Gaelic names, the word Strath is a prefix to the name of the adjoining river. In the word "Gwen-Ystrad," the word Strath is, on the contrary, in the unusual position of an affix; showing that the appellation is descriptive of the beauty or fairness of the strath which it designates. The valley or dale of the Almond, and the rich tract of fertile country stretching for miles to the south-west of the Cat-stane, certainly well merit such a designation as "fair" or "beautiful" valley--"Gwen-Ystrad;" but we have not the slightest evidence whatever that such a name was ever applied to this tract. In his learned edition of _Les Bardes Bretons, Poemes du vi^e Siecle_, the Viscount Villemarque, in the note which he has appended to Taliesin's poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, suggests (page 412) that this term exists in a modern form under the name of Queen's-strad, or Queen's-ferry--a locality within three miles of the Cat-stane. But it is certain that the name of Queens-ferry, applied to the well-known passage across the Forth, is of the far later date of Queen Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore. Numerous manors and localities in the Lothians and around Kirkliston, end in the Saxon affix "ton," or town--a circumstance rendering it probable that Lis-ton had possibly a similar origin. And further, against the idea of the appellation of "the white stone of Galysten" being applicable to the Cat-stane, is the fact that it is, as I have already stated, a block of greenstone basalt; and the light tint which it presents, when viewed at a distance in strong sunlight--owing to its surface being covered with whitish lichen--is scarcely sufficient to have warranted a poet--indulging in the utmost poetical license--to have sung of it as "the white stone." After all, however, the adjective "wen," or "gwenn," as Villemarque writes it, may signify "fair" or "beautiful" when applied to the stone, just as it probably does when applied to the strath which was the seat of the battle--"Gwenn Ystrad." Winchburgh, the name of the second largest village in the parish of Kirkliston, and a station on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, is perhaps worthy of note, from its being placed in the same district as the stone of Vetta, the son of Victa, and from the appellation possibly signifying originally, according to Mr. Kemble (our highest authority in such a question), the burgh of Woden, or Wodensburgh. (See his _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, vol. i. p. 346.)] [Footnote 209: _Vita Agricolae_, xliv. 2.] [Footnote 210: _History of England_--Anglo-Saxon Period, p. 20.] [Footnote 211: On the probable great extent of the Teutonic or German element of population in Great Britain as early as about A.D. 400; see Mr. Wright, in his excellent and interesting work _The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon_, p. 385.] [Footnote 212: _Historia Ecclesiastica_, lib. i. c. 1; or Dr. Giles' _Translation_, in Bohn's edition, p. 5.]