8 THE CAPEECAILLIE. 



longed Connich being the Gaelic name of Kenneth, and 

 Mackenzie, as now used, being really the son of Kenneth. 



But since the above was written, Professor Newton of 

 Cambridge has called my attention to the fact lhat y and z 

 were used, the one for the other, long before the days of 

 printing ; " and old English MSS. have," he goes on to say, "a 

 mysterious letter | or q, about the pronunciation of which 

 some of the best old English scholars are in doubt ; for in 

 some words it is modernised into gh, if I remember right, fre- 

 quently into y consonant, and less commonly into z." 



Though this may appear at first to nullify my remarks on 

 the interchange of y and z, still I think it cannot do away 

 with them altogether, nor can it alter materially the fact that 

 there being no y nor z in Gaelic, these letters should not occur 

 in Capercaillie, unless, as Professor Newton suggests, as a ter- 

 minal letter, thus Capercally or Caperkally (plural, ies), for 

 the English method. 



A good illustration of the MS. use of the letter z is cnizt, 

 knight. In the Bannatyne MS. y written in 1568 as I am 

 informed by Mr. J. B. Murdoch, Glasgow there are many z 

 characters, which, on the authority of Mr. Thomas Dickson, 

 Curator of the Eegister House, Edinburgh, ought to be ren- 

 dered as y. In the same MS. y is used invariably for th. 

 " Therefore," Mr. Murdoch adds, " I think the z had to be 

 used for y where y was intended." According to some of 

 the best authorities on old English MS., however, the use of 

 z seems to be variously and differently applied from the use 

 of it in Scotch MS., both as y, gh, or z, or s, according to its 

 position in the words. In French the use is for z alone. In 

 some words in old English MS. it stood also for g } (vide 

 Morris and Skeat " Specimens of Early English" New and 

 revised edition. Part II. Oxford, 1872). 



Capercally or Caperkally may perhaps be looked upon as 

 the correct English mode of spelling the word, if we take 



