Transaciions. 41 



of getting hold of the oldest spelling or sound, and instances given 

 of changes of pronunciation, obscuring or obliterating the meaning 

 of place-names, in Tynron and adjacent localities. (3.) An attempt 

 to show that Tpiron, formerly Tindrim, means " the hill or rid-e 

 m which the sacred fire was lighted" by the Celts of old. AfteV 

 wards, from thirty to forty place-names, nearly aU of Celtic origin, 

 are given, with the meaning assigned, according to Joyce, Blackie' 

 and other recent writers on the subject. To collect the place- 

 names of a county is a task (says Mr Shaw) somewhat like that of 

 guang an account of its Flora, and would be best achieved by each 

 member taking up the area with which he is best acquainted Not 

 only should books, but title-deeds, session records, old grave-stones 

 and old inhabitants be pressed into service. In a research of this 

 kind the oldestspelling or sound of the word should be considered the 

 most valuable, as phonetic decay, like much handling of a coin is 

 very apt to obliterate the characteristics of the original. I recol 

 lect the farm and wood adjacent to my birth-place were respec- 

 tively named Eaiojlesh and Jiacewood, and it was not until perusal 

 of the Old title deeds that Bawjlesh was discovered to be a con-up- 

 tion of Houghlees, and that the Eacewood meant the park or wood 

 in whi3h roes had been accustomed to herd. The first case is that 

 of a word drifting away from its original sound by attempts to 

 pronounce it more easily, the second shows how an old pronuncia- 

 tion tends to become unintelligible from the Queen's Enc^lish 

 usurping the place of the vernacular. Since such changes are 

 wrought in English words by an English-speaking people, greater 

 changes are the rule when an alien race, speaking a different 

 language, succeeds an aboriginal in possession of a country, and 

 retams for convenience the place-names that had been given by 

 the displaced race. It is not easy to observe at first glance that 

 Countam, on the borders of Tynron and Penpont, means "the 

 head of^the hill," and contains, in its first syllable, the same word 

 as Can in Cant^jre, the headland, and in its second Tom the 

 knoll, Tonmchuriach, the knoll shaped like a boat (curaah), near 

 Inverness. It would be vain, unless we knew its more ancient 

 spellmg to attempt to extract the true meaning from Craigmay 

 in the Stewartry, since it appears in the earlier records as Craia- 

 beath, which we at once recognise, as "the craig or hill of the 

 birch trees." The loss of the meaning of a place-name gives rise 

 to tautology. In Tynron it was forgotton that Torr meant "a 



