Excerpt from Celtic Place-Names in Aberdeenshire: With a Vocabulary of Gaelic Words, Not in Dictionaries, the Meaning and Etymology of the Gaelic Names of Places in Aberdeenshire There are many stone circles round graves in Aberdeen shire without traces of metal tools, and there is none on the great sepulchral circles at Stonehenge. Hence we may infer that these circles were set up before 2000 when the use Of metal tools began in Britain. The first inhabitants Of the British Isles were called Celts by the Greeks, and we give the name Celtic to the language which they spoke. In process of time the language had broken up into six or seven dialects, differing in the pronunciation and the use Of words. Three of these, called the Gaelic group - spoken in England, Scotland, and Ireland - closely resembled one another. The Celtic language is still spoken in some parts Of Scotland. Though it is always called Gaelic the ancient languages of England and Ireland had an equal right to the name. The names of places in the three countries had been given before the language of the Gaelic group began to break up, and I have used Gaelic to denote the ancient language of Great Britain and Ireland. 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.