical names-Early dedications of chapels and wells-Priests and monks-Land not usually named by the early Celts from ownership-But frequently so by Teutonic SCOTTISH LAND-NAMES. LECTURE I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES. DIFFICULTIES TO BE ENCOUNTERED-EVERY PLACE-NAME MEANS to be en NQUIRY into the origin and mean- Difficulties ing of Scottish place-names is a task countered. beset with difficulties of a peculiar kind. Most of these names were con ferred by people speaking a language which has long ceased to be heard in the districts where the names remain a language, moreover, which was practically unwritten, for, unlike Ireland, Scotland possesses but a few uncertain fragments of A Every place-name means something. Scottish Gaelic, therefore, Gaelic or Erse literature. on. But there is one sure source of encouragement towards the solution of place-names, in that every such name has a real meaning, however darkly it may have been obscured by linguistic change or phonetic expression in the lips of people speaking another language. No man ever attempted successfully to invent an arbitrary combination of soundsigns to designate a locality: every place-name, in whatever language, is a business-like definition derived from some peculiarity or leading feature, as we might say the Green Hill, the White House, the Oak-wood; or from some incident, as the BattleField, the Murder-Stone, the Forge-Hill; or of possession, as John's town, William's field, the Priest's land. Once localities are thus distinguished, it is very ence of names. difficult to dispossess them of the names they have Permanacquired, even though Greenhill should lose all its placeverdure, though the Whitehouse (or Whithorn— Anglo-Saxon hwit ærn) should be pulled down and a red one built in its place, and the oak-wood be levelled with the ground. In A.D. 43 the Roman general Aulus Plautius, in the course of operations against the British King Cunobeline, intrenched himself on the marshy ground above the junction of the Lea with the Thames. There is no record of a town there previous to this, and the Celtic natives probably called it lon dyn ro dún-London-the marsh fort, to distinguish it, perhaps, from hen dún-Hendon-the old fort, the stronghold of Cunobeline, a few miles to the north-west. The place where the Tower of London now stands was then marsh land, and this is a good example of an ancient name preserving a picture of a landscape which has undergone complete change in the process of civilisation. The Roman conquerors altered lon dún into Londinium; but in order to commemorate their conquest of Britain, they subsequently decreed that the town which grew up round the camp of Aulus Plautius should be known as Augusta, and that, or Londinium Augusta, was for a time its official title: yet the simple native name could not be got rid of, and by that name it will continue to be known as long as one of its stones remains upon another. Now, the lesson of this example is that poetical and metaphorical interpretations of place - names |