Lanterna Rally

Author: James MacDonald

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-07-28

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9781332063413

Excerpt from The Place Names of West Aberdeenshire As editor, besides putting together the latter part of the work, I have only corrected clerical errors, and inserted references which had been left blank. A few explanations which the author had marked as doubtful, or which appeared to be incomplete, have been omitted. While the text of the work is Mr. Macdonald's both in substance and in form, it is necessarily much less complete than it would have been had he lived to publish it. In his hands it would have undergone repeated revisions - he never spared himself labour - in which many imperfections would have disappeared, and not a few blanks would have been filled up. It will be seen, for instance, that the number of words of which no explanation is offered (other than Saxon place-names whose meaning is self evident) is considerable, especially in the latter part of the work. For some of these no explanation would in any case have been given: Mr. Macdonald held strongly that there are many names in the district covered by his work whose original form is so completely lost as to put their meaning beyond the reach of reasonable conjecture: but others of them he was still investigating at the time of his death, and it may be taken as certain that in some cases he would have arrived at conclusions which he would have embodied in the work. For the deficiencies, whatever they may be, in the author's work, his death in the midst of his labours must be sufficient apology. For those faults which may be attributable to the editor, he can only plead that the work was not of his own choosing; and that the disqualifications to which those faults may be due have had at least the advantage of freeing him from the temptation, to which a student of place-names would have been exposed, of introducing into the work of another his own emendations and suggestions. If on the other hand the minor errors in the book should prove to be few, this is due chiefly to Professor Mackinnon's careful revision. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.