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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
city of Eadwine." Plausibility is given to the derivation
by the error of a copyist or interpolator of Symeon of
Durham, but Aodann, or edin, occurs as a prefix in more
than a hundred places in Ireland and Scotland and there
is no doubt of the Irish character of the name. Similarly
Auld Reekie is derived from the Irish alt (high place)
ruighe (slope) ; Arthur's Seat, from the Irish ard-thir
suidhe, a place on high ground, and so.
1
on.
Irish place-names in Scotland outnumber all others by
ten to one, while such of them as are or appear to be
English have in cases like those just mentioned been translated
or corrupted from their Irish form. Thus Edderon,
near Tain, is Eadar duin, "the town between the hillocks" ;
Falkirk is a translation of Eaglais breac, "the speckled
church" (Varia Capella) ; Earlston is Ercheldon or
Ercildun; Almond is a corruption of Amhuinn, a river;
and Glen Howl is Gleann-a-ghabail, "the glen of the
fork." 2
In a similar way Strathclyde has become Clydesdale;
Strathnith has become Nithsdale; Strathannan has
become Annansdale; and so on. In some cases the Irish
prefix "kil-" has been supplanted by the Saxon "kirk-," as
Kirkpatrick for Kilpatrick. But "Kil-" is still the more
common prefix, as Kilmarnock, signifying the "chapel
of Marnock," a famous Irish saint. In Galloway alone,
almost the most southerly part of Scotland, Sir Herbert
Maxwell found 220 "Knocks" (Irish Cnoc, "a Hill"). 3
There are Irish place-names even in Berwickshire on the
English border and they increase as we go north and west
in the rest of the Lothians. The subject of place-names
however needs no laboring. A glance at any large scale-
1 See Milne, Gaelic Place-Names in the Lothians; Joyce. Irish Names of
Places.
2 Johnston, Place-Names in Scotland, p. XVII.
3 Studies in the Topography of Galloway, 1885.
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