CORRESPONDENCE PLACE NAMES— MOSGIEL.

Evening Star, Issue 21836, 27 September 1934, Page 11

CORRESPONDENCE

PLACE NAMES— MOSGIEL.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Can you inform* me whether the township of Mosgiel in Otago was named after the lanu at one time cultivated by Robert Burns of immortal memory? 1 have always taken it for granted that such was the fact, but J may be wrong, if 1 am right, a grave error has been made, and I am amazed that, long ere this, every loyal Scot in Otago has not girded on his pibroch and his haggis (or whatever weapons an angry Scot docs gird on), and at the point of his pipes demanded that this wrong be redressed. In all the Burns literature which I have read, the name oi the farm in question is spelt “ Mossgiel ” —with two “ s’s.” 1 am sure that, however careful and saving a man might be, if he was a true Scot he would never carry these virtues to the point of making one “ s ” do the work of two in a name so closely associated with that of Scotland’s best-loved poet. If, then, Mosgiel ought to be Mossgiel, the change should be made, for it is never too late to mend: and in the words of the poet himsell : “ Now’s the day, and now’s the hour.” —I arm jdc., Wellington September 25. [According to ‘ Weeks’s Cyclopedia, “ Mr Arthur J. Burns, son of the Rev. Dr Burns, founded the township, and named it after one of the farms held in Scotland by his grand-uncle, the famous poet, Robert Burns.”—Ed. E.S.]