586 Welsh and Gaelic. 



people in Ireland. In the same century, according 

 to Mr. Skene, 'from the Dee and the Humber to 

 the Firths of Forth and Clyde, we find the country 

 almost entirely possessed by a Cymric population,' and 

 though it may be presumptuous to differ from an 

 authority so distinguished, I do not stand alone in 

 the opinion that the Cymry spread still further north, 

 and pressed upon the Gael, at all events on the west of 

 Scotland, as far as the verge of the mountains of the 

 Highlands. 



It is remarkable that a number of the names of 

 places in the centre and south of Scotland are not 

 Gaelic, but have been given by the later conquering 

 race, and can be translated by anyone who has even 

 a superficial knowledge of Welsh, and it is certain that, 

 from the Lowlands of Scotland all through the midland 

 and southern parts of Britain, the country was inhabited 

 in later Celtic times by the same folk that now 

 people Cornwall and Wales. The names of scores of 

 places now unintelligible to the vulgar, prove it. Thus 

 there are all the Coombs (Cwm) of Devon, Somerset- 

 shire, and even the south-east of England ; Dover, so 

 named from the river Douver (dwfr, water), still cor- 

 rectly pronounced by the French ; and at Bath, by the 

 Avon, we have 'Dolly (dolau) meadows'; near Bir- 

 mingham, the 'Lickey hills' (llechau) ; near Maccles- 

 field, the rocky ridge called * the Cerridge ' (cerrig) ; 

 and in the hills of Derbyshire ' Bull gap,' the Welsh 

 bwlch* translated, just as in another instance dolau is 

 repeated in the English word meadows. Again, in 

 Scotland we have the islands of the Clyde called the 

 Cumbraes (Cymry), Aran, Welsh for a peaked hill, 

 Aberdour (the mouth of the water), Lanark (Llanerch, 

 an open place in a forest, or clearing), Blantyre (Blaen- 



