EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE BRITISH ISLES BY CELTS. 317 
indelible record behind them in the names of streams, and hills, and 
valleys, must of necessity have held for a long time undisputed 
possession of the country. 
It is noteworthy that, though for more than 1,300 years Gaelic 
has not been spoken in the South of Scotland, Gaclic words con- 
tinually occur in the Topography of that part of the Kingdom. A 
brief reference must here be made to a theory which has as its 
advocates such scholars as Chalmers in his Caledonia, Dr. Mac- 
Lauchlan and Taylor—the theory that at one time the Cymri occupied 
the region which was known as Strathelyde; and that the topo- 
graphical names of that portion of Scotland are Cymric and not 
Gaelic. Taylor, in his Words and / laces, thus writes (pp. 257, 258, 
259): “The Cymry held the Lowlands of Scotland as far as the 
Perthshire hills. The names in the valleys of the Clyde and the 
Forth are Cymric not Gaelic. . . . To establish the point that 
the Picts, or the nation whatever was its name, that held central 
Scotland was Cymric not Gaelic, we may refer to the distinction 
between ben and pen. en is confined to the west and north, and 
pen to the east and south. Jnver and Aber are also useful text- 
words in discriminating between the two branches of the Celts. 
The difference between the two words is dialectic only, the etymology 
a confluence of waters either of two 
and the meaning are the same 
rivers, or of ariver with the sea. . . . In Scotland the cnvers 
and abers are distributed in a curious and instructive manner. IEf 
we draw a line across the map from a point a little south of Inverary 
to one a little north of Aberdeen, we shall find that (with very few 
exceptions) the invers lie to the north of the line, and the abers to 
the south of it. This line nearly coincides with the present southern 
limit of the Gaelic tongue, and probably also with the ancient 
division between the Picts and Scots. The evidence of these names 
makes it impossible to deny that the Celts of the Scottish Lowlands 
must have belonged to the Cymric branch of the Celtic stock.” By 
way of refuting the theory which Taylor has thus expounded, in 
reference to the prevalence of Cymric and not of Gaelic names in the 
region which was known as Strathclyde, it will be sufficient for my 
present purpose to cite the conclusions at which Robertson and 
Skene have arrived after able and mature consideration of the 
theory in question. 
