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The place-name, "Skaill," remains both in Sutherland and Caithness. But no skilled antiquary, has as yet laid bare by excavation the secrets of likely sites of Norse dwellings in these counties, as Mr. A.W. Johnston has done at The Jarls' Bu at Orphir, in Orkney. There was also a castle of note on the northern shore of the modern port of Helmsdale, which is probably the castle of Sorlinc of Mr.
Duncan of Duncansby or Dungall of Dungallsby, as he is variously called, allowed part at least of his dominions to pass by marriage to the Norse jarls; but both Moddan and Earl Ottar, whose heir was Earl Erlend Haraldson, who left no heir, owned land extensively in Ness and elsewhere, while Moddan "in Dale" had daughters also owning land, one of whom, Frakark, widow of Liot Nidingr, had many homesteads in upper Kildonan in Sudrland and elsewhere, and possibly it is her sister Helga's name that lingers in a place-name lower down that strath near Helmsdale, at Helgarie.
From the thirteenth century onwards, the name, under the various disguises of Stevinstoun, Stevensoun, Stevensonne, Stenesone, and Stewinsoune, spread across Scotland from the mouth of the Firth of Forth to the mouth of the Firth of Clyde. Four times at least it occurs as a place-name.
The region where English place-names abound is, of course, the Lothians; but scarcely an English place-name is definitely known to have existed, even in the Lothians, before the Norman Conquest, and, even in the Lothians, the English tongue never affected the names of rivers and mountains.
This new jarl, the second founder of the line of Orkney jarls, conquered Caithness and Sutherland as far south as Ekkjals-bakki, which is believed by some to be in Moray, and by others, with more truth, to be the ranges of hills in Sutherland and Ross lying to the north and to the south of the River Oykel and its estuary, the Dornoch Firth; and the second part of the name still happens to survive in the place-name of Backies in Dunrobin Glen and elsewhere in Cat where the Norse settled.
There is a curious place-name here in Burley, New Forest, where I am now living, spelt "Shappen," which puzzled me until I chanced to meet with an ancient print of a village merry-making, with dancing and a May-pole and found that the name Shappen applied especially to the spot, and that not far away the Forest ponies and cattle were formerly penned for sale at an annual fair in a lane, still called Pound Lane "Pound" is from the Anglo-Saxon pund, a fold or inclosure.
From the thirteenth century onwards, the name, under the various disguises of Stevinstoun, Stevensoun, Stevensonne, Stenesone, and Stewinsoune, spread across Scotland from the mouth of the Firth of Forth to the mouth of the Firth of Clyde. Four times at least it occurs as a place-name.
We have de Corbet, de Beauchamp, de Colevilles, and so on. Sometimes the de has been dropped. Sometimes, again, people took their names in the same way from places in England. We find in old writings names like Adam de Kent, Robert de Wiltshire, etc. Here, again, the prefix has been dropped, and the place-name has been kept as a surname.
A. Porson, in the pamphlet referred to: Place-names everywhere are a most interesting study; as a rule, people do not recognize that every place-name has a meaning or reference to some outstanding peculiarity or characteristic of the place, and that much history can be gathered from interpretation.
Nothing remarkable is told of them. The name of the last and the names of the next two are really the names of places; but the prefix "de" seems now to have been discontinued, and the place-name to have become a surname. Abbot John resigned his office the year before he died.
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