AND THE DIALECTIC DIFFERENCES INDICATED BY IT. 215 



British people, but the old form of this word in Scotland was Doboir, as appears 

 from the Book of Deer, where Aberdour is written Abber-doboir, and in 

 Cormac's Glossary of the old Irish, Doboir is given as an old Irish word for water. 

 In another old Irish glossary we have this couplet : — 



" Bior and An and Dobar, 

 The three names of the water of the world." 



These words, therefore, form no criterion of difference of race, and to judge by 

 them is to fall into the mistake of the phonetic etymologists, viz., to apply to old 

 names, as the key, the present spoken language, which does not contain words 

 which yet existed in it in its older form. 



In order to make generic terms a test of dialect they must be words which 

 contain sounds affected differently by the different phonetic laws of such dialects, 

 — such as Pen, Gwastad, Gwern, and Gwydd, which all enter copiously into 

 Welsh topography, and the equivalents of which in the Gaelic dialects are Ken, 

 Fearn, and Fiodh — Gwastad having no equivalent. 



Such generic terms afford a test by which we can at once determine whether 

 the Celtic topography of a country partakes most of the Kymric or the Gaelic 

 character. The earliest collection of names in North Britain is to be found in 

 Ptolemy's Geography in the second century, but we know too little of the 

 origin of his names, whether they were native terms, or names applied by the 

 invaders, to obtain from them any certain result. After Ptolemy, the largest col- 

 lection of names in Great Britain is in the work of the anonymous geographer of 

 Ravenna, a work of the seventh century. The exact localities are not given, but 

 the names are grouped according to the part of Britain to which they belong. 

 Those which commence the topography of Scotland are placed under this title :— 

 " Iterum sunt civitates in ipsa Britannia quae recto tramite de una parte in 

 alia id est de oceano in oceano existunt, ac dividunt in tertia portione ipsam 

 Britanniam." They commence with the stations on the Roman wall between the 

 Tyne and the Solway, and then proceed northwards. Among these we find two 

 names together, Tadoriton and Maporiton, and as Tad and Map are Kymric 

 forms for father and son, we have no doubt that here we are on the traces of 

 a Kymric population. The next group is arranged under this head :— " Iterum 

 sunt civitates in ipsa Britannia, recto tramite una alteri conexse, ubi et ipsa Bri- 

 tannia plus angustissima, de oceano in oceano esse dinoscitur." This part of 

 Britain, which is plus angustissima, is the isthmus between the Forth and the 

 Clyde, and in proceeding with the names northwards we come to one called 

 Cindocellum. The Ocelli Montes were the Ochills, and here the Gaelic form of 

 Kin is equally unmistakeable. 



In the twelfth century, the Chartularies have preserved charters which contain 



the names of places, accompanied by an interpretation of the meaning of them. 



' One bears upon the topography of Moray. It is a charter by Alexander II. to the 



VOL. XXIV. PART. I. 3 M 



