Coming to some of the terms connected with mountains we 

 have the word gill, applied to the fissure or small ravine made by 

 a torrent running down the mountain side. I doubt, however, 

 whether the sense of water is inherent in the word, though 

 Cleasby thinks that it is ; the root-meaning seems to me to be 

 only that of cleft. Hence has been derived the name of Gilsland' 

 where is the well-known spa. But this derivation is utterly out of 

 the question — in the first place Gilsland is not the land of gils — 

 no Cumberland or Westmorland man would call the deep ravine 

 in which the river Irthing runs a gill — and, secondly, as an 

 etymological form it would be scarcely possible. Not any more 

 reasonable is the suggestion in Cleasby's Icelandic Dictionary 

 that Gilsland is from Dan. lund, a grove — surely land is a terra that 

 does not require to be explained away. Gilsland is, there can 

 hardly be a doubt, the land of a man called Gill, and probably of 

 that Gill who appears in county history as the son of Bueth, the 

 latter being himself represented in the neighbouring place-names 

 Boothby, "Booth's village," and in Bewcastle, formerly Bueth- 

 castle. Gill, in the sense of which I am now speaking, never 

 occurs as a prefix, and such names as Gilcrux and Gilgarron are, 

 as I shall have occasion to note, from an entirely different origin. 

 I have to protest against the present fashion of spelling the word 

 ghyl, introduced, I believe, by Miss Martineau. It is intended no 

 doubt to shew that the g is hard, but it outrages the etymology in 

 a manner that would not be allowed in the case of any English 

 word. The word man, applied to the pile of stones placed to 

 mark the top of a mountain, as e.g., Skiddaw Man, and which has 

 been derived, by no means satisfactorily, from the Celtic niaen, 

 stone, may also be capable of a Scandinavian derivation. There 

 is a word mcena, to project, jut out, and which is applied to the 

 top ridge of a house, which would seem to present the appropriate 

 meaning of summit, culmen ; but as I do not as yet know whether 

 there is any trace of the word as so applied to a mountain in the 

 Scandinavian north, I must suspend coming to a more definite 

 conclusion. 



Another word used throughout the district to express a hill or 



