Mr. Heddle also tells me that the old name of ‘Lyars’ for the people of Walls was to a great extent replaced by ‘Cockles.’ The ‘lyars’ were very common in Walls at one time, and were esteemed a great delicacy, but, Mr. Heddle tells me, were to a great extent killed out by the brown rat. He himself remembers men being bitten by rats when putting their hands into holes to look for young ‘lyars.’ Some three generations back enormous numbers of cockles were taken and eaten by the people of Walls, and they seem to have been called ‘Cockles’--or, I presume, ‘eaters of cockles’--in consequence. _Oily Bogies_.--I hardly see how this can have been ‘eaters of.’ There might have been some old story to the effect that the Burray men stole and ate these buoys, but I never heard it. South Ronaldshay has names for every district, which no other island but the Mainland has. _Gruties_ is, Mr. Heddle says, equivalent to ‘Skerry-scrapers’--people who get their living from the ‘grut’ or refuse left in bights by the tide. (‘Grut,’ see Norse _gröde_ = porridge or gruel.) _Scouties_ may be derived from the skua, though Mr. Heddle gives an unpresentable derivation. The word _Birkies_ he did not know the meaning of, but asked two or three people, who all said the Sandwick people were so called ‘because Sandwick was such a place for tangles coming ashore, and the people had such a habit of eating what they called “birken” tangles, i.e. the stout or lower ends of the large thick tangles.’ _Burstin Lumps_ are a sort of preparation of oatmeal, once a very favourite dish in the Isles. _Rousay ‘Mares’_--There is an old tale of a Rousay man who, being a coward, killed his mare and hid inside her from his enemies. Mr. Heddle sends me an old rhyme on the subject: As the Rousay man said to his mare: ‘I wish I were in thee, for fear o’ the war; I wish I were in thee without any doubt, Were it Martinmas Day before I cam’ out.’ The North Ronaldshay people did eat seals. Why _Hides_ I do not know. Mr. Heddle here suggests it may have had to do with witchcraft, in which skins and especially seals’ flippers were much used. Within the last ten years a man pulled down and rebuilt his byre because of some ‘ongoings with a selkie flipper.’ The names are very old and must be of Scandinavian origin. Yours sincerely, DUNCAN J. ROBERTSON. In addition to these names of ‘eaters,’ simple names of animals, we have shown in the text, are as commonly given to English villages as totemic names are given to the totem groups of savages.