Placenames: Hidden Gems Strewn Along Drove-Roads to our Past

PLACENAMES: HIDDEN GEMS STREWN ALONG DROVE-ROADS TO PAST

MONTHLY FIRST WEDNESDAY EMERGENCE FROM OUR (INSECURE) WRITERS’ CAVE TO GLIMPSE THE LIGHT

Northumbrian Venerable Bede, left, 7thC monk at Jarrow’s church of St. Peter and St. Paul, pulled north England and Pictish east Scotland up to the level of Rome by building stone kirks, ‘educating the unlearned’ populace.

Language is a dialect with an Army, a Navy and a Monarch

Simon Taylor, PhD, ‘Pictish Placenames’

Eastern Scotland holds Secret Language Key to the Past

When Bede wrote his glorious Ecclesiastical history of the English people—Historia Gentis Anglorum Ecclesiastica—before he died in 736, most of the landmass he was addressing still lived a rural pastoral life with belief in nature spirits, Celtic deities and giving gifts to the Earth in thanks for sustenance through the year.

An English education custom which continues to this day is sending boys to boarding school at an early age—in the Noughties girls go, too. Sometime around 680, a small seven-year old Bede was enrolled at Monkwearmounth and spent the next fifty years learning Church history. As an adult, he wrote 40 books—including his De Natura Rerum—a 7thC guide to the Universe—along with hundreds of pamphlets to enlighten ‘unlearned’ Britons in the ways of Rome. As Irish churches and Iona calculated by a different calendar—one year King and Queen of Anglian Northumberland held Easter on separate Sundays. Bede encouraged closer alignment with up-to-date Rome.

He succeeded.

King Nechtan Orders ‘Fite’ Peterkirks for Roman Easter in N & E Scotland

During Bede’s own simple monastic life, he was able to witness Pictish King Nechtan write to Jarrow asking for stonemasons to help build stone kirks ‘in the manner of Rome’. When work began on ‘Fite Kirks’ (rather than ‘black hoos’ hovels), Nechtan thanked his resident monks (from Iona, i.e. antiquated) and asked them to leave. Bede recorded in his own lifetime the lives of Nechtan, Adamnan, Columba and the rise of Christianity.

Throughout Pictland, new monasteries were set up, sometimes—as at Turriff—on the foundations of the old, where Celtic observance was replaced by the ‘new’ Roman calculation and, for monks,  their hair cut in the tonsure of a crown. Others, like Rosemarkie and Tarbet may well have been completely new foundations. Curitan (Boniface) of Rosemarkie was a strong supporter of Adamnan (abbot of Iona and Columba’s biographer) at the 697 council held at court. He continued to support Nechtan’s initiative.

Maelrubai (‘Maree’) had founded the huge settlement at Applecross in Wester Ross, dying there in 722 at the age of 80. His influence was widespread, did not conflict with the royal strategy, and stretched east to Keith, where his Summareve’s Fair was [and is still – Keith Show] held annually.

Status and wealth were directly related.

The larger the citadel, the more land it controlled; but it had the burden of producing more to feed its dependents. Food had to be grown in abundance to stock a royal town (urbs or civitas, Bede, (HE I1). For a small dun crops could be grown locally. Whereas in a larger province, centred on a major fortress, a higher proportion would be tithed and collected as tribute from widespread tenantry.

‘He held his household . . .
Sometyme at Edinburgh, sometyme at Striveline,
In Scotlande, at Perthe and Dunbrytain,
At Dunbar, Dunfrise, and St. John’s Toune,
All worthy knights more than a legion,
At Donydoure also in Murith region’
Jhon Hardyng, 1465 describing wealth of Pictish nation and royal residences

Scots and Irish Gaelic travelling monks used ogham etched into sacred stones as a means to teach locals Christianity. Fish shape design incised in rocks at parish boundaries held the message from Gk ICTHYS (L. piscis) which would be understood by the locals as salmon was sacred beast in Pictish pantheon

ICTHYS Jesu Christos son of God Gk. ΙΧΘΥΣ

Brandsbutt on old Inverurie ‘marches’, now in housing estate; Aboyne Formaston ogham flanks ClassII cross slab; Afforsk simple cross-inscribed boulder in ancient Caledonian forest on parish boundary of the Garioch and Monymusk—itself an early monastery with ClassII cross stone.housing Columba’s ‘Monymusk Reliquary’

‘At the present time there are five languages here [in
Britain], just as the divine law is written in five books …
These are namely the languages of the English, of the
British, of the Gaels, of the Picts as well as of the Latins;
through the study of the scriptures Latin is in general
use among them all’ Bede Historia Gentis Anglorum

Writing in Latin, which he learned from age 7, gave him unlimited access to church history. It also elevated him to stardom.

In 1022 a monk carried Bede’s remains from Jarrow to Durham cathedral, where he was interred as a saint next to Cuthbert. Durham is considered the greatest Anglian cathedral.

Britain’s Four Languages—and Latin

Celtic linguistic roots surface in all four British languages: pronunciation being the dividing line between Q-Celtic [West Coast, Glasgow, Eire and Isle of Man Manx] and P-Celtic sounding Breton, Cornish, Pictish and Welsh or Brittonic. e.g. Latin piscis, fish above, is Gaelic iasg ‘fish’. Latin pater, becomes Gaelic athair ‘father’.

P-Celtic pen ‘head’ becomes Q-Celtic ceann—sometimes ‘borrowed back’ into P-Celtic. Aberdeenshire has Kintore and Kincardine: combines caen + carden=rich grassland, pasture enclosure. Pit or pett is well-known for denoting a place of Pictish importance, a regional division, an enclosed place owned by Picts, usually high status. Pitcaple in the Garioch was royal stables: Pit-capull place of the horse. Many Scots Gaelic names borrowed into Pictish survive in rural steadings, ancient kirkyards and wild sheep-devoured meadows.

Original Uu sound of Celtic in Uurguist (Pictish king) translates Fergus in Scots Gaelic. St Fergus of Dyce Aberdeen (pic below of his ‘teaching slab’) represented his king, stonekirk-building Nechtan, at a Council in Rome in 721, to relate his nation’s conversion to Roman Christianity.

Royal Forests, Cold Mountain Passes & Gleaming Fields

Among Pictish beauties still giving their names and meaning to the landscape—rare in Britain south of the Border—are Aber ‘river or burn mouth’ as in Aberdeen, Arbroath, Aberfeldy; Cet, a wood (Keith family name ruled from Caithness to Angus); Cuper a confluence, Cupar in Fife; Mig bog, marsh, perhaps peat bogs, Migvie ABD;, Migmar ABD, Meigle Gowrie PER & Strathmiglo FIF. Pert wood, grove as in Perth. Interestingly Perth in Welsh means wood, copse, hedge brake or bush. Strath, Pictish broad valley like Welsh/Brittonic ystrad. Strathearn lush valley of Earn, see below.

Some names contain Pictish loan-words attested as common nouns in Scots Gaelic, e.g.bad (‘spot, clump’), dail, (‘haugh, water-meadow’), monadh (‘hill, hill-range, muir’), preas (‘bush’), pòr(‘seed, grain, crops’); and obsolete pett. The Slug—difficult climb alternative road over the Mounth from Crathes to Dunnottar comes from sluig (v.) ‘to
swallow, devour’ slugan m. ‘gullet, or whirlpool..Yet on a totally different tack, the Slug connects 2royal strongholds.

Fergus/Uurguist Pictish monk who represented his king in Rome in 721 Stone rear wrapped in fish-curled ogham

Royal Ownership Dictated by Fertile Valleys

It is thought by linguistic scholars that the Mounth—1500ft.mountain ridge denoting E-W geological fault dividing ‘lowland’ from ‘highland’ Scotland—is pure Pictish, as Irish-Gaelic Annals of Ulster list ‘Dub Tholargg rex Pictorum citra Monoth 782,’ King Dub Talorc gives family name Duff, surviving landowners in Aberdeenshire.

Fetter names contain Gaelic foithir usually translated as a slope, a terraced ravine. Multiple locations, however, include a remarkable number of high-status names in former Pictland: both N & S: Dunottar, Fetterangus,
Fettercairn, Fetteresso, Fetternear, Forteviot, Kineddar, Kingedward – all medieval parishes. foithir is made up of two Gaelic elements: fo ‘under’ and tìr ‘land’. The Welsh/Brittonic cognate is godir ‘region, district, lowland, slope’.

Dr Taylor suggests that behind this foithir in many eastern placenames is Pictish *uotir, which may have referred to some kind of high status/royal administrative district within Pictish domain. Probably not fuar=cold as in freezing Balfour (cold place!) equivalent of Cinrighmonadh=old name for religious pinnacle St.Andrew’s where kings were buried. ‘Head of the mountain of kings’. Birse, brass describes ‘gleaming’ cornfields, i.e.rich pasture = contented tenantry.

*It is quite synchronous that HRH Prince William is traditionally called Earl of Strathearn when he treads North of the Border, It was, after all, the highest pinnacle of royaldom any mormaer coiuld reach. The regal hub, as it were.

I believe Dr Taylor has hit jackpot on his connection of P. uotir as a high-status arondissement ruling body district, considering much of Scotland still remembers feu duty, tenantry and ownership of land by ruling classes.

Now that makes complete sense in high status and royal Pictish strongholds such as Forteviot, Fuor-triu (nom., acc. For-trenn) ‘Kingdom’ of Forgue, Aberdeenshire (kingdoms included Fife Fib, Forgue, ‘Regality of the Garioch

Surviving Ten Centuries of English Domination

While a surprising amount of anti-English rhetoric survives since our Scots barons signed their Declaration of Independence (1320), there are quite a few who (Cornish, Manx are being revived, the Doric is still spoken among loons & quines o’ the NorthEast) working to an all-indigenous culture. Much new research brightens the horizon.

That’s the Light we cave-dwelling scribes look for when we emerge from our [deeply-immersed-intuitive Muse-driven internal space into the sparkle of a New Dawn—ever hopeful—a new vibrant Earth full of its own history, totems and tautology—aka longwindedness. Us writers can’t help it. It came with the package.

p.s.incidentally, our Muse this month is Deva, Celtic goddess of the River. Aber-Deva: patroness of Aberdeen. She’s a star! ©2021 Marian Youngblood