Field-names in Scotland are part of the oral tradition, passed down from generation to generation of farmers. Despite the valuable holdings at the Scottish Field Name Survey (University of Edinburgh), work to collect these names has been patchy and many areas of Scotland remain uncovered. The introduction of a new numbering system for tax purposes has resulted in a marked decline in the use of field-names, and generally only older members of the community can recall the names. There are few written records that preserve early forms, and little systematic study of the topic. Therefore, time is running out to collect the names of Scottish fields. The focus of this thesis is a corpus of 1552 field-names from the north-east of Scotland which I collected using a socio-onomastic approach. Spoken interviews were used as the main tool for data collection drawing on practices from the discipline of sociolinguistics. A key aspect of this research is the social aspect of naming and the combination of sociolinguistic methods with more traditional onomastic methods.

Women's identities are created and performed relational to the contexts in which they live and by which they are bound. Identities are performed within and against those contexts. Romantic subjectivity: women's identity in their nineteenth-century travel writing about Scotland, is concerned with the location of women and their creation and construction of relational identity in their personal narratives of the nineteenth century. The texts taken for study are travel journals, memoirs, and diaries, each of which narrates times and journeys in Scotland. The subjects of study are three women writers whose identities have been located relational to their husband, brother, or father. They are Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, whose work was located with her husband's, William Hazlitt; Dorothy Wordsworth, whose work was located relational to her brother's, William Wordsworth; and Elizabeth Grant, whose identity was located with that of her father and his Highland estate. The texts considered are Journal of My Trip to Scotland, written by Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt in 1803; Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, 1803 and Journal of my second tour in Scotland, 1822, written by Dorothy Wordsworth; and Memoirs of a Highland Lady, written by Elizabeth Grant about her life before 1830. The focus of study is Romantic subjectivity in the texts of the three women writers. Women's relational performativity to the prevailing social and cultural norms is examined and considered in the context of women writers; women's travel writing; and ideologies of women's place in the nineteenth century.

Open Gardens are those in private homes that have been opened as visitor attractions, where a proportion of money charged for entry is given to charity. Whilst there is a body of literature on garden visiting, there is little empirical research into garden opening. In addition, the existing studies, which were largely based on quantitative methods, do not differentiate between the roles and perspectives of the various agents who produce garden openings. This research investigates how Open Gardens, under the auspices of the charitable organisation Scotland’s Gardens, are collaboratively produced by garden openers, their helpers, volunteers and salaried staff of the organisation. The principal method of data collection was fieldwork that included participant observations from 39 site visits and 41 semi-structured interviews with the four kinds of producers. Supplementary data were generated from archival documents that record the historical development of Open Gardens. Data collected from fieldwork were analysed and categorised according to themes emerging by means of domain analysis. Each theme was carefully defined and described by creating thematic codes. After the preliminary data analysis, ongoing reading of various social theory literatures drew me towards using concepts of power to more deeply understand the nuanced ways in which the four kinds of producers work together. Hearn’s (2012) theoretical framework was employed to examine how power which differs in perception between the various agents in a given social situation operates in the production of Scottish Open Gardens. The data suggest that the meaning of legitimate power exercised by the producers of Scottish Open Gardens is often highly subjective. Some volunteers were reluctant to fully exercise their power to instruct garden openers because they assumed their request would not be accepted or that it would lead to unwanted conflict. Some garden openers concealed their intentions to show off their horticultural achievements through engagement with Scottish Open Gardens, because they perceived that others would regard pursuing such personal interests to be egocentric. The data also suggest that the production of Scottish Open Gardens is partly dependent on non-human forces such as nature or materials. The quality of gardens, the number of visitors and the amount raised for charity were determined by weather conditions, public transportation and even the refreshments on offer. The findings highlight the role of such non-human elements in the production of Scottish Open Gardens, and challenges the conventional premise that human-intentionality alone defines agency. The thesis concludes that the production of Scottish Open Gardens can be more deeply understood by considering the highly fluid, subjective and non-human ways in which power operates. There is no definitively powerful agent present, as the locus of power is continually contested between a rich and complex mixture of human and non-human agents. An implication for practice is that Scotland’s Gardens should clarify which agents may be more or less empowered in given aspects of Open Garden production, and the ways in which his or her power can and should be legitimised. The thesis also offers a broad theoretical framework which may help to more deeply understand the subtle power operations present in the co-production of outdoor leisure and tourism pursuits.

This is a study of settlement and society in the parish of Torosay on the Inner Hebridean island of Mull, through the earliest known settlement-names of two of its medieval districts: Forsa and Moloros. The earliest settlement-names, 35 in total, were coined in two languages: Gaelic and Old Norse (hereafter abbreviated to ON) (see Abbreviations, below). The settlement-toponymy provides irrefutable evidence that ON-speakers settled locally and named their settlements in ON. In subsequent centuries, long after ON ceased to be spoken locally, these ON settlement-names were perpetuated by local Gaelic-speakers. Many of these ON settlement-names are still used locally and are recorded on modern maps; others have fallen out of use. The same can be said of the earliest settlement-names of Gaelic origin. New etymological analysis of the earliest known forms of these settlement-names, considered alongside local pronunciation where available, forms the basis of this thesis. Much of this analysis challenges previous research. A number of the settlement-names have not hitherto been located or been subject to etymological analysis, no previous study having comprehensively engaged with their earliest forms. The earliest known forms are recorded in fiscal evaluation dating to the final decade of the 15th century and, as such, the settlement-names provide a window on the Late Medieval period. The settlement-names also provide an invaluable insight into settlement and society in the Norse period; i.e. the period in which ON was spoken locally. Norse is employed here as both an adjective, as in the Norse period, and a noun, in reference to speakers of ON. Thus, application is broadly to what is now Scandinavia and contemporary inhabitants thereof, as opposed to the more typical modern application of Norse to Norway and its inhabitants (see OED s.v. Norse). Individual place-name elements employed in ON settlement-names provide an insight into how the local landscape was perceived and utilised agriculturally by these immigrant ON-speakers. In some cases, proposed personal names identify individuals associated with specific settlements. At least one ON settlement-name is likely to provide evidence of the religion of those who coined the name. Syntactic analysis of the Gaelic settlement-names highlights the possibility that some were coined in the Early Medieval period. It also identifies names which are perhaps unlikely to have been coined before the early 10th century. Loan-words borrowed in both directions, i.e. from Gaelic to ON and from ON to Gaelic, are identified and these reveal something of the chronology of individual settlement-names, in addition to providing evidence for language contact. The distribution of ON settlement-names and the fiscal status of settlements bearing ON names can also reveal something of the status of immigrant ON-speakers and the status of local Gaelic-speaking communities. The date of the earliest known forms probably post-dates the period in which these ON names were coined by around six centuries and this clearly allows for significant displacement of settlement-toponymy. However, settlement-names of ON origin apply to both settlements of principal and of relatively low fiscal status and the implication is that there was a significant amount of continuity in settlement-toponymy up to the date of the earliest known fiscal sources. The dearth of contemporary textual sources for the Early Medieval and Norse periods and of local archaeology relating to these periods identifies these settlement-names as invaluable sources of information for contemporary settlement, society and language in the districts of Forsa and Moloros. Part One Chapter 1 sets the research in context in providing geographical, geological, topographical, tenurial, ecclesiastical and fiscal information for the two districts. Chapter 2 comprises a review of previous studies on local settlement-toponymy. Chapter 3 identifies the sources which provide the earliest known forms and outlines the employed methodology. Chapter 4 provides an historical framework and engages with Norse toponymy furth of Mull across Britain and Ireland. Chapter 5 presents discursive analysis addressing the predominant research questions. Chapter 6 presents conclusions. Part Two The place-name survey presents raw spatial data and etymological analysis, where not included in chapter 5, for each of the 35 settlement-names.

This study has collected and analysed a database of place-names containing potential ethnonymic elements. Competing models of ethnicity are investigated and applied to names about which there is reasonable confidence. A number of motivations for employment of ethnonyms in place-names emerge. Ongoing interaction between ethnicities is marked by reference to domain or borderland, and occasional interaction by reference to resource or transit. More superficial interaction is expressed in names of commemorative, antiquarian or figurative motivation. The implications of the names for our understanding of the history of individual ethnicities are considered. Distribution of Walh-names has been extended north into Scotland; but reference may be to Romance-speaking feudal incomers, not the British. Briton-names are confirmed in Cumberland and are found on and beyond the fringes of the polity of Strathclyde. Dumbarton, however, is an antiquarian coining. Distribution of Cumbrian-names suggests that the south side of the Solway Firth was not securely under Cumbrian influence; but also that the ethnicity, expanding in the tenth century, was found from the Ayrshire coast to East Lothian, with the Saxon culture under pressure in the Southern Uplands. An ethnonym borrowed from British in the name Cumberland and the Lothian outlier of Cummercolstoun had either entered northern English dialect or was being employed by the Cumbrians themselves to coin these names in Old English. If the latter, such self-referential pronouncement in a language contact situation was from a position of status, in contrast to the ethnicism of the Gaels. Growing Gaelic self-awareness is manifested in early-modern domain demarcation and self-referential naming of routes across the cultural boundary. But by the nineteenth century cultural change came from within, with the impact felt most acutely in west-mainland and Hebridean Argyll, according to the toponymic evidence. Earlier interfaces between Gaelic and Scots are indicated on the east of the Firth of Clyde by the early fourteenth century, under the Sidlaws and in Buchan by the fifteenth, in Caithness and in Perthshire by the sixteenth. Earlier, Norse-speakers may have referred to Gaels in the hills of Kintyre. The border between Scotland and England was toponymically marked, but not until the modern era. In Carrick, Argyll and north and west of the Great Glen, Albanians were to be contrasted, not necessarily linguistically, from neighbouring Gaelic-speakers; Alba is probably to be equated with the ancient territory of Scotia. Early Scot-names, recorded from the twelfth century, similarly reflect expanding Scotian influence in Cumberland and Lothian. However, late instances refer to Gaelic-speakers. Most Eireannach-names refer to wedder goats rather than the ethnonym, but residual Gaelic-speakers in east Dumfriesshire are indicated by Erisch­-names at the end of the fifteenth century or later. Others west into Galloway suggest an earlier Irish immigration, probably as a consequence of normanisation and of engagement in Irish Sea politics. Other immigrants include French estate administrators, Flemish wool producers and English feudal subjects. The latter have long been discussed, but the relationship of the north-eastern Ingliston-names to mottes is rejected, and that of the south-western Ingleston-names is rather to former motte-hills with degraded fortifications. Most Dane-names are also antiquarian, attracted less by folk memory than by modern folklore. The Goill could also be summoned out of the past to explain defensive remains in particular. Antiquarianism in the eighteenth century onwards similarly ascribed many remains to the Picts and the Cruithnians, though in Shetland a long-standing supernatural association with the Picts may have been maintained. Ethnicities were invoked to personify past cultures, but ethnonyms also commemorate actual events, typified by Sasannach-names. These tend to recall dramatic, generally fatal, incidents, usually involving soldiers or sailors. Any figures of secular authority or hostile activity from outwith the community came to be considered Goill, but also agents of ecclesiastical authority or economic activity and passing travellers by land or sea. The label Goill, ostensibly providing 178 of the 652 probable ethnonymic database entries, is in most names no indication of ethnicity, culture or language. It had a medieval geographical reference, however, to Hebrideans, and did develop renewed, early-modern specificity in response to a vague concept of Scottish society outwith the Gaelic cultural domain. The study concludes by considering the forms of interaction between ethnicities and looking at the names as a set. It proposes classification of those recalled in the names as overlord, interloper or native.