Coigach Gaelic Place-Names CD-ROM
40 years ago Donnie Fraser of Raon Mor began collecting all the Gaelic place- and feature-names of his native village, Achiltibuie, and those of the surrounding area of Coigach in Wester Ross.
Almost at the northernmost edge of the Gaeltacht, Coigach lies in the country of the MacLeod's of Assynt and, because until the time Donnie started his collecting, it was accessible only from the sea, it had preserved and still preserves a great deal of its Gaelic.
Donnie compiled his lists but died before he could map them. His nephew, Alasdair, on retiring to Raon Mor, took up the work and continued, with more input from the two Ali MacLeods of Achnahaird, "West" and "Beag", locating and mapping the almost two thousand names. The maps and the accompanying book are displayed in our village hall.
However, Alasdair and local enthusiasts decided to use modern techniques to create a CD of the project - the Coigach Gaelic Place Names CD. From the large maps was created a series of smaller, interlinking, clickable maps connecting the
names to their locations and vice versa, backed by local music all contained on a hybrid disk that can used on any PC or Mac.
The project from its beginning with Donnie Fraser in 1960s was unique. It remains unique in its CD form that was completed in January 2002 and is already being used by local schools as a geography, history and Gaelic language resource.
The Coigach Gaelic Place Names CD is a community project. It is for sale at £(sterling) 7.99 directly from us or on the Net. All profits go to the Coigach Good Fund, to be used for helping local people and projects. For more details in general in Gaelic and English, and more details of how to buy click onto:
http://members.aol.com/coigich/CGPN.htm
The Coigach Gaelic Place Names CD is the first of a Coigach series that will be made available over the next few weeks. The others will be of singers and musicians, past and present, who are or were local or had or have local connections. First in the series will be Alasdair Fraser - Raon Mor. He is also the uncle of the present Alasdair Fraser and was a fine Gaelic singer on the radio in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1953 he sat down to record into on tape his repertoire. The tape has been handed down and once again modern computer techniques have allowed to cleaned
and re-mastered to produce a wonderful record of a fine Gaelic voice.
If you would like more details of these and other Coigach recordings, simple let me know and I will let you know when they are available. If you would like more details of Coigach Gaelic Place Names or have anyone else in mind who might be interested in it or Coigach music, again do not hesitate to contact me.
Ian Campbell Whittle
Tigh na'Tilleadh
Polbain
Achiltibuie
Wester Ross IV26 2YW
Tel/fax: 01854-622448
(from Newsletter 5, Autumn 1998)
WESTER ROSS DEVELOPMENTS
Although not able to attend in person, the Conference heard a report from Society member Roy
Wentworth (speaker at last May's AGM Conference). Scottish Natural Heritage have
commissioned him to do a thorough toponymic survey of the Beinn Eighe and the Loch Maree
Islands National Nature Reserves. This signals SNH's interest not only in the preservation of the
natural world, but also in the cultural heritage of landscapes under their care, and sets an excellent
example for those bodies whose prime responsibility is that of cultural heritage. As reserve
manager David Miller said, it is also a matter of relating the present condition of the land to its use
and management in the past, about which many clues are given in place-names. More details of the
project can be found in Roddy Maclean's article 'Recording the rich heritage of the Ross-shire
Hills',Ross-shire Journal 20.3.98.
WESTER ROSS ADDENDUM
Both Roy Wentworth's studies are now complete, and are a model of meticulous toponymic
scholarship. The Beinn Eighe study resulted in 240 names and alternative name-forms, many
collected from local Gaelic-speakers, written up under 161 main name entries. This contrasts with
the 80 names recorded for this area by the O.S. 1:10 000.
SNH will publish both studies: Place-Names of the Loch Maree Islands National Nature Reserve
(140 pages) and Place-Names of Beinn Eighe NNR (480 pages). Costs still be decided. For more
information, contact Scottish Natural Heritage, 12 Hope Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 2AS.
(from Newsletter 3, Autumn 1997)
Collecting Place-names from local sources in the North-West Highlands was the title of the talk given by Roy Wentworth of South Erradale/Earradal a Deas, Torridon. Roy has worked for around 20 years on collecting place-names in Torridon from the Gaelic-speakers of the area. So far he has covered seven OS 1:10,000 sheets, running from Srath, Gairloch in the north, round the coast to Diabaig in the south: about 120 square leans of land, or 45 square miles. In this relatively sparsely populated area he has collected the surprising total of 1,300 place-names, the vast majority of them existing only in local oral tradition. The results of this work are lodged both with the Scottish Place-Name Survey, School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh, and with the Gairloch Museum. It would be interesting to compare the number of place-names for every conceivable local feature, including fields, in a similar area in a more densely populated part of Scotland. By focusing in on a one km grid square from map NG76SE, grid reference NG7861, which lies north-west of Lower Diabaig, Roy was able to give a dramatic illustration of just how inadequate the Ordnance Survey maps can be, especially in areas of very sparse habitation. If the Ordnance Survey were to be believed, there have never been more than two names in this grid square since the original collection was carried out in the 1870s. After intensive work with a local informant, Iain Mackenzie, 35 place-names from grid square NG7861 were recorded. Furthermore, it had already been established by the work of Bridget Gordon in 1961 that the two names which the OS did have - the names of two lochs, 'Loch nam Ball' and 'Loch Airigh a' Mhill' were in fact attached to the wrong lochs! Roy's important work is continuing, although the rich toponymic information he is collecting is disappearing, along with the Gaelic language, with alarming rapidity. His work is hampered by lack of funding: as Roy himself said, councilors and the Local Enterprise Company have shown themselves remarkably unsupportive of a project which plays such a key role in the preservation of so much local lore, language and traditions.
The bulk of Roy Wentworth's talk will be appearing as an article in the Autumn edition of Cothrom (no.13), the excellent bilingual quarterly magazine of Comann an Luchd-Ionnsachaidh, for Gaelic learners and supporters. Details of this publication can be obtained from CLI, 62 High Street, Invergordon, Ross-shire 1V18 ODH Tel./Fax 01349 854848.
Two very detailed maps of the Gairloch area, based on Roy's work, have been produced by Nevis Hulme with place-names in Gaelic, and English translations. Gearrloch (1) covers National Grid squares NG7977 8077 and 8076 (Gairloch village); while Gearrloch (2) covers the squares immediately to the south, namely NG8075, 8175, 8174 and 8074. They are available, price £1 each, from the Gairloch Heritage Museum, Achtercairn, Gairloch, Ross-shire IV21 2BJ. If ordering by post, please include a second class stamp for each map. Note also Ian Fraser's Settlement names of Gairloch Parish, published in 1972 by Ross & Cromarty Heritage Society, also available from the Gairloch Heritage Museum.
(from Newsletter 1, Summer 1996)
Reprint of W.J. Watson's Place-Names of Ross & Cromarty.
In March 1996 Highland Heritage Educational Trust issued a reprint of W.J.Watson's invaluable study of the place-names of Ross and Cromarty, first published in 1904, and reprinted for the first time in 1976. Since that reprint, demand has far outstripped supply, hence this new reprint.
It retails at £10.99, and can be ordered through any bookshop (ISBN 0 9509882 6 X). Highland Heritage Educational Trust have also brought out a map and gazetteer of Gaelic Place-Names of Easter Ross, Mid Ross and the Black Isle. For more details contact the Highland Heritage Educational Trust c/o Rob Gibson, Tir nan Oran, 8 Culcairn Rd., Evanton Ross-shire IV16 9YT or telephone 01349 830388.
Bibliography (to see the full bibliography, click here)
Crawford, B. E. 1995, Earl & Mormaer; Norse-Pictish Relationships in Northern Scotland, 1995 (Groam House Museum lecture publications, Rosemarkie).
Fraser, I. A., 1984, 'The Place-Names of Ross and Cromarty', in The Ross and Cromarty Book, ed. D. Omand, 219-29.
Watson, W. J., 1904, Place-Names of Ross and Cromarty (reprinted in paperback 1996 by Highland Heritage Books, price £10.99).
Western Isles
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.
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
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.