William Nimmo
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 90
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... a character which cannot apply to the thickly wooded shoulder of the kingly "Ben" on the west. Metaphorically, it signifies "insulated." A pronunciation of the name nearly approaching the Gaelic occurs in a notice of a charter in David II.'s time by Donald Earl of Levenax to Maurice of Bouchcannane, of various lands, and, amongst others, "illam terrain de Sallachy per has similiter divisas, a Sallachy usque Kelg, et sicut descendit in stagno de Lougchlomneid." If there be any force in these remarks, they go to show that the loch is named from its mountain. According to Richard of Cirencester, it was anciently called Lyncalidor, and certainly it did not receive its present appellation till the fourteenth century. Few there must be who have not heard of its three wonders, "waves without wind, fish without fin, and a floating island." The swell in the widest part, more particularly after a storm, has originated the first. Vipers are said to swim from island to island, and may account for the second. As for a "floating island," such a phenomenon has been heard of elsewhere. Pliny tells us that certain green lands, covered with rushes, float up and down in the lake of Vandimon. There is in MacFarlan of MacFarlan's papers, now deposited in Advocate's Library, a curious passage, witten in 1724, by Alexander Graham, Esq. of Duchray, in his account of several parishes, and, amongst others, that of Buchanan. "On the north side of Loch Lomond, and about three miles west from the church, upon a point of land which runs into the loch, called Cashel, are the ruins of an old building of a circular shape, and in circumference about 60 paces, built all of prodigious whinstone, without lime or cement....