Place-names of Scotland

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D. Douglas, 1903 - Names, Geographical - 308 pages

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Page 304 - By-ways of History : Studies in the Social Life and Rural Economy of the Olden Time. By JAMES COLVILLK, MA, D.Sc., Examiner in History, University of Glasgow:.
Page 303 - Dasent's Popular Tales from the None may claim to rank as a classic. One of the most capable, earnest, and scholarly disciples of the Grimms, Sir George contributed greatly to the knowledge of comparative mythology and folklore, and besides doing much to popularise a branch of knowledge at that time confined to the specialist, gave us a book of stories which has been a perpetual delight to manhood and to youth.
Page vii - The study of place-names may be said to stand to history and ethnology in somewhat the same relation as the study of fossils stands to geology. Each group or set of fossils represents, with more or less strictness, a distinct age of geologic time as, roughly speaking, does each group of place names represent a period of historic or prehistoric...
Page xii - ... open a limestone nodule and finds therein a magnificent Productus, every curve and line of the shell perfect, is hardly greater than the satisfaction of the historical philologist when he first discovers that a puzzling and prosaic name like Carstairs originally was ' Casteltarres
Page xcii - Kylosberu, though already in 1278 it has donned its present guise. The early form shows that here we have another of the superabundant Celtic kils ; only this was the ' cell ' or 'church' of a Norse saint; for Osborne is the N. Asen-bjorn, ' the bear of the Asen ' or
Page 291 - Celtic overlays or modern substitutions, and of these remains the work offers little information. Even where explanations of Norse or Anglian names are attempted, the results are in many cases singularly lame. Two instances, taken at random, may be cited : — " WANLOCK WATER and WANLOCKHEAD (Sanquhar). Can this mean ' stream like a woman's ringlet,' or ' curl
Page xcvi - the first name in all the Scottish Calendar, and presumably the first bringer of Christianity to Scotland, was St. Ninian of Withorn, born 360 AD ; his name also appears as Ringan and Rinan. Ground Plan, Church of St. Ninian, Sanda Island. He is commemorated in twenty-five churches or chapels, extending from Ultima Thule to the Mull of Galloway.
Page 163 - Groat to prevent dissensions as to precedence among the eight different branches of his family. Whatever the origin of the legend, which resembles that of the Round Table, it is certain that between 1496 and 1525 there was one ' John o' Grot of Duncansbay, baillie to the Earl in those pairts,
Page xii - Casteltarres ' (sic c. 1170), Terras being a familiar Scotch surname to this day. Even yet all will not be well unless the student also knows that the oldest usage of the word ' castle ' in English was as a translation of the Vulgate's castellum, where castellum means always...

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