SHIANT ISLES. GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 435 



THE SHIANT ISLES/ 



THESE islands are among the few which possess a 

 Gaelic name, those of most of the Western islands being 

 of Scandinavian origin. The term, meaning sacred, was 

 most probably applied to them from their having been 

 at one period a place of eremitical or monastic seclusion,f 

 traces of which seem to exist in the walls of a building, 

 now nearly levelled to its foundation, on Eilan a Kily. 

 These remains are of square masonry laid with lime, and 

 are on too small a scale to have been a castle of strength, 

 or the habitation of a chief. It is indeed recorded that 

 the Shiant isles contained a chapel dedicated to St. Co- 

 lumba, being one among the numerous buildings placed 

 under the protection of this favourite saint ; and the ruins 

 in question probably belong to that chapel or to a cell 

 dependent on lona. The name of the island, " The isle 

 of the monastery," countenances this supposition, and 

 will justify the addition of this ruin to the few fragments 

 of religious antiquity still remaining in the Highlands 

 of Scotland. 



* See the general Map. 



f This word is also used, with its congeners, to denote any thing 

 connected with magic or supernatural agency. Its strong resemblance 

 to our word enchant, in sound as well as in meaning, renders it probable 

 that it is the origin, however remote, of that term. It is true that 

 etymologists have derived it from the Latin, and that they have also 

 conceived the Latin term to have proceeded from the use of music 

 or song in the process of incantation. But neither in Theocritus, in 

 Horace, in Lucian, nor in Apuleius, is there any allusion to music as an 

 instrument of magic : the etymology seems purely gratuitous, and, like 

 many others, founded on mere resemblance of sound. The original 

 languages of Italy are more probably its real origin, as they are of the 

 Latin language in general ; and through that ancient source, as well as 

 the Greet, we must trace the numerous analogies apparent between the 

 Latin and the Gaelic. 



