I invited the poet and Gaelic translator, Taylor Strickland, to collaborate with us on a forthcoming day of access event at Blair Atholl, in Highland Perthshire.
The theme of the event is translation – in its various aspects and expanded possibilities – considered in relation to access. We’re thrilled to be working with Taylor, a lover of Gaelic who is willing to innovate to achieve more expressive translations, alongside the Gaelic signer and signer, Evie Waddell, who is creating expansive hybrid performances for the D/deaf community, embracing aspects of acting, BSL, dance, and song. We will also be joined by the registered sign language interpreter Victoria Paulo, who first inspired the idea for this event.
Taking the Gaelic landscape and innovative approaches to access as our departure point, we’ll explore what new ideas and images might spark through the conjunction of names – in particular names of hills and flora – and the creative possibilities of BSL signing.
On the first day of access in this new series, the gun-bus stopped near Gelder Shiel, below the Lochnagar massif, just where the track turns north towards Easter Balmoral. There, in a sweeping conspectus, I was able to point out some of the hill names I knew:
south of us, was what I thought was Caisteal na Caillich, the hag’s bastion, but the map corrected me – the muirburn slopes were Cnap na Clais Giubhais, long ago shorn of the pinewoods signalled in its name
nearby, Little Conachcraig, little rock collage
beyond and above us, to the south, Lochnagar, punctuated by Little Pap, the massif hard to make sense of in terms of scale from where we were.
turn west to Ripe Hill, the clamber hill. and north-west, over the Dee, to Cùlardoch, the great behind, Craig Leek, rockslab crag, Canup, the cantle (named for a part of a saddle), and Craig Nordie, orders crag, where Clan Farquharson once gathered in times of war
I knew the names and come of their meanings – from which I made my own English versions – from mapping them for the Fife Arms, using Adam Watson and Elizabeth Allan's place-name collections. As a ‘not-walker’, I never dreamt I’d be here, deep among the hills, seeing their textures and sinuous skylines.
In the same spirit, the status of BSL or Gaelic as so-called minority languages doesn’t limit their creative potential, as Evie's approach shows.
to make the sign for mountain
hands pray over your heart
elbows splay over the earth
fingers meet at the summit
The event at Blair Atholl will be informal and experimental. It will include plant listening with Tamara, gathering some plants to name. To prepare us for this creative sharing, I invited Taylor to write this blog meandering through the meanings and interpretive possibilities of bringing Gaelic hill and mountain place-names one into English.
(AF)
Roddy MacLean, on his excellent blog for NatureAlba, points to a Gaelic poem of strange distinction, not for its particular beauty or formal complexity, or anything like that, but for being little more than a list. Literally. A list. Of mountain names!
Òran nam Beann / Song of the Mountain(s)
Chì mi Beinn a’ Ghlò nan eag,
Beinn Bheag is Airgead Bheann,
Beinn Bhùirich nam Madadh Mòr,
Is Allt Nead an Eòin ri a taobh.
(I see Beinn Ghlò of the notches
Beinn Bheag and Airgead Bheann
Ben Vuirich of the great wolves,
And Allt Nead an Eòin beside it.)
tr. Roddy MacLean
Listing is no stranger to European poetry. In many poems, rhetorical device known as anaphora implies a list structure by repetition of a word or two at the beginning of each line (Her hair was like snow / Her hair was aglow / Her hair… ). You get the idea. This is different. Literary device doesn’t structure the poem here, rather the poem is merely a list of the mountains that a person sees. (OK, eag/notches are described, but still). Gaelic poetry often revels in place, so a name-packed poem should come as no surprise to us, but naming as such is typically locative of some action or narrative. This excerpt is an exception. Names for names’ sake!
Roddy MacLean, quoting another source, writes that the poem is ‘from Atholl’ in Highland Perthshire, and continues to explain the names. But no other context is provided. Why list peaks? Why Atholl? A poem of similar design can be found online on Tobar an Dualchais/Kist of Riches: Òran nam Beann - Tobar an Dualchais
Background here describes a courtship poem, in which a path back to Lewis and through the mountains is plotted.
Now that makes more sense. But how disappointing! A name for names’ sake poem may not be everyone’s bag, but for munro-baggers, and others who love mountains, a peak name poem would stand tall among Scotland’s trilingual literary canon (one that doesn’t formally exist, but should). Curiosity would’ve only been more piqued by an Atholl provenance, since few Gaelic poems originate there, despite it having been a Gaelic stronghold through the 19th century. Mountains, however, all the way to Lewis are mentioned, of which Atholl’s are but one stop along love’s long highroad (if it’s the same poem).
Place-names are beloved by Gaels, and it’s no wonder. Names for them demonstrate a far-reaching, supercharged, mythopoetic homeland, both material and spiritual in range, yet always walkable if not already walked. Their ancestors, in other words, knew intimately the topography and the total world that came with it, hence their attachment, their dualchas. But thoroughly translating this storied strata is another business altogether. Orthography, given the ages, frequently stonewalls the etymologist, but that which can be deciphered carries a near-impenetrable bulk, so much so that peeling back lexical layers simply is not enough. Indeed, to plumb the depths for deeper meaning poetic imagination is required, though never without the qualification that English names for Gaelic originals are, at best, tentative substitutes! In which case, why stop with one name? Why not experiment with several as records for the reckoning?
Below are five better-known Perthshire names, selected precisely for their relative prominence, so those familiar with them can be reacquainted and consider their semantic density. They are not just translated but put to an English that seeks to capture poetry: character, distinction, otherworldliness, or even complete banality, depending on how you envision it. Whatever the interpretation, the aim of these renderings is to challenge assumptions, rather than reaffirm orthodoxy. (And be a bit playful.) We hope you agree.
Beinn a’ Ghlò massif
Proposed Translation: Where Grey Air Skims the Summit
Standard Translation: Mountain of the Veil, or Mist
Experimental Tr: Benigmatic
Long-term Perthshire folk will know the tale. Beinn a’ Ghlò carries 19 corries across its 4-part form (4 if you include Airgiod Bheinn), and it’s said that, on a quiet day, if a rifleman were cupped by one, with a listener in another, no matter how close together the two corries were, the shot would thunder around unheard. That goes for all 19. Soundproofed corries! What a tale. If only The Corries had recorded an album in one. Adding a new dimension to their name. And to the popular history of the Misty Mountain, which is one translation of Beinn a’ Ghlò. (No, Tolkien did not get inspiration from Beinn a’ Ghlò for his Misty Mountains.)
John Gregorson Campbell, in the 19th c, documented stories that this massif was fairy-haunted and that a cailleach lived there (the cailleach, or old hag, is something of a Gaelic wind and winter goddess, ubiquitous on rough seas and mountaintops, as if she has nothing better to do…). She’s sometimes a witch, too. The story goes that two hunters (more gunslingers) sought a deer for the Duke of Atholl and got lost on the mountain during a storm. There they met an old woman with a forbidding appearance who fed them salmon. She told them she was the wife of the mountain, and could summon the mist. A (rarely) friendly Cailleach! Another tale recorded again in Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o’ Riches sees a man named MacCallum meet the witch Naidheachd mu MhacCaluim agus Buidseach Mhòr Bheinn a' Ghlò.... - Tobar an Dualchais
Funny how the other men of rigorous Victorian sonic science, playing with their guns in the corries, never witnessed the Cailleach; or perhaps they did and drove her away after a season of firing into the sky. Now we know where Florida Man got his sense of humour. Remember that incident? In 2017, 1000s of Floridians pledging to shoot Hurricane Irma, which turned out to be a joke, so they claim… James Hutton, the groundbreaking 18th c Scottish geologist, studied granite and marble near the beinn. He encountered no Cailleach.
‘Dim haze’ has been an observation of the mountain since the 19th c, and this is the first written explanation of the name. In Atholl, according to James A Robertson, in his The Gael of Alban, the name gleò ‘was applied anciently to objects where a haziness appeared’. Indeed, gleò in current Gaelic simply means ‘mist, blur, clouding’. Dwelly’s Gaelic dictionary, however, claims glo, a similar word, to mean ‘veil, covering, hood’. The frequency of the haze is what's of interest in this name. Pockets of rain drench the peaks. White granite can be dusty. Heather appears charred and grey-ish/silver-ish in winter. The conditions here must make the name.
Is the name ‘hazy/misty’ or is it ‘veil’? Robertson’s explanation is more convincing than a cherrypicked word from the Dwelly dictionary, just because of the elements and atmospheric shifts. But the name of either, veil and haze, effectively describes the same phenomenon of diminished clarity, so could it be both? Is there a way to conjure this unified meaning? To account for both meanings, I have opted for ‘grey air’ apropos the poet George Mackay Brown, where in his poem The Stone Cross, Brother Simon makes a ‘cross of grey air’. The reason is veil and haze, in this case, refer to the appearance of the air, whether it is rainy or dusty. My place name, rather than being a proper name, is more an epithet because the inclusion of the verb ‘skim’ somewhat illustrates what a veil might do.
Càrn Liath
Proposed Translation: Hillstone
Standard Translation: Grey Hill
Lowest of all the summits on the massif, and with white granite scree at the top. However, liath denotes ‘grey’, but the grey from stone, hence an old form of the word existing in Lia Fàil, or the Stone of Destiny, where the kings of Alba were coronated. At one time called Beinn Liath, perhaps demoted from Beinn to Càrn because it’s the lowest? See Airgead Bheinn below for name-to-height relationship.
In Scotland, it's peculiar to name a peak of stone ‘grey’, unless it’s to differentiate it from the old red sandstone. Most peaks, especially inland mainland ones, will be grey. Is this an exercise in literalism, or boredom? In Golspie, Sutherland, an Iron Age broch shares the name of this summit, but is translated Grey Cairn, pointing to the fact that this was, in fact, a cairn, a manmade structure, for defence, habitation or for burial. Whatever it was for, it wasn’t a summit, bit both the summit and manmade cairn are derived from the Gaelic word càrn. Was there a fort or burial chamber here, from which we can relate it back to the Golspie translation? Not that I can find. Another Càrn Liath exists near the River Spey, and a Càrn Liath-Bhaid in Glen Albyn. Both refer to the geological makeup rather than to a site of manmade significance. In which case it is better to think of the name as an identifying marker, not something special.
The surface of the mountain, due to screes and thin heathers, gives the appearance of having been scraped. It is patchy, mottled. If we wanted more from the name, we could go the route of the stone denotation of liath. Stony Peak? Otherwise this one may have to remain in the standard translation, lest we impose meaning. What we observe of the mountain must work to reinforce a translation, not force one onto the name. At the very least we could try to use more of the Gaelic in our name. ‘Hillstone’ might be interesting, given the older use of liath sometimes being ‘stone’ and the syntax reflecting the Gaelic. I quite like The Lia Cairn. Or is it too reminiscent of Burns’ The Lea Rig? Note that ‘lia’ or ‘lea’ is how you would pronounce the Gaelic word liath. The ‘th’ is silent.
Bràigh Coire Chruinn-bhalgain
Proposed Translation: Tussocks of the Corrie Brae
Standard Translation: Brae of the Corrie of the Round Bags
This is going to be a good one. Frost here appears like the moon’s surface, covered in a dusty grey. And this contrasts heavily with what is down below it, beautiful Glen Tilt, onto which the climber can peer from the Bràigh.
Not much context for this one because the name is so richly descriptive. Bràigh is where the Scots word ‘brae’ comes from, and likewise coire led the to the Scots word ‘corrie’. Upland of corrie of round little bag (shape)? Chruinn-bhalgain reads as a variant of the plural Chruinn-bhalgan, or ‘round bags’, perhaps referring to hillocks in the corrie according A. Watson, 2015. Bray of the Corrie of Round Blisters, the upland of the corrie of round lumps? I propose ‘tussocks’ instead of ‘round bags’, as cued by Watson’s use of ‘hillocks’. Gaelic technically has a word for tussocks in badanach, although that is an adjective, as opposed to a noun, and describes something being ‘tufted’.
Càrn nan Gobhar
Proposed Translation: Cairn for the Wild Goats
Standard Translation: Hill of the Goat(s)
I cannot remember where I read it, but Frank Fraser Darling mentions that wild goats were once ubiquitous throughout Scotland’s uplands, until eclipsed by sheep, in which case goats were cut loose or killed. There is an anecdote about Perthshire in 1829 when it was remarked that the one ‘novelty from the hills this season is the murder of half a dozen goats by an English party in Atholl, who has mistaken their prey for deer’. Gruesome. Also, how do you mistake goats for deer?
The name associated with wild goats is interesting, less for what it might describe now, and more for what it tells us of the age of the name – that it predates the 18th century when sheep became a growing economy in Scotland.
Not much room to play with this name, although càrn offers some options meaning ‘heap’, ‘mound’, ‘cairn’, ‘hill’… ‘Bing’ is a Scots word borrowed from the Norse to denote a hill of wasted industrial byproduct, usually metal and ore of some kind. The interest there is ‘waste’. Sadly I imagine the waste of the Perthshire goat carcasses stacked after being shot.
‘Cairn’ directly links back to the Gaelic name, but to invoke the sense in which a cairn is raised as a memorial or burial mound makes reparations for Victorian speciesism. I would like to have added ‘massacred’ or ‘slaughtered’ to bring the protest to the fore, but the quiet of the phrase ‘Cairn for…’ resounds like loss, and does the job for anyone who thinks about the name. ‘Wild’ was inserted, however, so that those curious would not miss out on the full message. Scotland’s limited wild fauna will hopefully be reversed in the future.
Airgiod Bheinn
Proposed Translation: Tulliment Mountain
Standard Translation: Silver Mountain
Experimental Translation: Ben Plackluster, Hacksilver Hoard Hill
Airgead, in the updated orthography of airgiod, is commonly Gaelic for ‘money’ and because of the shimmer of coin, ‘silver’ here denotes more than colour. (Note that when beò is added to the front, airgead becomes ‘quicksilver’, or figuratively, ‘snow drift’, which towards the bottom is sometimes icy and therefore ‘silvery’ looking.) ‘Silver’ is also used for Sgùrr an Airgid in Kintail.
What feature of these mountains gives them the ‘airgead’ name? My own guess is the numerous rocks punched into the surface by glaciation, like coins punched into tree trunks by the superstitious… Am I right? The Gaelic name is said to come from the erratics appearing white/silver, like bright currency, and the shape of the rocks from a distance can resemble coinage. James Alexander Robertson in the 19th century claimed the munro’s steep sides were ‘covered with whitish stones, which, when the sun is shining, gives a bright glittering appearance’.
For this particular beinn, it's unique that the adjective, which highlights a certain specificity, stands in front of the noun. Beinn is uncommonly translated ‘hill’, opting instead for ‘mountain’, although the Gaelic concept is less fixed than the English. According to Peter Drummond, nearly 30% of munros (i.e., mountains over 3000 ft or 914 m in height) and nearly 50% of the corbetts (i.e., mountains between 2500 and 3000 ft, or 762 m and 414 m) have beinn or sgùrr names, whereas anything lower is denoted by càrn (from which we get ‘cairn’ in English). View of Reviews | Names (pitt.edu)
‘Tulliment Mountain’ is pure risk. It might be too ambitious a name in its attempt to embody multiple allusions. The first is an Orcadian verb. What? Why Orkney? Well, the verb means to ‘sparkle, scintillate’ like stars twinkle, and that’s the recorded effect of the sunstruck stones. But there is more. I was tempted to spell it ‘Tullimint’ like a coin mint, but then decided subtle is better. Finally, and this is where it is all brought back home, there is a hamlet north of Dunkeld called Tulliemet where the Georgian Tulliemet House sits high on the braes, and indeed, the ‘Braes of Tulliemet’, often misspelled ‘Tulliment’ on Google, is a much beloved strathspey: a country dance and reel. This name incorporates the stars and the Perthshire braes, whilst hinting at minting coin, none of which is obvious. Is it too obscure? The alliteration resembles the thrust of someone climbing.
Taylor Strickland
July 2024
photos by Sam MacDiarmid, from Day of Access, Balmoral Estate, 25.VII.24.
