208 MR W. F. SKENE ON THE CELTIC TOPOGRAPHY OF SCOTLAND 



Scotland." In the schedule of questions which he issued in 1790 to the clergy of 

 the Church of Scotland, the first two questions were as follows : — 



1. What is the ancient and modern name of the parish ? 



2. What is the origin and etymology of the name ? 



This set every minister thinking what was the meaning of the name of his 

 parish. The publication of the " Poems of Ossian," and the controversy which 

 followed, had tended greatly to identify national feeling and the history of the 

 country with Gaelic literature and language, and, with few exceptions, the 

 etymology was sought for in that language. The usual formula of reply was, 

 " the name of this parish is derived from the Gaelic," and then followed a Gaelic 

 sentence resembling in sound the name of the parish, and supposed admirably to 

 express its characteristics, though the unfortunate minister is often obliged to 

 confess that the parish is remarkably free from the characteristics expressed by 

 the Gaelic derivation of its name. These etymologies are usually suggested irre- 

 spective entirely of any known facts as to the history or population of the parish, 

 and are purely phonetic. 



Thus the writer of the account of Elie, in the New Statistical, observes : — 

 " The writer of the former Statistical Account has, according to the fashion 

 which seems to have prevailed in his day, as well as now, had recourse to Gaelic, 

 the mother as it should seem of languages, and tells us that the parish received 

 its name from ' A Liche,' signifying ' out of the sea.' We are disposed to doubt its 

 soundness, for the village is not further out of the sea than any other part of the 

 coast, nay, it extends further into it. We should rather be inclined to consider 

 Elie as having sprung from the Greek word elos, a marsh." 



Both etymologies are entirely irrespective of the fact, that the old form of the 

 word was " chellm.'' 



After the publication of the Statistical Account, Gaelic was in the ascendant 

 as the source of all Scottish etymologies, till the publication of Chalmers' 

 " Caledonia" in 1807. John Pinkerton had indeed tried to direct the current of 

 popular etymology into a Teutonic channel, but his attempts to find a meaning 

 in Gothic dialects for words plainly Celtic were so unsuccessful, that he failed 

 even to gain a hearing. Chalmers was more fortunate. His theory was, that 

 a large proportion of the names of places in Scotland are to be derived from the 

 Welsh, and indicate an original Welsh population. And this he has worked out 

 with much labour and pains. In doing so, he was the first to attempt to show 

 evidence of the dialectic difference between Welsh and Gaelic pervading the names 

 of places, and to discriminate between them ; but for almost all the names of 

 places in the Lowlands of Scotland he furnishes a Welsh etymology, which, like 

 his predecessors the Scottish clergy, he supposes to be expressive of the charac- 

 teristics of the locality. His theory has, in the main, commanded the assent of 

 subsequent writers, and is usually assumed to be, on the whole, a correct repre- 

 sentation of the state of the fact. Yet his system was as purely one of a phonetic 



