fuel at the shieling would alter drainage regimes and cause erosion. Thus the layers of a landscape interact in a circular and continuous manner over time.
Processes of landscape change can originate and conclude in one layer. As humanity has moved from a hunter-gatherer to a global communications culture, with technology able to overcome many past constraints on activities, the origins, relationships and consequences of landscape change now mostly exist in the topmost cultural layer of landscape. In contrast, more traditional societies, like past shieling dwellers of the Highlands, were more dependent on vertical processes in the landscape coming from living and non-living layers. Today, the dominant cultural layer is increasingly disjointed, as modernist influences spread virally from culture to culture through mass media. Sometimes this is expressed in the naming of streets after Hollywood movie stars, and the many squares and places commemorating African or American presidents throughout the world; and even earlier by British street names commemorating battles in the Napoleonic, Crimean and Boer wars.
We might think that early Celtic culture was isolated from such rapid spread of cultural influences. Some might suppose, for example, that the women of the shieling sang songs of love and loss in a purely local context. Yet it has been argued that early Irish legend originating in Connacht and Sligo was transferred to the Perthshire Highlands in the 17th century (Meek 1998). The Lay of Fraoch - Laoidh Fhraoich, where Fraoch means heather but is also the name of the hero involved, and refers to the healing powers of rowan berries gathered from a heathery island in a loch. The legend was associated with a crannog in Loch Freuchie - Loch Fraochaidh, Amulree (NN864376) where heather is abundant among the hills. Before that, the loch was called after the Glen where it lies, Glen Quaich - Gleann Cuaich - Glen of a Cup (NN797396). Both names were known in the 18th century. Gleann Cuaich is probably named after Coire Quaich - Coire Cuaich (NN774375), which has the cup shape, which the Glen lacks.
Figure 3: Layers in the Landscape
Similarly, the Lay of Diarmaid (Laoidh Dhiarmaid), whose origins can be traced to Ben Bulben (Irish: Binn Ghulbain) in Sligo, has been relocated to Ben Gulabin / Beinn Ghulbhain (NO102722) in Perthshire’s Glen Shee - Gleann Sìodh (plate 25). Both mountains are snout shaped (though the toponym might come from the personal name Gulban). Here is a place-name which has been applied to a new locality to accompany a ballad moving from Irish to Scottish culture. Moreover, the new context has been carefully chosen to echo the formal landscape character of the original location, so helping to sustain the authenticity of the narrative action. The previous name of Beinn Ghulbhain and any attribute of the mountain it described, snout shaped or otherwise, is unknown. The begs the question: when is a place-name not the name of an actual place? Is it when it represents a symbolic locale in an imaginary narrative?
Walter Scott situated his poem ‘The Lady of the Lake’ on Loch Katrine in the Trossachs (plate 5). In his text he renames Eilean Molach, the shaggy or rough island, as Ellen’s Isle (NN487083) after the story’s heroine. The work became so popular that the name has persisted, albeit with the original Gaelic also shown on the map, along with another name from the poem, the Silver Strand - where other parts of the plot take place. Such an overlay of place-names coming from a poem and subsequently recorded by OS show a level of invention far beyond earlier practice. Later in the 19th century, the all pervading influence of Scott’s fictional geography caused widespread protests against the raising of the Loch’s level to supply water to Glasgow. This would have concealed most of the Silver Strand.
How does a layer of Gaelic place-names sit in the abiotic / biotic / culture model of landscape when there are so few inheritors of those who transmitted their unique geography of place-names to mapmakers of the late 19th century? How do we perceive this toponymic layer, when the culture, language and the land uses which created it have vanished from the greater part of the Highlands? In some ways the named inheritance points to something missing in the model, which supposes a continuous cyclical interaction between the abiotic, the biotic and the cultural. It does not accommodate an interruption of the vertical process of influence and counter influence when the cultural landscape suffers a quasi-seismic change. The model cannot accommodate the excision of Gaelic culture from most of the Gàidhealtachd. What remains is a toponymic layer, frozen in time and detached from potential subsequent expressions of the landscape. It is as if a chapter in a book you are reading has been torn out. This cultural discontinuity resembles the geological concept of non-conformity. Here, though rock types are physically contiguous, they are discontinuous in time.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
