National Library of Scotland B000363002 ^■Al '•'cos ^ ON THE EXTINCTION OF GAELIC IN BUCHAN AND LOWER BANFFSHIRE. j.v WILLIAM BANNERMAN, A.M., M.D. BANFF: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED AT BANFFSHIRE JOURNAL OFFICE. 1895. PRICK THREEPENCE. ON THE EXTINCTION OF GAELIC BUCHAN AND LOWER BANFFSHIRE. BY WILLIAM BANNERMAN, A.M., M.D. BANFF: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED AT BANFFSHIRE JOURNAL OFFICE. 1895. These Tapers were printed in the “Banffshire Journal” in October and November 1895. 3u, Polwarth Terrace, Edinburgh, November Vh 1895. ON THE EXTINCTION OF GAELIC IN BUCHAN AND LOWER BANFFSHIRE. L —THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLACE-NAMES OF THE DISTRICT. It may be taken as beyond all dispute that at one time the North-Eastern parts of Scotland, before their colonization by their present inhabitants of Anglian or Anglo-Norman origin, were occupied by a branch of the Celtic race. The same, no doubt, is true of all the Eastern sea-board and lowlands North of the Forth, but the present communication proposes to deal only with the district lying North of the Dee, or, as old Scots writers would have said, ‘beyond the Mounth.’ It is matter of common knowledge how distinctly the former Celtic inhabitants have left their impress on the nomenclature of the country from which they have long been banished. The rising grounds are still designated by names involving such Gaelic words as Knock, Ben, Tilly, Mel: the cliffs appear as ‘Craigs;’ the valleys as ‘Glen,’ ‘Strath,’ and ‘ Lag ’ or ‘ Logie; ’ not a few of the burns re- tain the Gaelic ‘Aid,’ and the confluence of two streams is still called ‘Inver.’ A little deeper examination serves to show that this Gaelic speaking people were not mere nomads, content to take the country as they' found it, concerning themselves only with its natural features and the wild beasts of the chase. The frequent occur- rence of the words ‘Bal’ and ‘Pet,’ which mean much the same as what we now call a ‘ farm town,’ shows that the land was divided into separate agricultural holdings. ‘Ashogle,’ rye-field or rye-ford, and ‘ Tillyorn,’ her e-hillock, indicate at least two cereals that they cropped, and their modern successors testify to the sagacity of those 4 ancient farmers in the doggerel rhyme, ‘At Tillyorn grows the corn.’ In the preparation of grain for food, they had got beyond the primitive stage ot hand-grinding and built mills, doubtless of the simple type subsequently called Scots mills, of which we have evidence in ‘Auchmull’ or ‘Auch- molyn,’ mill-field. The common appearance of ‘ Bo,’cow, in such words as ‘Tillybo,’ ‘Auchinbo,’ show that cattle rearing is no new calling in the district. They had herds of goats, gobhar, witness ‘ Inchgower,’ and sheep, caora, witness ‘ Aucheries,' ‘ Tullochery,’ places that in the Merse might be designated by the Anglian ‘Hirsel.’ The herd- loon or the cattleman had his prototype in the buachaille, whose office is commemorated in the word ‘ Culbeuchly.’ They had horses, too, as appears from ‘Aucheoch’ horse-field; and the record of their barn-yards survives in such words as ‘ Auchintoul.’ That they were great road-makers is not to be supposed, but they certainly had sufficient skill to throw a bridge, drochaid, over the smaller streams, whence ‘ Kindrought,’and to make the way easier through shallow pools by stepping-stones, sdair, whence ‘ Starnamanach.’ They could work in iron and had smiths, gobhann, who have left their name in ‘Balgownie,’ and ‘Pitgavenny,’ and ‘Allacardach’ tells of a ceardach or smithy. Whether or not their actions squared with their profession, they were Christians, and devout Church men at that—though, it is to be feared in their latter days at least, Churchmen of a debased and degraded type. Hardly a small district but had its patron saint, better known in Ireland than in the Roman calendar—St Colme, St Congan, St Donan, St Sair, and many more—to enumerate whom would involve the compiling of an extensive hagio- logy. Their churches are indicated in the numerous class of names prefixed by ‘ kil,’ and their monks manach, their clergy clcirich, their priests sag art, have left their designations to such places as ‘ Ardi- mannach,’ ‘ Cocklerachy,’ and ‘ Balhaggardy.’ For defence against armed invasion, they built ‘duns’ and ‘raths,’ whose names have survived long after the structures themselves in many cases have been levelled by the ploughshare, though more than one of their rallying words, ‘ Cairnywhing ’ or ‘Tirwathie,’ might have been heard at the break up of a market not many generations ago. This and much more may be gathered from simple investigation of the Celtic nomenclature of the district surviving to the present time. But the subject is raised from the level of mere antiquarian o research to the higher platform of documentary history by that most interesting survival of Celtic literature, The Book of Deer. From the entries of the various grants and donations forming the endowment of the primitive Columban Abbey of Deer we have contemporary evidence of the organisation of society in those days. The subject is exhaustively and interestingly treated by the late Dr John Stuart in his editorial introduction when the book was issued by the old Spalding Club. It is unnecessary and would only be presumptuous to dwell on this matter after so eminent an authority, but what really concerns the present enquiry is this —that a passage in the Book of Deer supplies us with the latest known date at which the population of Buchan remained purely Celtic and their language Gaelic. It has been thus translated:—‘Gartnait, son of Cainnech, and Ete, daughter of Gille Michel, gave Pet-mec-Cobrig for the consecration of a Church of Christ and Peter the apostle, both to Columcelle and to Drostan free from all the exactions. With the gift of them to Cormac, Bishop of Dunkeld, in the eighth year of David’s reign. Testibus ipsis Ncctan, Bishop of Aberdeen, and Leot, Abbot of Brechin, and Maledoun, son of Mac Bethad, and Algune, son of Arcell, and Ruaetri, Mormaor of Mar, and Matadin, the Brehon, and Gillie Christ, son of Cormac, and Maelpetir, son of Domnall, and Domongart, fereleginn (reader) of Turbruad. and Gillecolaim, son of Muredach, and Dubni, son of Maelcolaim.’ One can hardly conceive anything more purely and thoroughly Celtic than the state of Buchan as here revealed, and this was in the eighth year of King David—that is A.D. 1131. A good many years in the historical record have to elapse before a similar view of the state of society in the north-eastern districts is presented to us by contemporary records, and then it is with the Latin charters of feudal times that we have to deal. Take one of the earliest of these, the charter of Strathisla, granted by William the Lion in 1195, with which your columns are already familiar. It defines the boundaries of Strathisla as beginning ‘ from where the Lagyne falls into the Isla, ascend- ing b}’ a deep sike in the red moss to the summit of the Easter Balloch, and by the summit of the other Balloch, to a spring,’and so ©n, till finally it reaches a place called Clochindistone, thence descending along the Laggan back again to Isla. It is necessary here to examine the signification of the names of the various places mentioned. Lagyne is without doubt the stream now known as the Burn of Millegin; but Laggan in Gaelic signifies, not a () stream, but a hollow or valley, and no Gaelic speaker would dream of calling a stream by that name, any more than a Buchan man would call a burn a ‘ howe.’ Again, Balloch does not signify a hill, but a pass between two hills, hcalach. The name must have been given by the Celtic inhabi- tants to the pass we know as the Glack of the Balloch, and to speak as we do now of the Muckle Balloch and the Little Balloch is as repugnant to a Gael as it would be to ourselves to call the hills the Muckle Glack and the Little Glack. The word Clochindistone, now curiously modified to Clovenstone, stands in a different category, but equally with the others shows the dis- appearance of Gaelic from the district. Leaving out of account the ‘ indi,5 forming the second term in its composition, it will be seen that the first term is the Gaelic clock, a stone, while the last term is merely a reduplication of the first in English. There is only one possible conclusion, viz., that at this time Strathisla had passed from Celtic to Saxon occupation ; but it is surely a strange fact, and there seems no reason to doubt that it is a fact, that within the short space of sixty years Gaelic, from being the living spoken language of gentle and simple, should have become as utterly dead and forgotten as it is at the present day. It is interesting in this connection to compare with the names in the Book of Deer the names of the witnesses to the charter of Strathisla, which was given at the town of Elgin. After orthodox Roman bishops and feudal earls, instead of Celtic abbots and Mormaors, come 'William de Morville, the constable ; Robert de Quincey; Philip deValous, the chamberlain ; William, son of Freskin; William Cuming; William de Ha}’; Roger de Mortimer; Philip Durward; Walter Murdoch; and Herbert the Marshal. No doubt these were members of the court and attached to the King’s person, for their names appear in connection with his charters in other places ; but William, son of Freskin at least belonged to a family already settled in Moray, his father having acquired the land of Duffus in King David’s time.