[324] Also written Brough, meaning a round tower. The word is usually derived from the Gothic “berga,” to defend, but it has a far nobler origin. It is the Chaldee “burgadh,” the Arabic “burj,” the Armenian “pourc,” the Greek “πύργος,” and the Latin “burgus;” the Gothic “baurg,” the Mæso-Gothic “bairg,” and “borg,” a mountain; the Scandinavian “borg,” a fortress; the Armoric, Irish, and Welsh “burg,” also found in Teutonic and Saxon; the Anglo-Saxon “beorh” and “beorg,” a rampart, and “burh” or “bureg,” a castle; the Belgian “burg,” the Gaelic “burg,” the French “bourg,” the Italian “borgo,” the North British “burgh” and “burg,” as Edinburgh and Corrensburg; the Scoto-Scandinavian “brogh” or “broch,” with the guttural uncompounded, and even “borve,” as in Sianborve, and “burr,” as in Burraness; and, finally, the English “burg” and “burgh,” “borough” and “burrow.” Such are a few of its titles to antiquity and extent of domain.
[325] I am well aware of the difficulties, and especially of the expense, objected to condensing peat. But peat au naturel can be burnt as the mottes in France and Holland have been used for generations. And I am also aware of the immense interests wielded by the Coal League—surely these must sooner or later succumb to the public good. Lands without coal leagues find no difficulty in the operation. The two companies lately established at Oldenburg use a large flat-bottomed steamer, which opens a canal 20 feet broad and 6 deep at the rate of 10 to 12 feet per hour: the soil is heaped up on the banks, and is cut into brick-shape, after which mere drying makes it fit for fuel.
[326] After Australian diggers had asserted for years that gold would be found in Bute, a specimen was lately (1874) extracted from a vein of quartz which runs out into the sea below the Skeoch plantation.
[327] Jerome Cardan, travelling in Scotland (1552), remarked the popular fondness for the Platanus, and explains it thus: “I think they take a special delight in that tree, because its foliage is so like vine leaves.... ‘Tis like lovers, who delight in portraits when they can’t have the original.” Colonel Yule (Geograph. Mag., Sept. 1, 1874) asks whether these trees were the real plane (P. Orientalis) or the maple (Acer pseudo-platanus), commonly but erroneously so called in Scotland, and still more erroneously in England, “Sycamore.” Hence also, he observes, by propagation of error Eastern travellers translate the Persian “Chínár” (Platanus) by Sycamore.
[328] Especially “Shetland,” etc., by Robert Cowie, M. A., M. D. Edinburgh: Menzies, 1871. Will the author allow me to suggest that in his next edition of this valuable work—an exceptional guide-book, amusing as well as instructing—the medical part from page 56 to page 88, and especially Chapter XIV., should be placed in an appendix? At present it reminds me of a volume which I read with the liveliest interest, “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” regretting only that the order of the tales had not been systematically reversed. Dr Cowie has been kind enough, at my request, to draw up an account of the pre-historic collection at Lerwick, which will be found in the note at the end of this chapter.
Since these lines were written, the papers have informed me that Dr Cowie, after printing a second edition of his admirable guide-book, has passed from this world when in the prime of manhood.
[329] The number of these places of refuge shows the Shetlands in proto-historical times to have been densely peopled. I have made the same remark about the Istrian Castellieri.
[330] Etymological Glossary of the Shetland and Orkney Dialects, by Thomas Edmonston. Edinburgh, 1866.
[331] Hence the name of Malestrom or Moskoestrom.
[332] “Lappmark’s land-plague,” says Mr Shairp, author of “Up in North” (London: Chapman & Hall, 1872), is of three kinds: