"Till a' their weel-swall'd kites belyve Are bent like drums." Blackie rolled in his chair, held his sides and uproariously expressed his approbation. Then came the distribution of prizes, during which the Grand Old Boy made some pun or quaint remark on each of the children's names, as he presented the books: _"Miss Minnie Morrow_: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day; _James Glen_: be a real genuine _Glen_ all through life, not a _valet_ or flunkey; _William Lindsay_: Willie, my lad, imitate your ancestors at Otterburn: 'The Lindsays flew like fire about till a' the fray was done'; _Mary Black_: black but comely like the daughters of Jerusalem," and so on, in a bird-witted, half-daft way that the audience contemplated with benevolent wonder. NOTE ON INVERNESS SURNAMES, ETC. Let me mention here a very useful and interesting piece of philology that was done by Dr. Macbain in 1895. That eminent scholar, working on the _Inverness Directory_, analysed the names occurring there, explained them on sound principles of etymology, and gave percentages of Celtic and Saxon surnames in the Highland capital. Roughly speaking, the _Directory_ of 1894-1895 had 5,000 single entries, and _750 distinct surnames_. Of these surnames, only 110 are pure Gaelic. About 70 per cent. of the natives are, however, supposed to be of Highland descent. Dr. Macbain points out that certain Highland clans have names that are not Celtic: _Grant_ is from the French "grand"; _Fraser_ from the French "fraise," a strawberry (the Frasers have a strawberry in their coat-of-arms); _Chisholm_ is English and means "gravel-holm,"--the Anglo-Saxon _ceosol_ (pebble) is preserved in _Chesil Beach_ and _Chiselhurst_; _MacLeod_ signifies "son of Ljot"; and _ljotr_ is the Norse word for "ugly." _Campbell_ is probably Norman-French, though Dr. Macbain suggests _cam-beul_, Gaelic for "crooked mouth." In olden times an external conqueror would sometimes subdue a district, and call the natives after his noble self. The commonest names in the town are Fraser, Macdonald, Mackenzie, Macintosh, Ross, Cameron, and Munro. About 1,200 of the population have one or other of the first three names. The Frasers are an easy first, and form more than 9 per cent. of the population. _John_, _Alexander_, and _William_, are the commonest Christian names in Inverness. "It is remarkable and indeed regrettable," says Dr. Macbain, "that the Gaelic Christian names (Donald, Duncan, Kenneth, Murdoch, and Angus), are not higher in the list."