Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/99

84 in so barren a form. Many readers will no doubt miss from the volume much interesting matter which the author could present in a very agreeable manner, but others, not the least thoughtful, would prefer that the more relevant and important aspects of the subject were always kept to the front even at the expense of a still further suppression of the picturesque side of Argyllshire names and of Dr. Gillies’s mind. Among the many requisites for a full and fitting explanation of our topography is a chastened fancy; but other and more prosaic qualities are still more essential. Adequate knowledge of the roots, sounds, forms, and structure of the languages concerned must be brought to bear upon the names, and the results must be presented with clearness and, above all, with accuracy, without bias or prejudice of any sort. A work done on such lines possesses a fascination and eloquence which do not depend in the smallest degree upon rhetoric and hyperbole. In this volume we are too often brought within the domain of ‘feeling,’ ‘atmosphere,’ ‘suggestion,’ ‘belief’—attractive regions, no doubt, but delusive when discussing scientific problems. It is much to be feared that this mental or rather moral attitude has biassed the author’s judgment with regard to several important questions.

For example. The early movements of races, in Argyllshire as elsewhere, are largely unknown. But in so far as names throw light on this obscure subject there are certain conclusions forced upon us which Dr. Gillies fails to recognise. According to him, apart from a few ‘bed-rock names which are the despair of the historian and the linguistic historian particularly,’ by which presumably he means pre-Celtic names, Gaelic ‘has been there from the beginning. . . . It is written in the rock.’ Now our oldest names come to us from the Greek and Roman writers. A few of these, in respect of form, may be explained, in so far as the Celtic language can reliably explain them, from the Gaelic side, but the greater number are undoubtedly British rather than Gaelic. Especially significant is the Ptolemaic name Epidion, Epidii, in Kintyre and Knapdale. Unless we assume that the person who gave this name to the Roman officer who in turn gave it to Ptolemy was not only a Briton, which is practically certain, but also that he changed the Gaelic form Echid- to his own Epid-, which we are hardly entitled to do, we are driven to the conclusion that the Pict was, in language as in blood, in that district before the Gael; that it is the former rather than the latter who is entitled to say that he was there ‘from the beginning,’ with his speech ‘written in the rock.’ Nor does this old name stand alone. Dr. Gillies on several occasions hints at a possible British element in the Argyll names, but he instances only Nant, possibly Gilp. Nant, in the map form, is plainly British, but if, as is probable, the name as written stands for An Eannda it may well be Gaelic. One or two names can be added, the British origin of which is beyond doubt Several terminals, found chiefly in the parts of the county bordering on Pictland, must be identical with the same suffixes so common in the north and east of Scotland. Further there is a Tir-a-fùir in Lismore, a Penny-fùir near Oban, and an Aird-a-fùir near Crinan. Dr. Gillies (p. 60)