Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland : $b or, The traditional history of Cromarty — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland : $b or, The traditional history of Cromarty
John Stuart Mill · en
the Amazons who assisted the Trojans against Agamemnon. Buchanan has
expressed his astonishment that the chroniclers of Britain, instead of
appropriating to themselves honourable ancestors out of the works of
the poets, should rather, through a strange perversity, derive their
lineage from the very refuse of nations: Sir Thomas seems to have
determined not to furnish a similar occasion of surprise to any future
historian. There were princes of his family who reigned with honour
over Achaia and Spain, and a long line of monarchs who flourished in
Ireland before the expedition of Fergus I.
[Sidenote: ETYMOLOGICAL LEGENDS.]
The era of Alypos was one of the most important in the history of
Britain. It was that in which the inhabitants first began to build
cities, and to distinguish their several provinces by different names.
It witnessed the erection of the city of York by one Elborak, a
brother-in-law of Alypos, and saw the castle of Edinburgh founded by a
contemporary chieftain of Scotland, who had not the happiness of being
connected to him, and whose name has therefore been lost. The historian
assigns, too, to the same age the first use of the term Olbion as a
name for the northern division of the island--a term which afterwards,
“by an Eolic dialect,” came to be pronounced Albion, or Albyn; and
the first application of the name Sutors, from the Greek σωτηξες,
_preservers_, to those lofty promontories which guard the entrance of
the bay of Cromarty--a fact which Aikman the historian recommends, with
becoming gravity, to the consideration of Gaelic etymologists. Much
of a similar character, as appears from Sir Thomas, could have been
brought under their notice in the reign of Charles I., when, as he
states in one of his treatises, the names of all places in the shire of
Cromarty, whether promontories, fountains, rivers, or lakes, were of
pure and perfect Greek. Since that time, however, many of these names
have been converted into choice trophies of the learning and research
of those very etymologists;--even the derivation of the term Sutors
has been disputed, but by the partisans of languages less ancient than
either Greek or Gaelic. The one party write the contested dissyllable
Suitors, the other Soutars, and defend their different modes of
spelling each by a different legend--a species of argument practised at
one time with much ingenuity and success by the contending Orders of
St. Dominic and Loyola.