316 A TOPOGRAPHICAL ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OF THE 
words, that tribes or people who spoke Gaelic must have preceded 
the Cymri or Welsh in England ; and that one and the same people 
gave, in the unrecorded beginnings of human settlement in Britain, 
names to the rivers and streams of England and Scotland. Altera- 
tions in the topographical names of England must have been made 
to a much larger extent than in Scotland or Ireland, in consequence 
of the successive and powerful waves of invasion that swept over it 
from the time of the Romans until the Norman conquest. 
The Gaelic word Dun (hillock or fort), which is of very common 
occurrence in Scotland, still survives in many parts of England. In 
Doncaster, with its Latin termination ; in London, whose second 
syllable is supposed to be dun, the hill or fort on which St. Paul’s 
Cathedral now stands; in Dunstable, Dunmore and Dundry in 
Somerset, the word dun is to be found. Zinn the Gaelic word for 
pool occurs in Lincoln and in Linn, as it does in Loch Linne, in 
Argyllshire, in Dublin and Roslin. Beinn (ben), the well-known 
Gaelic word for a hill, may be discovered in Penard or Beinnard, 
high hill, in Somerset, (the letters 6 and p being convertible), and in 
Penn in Buckinghamshire. Ceann, the Gaelic word for head, which 
occurs frequently in the Topography of Scotland and Ireland, appears 
in England in Kenne, in Somerset; in Kennedon, (i.e., ceann an 
duin, the head of the hillock), in Devonshire ; Kenton, (ceann duin, 
head of the hillock), in Middlesex ; Kencet, in Oxfordshire, and 
Kencomb (ceann cam, the crooked head), in Dorsetshire. There is 
a striking similarity between Cheviot (in Cheviot Hills) and 
tinghad, the Gaelic word for thickness. With regard to England, 
Taylor remarks that ‘over the whole land almost every river-name 
is Celtic: most of the shire names contain Celtic roots, and a fair 
sprinkling of names of hills, and valleys, and fortresses bear witness 
that the Celts were the aboriginal possessors of the soil.” 
When we turn our attention to Scotland, we find that over the 
entire extent of that country,—in the names of mountain and glen, 
of strath and corry, of pass and headland, of stream, and loch, and 
river, in sequestered islands, as well as in the heart of large cities 
and centres of population and industry, words of the purest Gaelic 
are to be found,—words which serve to connect the present time 
with the far-off centuries, and to testify that in the Gaelic as the 
Scottish Highlanders have it and speak it, there is perpetuated the 
language of those early Gaels, who, before they could leave an 
