The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

AND NOTES] OF SCOTLAND 399
inscriptions are not correctly deciphered, and some,
like the
Golspie stone, are too weathered or worn to be deciphered.
(4) Place-names of Pictland.
Only a resume can be given here. The Pictish place-names
are very different from names on Gadelic — ground Ireland and
Dalriada. There is, of course, a veneer of Gaelic over them, as
the Scots really did impose their language as well as their rule
on the Picts. Place-names in the Isles and in Sutherland and
Caithness must be left out of account, since they are largely
Norse. From the southern borders of Ross to the Forth east
of Drumalban the names have all a marked family resemblance,
partly Gaelic, partly Pictish. The prefixes aber and pet, unknown
to Gadelic, are found from Sutherland to the Forth.
The former means " confluence," and had two forms, aper and
oper, as in Welsh {ad, od, and ber, \jdX.fero) ; the Gaelic for aber
is inver, and it has in the most common names superseded the
Pictish aber. Pet means "farm," G. baile, which, in fact, has
superseded it in purely
Gaelic districts for a reason which the
dictionary should make clear. The prefix both— farm, dwelling,
common to Irish and Welsh as an ordinary noun, is widely used
in Pictland to denote a bally. Pres, a bush, W. pjys, a covert, is
a borrowed Pictish word, and occasionally appears in place-
names, as does perth, brake, in Perth, Partick (old Perthoc,
Strathclyde British), and Pearcock or Perthoc (King Edward).
British pen we do not find now ; every one such has become
kin, as in Kin-cardine, a very common name, for Pen-cardin,
W. cardden, brake. Equall}' common is Urquhart for older
\5v-clmrden, Adamnan's Airchartdan, " At (the) Wood." A pre-
positional prefix peculiar to Pictish names \s for, /other, corrupted
into fetter (Fetter-cairn) and foder (Foder-lettir). It is cor-
rupted also mto far (Far-letter = Foder-letter). Possibly it is
an adjective terminally in Dunottar (Dun Foither of Chronicles ?),
Kin-eddar (King Edward), &c. It seems to mean " lower,"
" under " : vo-ter, a comparative from vo, Gaelic fo, under. The
extensive use of certain prefix names in Pictland is observable
as compared to Ireland, where their use is rare : strath, ben,
monadh (rare in Ireland), allt ("stream" in Pictland), corrie, blair,
and cairn. Lan, so common in Wales, is rare, though known, in
Pictland ; the cill of the lona monks gave lan no chance.