316 A TOPOGRAPHICAL ARGUMENT IN FAVOUR OP THE 



words, that tribes or people who spoke Gaelic must have preceded 

 the Cymri or Welsh in England ; and that one and the same people 

 gave, in the unrecorded beginnings of human settlement in Britain, 

 names to the rivers and streams of England and Scotland. Altera- 

 tions in the topographical names of England must have been made 

 to a much larger extent than in Scotland or Ireland, in consequence 

 of the successive and powerful waves of invasion that swept over it 

 from the time of the Romans until the Norman conquest. 



The Gaelic word Dun (hillock or fort), which is of very common 

 occurrence in Scotland, still survives in many parts of England. In 

 Doncaster, with its Latin termination ; in London, whose second 

 syllable is supposed to be dun, the hill or fort on which St. Paul's 

 Cathedral now stands ; in Dunstable, Dunmore and Dundiy in 

 Somerset, the word dun is to be found. Linn the Gaelic word for 

 pool occurs in Lincoln and in Linn, as it does in Loch Linne, in 

 Argyllshire, in Dublin and Roslin. Beinn (ben), the well-known 

 Gaelic word for a hill, may be discovered in Penard or Beinnard, 

 high hill, in Somerset, (the letters b and p being convertible), and in 

 Penn in Buckinghamshire. Ceann, the Gaelic word for head, which 

 occurs frequently in the Topography of Scotland and Ireland, appears 

 in England in Kenne, in Somerset; in Kennedon, (i.e., ceann an 

 duin, the head of the hillock), in Devonshire ; Kenton, {ceann duin, 

 head of the hillock), in Middlesex ; Kencet, in Oxfordshire, and 

 Kencomb (ceann cam, the crooked head), in Dorsetshire. There is 

 a striking similarity between Cheviot tin Cheviot Hills) and 

 tiughad, the Gaelic word for thickness. With regard to England, 

 Taylor remarks that " over the whole land almost every river-name 

 is Celtic : most of the shire names contain Celtic roots, and a fair 

 sprinkling of names of hills, and valleys, and fortresses bear witness 

 that the Celts were the aboriginal possessors of the soil." 



When we turn our attention to Scotland, we find that over the 

 entire extent of that countiy, — in the names of mountain and glen, 

 of strath and cony, of pass and headland, of stream, and loch, and 

 river, in sequestered islands, as well as in the heart of large cities 

 and centres of population and industry, words of the purest Gaelic 

 are to be found, — words which serve to connect the present time 

 with the far-off centuries, and to testify that in the Gaelic as the 

 Scottish Highlanders have it and speak it, there is perpetuated the 

 language of those early Gaels, who, before they could leave an 



