All names Gall formed much (too much) of my PhD thesis. Canna entice the thesis to download onto the tablet (too many Goill?), but did get its database to open, with this below. Happy to accept the Roman reference should read Pictish, especially with the evidence from Tarradale (just down the hill from me). I see I had also taken Watson at his word, albeit leaving options open. (Copy & paste has lost the italicisation.)
Thank you Peadar for this - I knew I'd seen somewhere that the 'Gal' might be an antiquarian styling, but I couldn't think where! As 'Galcantree' appears in a charter of 1458, I wonder if it's not a reference to the enclosure but to a big stone, per p. 25 of your thesis. Could 'gal' be the generic and 'cantree' the specific (hence the genitive spelling), making it the 'big rock of Cantray'? That sounds like the kind of down-to-earth naming one might expect in rural Nairnshire.
I'd happily consider a 'freestanding stone or rock' if we had evidence for one (though they admittedly do occasionally get broken or blown up; breaks my heart reading of such cases). And gall could be the generic if the modern Gaelic hides an earlier ending that had or could take a slender ending - though it would run against the rich pattern of Cantray as the generic. For what it's worth these are the references in the text of my thesis: A sphere-of-interest name [p.249]; Galcantray‡ CRD-INV [...] appears to be an antiquarian reference, specifying part of the district of Cantray with allusion to a Roman [read, Pictish!] enclosure (Canmore, 15033). The model Gall + existing name also existed in Ireland, where in 1605 Balligalantrim† (1565 Ballygallantry), IrG n.m. baile + Gall-Aontroim, applied to that part of the town of Antrim I/ANT, IrG Aontroim, which was inhabited by the English (PNNI Antrim 1, 152) [p.251]; The specific [Gall] can be applied to various categories of people, only one of which can be described as specifying an ethnicity, variously Norse and non-Gaelic Scots: [...] 'Predecessors', in names applied to archaeological remains in the environment, typically Dùn nan Gall for defensive remains [pp.254-7]. Hope that helps more than it confuses (me). Myself, I'm still reeling from Jones's statement, “The root of the name Galcantray was probably derived from the Irish Gaelic for the ‘place of two streams’.” What on earth was he on about, and why would Irish Gaelic be coining a name in Strathnairn?!
Ha, I've no idea why he thought it meant 'place of two streams' - especially as he could very easily have checked in CPNS and/or SPN. Yes, the 'gal' as freestanding stone argument would work better if there was an actual stone! There is one on the other side of the river at Dalgrambich https://canmore.org.uk/site/14161/dalgrambich but that is of no use to this enquiry. Unless there was anciently a stone that got carried away in a flood like the one of 1829, but that is an imponderable. Would you still see it as antiquarian given that the name appears in 1458? Or might it at that time actually refer to a place inhabited by 'foreigners'?
The year 1458 (thanks for an earlier form than I collected - what charter was this?) is only the date of mention of the name, I presume, so only tells us that the name was coined before then. So could either be a domain-name (here there be Goill) or an antiquarian name (here there were Goill). If I'm right (pp.203, 208) that pre-1100 EG Gall applied to an incoming 'alien', then this is unlikely to refer to Picts. So I'd say antiquarian (and post-1100 ScG Gall) - here is a feature that marks itself out as being left by a different culture, whether or not the nature of that culture was known. Though it could I suppose be contemporary with a later outsider ethnicity with which Galcantry was associated; but is there any evidence or supporting suggestion for such a presence, sometime c.1100 to 1458?
Thanks, this is all very helpful! The charter is on p.133 of A Genealogical Deduction of the Family of Rose of Kilravock: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Genealogical_Deduction_of_the_Family_o/rb9GCo3_bqYC?hl=en&gbpv=1. It says "This endenture made at Elgyn the xvi day of the moneth of Januar, the yeir of our Lord a thousand four hundreth fyffty and acht yeris, betwix honorabiles and worthie men, Hucheon of Ross baroune of Kilravach, on a parte, and William of Doles of Mikilbudwete and Galcantree..." The outsider ethnicity in the area in the twelfth century will have been Flemish. David I implanted a Flemish aristocrat, Freskin, in the region in 1150, probably to draw on his land reclamation expertise, and there is a (much reduced) Loch Flemington to the north of Cantray. If so, Freskin may have brought some of his countrymen in to do the drainage work. Hmm. Interesting!
Of course, I should have thought of that! Especially after you taking about Freskin in relation to Cantray. So the archaeological remains could be a red herring.... Certainly another line of inquiry for you to check out. Thanks for the charter link - appreciated.
Thanks Bernard, could you expand a bit on why it would be more appropriate? Not being a historical linguist myself, I'm guided by Watson who writes (CPNS p357):
“An early Celtic trebo-, ‘dwelling,’ perhaps also ‘village,’ is seen in the tribal name Atrebates for Ad-trebates, ‘nighdwellers.’ With Contrebia, ‘ joint-settlement,’ we may compare G. caidreabh, ‘society, intimacy,’ earlier co-treb, ‘dwelling together,’ ‘fellowship.’ In Welsh tref is a homestead, hamlet; technically in the Welsh Laws it was a division consisting of four ‘gauaels,’ each of 64 acres, and four trefs made a ‘maynaul’; cantref is the largest division of land in a lordship or dominion, a ‘hundred.’ The Irish cognate treb, treabh, means ‘place of abode, home, region, family.’ In Sc. Gaelic treabh is used only as a verb, ‘to plough’; treabhar means houses collectively, especially farm-buildings : the uninhabited and untilled waste is dithreabh, ‘ wilderness.’"
He goes on:
"Treabh is extremely rare in Irish place-names, the only instances known to me being Oentreb, ‘single stead,’ now Antrim, and Seantruibh, ‘Shantry,’ ‘old stead,’ the name of a village north of Dublin, and these may have been influenced by British usage. In Wales, on the other hand, tref is as common in names of places as baile is with us and in Ireland.”
I think that many of the place-name elements Watson tries to make Brittonic are just as likely to be archaic Gaelic forms. Migrant dialects are usually characterised by their archaisms -- the Spanish spoken in Mexico is more archaic than that spoken in Spain. Gaelic dialects that are no longer spoken also sometimes had -a- for etymological *-o-, but I don't know whether that characteristic of the area the Cantray names are found.
I don't know either, but doesn't the fact that 'treabh' isn't used for place-names in Ireland count against it being archaic Gaelic here? That was Watson and Nicolaisen's argument for this being a Brittonic survival. There are also two other Brittonic survivals exactly adjacent to Cantray: Cawdor (Abbircaledouer in a charter of 1214 x 1242, no. 40 in the Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis), and Budgate (Budwete in a Kilravock charter of 1458, Budwit in a charter of 1515, possibly bod-gwid, house in the wood).
The distribution in modern Irish toponymy is not necessarily a good guide. Most Old English place-names are quite different from those found in Denmark. Aber- names are not necessarily Brittonic either -- they could be archaic Gaelic (which is presumably why they are spelled Obar- in the earliest sources). Its always possible that there were some Brittonic names in the area, but its often been noted that elements like lanerc and perth that are clearly not derivationally Gaelic aren't usually found north of the Tay.
So an archaic Gaelic dialect that developed in Pictland separately from Ireland (and Dál Riata)? But is the 'caledouer' bit of Abbircaledouer not Brittonic? And what would be your view on Budgate? (This is all fundamental to my PhD so I'm keen to know what I'm dealing with!)
There has long been a suspicion that Old Irish was either a clerical koine or an invention of modern editors, and the first Gaelic speakers in Argyll must have spoken Primitive Irish, not Old Irish. So it's likely that Argyll Gaelic developed different traits than Irish at an early date -- loanwords from Brittonic, loss of the future tense etc. But Old Irish and then Middle Irish remained the dominant clerical/legal languages. So Gaelic may have developed differently in different parts of Scotland from the very beginning, with the clerical/legal language operating as an upper-class superstratum. We may be able to detect early dialectal variation of the substratum dialects in place-names, just as we can in both Old English and Brittonic toponymy. We know that the modern East Gaelic dialects were different than the West Gaelic ones, but how early the main divergences were is not as clear. On the place-names: yes, given all the rivers called Calder in England, caledouer looks Brittonic, although 'wood bothy' seems to lack parallels. Jackson proposed that the Picts had come to be ruled by Brittonic-speaking kings at one stage and the king-list appears very Brittonic. There could be an Old European, a Brittonic and then a Gaelic stratum of place-names, but whether the Brittonic one should be called Pictish or not is the question given that the Pictish inscriptions don't seem to be Brittonic.
Fascinating as ever! Thank you! Also, I realise this is irrelevant, but as it was in my head the whole time I was reading, I feel I should say it: "canto" is "I sing" in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and no doubt some other languages too, so I kept wondering whether any of your place names were related to singing, even though I know it's a whole different branch of language!
Thanks Jocelyn - I had canto for sing in mind all the time too (not because I'm in any way a musician but because I did my undergrad degree in Italian!) I'm no expert in ancient Celtic languages but the specialists haven't raised it as a possibility - they're divided between 'shining', 'portion of land' and 'corner'.
Hi Andy, yes it could be. Geoffrey Barrow thought that Cantrafreskyn was Cantraydoune, because Freskin himself had built the motte at Duffus and so his descendants may also have built mottes. But then he also thought that the de Moravias owned almost all of Strathnairn, so Cantrafreskyn may well be the whole stretch from Kilravock down to the Clava viaduct, where it seems to stop. It's so frustrating that so many old charters have been lost. There was once an entire Cantray charter chest, but nothing is left of them.
Are you aware of Cantraless / Cantraleis / Cantray Leis? It's in "The history of the family of Dallas", along with some more spellings of Kantrafrish / Cantrafreskyn.
Belated thanks for this reference! Cantraleis turns out to be Leys, just south of Inverness. It seems to have been a detached portion of the Cantray estate, surely used for summer livestock grazing. That must be the reason it was in the weirdly-shaped Croy and Dalcross parish, miles from Croy parish church.
Interesting. I suppose it's broadly still within the valley of the Nairn, although quite distant from the other Cantray names. I find the detached parts of parishes quite fascinating.
All names Gall formed much (too much) of my PhD thesis. Canna entice the thesis to download onto the tablet (too many Goill?), but did get its database to open, with this below. Happy to accept the Roman reference should read Pictish, especially with the evidence from Tarradale (just down the hill from me). I see I had also taken Watson at his word, albeit leaving options open. (Copy & paste has lost the italicisation.)
Galcantray CRD-INV ‡ (Croy & Dalcross). Antiquarian name. Ch. 20 Goill: probable.
NH810480 (SS). +Easter, +Nether†, +Newlands, +Over†, +Wester.
Farms (OSnb 18:17,20). Newlands – a house (OSnb 18:22).
1618 Nr/O.Galcantray (Retours no. 36)
1636×52 Gald Cantray (Gordon Map 5)
1755 Gallachantry (Roy Map)
1873 E/W.Galcantray (OSnb 18:17,20)
1873 Newlands of Galcantray (OSnb 18:22)
1920 ScG "galla-chantdra" (Diack MS Nairn, 18)
1894×1926 ScG "Gall-channtra· Gall(a)-channtra" {MS 360, 4} (Robertson MSS)
1894×1926 ScG "Gall(a)channtra" {MS 364, 132} (Robertson MSS)
attrib. ScG n.m. Gall + lenited ScG ex nom. *Canntra (BrB adj. can + BrB n.f. treβ)
ScG Gall-Channtra – 'subdivision of Cantray ('white settlement') associated with the
Goill'
Easter Galcantry (between Wester Galcantray and Newlands of Galcantray) provides the
grid reference. Galcantray is on the south side of the River Nairn as it crosses the former
parish border with Cawdor NAI, giving a borderland context. However, an apparent
Roman enclosure with ramparts was excavated at NH810483 in the 1980s (where tradition
had placed a graveyard or chapel) (Canmore, 15033). The ethnonym ScG n.m. Gall is
probably an antiquarian reference to this pre-Gaelic feature, prefixed to the established
name for the district, Galtray, which in turn may have referred to the colour of stone
construction. (Alternatively, Cantray could be BrB n.m. cant + BrB n.f. treβ, 'district or
border settlement', or BrB *cantref 'lordship division'.) The name Cantray is in Gaelic
Cantra or Canntra (Watson 1930, 8)
Thank you Peadar for this - I knew I'd seen somewhere that the 'Gal' might be an antiquarian styling, but I couldn't think where! As 'Galcantree' appears in a charter of 1458, I wonder if it's not a reference to the enclosure but to a big stone, per p. 25 of your thesis. Could 'gal' be the generic and 'cantree' the specific (hence the genitive spelling), making it the 'big rock of Cantray'? That sounds like the kind of down-to-earth naming one might expect in rural Nairnshire.
I'd happily consider a 'freestanding stone or rock' if we had evidence for one (though they admittedly do occasionally get broken or blown up; breaks my heart reading of such cases). And gall could be the generic if the modern Gaelic hides an earlier ending that had or could take a slender ending - though it would run against the rich pattern of Cantray as the generic. For what it's worth these are the references in the text of my thesis: A sphere-of-interest name [p.249]; Galcantray‡ CRD-INV [...] appears to be an antiquarian reference, specifying part of the district of Cantray with allusion to a Roman [read, Pictish!] enclosure (Canmore, 15033). The model Gall + existing name also existed in Ireland, where in 1605 Balligalantrim† (1565 Ballygallantry), IrG n.m. baile + Gall-Aontroim, applied to that part of the town of Antrim I/ANT, IrG Aontroim, which was inhabited by the English (PNNI Antrim 1, 152) [p.251]; The specific [Gall] can be applied to various categories of people, only one of which can be described as specifying an ethnicity, variously Norse and non-Gaelic Scots: [...] 'Predecessors', in names applied to archaeological remains in the environment, typically Dùn nan Gall for defensive remains [pp.254-7]. Hope that helps more than it confuses (me). Myself, I'm still reeling from Jones's statement, “The root of the name Galcantray was probably derived from the Irish Gaelic for the ‘place of two streams’.” What on earth was he on about, and why would Irish Gaelic be coining a name in Strathnairn?!
Ha, I've no idea why he thought it meant 'place of two streams' - especially as he could very easily have checked in CPNS and/or SPN. Yes, the 'gal' as freestanding stone argument would work better if there was an actual stone! There is one on the other side of the river at Dalgrambich https://canmore.org.uk/site/14161/dalgrambich but that is of no use to this enquiry. Unless there was anciently a stone that got carried away in a flood like the one of 1829, but that is an imponderable. Would you still see it as antiquarian given that the name appears in 1458? Or might it at that time actually refer to a place inhabited by 'foreigners'?
The year 1458 (thanks for an earlier form than I collected - what charter was this?) is only the date of mention of the name, I presume, so only tells us that the name was coined before then. So could either be a domain-name (here there be Goill) or an antiquarian name (here there were Goill). If I'm right (pp.203, 208) that pre-1100 EG Gall applied to an incoming 'alien', then this is unlikely to refer to Picts. So I'd say antiquarian (and post-1100 ScG Gall) - here is a feature that marks itself out as being left by a different culture, whether or not the nature of that culture was known. Though it could I suppose be contemporary with a later outsider ethnicity with which Galcantry was associated; but is there any evidence or supporting suggestion for such a presence, sometime c.1100 to 1458?
Thanks, this is all very helpful! The charter is on p.133 of A Genealogical Deduction of the Family of Rose of Kilravock: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Genealogical_Deduction_of_the_Family_o/rb9GCo3_bqYC?hl=en&gbpv=1. It says "This endenture made at Elgyn the xvi day of the moneth of Januar, the yeir of our Lord a thousand four hundreth fyffty and acht yeris, betwix honorabiles and worthie men, Hucheon of Ross baroune of Kilravach, on a parte, and William of Doles of Mikilbudwete and Galcantree..." The outsider ethnicity in the area in the twelfth century will have been Flemish. David I implanted a Flemish aristocrat, Freskin, in the region in 1150, probably to draw on his land reclamation expertise, and there is a (much reduced) Loch Flemington to the north of Cantray. If so, Freskin may have brought some of his countrymen in to do the drainage work. Hmm. Interesting!
Of course, I should have thought of that! Especially after you taking about Freskin in relation to Cantray. So the archaeological remains could be a red herring.... Certainly another line of inquiry for you to check out. Thanks for the charter link - appreciated.
excellent as always!
Thanks Murray, and thanks as always for reading my ramblings :)
The Old Irish verb con-treba 'inhabits' might be a more appropriate starting point for Cantray.
Thanks Bernard, could you expand a bit on why it would be more appropriate? Not being a historical linguist myself, I'm guided by Watson who writes (CPNS p357):
“An early Celtic trebo-, ‘dwelling,’ perhaps also ‘village,’ is seen in the tribal name Atrebates for Ad-trebates, ‘nighdwellers.’ With Contrebia, ‘ joint-settlement,’ we may compare G. caidreabh, ‘society, intimacy,’ earlier co-treb, ‘dwelling together,’ ‘fellowship.’ In Welsh tref is a homestead, hamlet; technically in the Welsh Laws it was a division consisting of four ‘gauaels,’ each of 64 acres, and four trefs made a ‘maynaul’; cantref is the largest division of land in a lordship or dominion, a ‘hundred.’ The Irish cognate treb, treabh, means ‘place of abode, home, region, family.’ In Sc. Gaelic treabh is used only as a verb, ‘to plough’; treabhar means houses collectively, especially farm-buildings : the uninhabited and untilled waste is dithreabh, ‘ wilderness.’"
He goes on:
"Treabh is extremely rare in Irish place-names, the only instances known to me being Oentreb, ‘single stead,’ now Antrim, and Seantruibh, ‘Shantry,’ ‘old stead,’ the name of a village north of Dublin, and these may have been influenced by British usage. In Wales, on the other hand, tref is as common in names of places as baile is with us and in Ireland.”
I think that many of the place-name elements Watson tries to make Brittonic are just as likely to be archaic Gaelic forms. Migrant dialects are usually characterised by their archaisms -- the Spanish spoken in Mexico is more archaic than that spoken in Spain. Gaelic dialects that are no longer spoken also sometimes had -a- for etymological *-o-, but I don't know whether that characteristic of the area the Cantray names are found.
I don't know either, but doesn't the fact that 'treabh' isn't used for place-names in Ireland count against it being archaic Gaelic here? That was Watson and Nicolaisen's argument for this being a Brittonic survival. There are also two other Brittonic survivals exactly adjacent to Cantray: Cawdor (Abbircaledouer in a charter of 1214 x 1242, no. 40 in the Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis), and Budgate (Budwete in a Kilravock charter of 1458, Budwit in a charter of 1515, possibly bod-gwid, house in the wood).
The distribution in modern Irish toponymy is not necessarily a good guide. Most Old English place-names are quite different from those found in Denmark. Aber- names are not necessarily Brittonic either -- they could be archaic Gaelic (which is presumably why they are spelled Obar- in the earliest sources). Its always possible that there were some Brittonic names in the area, but its often been noted that elements like lanerc and perth that are clearly not derivationally Gaelic aren't usually found north of the Tay.
So an archaic Gaelic dialect that developed in Pictland separately from Ireland (and Dál Riata)? But is the 'caledouer' bit of Abbircaledouer not Brittonic? And what would be your view on Budgate? (This is all fundamental to my PhD so I'm keen to know what I'm dealing with!)
There has long been a suspicion that Old Irish was either a clerical koine or an invention of modern editors, and the first Gaelic speakers in Argyll must have spoken Primitive Irish, not Old Irish. So it's likely that Argyll Gaelic developed different traits than Irish at an early date -- loanwords from Brittonic, loss of the future tense etc. But Old Irish and then Middle Irish remained the dominant clerical/legal languages. So Gaelic may have developed differently in different parts of Scotland from the very beginning, with the clerical/legal language operating as an upper-class superstratum. We may be able to detect early dialectal variation of the substratum dialects in place-names, just as we can in both Old English and Brittonic toponymy. We know that the modern East Gaelic dialects were different than the West Gaelic ones, but how early the main divergences were is not as clear. On the place-names: yes, given all the rivers called Calder in England, caledouer looks Brittonic, although 'wood bothy' seems to lack parallels. Jackson proposed that the Picts had come to be ruled by Brittonic-speaking kings at one stage and the king-list appears very Brittonic. There could be an Old European, a Brittonic and then a Gaelic stratum of place-names, but whether the Brittonic one should be called Pictish or not is the question given that the Pictish inscriptions don't seem to be Brittonic.
Fascinating as ever! Thank you! Also, I realise this is irrelevant, but as it was in my head the whole time I was reading, I feel I should say it: "canto" is "I sing" in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and no doubt some other languages too, so I kept wondering whether any of your place names were related to singing, even though I know it's a whole different branch of language!
Thanks Jocelyn - I had canto for sing in mind all the time too (not because I'm in any way a musician but because I did my undergrad degree in Italian!) I'm no expert in ancient Celtic languages but the specialists haven't raised it as a possibility - they're divided between 'shining', 'portion of land' and 'corner'.
Ooh, I forgot you did Italian! But I do also like the idea of a shining corner of the land, haha!
Strathnairn is a lovely, green and sunny part of the world, so it would be apt!
I wonder if Kantrafrish and Cantrafreskyn might be the same place, being from Freskyn rather than phris.
Hi Andy, yes it could be. Geoffrey Barrow thought that Cantrafreskyn was Cantraydoune, because Freskin himself had built the motte at Duffus and so his descendants may also have built mottes. But then he also thought that the de Moravias owned almost all of Strathnairn, so Cantrafreskyn may well be the whole stretch from Kilravock down to the Clava viaduct, where it seems to stop. It's so frustrating that so many old charters have been lost. There was once an entire Cantray charter chest, but nothing is left of them.
Are you aware of Cantraless / Cantraleis / Cantray Leis? It's in "The history of the family of Dallas", along with some more spellings of Kantrafrish / Cantrafreskyn.
Belated thanks for this reference! Cantraleis turns out to be Leys, just south of Inverness. It seems to have been a detached portion of the Cantray estate, surely used for summer livestock grazing. That must be the reason it was in the weirdly-shaped Croy and Dalcross parish, miles from Croy parish church.
Interesting. I suppose it's broadly still within the valley of the Nairn, although quite distant from the other Cantray names. I find the detached parts of parishes quite fascinating.
Ooh, I am not! Thank you, I will check that out.