stirling-1963-vol-1/05_040

Transcription

INTRODUCTION : GENERAL
years immediately before 850 and set up the kingdom of Scotia. In this way the Gaelic
language was spread over the whole of northern Scotland. An instance of a Gaelic name in
Stirlingshire (and there are many) is Cambuskenneth 'Kenneth's river-bend'.
"Meanwhile the Angles of Bernicia, having occupied the coast of Northumberland in the
middle of the 6th century, gradually absorbed the whole of southern Scotland except Strath-
clyde in the 7th and 8th centuries. The foundation of a bishopric at Abercorn in 681 seems to
represent an English border-outpost designed to minister to what it was hoped would be an
extension of the English church into Pictland. All south-east Scotland and a large part of the
south-west became thoroughly English at this time, especially in the east, as many place-
names like Haddington, Whittinghame, Athelstaneford, Symington, Whithorn, and, in
Stirlingshire, Falkirk, clearly show. The Anglians borrowed numerous Cumbric names like
Linlithgow and Din Eidyn (whence Edin-burgh) from the Britons. The Cumbrian kingdom
of Strathclyde remained independent under its own kings till the 11th century. There is some
evidence that its boundary with Scotia was the river Forth, Loch Lomond, and Loch Long;
but that between Strathclyde and Bernicia must have been vaguely the waste lands stretching
south of Falkirk towards Lanark and the upper Tweed. Cumbric probably continued to be
spoken in Strathclyde throughout this period, and names like Penpont 'the end of the bridge',
Lanark 'the grove', Ochiltree 'the high village', and so on are evidence of this. With the
expansion of Gaelic Scotia across the 'Bannoc' hills and all over southern Scotland early in
the 11th century, Gaelic came to be spoken for a short time almost throughout the whole of
Scotland, and names like Garvald 'the rough burn', Tarff 'the bull (river)', the Kips 'the
blocks', and, in Stirlingshire, Kilsyth 'the church of St. Syth', go back to this period.
"There must have been a time, in the 7th and 8th centuries, when the isthmus between
Forth and Clyde was a linguistic borderland, with Gaelic to the north-west, Pictish to the
north-east, Cumbric to the south-west, and Anglo-Saxon to the south-east. Evidence of a
confused situation is to be seen in Caerpentaloch, the early form of what is now Kirkintilloch,
south-west of Kilsyth. where caer 'stronghold' and pen 'end' are Cumbrian and taloch 'hillock'
is Gaelic, whereas in Kirkintilloch Gaelic kinn 'end' has been substituted later for Cumbric pen.
Similarly with Kinpont 'the end of the bridge', in West Lothian, with Gaelic kinn and Cumbric
pont. The notorious Peanfahel is probably another instance. Bede gives it as the Pictish name
of what is now Kinneil, near the end of the Antonine Wall; and it evidently consists of pen
'end' (in this case Pictish) and Gaelic fal 'wall'; Kinneil, really Kinnfheil, has substituted
Gaelic kinn for pen, but is otherwise unchanged. Such extraordinary hybrid names point to a
state of linguistic chaos all round this basic boundary-line, the central cross-roads of Scotland;
which is just what might be expected."
As regards the life of the community in later times, a few factors of importance deserve
to be mentioned here. For example, a first point arises from the position of the county on the
borders of the Highlands proper. Geikie has described Stirling as a brooch clasping Highlands
and Lowlands together. Moreover, the county includes within its boundaries a slice of High-
land territory, with the result that the community with which we have to deal is not really
homogeneous. To work out the contrast of the two cultures in detail would outrun the scope
of these notes, but the point should nevertheless be kept in mind and a modicum of truth
recognised under the romantic licence of Scott's Rob Roy. Another aspect of this same picture,

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