“On the way back from the 1937 Labour Party Conference at Brighton – we had stopped to eat sandwiches & talk about George Lansbury – I happened to notice a hobyah type of fairy just going away.” —A casual reference to seeing fairies in Naomi Mitchison’s 1975 memoir ALL CHANGE HERE #BookWormSat 1/3

Swillie de Stroma Tournant d'eau pendant le flot Carte des Isles Orcades, 1804

Whirl Pool occasioned by many Tides meeting but not so Dangerous as is Reported George Eunson (1795) 'A chart of the islands of Orkney... with the coast of Scotland' maps.nls.uk/view/74401125

My accent is one of those still holding out against the wine/whine merger but you can almost hear /ʍ/ disappearing in real time in the south of Scotland

Me and Sheena will be taking about the South Ronaldsay 'Fields of Time' project next week

A couple of names for triangular fields in Harry: 9. Three Neuks 52. The Jib From 'Harray: Orkney's Inland Parish'

Love this. Doesn't include the best part of the interview which I heard on the radio this morning: "I think the fourth pile is the real denouement of the piece." "Why's that?" "It's the last one." www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Finally got Recogito Studio up and running. Wouldn't have managed without using Claude. Many happy hours of transcribing estate maps ahead

This article, which while fascinating, has all the stylistic hallmarks of being run through ChatGPT or similar: "Here’s the twist: the core ideas were never flawed. The project tackled problems no other system dared approach — and it’s now finally yielding real-world utility at scale." Which isn't >

Would anybody like to do my wee survey about attitudes to speaking the Scots language in different social contexts? forms.gle/KNKQTQMXRH1Z...

Still baby steps, but I think @kidehen.bsky.social may be right that AI tools are going to transform the usability of knowledge graphs bsky.app/profile/kide...

Mapping Identities Conference 9/02/26-10/02/26 Call for Papers. We warmly invite expressions of interest in the form of 250-word abstracts and 100-word short biographies Wednesday 17/12/25 tinyurl.com/3nnacccd

"The women here [Kirkwall] are much addicted to pleasure, which I attribute to the abundance of fish." Description of the Orkney Islands, 1529

And you can explore many of the #PlaceNames of the #Saga here! storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e91b...

'Water' is from a more widely attested Proto-Indo-European root. Its Old Norse cognate is vatn, as in the excellently named Trolla Vatn in North Ronaldsay. The Proto-Indo-European root was heteroclitic, ie it had different final consonants in different cases. Old Norse formed vatn from the -n stem >

"It may be observed that most of the Names of these Isles end in a or -ey, which in the Teutonick Tongue signifieth Water, to show that these Isles are pieces of Land surrounded with Water." Land surrounded with water is >>> A brief description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland-Firth & Caithness, 1701

For giants and dwarves in Norse Orkney, see some brief comments by me in ‘Kirkwall, Orkney’, in Europe: A Literary History 1348-1418, ed. David Wallace, Oxford: OUP 2016, I, 375-383.

17th-19th century Irish scribal abbreviations that look like text-speak: numeral 8 edition "beannacht" (x2), "Connacht"

CAIN' WHALE 'pilot whale', so named because of how easy they are to drive (ca') ashore. "A dyke at Grainbank Farm, Wideford Hill, was composed of the skulls of ca'in whales driven into Kirkwall Bay. "

Orkney word of the day: KROMO 'to tie the toes (of geese) together to prevent straying'

The Greek χλωρός (chlorós) means both 'grass-green' and 'pale, pallid'. In Tyndale's translation, therefore, Death, the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, rides 'a grene horsse'. And apparently it's now just a thing in some translations that Death has a green horse.

The Shell Holm, the southern most outcrop of the Holm of Aikerness yesterday. Selkies litter the north, on their own desert island. #holmsweetholm #papayatoll #orkney #westray #papawestray #desertisland

The Stane o' Quoybune, Birsay walks to the loch for a drink on New Year's Day too. Unfortunately, if you witness it you die shortly after so hard to confirm.

Marwick suggests this #PlaceName derives from ON Jǫtunn ‘giant’. The same word is in Yettna Geo (Sandwick) & in a Rousay standing stone of which it ‘is said that in the early hours of every New Year’s Day the Yetnasteen takes 2 giant strides down to the nearby loch for a drink!' (Rousay Remembered)

20 year antedating of the SND's only citation for JET 'a pier' from Armstrong's 1775 'A New Map of Ayrshire' maps.nls.uk/view/218514920

When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you’ll remember. For you need not so… —Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895–1915) #RemembranceSunday #poem #poetry www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47427/...

Better than calling yourself Lake Superior

Watching @realgdt.bsky.social’s excellent new Frankenstein film reminded me of a specific passage from the book. Mary Shelley wanted somewhere extremely remote and depressing for Victor Frankenstein to create the companion for his ‘monster’. So she sent him to…Orkney 📚🧬⚡️

That's so much healthier than the toxic self-image that some lakes have.

The last two orders before my self-imposed book-buying ban arrived today

@shroomgirl.bsky.social That was great - really enjoyed it!

A reminder to other lochs to abandon the pressure to be perfect maps.nls.uk/view/218516888

Whistle O'er the Lave O't from 'Before Burns: Eighteenth-Century Scottish Poetry'

Made a site where you can practise Old English scansion. You get given a half-line and have to select which of Sievers's five types it belongs to. Just Beowulf for now, but that's 6364 half-lines to be getting on with: dgplacenames.github.io/scansion/ [Data: clasp.ell.ox.ac.uk/]

My article on Metre and Clitics in Old English and Old Saxon has just appeared in Glossa. Basically an attempt to use metre to get a better handle on the prosody of things like prepositions and the development of articles in those languages. Really enjoyed working with Glossa -- a model journal!

The Sievers type quiz is almost good to go. Just need a name. I'm never going to top 'This b the verse' so will happily take suggestions

Papay Don't Preach Altnabreac-y Heart In Tain in the Brain Beauly and the Beast

That's me learned the word chemoautotrophic

Don't think the author was called 'Joseph', though, the only info is that he was 'Jo Ben'. There's some useful stuff in this: www.orcadian.co.uk/shop/orkney-... 1/2

Also, the Latin text is reproduced in Barry's History of the Orkney Islands (1805; pp. 433 ff. in the 1975 facsimile reprint and p. 447 ff. in the Internet Archive version). archive.org/details/hist... 2/2

Stronsay, 3. [...] One half of it is barren. Some of the inhabitants worship a god called Tuidas, others do not. They have great belief in fairies, and say that men dying suddenly, spend their life with them afterwards, but this I do not believe. celt.ucc.ie/published/T8...

@ccurran.bsky.social I made this using CLASP data. I'd planned to make a similar tool for scansion but unlike the xml files, I haven't been unable to find a license or copyright statement for that data. Do you know if it can be reused and if so how to credit it? Thanks! bsky.app/profile/dgpl...

Incredibly, I've only just learned that Shetland Islands Council's motto is in Old Norse - Med lögum skal land byggja

📣 Time Change - Kemble Lecture #TOEBI #medievalsky 🕰️ 5:30pm‼️ 📅 13 November 2025 📜‘Myths and Monsters: Beowulf and the Etymologists’ 🗣️Prof. Richard Dance, University of Cambridge 🏫Neill Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin 💻Register for Zoom: tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Are you tired of reading each line in the same direction? If so, Boustrophedonise might be what you're after: dgplacenames.github.io/boustrophedo...

A great opportunity to see Prof. Steve talk about Govan and Glasgow over the last 1,500 years! Stones, Saints, Ships and Slaves: an archaeology for Glasgow 850 - Prof. Driscoll of Glasgow Archaeology for the 2025 Glasgow Archaeological Society Dalrymple Lecture Series - FREE online and in person.

Are you tired of reading each line in the same direction? If so, Boustrophedonise might be what you're after: dgplacenames.github.io/boustrophedo...

After wrestling with some difficult sources, I'm quite excited about my paper next Saturday at the Scottish Place-Name Society conference. New research on the cult of Curetán/Boniface in the Black Isle, and the possible layout of early medieval Rosemarkie. Details here: spns.org.uk/spns-autumn-...

Just had to check to see if Paul is a bot and he is the CTO of Bluesky

I just scored 93 in a Second Guessing monthly challenge! #SecondGuessing www.secondguessing.net/shared/chall...