THE LAND OF CAT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3117, 10 December 1913, Page 77

THE LAND OF CAT.

*>By Jessik Mack ay. No district in Scotland has had the searchlight of scholarship cast more insistently over its names and historic memorials than the counties of Caithness and Sutherlandshire. It has been doubly attacked, by /the Celtic societies on one hand and the Viking (or Norse) Society on the other, since in no part of Scotland, unless in the Western Isles, has Norse domination south of Pentland Firth been more complete than round about the stormy headlands and bleak dales of these two, which once were one. For at least the eastern part of the modern Sutherlandshire, that part to which the name Sudhrland (Southland) was given- by the Norse invaders, was, in more general speech, included under the name Katanes, while the northern part of Strathnaver was called the Dales of Katanes. Altogether, this formed, in more poetic phrase, the Land of Cat, to which, as late as 1631, the district of Assynt was joined. In early or premediaeval times the distinction between the counties was probably as shadowy and fluctuating as that between Northumberland and the Scottish marches. In those days modern Caithness was called Ness or Nose whenever the Norse desired to differentiate it from the land south of the Ord. The native Colts called Caithness Gallaohh, and Sutherland Cataobh. According to Mr Alexander Macbain, writing in the Celtic Monthly, there is no doubt that Gallaohh, the country of the invading Norse, signified “land of the strangers, ’ the word “gall - ’ being the root also of ‘'Wales.’’ Cataobh is le:-s obvious, and a mass of speculation, much of it utterly untenable, has been built up on the name. Some have derived it from St. Cattan. Old Gaelic tradition speaks of a hero. Cat. one of seven warlike brothers, who were supposed to divide Scotland between them. Mr Macbain dismisses these speculations, but puts more faith in identification with the old clan, the Catti (Chattan), who held much of that country. But he traces the name of both tribe and district from the simple word “cat,” the same in Gaelic ars in England, and applicable to a country where the wild cat was a likely badge or emblem. The name Cat : t> older than any Norse name in Scotland, and it is inferred that the conquerors simply adapted the name into “Katanes,’’ the Ness or Nose of the Land of Cat. Ptolemy, that old geographer,' writing about 120 a. i)., left a few names then current in the far north—names of tribes for the most part, but among these “Nabarus flumen” - plainly denotes the Naver, Nabarus being deemed akin to the root “nav,” to flow, seen in ‘‘navy.” The Cape of Travedum in Ptolemy’s list is thought to be one of the horns of Thurso Cay—Thurso in Norse signifying “Bull Water.” the older Latinised name being thought to mean "bull head.” Ptolemy’s Alta Ripa (High Bank) is deemed to he the Ord placed in wrong order. The shadowy memory of Scotland’s first Celtic inhabitants, the Piets, lingers still in a few place-names, conspicuously in words beginning with Pit or Pet, Everyone knows that “Pentland” is Petland ; and less familiar combinations are found in Pilfour, which Mr Macbain thinks mayhave been Pastiere Town, while Pitmean may have been Middle Town, as Pilleutrail may have been the Town bv the Shore. Assuredly Pictish are the names Ahirscor, now Aherscross, and Oyvili. In the first we have Aber, which in the Gaelic is Inver, a month, in the second a Pictish word for “high” is discernible, which seemingly refers to the high hanks of the river. It is this same root, which appears in the Ochil Hills, and in Ochiltree —probably the High Town. Tile Pictish language had faded cut of the land as a living tongue between the time of Columba- and the first Non e invasions—a period of two centuries barely. They entrenched themselves firmly in the Shetlands-and Orkneys, finding them a base for descents on Scotland and Ireland. They had made many such descents ere they finally conquered and occupied Caithness and Sutherland under Thorstein the Red and Sigurd of Orknev. This was

about 880, or about the time Alfred finally routed the Danes at Ethandune. There the Norsemen held sway for 300 years. The great Jarls, who displaced for a time the Celtic Mormaers or lords, were little kings in the Land of Cat and beyond, and it was not till the time of Cceur de Lion that the Scottish kings were able to change their nominal suzerainty in the north for real dominion over these remote regions. The name Dingwall (Parliamentplace) is reminiscent of Norse rule in the north —Dingwall, which is so closely allied with the Thuigvellir of Iceland. In Sutherland, Norse and Gaelic names fight for pre-eminence; in the north of Strathnaver, round about Tongue (itself a Scandinavian name), two names out oi three are found to be Norse, while in Sutherland proper, round about Dornoch, the Gaelic names preponderate in the same proportion. Mr Macbain’s rendering of some of these, names differs in many cases from that of other scholars. He takes no notice of the legend of the Sam-son-like Norse hero who won a fight with a horse's hoof, after which the nlace wan called the Horse’s Fist or Hoof; nor docs he seem to consider the less startling Dornag-ach (place of the hand-stoves) suggested later, but derives the word from a Celtic name for "stronghold,’ - allied to "dorn,” first. Nor does he endorse the poetic derivation for Assynt tendered earlier oy the Rev. Adam Gunn —namely, “holy land - ’ or "land of the gods’’ in Norse, —but suggests rather the prosaic

"end of the ridge.” But we may say in conclusion that all Mackays will be charmed with the musical Irish-sounding title iie. lias found to have belonged to the first Lord Reay. He derives Reay' from the Gaelic Magh-Rath, Place of the Fort, allied to the far-famed Moyra in old Ulster. And the writer M’Yurich, he says, called the Lord of Reay, head of the clan Mackay, the Mormaer of Moyra—surely a phrase that touches the Ran-Celtic consciousness with a plaintive and gracious idea.