A Re-Examination of the Lineage of Bost &
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DESCENDANTS OF NORSE BOLSTAIJR?: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE LINEAGE OF BOST & CO. Richard Cox INTRODUCTION The account by Nicolaisen in Scottish Place-Names of the Norse settlement of Scotland as seen from place-name evidence is a land-mark in the development of our understanding of that largely undocumented process. His analysis of the distribution of selected generic elements clearly plots the gradual but relentless approach of serial settlement, through the Northern and Western Isles, up to and onto the northern mainland and western coastal belt. The chronology proposed for the settlement generic-elements discussed, places them in the following order: 1. sta(Jr, 2. setr (and/or sretr) and 3. b6lstaor (Nicolaisen 1976. 87-94). The remarkable thing about the last of these elements, b6lstaor, is that, according to Nicolaisen, it has yielded a large number of different reflexes in modern forms of names. These include orthographic bist, bister, bust, buster, bast, pster, mster, bus, boll, poll, pool and bo (Nicolaisen op.cit. 94). There is general agreement here among earlier commentators, but there are some dissenters concerning one or two individual reflexes (Appendix 2). For instance, not all would agree that boll, poll or pool forms derive from b6lstaor. This in itself does not prompt a complete re-examination of the reflexes of b6lstaor, but there does seem to be a sufficiently compelling reason to undertake one. Enquiring into the form and derivation of shader-names over the west of Scotland (in Gaelic, Siadar ['fiaqdr] ['fid<;ldr] or final -seadar [,f aqdr]), the evidence suggested that an early group of these coincided chronologically with name-forms with the reflex bast, but that · another group of shader-names were of a slightly later stratum than bast-names (Cox 1990). This did not say that shader-names, derived from ON (-)sretr, were contemporary with or later than all names with reflexes hitherto deemed to have derived from b6lstaor. However, it somewhat weakened the case for the accepted chronology of staor yielding to setr (and/or sretr) yielding to b6lstaor. Unless we choose to ignore this, it begs the question whether it is possible that more than one ON generic element lies behind the variety of reflexes currently ascribed to just the one element b6lstaor. If this proved to be the case, we would have quite a different picture before us of the phasing and chronology of Norse settlement. Our analysis draws upon 105 names, with the benefit of the pronunciations of 85 of these. Of the remainder, although we cannot be at all certain, we may at least be able to make an educated guess at what the 43 pronunciation of some of these may or may not have been. The reason for not having pronunciations for all the names concerned is due to a lack of resources. In part this was a question of time and money, but it was also a question of the availability of pronunciations. This' last point needs some clarification. The figure of 105 represents relevant names I was able to trace in what, historically, we may call Gaelic Scotland. Caithness and the Northern Isles are therefore not dealt with here. This was because I did not feel qualified to consider questions of historical phonology there at such notice, and also because the area would deserve separate treatment because of the number of relevant names there. In Gaelic Scotland there were instances where I was simply unable to obtain pronunciations of name-forms as used in a Gaelic nomenclature. For the pronunciations I did obtain, my informants included both local individuals and scholars, and I am much indebted to them. The importance of obtaining Gaelic pronunciations of the name-forms concerned is self-evident, though it cannot be overstated: given the phonological developments of the Gaelic language, we are just one remove from the Norse names themselves, while an approach using English name-forms, themselves borrowed from Gaelic, would place us, at its most simply expressed, at a further remove from the original Norse nomenclature. The main aim of this paper, then, is to look at Old Norse (ON) generic elements that have traditionally been taken, for the most part at least, as belonging to a category of habitation or settlement-names. We are not looking, therefore, at the derivations of individual ON loan-names, and for this reason I have not made a full sweep of the documentary evidence for individual name-forms. This is macro-onomastics, so to speak, and we can anticipate that some points regarding individual names may escape our notice. Finally, I should like to point out that in my paper on shader-names (Scottish Gaelic Studies 16. 1990), I made various suggestions about the origin of some of the reflexes we shall be looking at. Suffice it to say that these were speculative and off-the-cuff remarks made without the benefit of later research carried out for this paper, and in consequence there will be no need to refer to them here. ON byli The pronunciations of the reflexes under discussion here include [J;:>gl], [l;:>::>st], [l;:>::>:sta(¥)], [!;:>Asta], [l;:>::>L], [!;:>As], [l;:>AS;:)1!'], [l;:>::>uLsa], [l;:>::>ust], [l;:>::>usta] and [J;:>gL]. In disyllabic forms stress occurs on the initial syllable of the reflex, and in name-final position all forms normally retain a weak stress reflecting the secondary stress of the original ON names. The first of these, [pgl], we find in only three names, all situated in the Western Isles [Fig. 3.1]. We have Bayble in Lewis, and Paible which occurs on Taransay, by Harris, and in North Uist. The specific element of the ON reconstructions is papa m. a 'cleric, or religious man' as found in 44 ON -byli 0 tj ~· t/ 0 ,. I \ / I .- I ,/ . ../ 0 50 Kms Fig. 3.1 Place-names incorporating ON -h>'li. 45 island-names such as Pabbay. Our n~mes go back to ON *Papy!i, as found in the Landnamab6k (f Papf!i: Asmundarson 189 l. 26) and in the Ork11oyi11ga Saga (Papu!i: Oftedal 1954. 396). In the Northern Isles we also have survivals, for example in Papy! and Papi/water in Shetland (Br0gger 1929. 61). ON Pap,vli is a syncopated form of *Papab_vli and the generic here is ON b)~li nt. used in the sense 'domicile, residence'. It is a derivative of ON b6! nt., to which we shall come later, and was apparently limited in use to compounds (De Vries 1961; Cleasby 1957). Of course the names Bayble and Paible tell us little about Norse settlement since these clerics were Celts. There is really no problem about the origin of final -[l;i;}I] here, and its derivation from ON b_vli is well noted by several eminent scholars, including Oftedal (op.cit. ibid.) and Br0gger (op.cit. ibid.). The names referred to here have quite unjustifiably been included by Nicolaisen in his distribution-map (Nicolaisen op.cit. 93). ON bO/staor and bustaor Continuing on the west coast, there are a large number of names which contain orthographic bosta or final -bast. They are found predominantly in Lewis and Skye but outliers are also found in the Uists and in Coll [Fig. 3.2]. There are two examples of unqualified and 32 of qualified name forms. The respective pronunciations of the reflexes here are [l;i):sta] or [1p:sta¥], and final -[l;i)St]; there was one name here whose pronunciation I failed to get. These undoubtedly derive from ON b6/staor m. which translates variously as 'farm, farmstead, residence', and commentators are unanimous here. The element is a compound of b6/ (a derivative of which we met earlier) and staor m. a 'place, stead', but also 'farmstead'. B6l originally applied to a 'lying-place for animals' but was later associated with farm-land and residences. The variants [l;i):sta] and [l;inta¥] are interesting. Final [¥] is not a reflex of ON o but, as is fairly common in the dialects concerned, merely closes an otherwise open final syllable. Compare Gael. feoil, gen. ['fj):b¥] besides ['fj):L;}], 'meat'; also Tairigeadh [NB 1841] ['thaoi,g'a¥] besides Taraigea [NB 2749] ['thari,g'a], names found on the west of Lewis and both from ON ParagiQ 'ravine' of the seaweed'. Final syllable [a] in [1;J):sta(¥)] has developed from an intermediate stage in which the original ON orthographic a was lengthened after borrowing to compensate for the loss of the final segment of the stem b6lstao-. In name-final position the reduction of stress was such that not only was the final syllable lost, but long [):] shortened to [)], although secondary stress is still discernible today, e.g. Swanibost ['siiaN';},l;i)st] in Lewis, from an acc. ON Sveinab6lstao 'Sveini's farm' (Oftedal 1954. 373). There are two other names, however, which we can consider here. These are Roust [l;i)usta] in Skye and Bousd [lpust] in Coll [Fig. 3.3]. Like Basta [l;i):sta] in Lewis, these are loans from unqualified ON names. [t;i)usta] is essentially the same as [l;inta], except that the long stress 46 ON (-)b61sta6r I ~· ,\ "il I .- I _./ . .../ 0 50 Kms Fig. 3.2 Place-names incorporating ON (-)b6lstaor. 47 ON ?b61sta6r 0 cj ~· {)° 0 I .- I ../ ....;' 0 50 Kms Fig. 3.3 Place-names incorporating ON ?b6/stac!r. 48 ON -bustaor ,. I \ /' i ~ I _./ .../ 0 50 Kms Fig. 3.4 Place-names incorporating ON -b1istat)r. 49 vowel is a diphthong rather than a monothong, suggesting that the lateral survived longer in the south than in the north.