xxx HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



depopulated by the constant incursions of the Vikings, or 

 by other causes. An explanation more or less plausible 

 of the different designations " Pictish " and " Danish" (the 

 latter word embracing Scandinavians generally), is afforded 

 by the suggestion that the forts may have been built by 

 the Picts as a means of repelling, or at least offering passive 

 resistance to, the hordes of Northern pirates who, there is 

 evidence to show, must have swarmed in the Hebrides 

 long before the strong rule of Harold Harfager forced 

 them, in the ninth century, to form permanent settlements 

 there. Subsequently, the brochs may have been used by 

 the settlers as means of defence against the rovers from 

 the fiords of Norway who, when in search of booty, were 

 not always accustomed to exercise a nice discrimination 

 between their own countrymen and foreigners. But all 

 this is pure conjecture, although the known facts are not 

 opposed to its acceptance as a working hypothesis. 



When we turn to etymology for assistance in groping 

 our way through the darkness which surrounds early events 

 in the Long Island, we find ourselves on more solid 

 ground. Etymology is always an interesting amusement, 

 but it is also capable of proving a valuable handmaiden of 

 history, and the place-names of the Outer Hebrides 

 emphatically belong to the latter category. We find here 

 a set of circumstances which is perhaps without parallel 

 elsewhere in the British Isles. The language of the great 

 bulk of the people is Gaelic, but the place-names are chiefly 

 Scandinavian. In Lewis, for example, there are about four 

 times as many Norse names as there are of purely Gaelic 

 origin, and in Barvas and Uig, the preponderance is over- 

 whelming.* But this fact, remarkable in itself, is rendered 

 still more noteworthy by the circumstance that the Scandi- 

 navian names are not confined to the coast, where they 

 might reasonably be expected, but extend to the interior, 

 and embrace rivers and mountains, the names of which 

 more particularly of rivers in accordance with the recog- 



* Captain Thomas states, as the result of his investigations, that in Barvas 

 the proportions are as twenty-seven to one, and in Uig as thirty-five to four. 



