Читать книгу Reading the Gaelic Landscape - John Murray - Страница 11

In 1984, four groups of students taking part in a hydrology field course were asked to make a sketch map of the same short stretch of river in northern Manitoba. Their subjects were biology, engineering, landscape architecture and technology. The biologists saw the stream as habitats grouped around a sinuous flow. They mapped areas of deposition, erosion and former water channels. The engineers drew a straight watercourse, which they thought was causing problems for the land upon either side. They mapped areas of slumping and active bank erosion. Landscape architects produced a plan whose graphics, though rendered with beauty and clarity, communicated little about place, natural phenomena or landscape process. Technology students made a drawing, which communicated accurately, if crudely, what was there and what was really happening (Hough1990).

The exercise showed how hard it is to represent the natural world even when drawn from life. What was omitted and included on the students’ maps was strongly influenced by their background, what they wanted to see and what they valued. Despite the advanced techniques available to modern cartographers, maps remain selective about what they choose to include and how it is represented. Place-names are no exception, particularly when what is being mapped, and who is carrying out the mapping, may come from different cultures. And especially when there is an asymmetry of power between those providing information and those recording it. Maps are documents of both commission and omission.

The first person to map Scotland from a Scottish point of view was Timothy Pont, who worked between 1596 and 1614. Although coverage of Scotland was incomplete and some of his work has been lost, it formed the basis of Blaeu’s Atlas, published in 1654. Pont was a graduate of St Andrews and a Lowlander and so had Gaelic-speaking assistants for at least some of his work in the Gàidhealtachd. It is thought that the motivation for his task, like The Statutes of Iona, was part of the government policy of bringing the Highlands under more effective central control. With this in mind, the maps aimed to document how geography and society contributed to regional identities. Accompanying notes assessed the resources and productivity of the landscape. The focus was on how the rural economy of Scotland was organised. There was an emphasis on farms, mills, churches, bridges and roads, but much less notice was taken of natural features. Nevertheless, watercourses are often used as organising features around which information on the mapped landscape could be positioned.

Out of 20,000 place-names recorded by Pont, over 75% are settlement names. Pont must have consulted local Gaelic-speakers, since the language has been phonetically realised into Scots on the maps with reasonable accuracy. On Loch Maree, he records 16 islands named in Gaelic in more detail than on any later map, including those by OS. Roy Wentworth discovered a small drawing in the margin of one map which showed that four island names appear on no other record.

Three island names which Pont sketched in the corner of this map have different names to those recorded by William Roy’s military survey of the mid-18th century and those entered by the OS in their name books made in the second half of the 19th century. One island changed its name twice in that journey through time. Pont records it as ylen or ella Gewish, which is probably Eilean Giuthais - Scots Pine Island (NG913730). The same place is recorded in Roy’s ‘Fair Copy’ as Id (island): na Feannaig and I Fainnig in his ‘Original Protraction,’ which could mean either Island of the Crow or Crow Island. The OS Name Book records the place as Eilean Loisgte, Burnt Island – which is what is shown on the contemporary 1:25,000 sheet.

There is no reason why different people at different times should not have had different names for the same place. Toponymic options may express contrasting but not necessarily contradictory aspects of place. Places will also change over time. Vegetation can be subject to the most rapid alteration. A causal interpretation of the name changes might be as follows. We begin with an island wooded with mature pines, Eilean Giuthais. These are felled and deciduous trees and shrubs regenerate and fill the vacant space left in the canopy. Such species are more favourable to the roosting of crows than conifers. The island catches fire, perhaps because of the combustible nature of broom and gorse, which also have regenerated in the lighter conditions of the new woodland. The island becomes known as Eilean Loisgte. The writings of two travellers shed some light on the matter. Thomas Pennant, who journeyed through the Highlands in 1769, suggests that the island was wooded with ‘firs’, the vernacular for Scots Pine, whereas the geologist John MacCulloch, over fifty years later, mentions a scattering of trees and thickets of mixed species over the islands.

Pont’s cartography is not conventional in the modern sense. He gives the general disposition of the land, but not with geometric accuracy. Some of his sketches of mountains seem like rough perspective drawings, and the spontaneous quality of their draftsmanship suggests that they were drawn in the field. This contrasts to William Roy’s work in the 18th century, where the mass and void of mountainous areas is depicted symbolically by monochrome pen and ink hatching.

Before William Roy’s survey, Blaeu’s Atlas, based on Pont’s work, was the best map available. Yet a month after the Battle of Culloden, Captain Frederick Scott, writing from the prominent landmark of Castle Stalker in Appin, noted ‘this Place is not marked on any of our Maps’. He also found out that place-names differed between those shown on his charts and those used by local people in their daily lives. The 1745 rising demonstrated the need for an accurate map of the country. Cartographic accuracy, or the ‘quantifying spirit’, became an ideal for the Age of Reason.

William Roy was commissioned in 1747 to undertake a military survey of the Scottish mainland, beginning in the Highlands. Roy used the military roads constructed by Generals Wade and Caulfield after the 1715 rising, as a way of organising his work. Unlike previous maps, which were often little more than an amalgam of previous charts, Roy’s survey used actual measurement and traverse survey along the length of the new road network.

After summers in the field and winters collating the results of their work in Edinburgh Castle, in 1755, Roy’s team produced two versions, a sketch and a fair copy. The latter comprised 84 brown linen map rolls giving 38 folding sheets. The complete map measured 20 by 30 feet. This was an impressive achievement accomplished in so short a time. However, as the work was not related to longitude or latitude and the maps were not aligned to true north, mistakes, after many traverses and successive offset measurements, accumulated steadily. The east end of Loch Leven in Fife is shown 20 miles south of its true position. The maps also lack features which had no strategic military value. Informed guesses were made about the nature of the landscapes remote from the military roads. Most of the islands were also omitted. Roy himself thought the survey was more of a ‘magnificent military sketch than a very accurate map of the country’. Place-names were not recorded systematically, and where they were, this was not done with any apparent knowledge of Gaelic. Some phonetic renderings are shown, which do have a certain value, as they reflect local pronunciations of the time.

Roy’s ‘magnificent … sketch’ was stored away in a cupboard and never seen until its rediscovery in the early 19th century. Maps were state secrets. Yet in this seminal work lay the origins of OS, formally established in 1791. Their mapping of Scotland continued fitfully from 1819 and at various scales until its completion at the end of that century. In Ireland matters were conducted more swiftly, motivated by the aim of maximising tax revenue.

As part of their work in Ireland, the OS established rules for collecting, recording and mapping place-names. These were subsequently applied to the Scottish Highlands. The following extract comes from ‘Instructions for the Interior Mapping of Ireland’ drafted by Thomas Colby, OS Superintendent in 1825.

The names of each place is to be inserted as it is commonly spelt, in the first column of the name book: and the various modes of spelling it used in the books, writings ... are to be inserted in the second column, with the authority placed in the third column …

(Withers 2000 535)

Rules were also laid down for choosing ‘authorities’ to authenticate the place-names collected.

For names generally the following are the best individual authorities and should be taken in the order given: Owners of property; estate agents; clergymen, postmasters and schoolmasters ... Small farmers and cottagers are not to be depended on, even for the names of the places they occupy …’

(ibid 535)

This exclusive approach, reliant on informants from the landowning and professional classes, meant that those who worked the land and were closest to it were marginalised in the formal recording of place-names. As a result, local variants in naming were ignored. Subtleties of the spoken language were mistakenly represented as fixed and constant. What was not standard became accepted as standard. Parts of the map also remained blank for no other reason than an understandable reluctance of the informants to give freely of information, which the Government might use to their disadvantage. In some cases, settlements of native Irish were omitted. Those who worked the landscape were either mapped off, or mis-mapped onto a paper landscape. Problems of representation were more complex still, since those collecting information had no influence over its final transcription in OS’s Southampton HQ, giving further scope for misrepresentation.

In the Scottish Highlands, mapping recommenced in earnest on Lewis in 1846, for no other reason than that the landowner, Sir James Matheson, wanted an update on the resources of his estate. Rules developed in Ireland about gathering place-names were extended to Lewis. Alexander Carmichael was one of the ‘authorities’ commissioned to ascertain the authenticity of names. He was a Gaelic-speaking historian and folklorist from Lismore and thus an exemplary ‘authority’. Today he would be called an ethnologist. Carmichael wrote about what happened to his painstaking work, once it was beyond his control.

I have gone to the locality and in every instance corrected the place-name from the living voice on the spot. From these corrections I have written out each name in correct Gaelic and have revised and re-revised my own work. I have adhered strictly to the local sound and pronounciation of every word. Well then fancy my mortification when Cap. MacPherson tells me that he means to adopt neither Norse nor Gaelic theory in spelling but to give the name in phonetic spelling.

(ibid 547)

In a subsequent letter he comments further on the fate of his translations:

... I found that many ... place-names which I was at so much pains and expense in collecting were entire left out ... that some names on the old maps were left unaltered in form thus lending the meaning different. I took the liberty of drawing the attention of the Dir G of the OS to these alterations and the reply was that the names were omitted to save expence that old names were left out as they were obviously incorrect and that the final mode of spelling rested with the Inspector General.

(ibid 547)

We must treat maps with caution. They reflect the society of the mapmaker and the way the landscape and its inhabitants have been interrogated. Nevertheless, over most of the Highlands, now bereft of native speakers and without further knowledge coming to light, today’s mapped record is arguably as good as it gets. This may remain true even after consulting original name books and manuscripts of earlier maps and charters. For this study, it has not been possible to substantiate the deep authenticity of the many thousands of names listed. Places mapped by OS represent a surface layer. But it is the surface layer which we use.

Later OS maps include information about landform, augmenting spot heights with contours. These connect points of equal elevation. Before leaving this chapter it is worth recounting how an early use of contours was employed during the ‘Schiehallion experiment’. After Newton’s discourse on the universal theory of gravitation, there was much scientific debate about the shape and mass of the earth. Mountains could be used to test contrasting theories. Deflections of a weighted plumb line from the vertical could be measured and used by extrapolation to find the mass and volume of the earth. Schiehallion or Sìdh Chailleann - the Fairy Hill of the Caledonians was deemed ideal for the experiment because of its isolation from other peaks. These would exert a gravitational pull, and the peak’s apparent symmetry meant that any declination from the vertical could be considered commensurate on all sides.

Accordingly, Charles Mason, later to be replaced by Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, embarked upon an expedition to the mountain. They spent four months on the summit. A mathematician and surveyor called Charles Hutton realised that the numerous readings and measurements of deflections could be organised according to common values by plotting them along a line circling the mountain. Hutton did not discover the contour or isopleth. Other thinkers of the time had developed similar ideas, but he did apply the concept to the experiment.

Roy was by now a renowned cartographer and scientist and visited the team at their mountain redoubt. He verified their measurement of Schiehallion’s height barometrically, by relating air pressure to elevation. Though the scientists complained about the weather and how it interfered with their observations, they were also kept company by local people, who brought them gifts of food. At the farewell party in October a local boy, Donnchadh Ruadh (red-haired Duncan), entertained the party with fiddle music and songs. The party, fuelled by local whisky, went so well that the observation hut burnt down and Donnchadh’s fiddle was left behind in the rush to escape the flames. Maskelyne sent a replacement from London a few weeks later. Duncan called it A’ Bhan-Lunnainneach Bhuidhe - the Yellow London Woman, and composed a song in her honour.

On the trip I took to Schiehallion,

I lost my wealth and my darling,

… Mr Maskelyne, the hero

… did not leave me long a widower,

He sent my choice treasure

That will leave me thankful while I live.

(Hewitt 2010 62)

The conjunction of enlightenment scientists and mapmakers with late 18th century Gaelic speakers in Perthshire, exemplifying the rational and the intuitive, high upon the summit of The Fairy Hill of the Caledonians, was an extraordinary amalgam. The meeting of science with Gaelic culture also produced a map with place-names. It is worth comparing this 1778 Schiehallion document of Hutton’s with the current record.

Table 2: Comparison of Schiehallion experiment Map with OS 1:25,000 sheet

There are 23 Gaelic names recorded near or on the measurement contour. Despite their irregular spelling, all can be tentatively translated. Names seem to have been collected from Gaelic speakers, as they have been rendered phonetically with some accuracy by the English speaking team. Less than half can be related to the contemporary map. In a way, this small episode, occurring 100 years before formal OS mapping, encapsulates many of the issues impinging on research into Gaelic toponymy.