Order of generic and One broad distinction separates Germanic comspecific pound names from Celtic. In the latter, as has syllables. been shown, the generic term generally precedes Corrupt forms. the specific; in Germanic or Anglian compounds, the specific term invariably precedes the generic. The stress faithfully follows the specific syllable, hence in Anglian place-names the stress most often lies on the first syllable, in Celtic most often on the ultimate or penultimate. Frisians, Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, however little lettered their colonists may have been, spoke dialects of a literary language, and their vocables are easily interpreted by comparison with Anglo-Saxon and Old Northern English. Nevertheless, one has to be on his guard against the tricks which modern topographers are so prone to play with names of which the meaning is not at once apparent. We have seen how the Welsh llanerch became Lànrig and then Lòngridge; Stòneykirk, a parish in Wigtownshire, has been made absurd by a similar process. This name is written phonetically in the Register of the Great Seal in 1535, Steneker; in 1546, Stenakere; and in 1559, Stennaker. Thus far early spellings mislead rather than assist us; but as late as 1725 it appears in the papers of the Court of Session as Stevenskirk. It is a dedication to St Stephen; the popular contraction "Steenie" sounded like "stany," and would-be-genteel scribes wrote it "stoney," though the name has no more to do with stones than it has with gooseberry-bushes. The local pronunciation is Staneykirk. becomes word. Not seldom the Anglo-Saxon circ was borrowed in A.S. circ Gaelic districts for use in a Gaelic compound name, Gaelic loanas Kirkcudbright-circ Cudbricht, Cuthbert's church; Kirkgùnzeon — circ Guinnin, St Finan's church, which you find with full Gaelic expression at Kilwinning in Ayrshire. These bilingual names are but a reflection of the social state of the country, when different races and languages were contesting for the mastery. In a charter printed in Anderson's 'Diplomata Scotiæ,' it is set forth how Richard de Morville, Constable of Scotland in 1166, sells Edmund, the son of Bonda, and Gillemichel his brother, to Henry St Clair. Here Edmund and Bonda are Saxon names, but Gillemichel is Gaelic, "Michael's servant." Kirk as a suffix may sometimes be confused with the Gaelic coirce or coirc (kyorky or kyork), oats. Thus Barnkirk in Wigtownshire is the contracted form of Barnkirky in Kirkcudbright; both signify barr an coirce, oats-hill. But the local application of the stress is a sure indication of the specific syllable. Scandi navian or Norse and Danish. 76 LECTURE IV. THE LANGUAGES OF SCOTTISH PLACE-NAMES. SCANDINAVIAN OR OLD NORSE AND DANISH- OBLITERATION OF IN the eighth and ninth centuries an important addition was made to the ethnology of Alban by the incursion and settlement of predatory bands of Norwegians and Danes, resulting in the establishment of many Scandinavian place-names in our islands. The wealth which some of the monasteries had by this time accumulated from the offerings of the pious was the lure for these marauders, and the first of a long series of depredations is thus described by Simeon of Durham as taking place on the monastic house of Lindisfarne in 793 :— The Pagans from the northern region came with armed ships to Britain like stinging hornets, and overran the country in all directions like fierce wolves, plundering, tearing, and killing not only sheep and oxen, but priests and levites, and choirs of monks and nuns. They came to the church of Lindisfarne and laid all waste with dreadful havoc, trod with unhallowed feet the holy altars, and carried off all the treasures of the holy church. Some of the brethren they killed, some they carried off in chains, many they cast out naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea. Next year, 794, they attacked the Hebrides. These islands they called the Sudreyar or Southern Isles, to distinguish them from the Nodreyar or Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland; and it is a curious instance of the conservative element in place-names that, although of course the Sudreyar or Hebrides are not now within the diocese of Man, the official title of that see is still "Sodor and Man." in the Isles. The people of Orkney and Shetland once, it may Native speech be assumed, spoke Iverian, Gaelic, or Pictish, for obliterated the early Ogham inscriptions in Shetland have been Northern interpreted in a Goidhelic dialect; but little trace of these tongues can now be detected in their placenames, which are almost exclusively Norse or later English. To this the first syllable of the name Orkney affords an important exception. Diodorus Siculus, writing in A.D. 57, mentions Orcas as one of the extremities of Britain. Orc, in Gaelic, means a large beast, especially a whale: when the Norsemen took possession they may have found them called Whale Islands, and adding their own ey, island, to the native name, called them Orkney, just as we saw in the last lecture that Boitter or Fether in the Forth became Fètheray or Fidra. Of course, when we speak of the Orkney Islands we are guilty of a pleonasm. It is as if we said "Whale Isle Islands." 1 St Ninian visited them in the fifth century, and left his name attached to North Ronaldshay, so spelt from false analogy with South Rònaldshay. This is an instance of the paramount necessity of obtaining the earliest written form of a name, for North Ronaldshay is written in the Sagas Rinansey —that is, Ringan's Isle-Ringan being a common alternative form of Ninian; whereas South Ronaldshay is Rögnvals-ey-Ronald's Isle. Sir Robert Sibbald, in 1711, stated that the inhabitants of Orkney and Shetland still spoke the "Gothick or Norwegian language, which they call Norn, now much worn out," among themselves, though able to speak English to strangers. Hence we see that not only has all trace of the original native speech been obliterated by the long occupation of the Norsemen, but there has not been in Orkney and Shetland a regurgitation of the Gaelic 1 The hamlet of Aith, near Conningsburgh, seems to be mentioned in the Ogham inscription found at the latter place; which has been interpreted ehte con mor—that is, the ait, or house-site, of great Conn. |