[33] Kassiterides is Aryan not Semitic; the metal in Sanskrit being Kastīra, which, like the Arabic Khasdír, may be from the Greek. The Scilly islands were also called Æstrumnides, a name which occurs in R. Festus Avienus (loc. cit.):
“Ast hinc duobus in sacram, sic insulam
Dixere prisci, solibus cursus rati est.
Hæc inter undas multum cespitem jacit,
Eam que latè gens Hibernorum colit.
Propinqua rursus insula Albionum patet.
Tartesiisque in terminos Æstrumnidum
Negociandi mos erat Carthaginis
Etiam colonis, et vulgus inter Herculis
Agitans columnas hæc adibant æquora.”
All this, be it remembered, is borrowed from Punic sources. Therefore Hibernia is explained by Bochart as “nihil aliud quam ultima habitatio,” and Keltic Ierne is translated the “uttermost point.”
[34] The Greeks were in the habit of borrowing their geographical terms from the indigenæ, not from the Phœnicians. Yet Dodwell is hardly justified in rejecting Hanno’s Periplus because Greek names occur instead of Phœnician. I have already derived their Erythræan Sea from the Sea of Edom, and the Sea of Himyar (of which the root is [illustration: symbol], redness); and the “Mountains of the Moon” from Unyamwezi, still shortened on the coast to Mwezi, the general name for the moon in the great south African family of languages. Dr Charnock (Local Etymology) says, “Scotland is the land of the Scoti, who by some have been considered as identical with the Σκύθαι, Scythæ, who may have been named from their great skill in the use of the bow, their principal weapon,” and he gives O. Teut. scutten, scuthen, archers; Gael. sciot, an arrow, dart.
[35] Surely there is no reason why Macpherson should derive Hebrides from Ey-brides, islands of St Bride or Brigida, the Vesta of the North.
[36] Compare “Fulham” (volucrum habitatio), the home of fowls.
[37] Celsius, indeed, arguing from the universal concensus of the classical geographers, believes in the former insularity of Scandinavia; the secular upheaval of the coast, which in parts still continues, may account for its annexation to the continent. Thus Skáni and Skáney (the-ey answering to the Latinised-avia), the modern term applied to Scania, the Scandinavia of Pliny and subsequent geographers, is still given only to the southernmost point of the great northern peninsula, the first district known to the Romans.
[38] M. Bruzen La Martinière (Grand Dictionnaire Géographique et Critique, fol., La Hage, 1738, and Venice, 1741) runs this sentence into the next, and makes the greater part of northern Thule barren. The text is the reading adopted by the splendid edition of Claudius Malvetus (Greek and Latin, Venetiis, 1729), and by the Latin translation, Basiliæ ex officinâ Ioannis Hervagii (anno 1531, pp. 92-94, and not divided into chapters). As regards the Heruli, whom Procopius calls Έρούλοι, we find in Stephanus Byzantinus (fifth century) Έλούροι; in Sidonius Apollinaris (fifth century, Carm. 7):
“Cursu Herulus, Hunnus jaculis, Francusque natatu;”
and in Zonaras (twelfth century) Άιρούλαι.