PREFACE. THESE lectures are offered as a contribution to a study conducted until lately on lines the reverse of scientific. What the late Dr Reeves and Dr Joyce have done for the place-names of Ireland, Canon Isaac Taylor has done for those of England, and Mr A. W. Moore for those of the Isle of Man, has never been adequately performed for Scotland. It was my original intention to expand these lectures, condensed from material collected during many years, into a tolerably exhaustive trentise on the subject but I am advised to publish them at once, just as they were delivered and I am encouraged by the numbers and attention of those who listened to them in the belief that there are plenty of students ready to apply sound principles and cautious analysis to a branch of archeology and philology at present in a very backward state. I have, it is needless to say, derived much assistance from the writings of the scholars above mentioned, to go well on from those of Professors Rhys and TV. M, Skeat, and the late Dr Skene...
