Cobblers and sneaky swans: what’s in a name?
Toponymists professional and amateur gathered at the Three Villages Community Hall in Arrochar for a conference of the Scottish PlaceName Society (SPNS).
The meeting, held on November 2, opened with a local slant, when Sue Furness, Fiona Jackson and Elizabeth Carmichael talked about Hidden Heritage, a two-year project developed by the Arrochar and Tarbet community to involve people in the area in investigating the heritage of the landscape joining the two villages.
This isthmus had been used by Vikings to portage their boats; by MacFarlanes to grow their crops; by drovers to take their cattle to market; and by Victorian tourists keen to experience the Scottish Highlands; and is now crossed by a major road, railway, and footpaths. Surveys and archaeological excavations, with support from by Dr Simon Taylor of the University of Glasgow, inspired the publication of Gaelic Place Names of Arrochar Parish.
Gaelic and Celtic academic Professor Ronald Black reported on the Dewar Manuscript project. John Dewar (1802–72) was a Gaelic speaking tradition-bearer from Arrochar. Commissioned by the Duke of Argyll for 10 years from 1862, he collected oral history from Argyllshire, Arran, west Dunbartonshire, west Perthshire and Lochaber, which Dewar wrote up in Gaelic in 10 manuscripts (7,000 pages in all), which are now part of the Argyll Papers in Inveraray Castle. The folk stories that Dewar collected contained numerous placenames, many of which are not known from other sources. Professor Black focused on Dewar’s idiosyncratic recording of place-names in general and on Arrochar in particular, whose name seems to derive from Gaelic an t-arachar, a unit of land under the plough.
Peter Drummond, SPNS treasurer, celebrated The Cobbler and his Neighbours, relating the iconic Argyll hill to its namesakes in other parts of Scotland as well as Italy, France and Canada. It seems that many societies see in their landscape shoe-makers bent over their lasts.
Southend-born Alan Cameron discussed the placenames in the little-known poem Flory Loynachan, written in the mid-1800s to record the Kintyre dialect. The poem is a litany of place-names, including Achnaglach, from Achadh nan Clach, Field of the Stones; Ballochantee, now Bellochantuy, from Bealach an t-Suidhe, Pass of the Seat, showing how English interpretations change with time and Dorling, from dòirlinn, a natural causeway between the mainland and a tidal island.
Over several decades German-born Professor WFH Nicolaisen collected the historical forms of several thousand Scottish placenames – some dating back to the 13th century – with a view to creating a single-volume scholarly dictionary.
Although Nicolaisen died before his plans came to fruition, he left an impressive collection of place-name forms, meticulously handwritten on paper. Alison Grant, former convenor of the SPNS and author of the Pocket Guide to Scottish Place-Names, described the work to digitise these. The final talk of the day by SPNS member Bill Stephens emphasised the caution needed when interpreting Gaelic place-names. On Lismore, there is a stone called Clach na-h-Eala, which is translated as Stone of the Swan, but it doesn’t look like a bird and it is not particularly close to water.
The stone traditionally marked a sanctuary and Bill argued that rather than eala/ swan, the name may derive from èalaidh/to creep, crawl or sneak, which sanctuary-seekers might have to do and which features in many other place-names, from Elie in Fife to the river Ealay on North Uist and Seolaid na h-Eala, a hidden channel in the Sound of Harris.
Despite the wealth of knowledge of place-names, Scotland’s toponymy is under-researched, and the conference concluded that although it was informative to talk about place-names, the most effective research was carried out in the field: nothing is as revealing as looking at the land at ground level.