142 RURAL PLACE-NAMES 



names at Glenturk, Bennanturk, Drumaturk, Sloch- 

 turk the glen, the hill, the ridge, and the den of the 

 boar. Muc, a sow, in the plural stood for swine, as in 

 Clachanamuck ; but Mucklagh, both singly and in 

 compounds, probably signified a place where domestic 

 pigs were pastured on acorns or mast. Thus Druin- 

 namucklach means the ridge of the swine pasture. 



It is still harder to distinguish names derived from 

 wild cattle among those arising from domestic herds. 

 There are, however, four rivers in Scotland named 

 Tarff, which almost certainly indicate the haunt of a 

 wild bull or bulls. People are prone to devise fanciful 

 or poetic explanations of the plainest names, and one 

 wiseacre after another has attributed to the primitive 

 Celt the design of naming these rivers tarbh, the bull, 

 because of their roaring. Well, I know three of the 

 four, and nothing could be less suggestive of a bull 

 roaring than their gentle murmur and plash. 



I prefer to imagine them when they wound their 

 way through the oak and birch of the primaeval forest, 

 with here an open glade and there a waterside me idow, 

 chosen haunt of the lord of the herd, whom it were 

 best to approach with precaution. Careful mothers 

 would warn their children not to wander along the 

 banks of Amkuinn Tairbh the bull stream and the 

 name, anglicised Tarff, has survived the wild cattle, the 

 forest, and the hunting community. 



The true wild cat and the polecat, or foumart, still 

 survive in a few recesses of our mountains, but in the 

 greater part of our country they live but in the 

 memory of the oldest inhabitants. In a certain region 



