f local lists of the oldest
names of the hills, rivers, rocks, farms, and other places and objects;
and this all the more that in this age of alteration and change many of
these names are already rapidly passing away. Yet the possession of a
Scottish antiquarian gazetteer or map of this kind would not only enable
us to identify many localities mentioned in our older deeds and
charters, but more--the very language to which these names belong would,
perhaps, as philological ethnology advances, betimes serve as guides to
lead our successors, if they do not lead us, to obtain clearer views
than we now have of the people that aboriginally inhabited the different
districts of our country, and the changes which occurred from time to
time in these districts in the races which successively had possession
of them. In this, as in other parts of the world, our mountains and
other natural objects often obstinately retain, in despite of all
subsequent changes and conquests, the appellations with which they were
originally baptised by the aboriginal possessors of the soil; as, for
example, in three or four of the rivers which enter the Forth nearest to
us here--viz., the Avon, the Amond, and the Esk on this side; and the
Dour, at Aberdour, on the opposite side of the Firth. For these are all
old Aryan names, to be found as river appellations in many other spots
of the world, and in some of its oldest dialects. The Amond or Avon is a
simple modification of the present word of the Cymric "Afon," for
"river," and we have all from our schooldays known it under its Latin
form of "Amnis." The Esk, in its various modifications of Exe, Axe,
Uisk, etc., is the present Welsh word, "Uisk," for "water," and possibly
the earliest form "asqua," of the Latin noun "aqua." Again, the noun
"Dour"--Douro--so common an appellative for rivers in many parts of
Europe, is, according to some of our best etymologists, identical with,
or of the same Aryan source as the "Uda," or water, of the sanskrit,
"[Greek: hydor]" of the Greeks, and the "Dwr" or "Dour" of the Cambrian
and Gael. The archaeologist, like the Red Indian when tracking his foe,
teaches himself to observe and catch up every possible visible trace of
the trail of archaic man; but, like the Red Indian also, he now and
again lays his ear on the ground to listen for any sounds indicating the
presence and doings of him who is the object of his pursuit. The old
words which he hears whispered in the anci