ARG Argyll
A 16th Century Cannon
Islay's
Norse Place-Names
The
Gaelic Landscape of Jura
Suil-sites
on Luing
Islay
Mull
A 16th CENTURY CANNON.
An article on a 16th century cannon owned by the Duke of Argyll is an
unlikely place to find a salutary snippet of information about the
reliability of names recorded long ago by persons unfamiliar with a
place or the speech of its inhabitants. The article in question, by
Robert J Knecht, is in Vol. 8, No. 2 of History Scotland, and among
other matters deals with the history rather than fantasy surrounding
the Spanish Armada ship which famously, and with dreadful loss of life,
sank off Tobermory, Mull, in late 1588 after an explosion. What is
pertinent to our interest in Scottish names is that the ship came from
what is now Croatia and had been commandeered with her Adriatic captain
and crew by the Spanish authorities; and survivors who made their way
home wrote, or informed someone who wrote, that they had anchored at an
island called 'Largona' where the local lord was called 'Maelan'.
Professor Kosti who found this archive record in Croatia has identified
Maelan with (in anglicised form - there are various Gaelic spellings of
the surname) Lachlan Maclean of Duart, as the facts seem to demand;
though Maelan would not look out of order in a list of early Gaelic
personal names. 'Largona' is less penetrable as there is no island of
similar name in the relevant area, but Alison McLeay has proposed that
it is an attempt at what was earlier Loarn, now spelled in Gaelic
Latharna (Lorne in English), the territory of an eponymous legendary
founding Gael, now best known for the name of the firth between Mull
and Oban.
In this instance we know approximately where those men came from who
remembered the names, and from whom the names reached written record in
a far away place; the events occurred little over four centuries ago;
and we could, with a little research, gain a good idea of what kind of
sounds would have been represented by the names as spelled in -
presumably - a 16th century south Slavic dialect of the Adriatic coast;
a hasty online search gives no indication that a Croat of today would
find it particularly difficult to transliterate those Gaelic names, or
Muile, much more accurately than his 16th century antecedents. That
these names could become so distorted and one of them could be
transferred to an island from a larger territory or a firth named from
it, possibly directly by those who heard them or at most through a few
intermediaries before being written down, is a reminder of the problems
in trying to make sense of place-names in what is now Scotland,
recorded 1600 and more years ago: from languages probably unfamiliar to
those who recorded the names; by way of an unknown number of
intermediaries and possible changes of language or dialect; at a time
when there were no accurate maps and no literacy in northern Europe;
and thereafter for centuries through copying and recopying which was
always liable to error. That is not to say that we should not be
grateful indeed for the fragments that mediaeval intermediaries have
passed on to us from ancient sources.
(Bill Patterson)
LIES, DAMN LIES,
STATISTICS AND THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF ISLAY’S NORSE
PLACE-NAMES
With little other evidence to go by, place-name statistics are central to our understanding of the Norse impact on Western Maritime Scotland. The purpose of my talk was to highlight the importance of context when using these statistics.
Etymological surveys by Marwick (1952), Oftedal (1954) and Thomas (1876, 1881-2) suggested relative proportions of Norse and Gaelic farm-names for Orkney (almost 100% Norse), Lewis (80% Norse: 20% Gaelic) and Islay (33% Norse: 66% Gaelic). Comparison of these figures has fed the received dichotomy of native ‘extirpation’ in the North but survival in the South. We can call this the ‘Ratio Approach’ to Norse settlement studies. Without background detail, however, the validity of this approach is open to question. The need for critical re-appraisal can be illustrated by a contextualised re-examination of the evidence for Islay.
The island of Islay lies at the SW extremity of the Inner Hebridean archipelago. To the modern, urbanite mindset, it is peripheral, barren, and not the most obvious target for Norse settlement. To primitive medieval farmers, however, its favourable bedrock, soils and climate combined to make it one of the most fertile lands in the West. Its location, at the entrance to the North Channel, was also highly significant. Whoever controlled Islay was also well placed to control transit between the Hebrides and the Irish Sea.
An abundance of dry-stone fortifications suggests that these qualities were exploited in prehistoric times. It is also clear from a series of early documentary references that a thriving prestige economy survived on the island into the 6th and 7th centuries AD. Its subsequent disappearance from the historical record corresponds to the advent and aftermath of the so-called ‘Viking Age’. Significantly, however, when it reappears in the late 12th century, it is at the heart of the vigorously ‘Gaelic’ MacSorley sea-kingdom.
As Islay was Gaelic-speaking before and after the Viking Age, it is assumed to have remained so throughout. We can nevertheless infer a Norse presence from what we are told was happening in the neighbouring areas. Norse Vikings sailed past Islay en route to Ireland. We know that they caused havoc nearby (e.g. AU 794.7, 802.9, 806.8) and eventually gained control of ‘all the islands around Ireland’ (ASB 847). While it is hard to imagine that this Norse dominion did not include the fertile and well-placed island of Islay, it is often assumed that the lack of evidence for stereotypical Norse long-houses precludes all but marginal settlement. The truth is that no Viking Age structures of any kind have yet been found in Islay. When it comes to culturally diagnostic artefacts, on the other hand, those which can be traced to this period have been overwhelmingly Norse.
Then, of course, there is the matter of such palpably Norse place-names as Conisby (ON *Konungsbýr, ‘the King’s farm’), and Stremnish (ON *Strömnes ‘headland of the current’). Surprisingly, almost bizarrely, in fact, there has been very little debate on the social context of Norse settlement – of how the implantation of Norse names and their survival in situ was possible in a landscape that was already fully owned and occupied by speakers of Gaelic. This is where the ratio approach really starts to unravel.
Firstly, it gives no indication of the physical distribution of place-names. If we take the
simple step of plotting Gaelic and Norse farm-names on a map it is clear that farms with Norse names are distributed fairly evenly across almost every habitable part of the island. When we examine their basic economic connotations, it is clear that many lay on highly productive land – land which must previously have been owned, farmed and named by speakers of Gaelic.
It has been argued that the low ratio of Norse to Gaelic farm-names in Islay reflects the temporary take-over of a Gaelic-speaking society by an elite veneer of Norse warlords. Given what is known of social structure in early medieval Norway and Scotland, however, this seems unlikely. Unlike Norman England, for example, where francophone lords had the social and military infrastructure to remain isolated from their English-speaking peasants, the local ‘headmen’ in early medieval Islay would have lived and worked alongside their people. If these were Gaelic-speaking, we might expect the incomers to have been relatively quickly assimilated. The survival of so many Norse farm-names into modern times points instead to large scale immigration following a break in both language and population.
By classifying names as simply Gaelic or Norse, the ratio approach obscures several contextualising features of Islay place-names which could help verify this. As the linguistic background of Islay’s name-giving community appears to have changed from Gaelic to Norse, and then back to Gaelic again, care must be taken to distinguish between independent names, which are intrinsically new coinages; and dependent names, which include pre-existing name material. Where a dependent name comprises word-material from more than one language, the relationship between its new and dependent components can hint at the relative periods of productivity of the different source languages. In the case of Dùn Bhoraraic in Kilmeny parish, for example, speakers of Gaelic coined a dependent dùn name by adaptation of a pre-existing *Boraraic (ON *Borga(r)vík ‘Bay of the fort’). Critically, however, the presence of this element points to the previous existence of an independent Norse name and thus of a Norse-speaking name-giving community which has later come to speak Gaelic. When dependent units are figured into a standard ratio, the relationship of originally Norse to Gaelic names rises above 1:1 – substantially higher than Thomas’ figure of 1:2.
Closer inspection of the dependent material challenges the established model yet further. While MacDougall’s map of 1749-51 shows more than 20 dependent Gaelic farm-names containing Norse material, there is not one Norse name containing Gaelic material. There is no sign of a *Portmór+vík or a *Ballimartin+staðir. The easiest explanation for this discrepancy would be to see Norse settlement following a period of ethnic cleansing. By killing or capturing the natives and sending them off to the battlefields of Ireland or the slave markets of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Norse would also have displaced otherwise resilient local place-names. The eventual absorption of Norse speaking Islay into the Gaidhealtachd on the other hand seems to have involved the introduction of Gaelic to an established population capable of passing on Norse name material.
But why, then, if the Norse impact on Islay really was so dramatic, is the total number of Norse names far less than their Gaelic counterparts? Settlement study is a retrospective business. Unqualified place-name ratios, however, tell us nothing about the effect of post-Norse socio-economic and political developments on naming traditions and nomenclature. Islay is known to have received several waves of Gaelic-speaking immigrants since the end of the Viking Age, each with the potential to replace Norse name material with Gaelic neologisms. Take, for example, the arrival of Somerled mac Gilla-brigte and his supporters from mainland Argyll in the mid 12th century. As a powerful new socio-political force on the island, these men will undoubtedly have left their mark on the local nomenclature. Indeed, examination of the 1541 rental of the Lordship of the Isles, the first to list the tenants of Islay’s farm-districts, reveals a broad correlation between clusters of Gaelic farm-names and those parts of the island under the direct control of the Lordship’s traditional office bearers.
A MacSorley influence can also be found in the generic elements of Islay’s Gaelic farm-names. Of these, baile- and cill- stand out immediately, occurring in around one third of the total. As common Gaelic generics, we might expect them to seem over-represented. But if we consider their distribution alongside the historical context of their coinage, a rather different explanation comes to mind.
While the word baile- is attested early in the Medieval period, it is not particularly common in place-names until the 12th century. This, by no mere coincidence, is the period when written standards of land-ownership first rose to the fore. In the Latin administrative documents of the day, landholdings were styled ville. It may have been as a colloquial counterpart to this term that Gaelic baile- blossomed as a place-name element. If so, the clear clustering of Islay’s baile- names might point to the wholesale division of newly acquired estates.
We can envisage a similar scenario for names in cill- (‘cell’ or ‘chapel’). Unlike baile- names, farm-names in cill- are remarkably evenly distributed – not, it has to be stressed, in terms of distance – but in terms of land assessment. On average, we find one such farm containing an ancient chapel for every 6 Quarterlands Old Extent. Given that the advent of clan Somerled was coincident with the establishment of the parish network, this layer of cill- names could represent another set of administrative neologisms. What, if anything, these names replaced is difficult to say. It is worth noting, however, that even the most conspicuous of Islay’s baile- clusters is punctuated by (fossilised) Norse nature names.
A final problem with the ratio approach is the way it treats all place-names as equal for statistical purposes. Thus the linguistic heritage of a small stream might be equated to that of a prominent mountain when assessing the relative ‘Norseness’ of an area. This is inconsistent with place-name theory. According to Magnus Olsen (1934), most place-names can be designated ‘names of the farm’ or ‘names of the district’, with the community creating, and/or maintaining them, being known as their ‘user group’. Thus, while the names of minor topographical features on a given farm, at a given point in time might only be known to individuals living on that farm; those of more conspicuous features might be known to everyone in the district.
As we might expect for an island previously dominated by speakers of Norse, Norse name material is still extremely over represented when it comes to the more conspicuous topographic features. Down the NW coast of the Oa peninsula, for example, the names of all the major indentations in the landscape have a Norse heritage: Port Alsaig (ON *Állsvík); Frachdale (ON *Frakkadalr); Grasdale (ON *Grasdalr); Glen Astle (ON *Ássdalr); and Giol (ON *Gil).
The same cannot be said at the level of ‘names of the farm’, the majority of which are Gaelic. But with much smaller user-groups, these names have been far more susceptible to change. When the Cawdor Campbells imported Gaelic-speaking farm-workers from Nairnshire in the 17th century, for example, their displacement of established local user-groups is likely to have seen many localised nature names, which could well have included Norse material, being replaced with Gaelic neologisms. Further dilution of Islay’s Norse nomenclature will have followed the agricultural reforms of the 18th century, and clearances of the 19th. While both Gaelic and Norse material might have been lost in these phases, any new names coined will have drawn on Gaelic or English and not Norse material, thus divorcing the relevance of modern place-name ratios yet further from the realities of the Viking Age.
In summary, I would ask the reader to be wary of bald statistics. They may be convenient, but they can also be misleading. On critical reappraisal of the place-name evidence for Islay, it seems that Norse settlement was far from marginal, with the Norse language completely supplanting Gaelic for a time during the early Middle Ages. And if this could happen in an island as important as Islay, it is unlikely that surrounding parts of the Maritime zone escaped the same fate.
References:
ASB – Nelson, J. (trans. Ed.) (1991) The Annals of St Bertin. Manchester.
AU – The Annals of Ulster (see http://www.ucc.ie/celt/)
BI – Smith, G.G. (ed.) (1895) The Book of Islay: Documents Illustrating the History of the Island. Edinburgh.
Marwick, H. (1952) Orkney Farm-Names. Kirkwall.
Oftedal, M. (1954) ‘The Village Names of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides’ Norsk Tidskrift for Sprogvidenskap XVII (1954): 363-409.
Olsen, M. (1934) Hvad våre stedsnavn lærer oss. Oslo
Thomas, W.F.L. (1876) ‘Did the Norsemen Extirpate the Inhabitants of the Hebrides in the Ninth Century’ PSAS 11 (1874-6): 472-507.
Thomas, W.F.L. (1881-2) ‘On Islay Place-Names’ PSAS 16 (1881-2): 241-76.
Dr Alan Macniven (based on a talk at the Spring 2007 conference)
The Gaelic Landscape of Jura: Place Names and Landscape Photography
This is the entire landscape of Jura in browse image format with translations of the place names from Gaelic using Dwelly and any local speakers/interpeters. There are 985 place names at the 1:25,000 scale OS map which are all listed here.
(from SPNS Newsletter 7, Autumn 1999)
SÙIL-SITES
ON LUING
The Isle of Luing lies to the south of Oban in Argyll. A small well on
the island called Tobair-na-Suil
[OS Pathfiinder form NM75 11] has traditionally been associated with
medicinal properties for eyesight. This association may be mistaken and
the original purpose of the well could be more interesting and more
ancient.
On Luing there are two Celtic fortifications, Ballycastle fort and Dun
Leccamore. At the time of the forts (between 200 BC and 300 AD) the
island had apparently had an early-warning defence-related
communication system with fortified lookouts at strategic places.
Lookout duty would have required individuals with responsibility and
good eyesight, precisely those young adults a community would have been
least able to spare for a non-productive function. In the interests of
minimum use of manpower the communication system had to be efficient
and relay stations avoided.
Modern practice with a radio ‘net' is to have all signals
routing
through a central HQ. Applying this principle to the situation of
Ballycastle fort yielded the requirements for a theoretical
communications HQ. This position had to have line of sight with two
(possibly three) fortified coastal earthworks, an observation post
covering a short section of coast blind to the lookout posts, a view of
the S.E. sea approaches to the island and, of course, sight of
Ballycastle fort itself. Only one small area on a ridge fulfils all
these criteria. In this area is a pit cut into the bedrock of the
ridge. A radar survey earlier this year confirmed the pit was an
artifact and that it originally was not very deep. After this discovery
it was realised that not far to the north lay Tobair-na-Suil.
Instead of an ‘eye well' might this not have been the
‘watcher's well'? The alternative meaning of sùil
is 'cast of the eye in any direction'. It is easy to imagine how, over
the years, knowledge of the original purpose of the well might have
been lost and its association with eyesight arisen. After all, those
whom it was for would have had the best eyesight in the community. The
second Luing fortification, Dun Leccamore, lies to the south of
Ballycastle fort. This new position was not suitable for direct
observation of all the supposed lookouts. In particular a western
observation post would have required an intermediate relay. Near to one
of the few suitable relay positions is Biennein Furachail meaning
"watchfulness, watchman's, or lookout hill". Are there other sùil-placenames?
Yes, there are and some at least may be associated with other iron-age
communications - but that's another story!
Peter Lamont
Luing
The Luing Newsletter has more about
Peter
Lamont's work on sùil-sites
in Luing, as well as a general article on Luing place-names. Copies of
all the Newsletters have been deposited in the National Library of
Scotland. The relevant articles are:
King, H., ‘What's in a (Gaelic) Name?', Luing
Newsletter vol.3 no. 8 (1983)
Lamont, P., ‘Luing Hillforts and the Missing Earthwork or
Luing's Early, Early Warning System!', Luing Newsletter
no.35 (winter 1997/98)
Lamont, P., ‘Luing's Early Defences Part II: Ancient Names?',
Luing Newsletter no.36 (summer 1998)
(from SPNS Newsletter 6, Spring 1999)
ISLAY
As a by-product of the Finlaggan Archaeological Project, a database on
Islay has been developed for the Finlaggan Trust by Roger McWee, David
Caldwell and Nigel Ruckley, and is now installed on a computer in the
Finlaggan Visitor Centre. It has information and images of people,
places and traditions on Islay. It is hoped to license other versions
of this ISLAY CULTURAL DATABASE to run in other research centres in the
near future.
The database includes the 6000 place names recorded in the Ordnance
Survey name books, with grid references. The modern day spellings are
also given, as well as earlier variations recorded in a remarkable
series of rentals and other documents extending back to the 15th
century. The database is in MSAccess, is fully searchable, and can be
used to produce distribution maps.
The authors would be happy to make this place name
material
available to a serious researcher or student prepared to work on it,
and make a written contribution on their research to the Finlaggan
publication. For more information please contact Dr
David H
Caldwell, National Museums of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1
1JF. Tel 0131 247 4068 < dhc@nms.ac.uk>
ISLE
OF MULL: Placenames, Meanings and Stories
This is the title of a book by the late Charles Maclean.
It is well-produced, with excellent black-and-white photographs,
representing a long
labour of love on the part of the author, whose family roots run deep
into the Island. It claims to
be a comprehensive list of all Mull place-names, both mapped and
unmapped, and I defy anyone
to disprove this, since it contains literally thousands of names, each
one usefully provided with a
6-figure O.S. grid reference. To quote from Mr Maclean himself:
"This book contains all the mapped and many unmapped placenames
throughout the Island of
Mull, together with their meanings. There are also many stories of why
some of these places were
given their names. It consists of 170 pages, size A4, packed with these
names...
It is divided into five chapters, each dealing with a different aspect
of the countryside e.g.
Settlement Names and Hydronymy, plus an additional chapter on unmapped
names."
ISLE OF MULL: Placenames, Meanings and Stories,
C.
Maclean (Dumfries 1997) can be ordered from www.mullplacenames.co.uk
.
Bibliography (to see the full bibliography, click here)
Argyllshire
Fraser, I. A., 1984-6, 'The Place-Names of Argyll: an
historical perspective', Transactions of the Gaelic Society
of Inverness 54, 174-207.
Unpublished:
Butter, Rachel, 2007, ‘Cill-names and Saints in Argyll: a way
towards understanding the early church in Dál
Riata?’,
unpublished PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
Macniven, Alan, 2006, 'The Norse in Islay: A Settlement Historical
Case-Study for Medieval Scandinavian Activity in Western Maritime
Scotland', unpublished PhD , University of Edinburgh.
Western Isles
Cox, Richard A. V., 2002, The Gaelic Place-Names of Carloway,
Isle of Lewis: Their Structure and Significance (Dublin
Institute for Advanced Studies).
Fellows-Jensen, G., 1984, 'Viking Settlement in the
Northern and Western Isles', in The Northern and Western
Isles in the Viking World, eds A. Fenton & H.
Pálsson (Edinburgh), 148-68.
Fraser, I. A., 1976-8 'Gaelic and Norse elements in
coastal place names in the Western Isles', Transactions of
the Gaelic Society of Inverness 50, 237-55.
Jennings, A., 1994, 'An Historical Study of the
Gael and Norse in Western Scotland from c.795 to c.1000', unpublished
PhD , University of Edinburgh.
MacAulay, D., 1971-2 'Studying the place names of
Bernera', Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness
47, 313-37.
McKillop, D. (for John Ferguson), 1982-4 'The
place-names of Bernera', Transactions of the Gaelic Society
of Inverness
53, 115-64. Read after and alongside D. MacAulay's 1971 article, this
is instructive - the work of an amateur collector, there is much of
folklore interest here, but linguistically and methodologically it has
many problems. Comparing this with MacAulay's article will give some
insight into problems of methodology.
McKillop, D. 1988-90 'Rocks, shoals and islands in
the Sounds of Harris and Uist and around the Island of Berneray', Transactions
of the Gaelic Society of Inverness 56, 428-502.
Unpublished
Stahl, Anke Beate, 1999, 'Place-Names of Barra in the Outer Hebrides',
unpublished Ph.D., University of Edinburgh [covers place-names in the
whole Barra island group, i.e. all islands from Barra southwards].