OO SE ss oe S,:t“‘( er 
NATURE AND MAN IN THE FORTH VALLEY. 93: 
with perhaps a little on the Braes of Doune. Mention 
ought to be made of the incursion during the present 
century of large numbers of Irish people. They are inclined 
to form communities by themselves, and do not readily 
intermarry with their Scotch neighbours, being separated 
from them by differences of religion as well as of race. 
Among the older people, those born in Ireland, Irish Gaelic 
is still spoken, but the language dies out in a generation, 
being seldom acquired by those born in Scotland. It would 
probably have been extinct by this time but for occasional 
fresh arrivals from Ireland. 
In the Highland area the place names are, as might be 
expected, purely Gaelic, as Uam Var, Ben Each, Craigmore, 
Balvaig, Avon Dhu. The names on the Braes of Doune 
also are purely Gaelic. All over the rest of the district we 
find a strange mixture of Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon names. 
There is less Gaelic as we proceed east and south, and such 
Gaelic as there is becomes more and more altered from long 
use on Teutonic lips, until, though their Gaelic origin may 
be easily recognised, the words can often hardly be trans- 
lated. In districts where Anglo-Saxon must have been 
spoken for very many centuries, rivers, hills, and other 
natural features are still called by Gaelic names, which must 
have had no meaning whatever to the generations of people 
who used them and carried them down to the present day. 
For example, the rivers Avon, Carron, and Devon, and the: 
hills known as Ben Cleuch, Dumglow (Cleish Hills), Darroch 
(Denny Hills), and Torphichen (near Linlithgow), are all in: 
districts where Gaelic has not been spoken within the period 
of local written history. 
In the carse lands Gaelic and Anglo-Saxon place names 
occur mixed indiscriminately together. Blaircessnock and 
Ballingrue are not far from Whitehill and Hilton; Fordhead 
and Culmore are but a few yards apart, and Thornhill lies. 
between Auchinsalt and Drummore. 
So far as I can trace, Anglo-Saxon place names, except 
those entirely modern, do not extend further up the River 
Forth than Gartmore, nor up the River Teith further than: 
Deanston. The Allan, above Dunblane, seems to be the: 
dividing line between two districts. On the right bank the- 
