APRIL 89 



ceptions, and one of these may be cited to show how 

 faithful an index of the qualitative is afforded by the 

 stress. Morven and Benmore both signify the great hill 

 mor Wieinn and beinti mor, and in either position the 

 qualitative mor, great, carries the stress. A misplacement 

 of stress may not seem to involve very serious conse- 

 quences, but here is a case in which not only is the old 

 meaning destroyed thereby, but a false one imported. 

 Kilmacolm, a village in Renfrewshire, with the stress 

 emphatically on the last syllable, is clearly cill mo 

 Coluim, the chapel of dear Colum[ba]. The railway com- 

 pany, having cause to erect a station there, choose to 

 print the name Kilmalcolm, and forthwith their servants 

 shift the stress to the penultimate Kilmalcolm. Im- 

 mediately the sense alters ; it becomes cill maoil Coluim, 

 the chapel of the servant of Colum[ba]. 



Lastly, in pursuit of the origin of place-names let no 

 man be cocksure. Not long ago I rushed into print to 

 explain the much-disputed name of Torvalvin in Knoy- 

 dart. I had been to the place, a conspicuous rocky knoll 

 on the flank of a bare mountain. What could be clearer ? 

 torr mhaoil bheinn, the knoll of the bare hill. 1 See 

 what a plain word put me down ! It seems the name is 

 by no means ancient. It is not many years since a dumb 

 crofter lived under this knoll, named, like our old friend 

 Balbus of the walls, in Gaelic speech balbhan, and com- 

 memorated in Torvalvin, torr bhalbhain, the dumb man's 

 hill! 



1 Mh and bh represent in Gaelic the sound of the English v. 



