Argyll

Researching the inhabitants of Killean and Kilchenzie parish during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be extremely challenging. Extant baptismal and marriage records are only available from 1762 on, and even then a close examination reveals that those records are strictly confined to the area that was originally Kilchenzie parish. The records for the area that was originally Killean parish do not exist before 25 March 1784.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a historical overview of all known McEachan men who lived in Killean and Kilchenzie parish (which is located in the Kintyre Peninsula, Scotland), from about 1541 CE–1710 CE.

By utilizing little known and obscure historical resources, the author hopes to illuminate the genealogical evidence that can be found in the existing historical record.

Additional notices of the Taghairm, a divinatory method of roasting a live cat so that prognostications could be made of future events usually to the benefit of the person who was willing or who had courage enough to carry out such a dreadful rite.

A detailed survey of the Atlantic roundhouse at Loch Glashan (NMRS: NR99SW 8; NR 9227 9301) was carried out over two weeks in June 2003 alongside a small-scale excavation to assess the extent of damage caused by encroaching vegetation and to obtain dating evidence. The structure is a large dry-stone circular building located above Loch Glashan, and the excavations produced architectural evidence suggesting more than one phase of occupation, alongside Iron Age artefacts and radiocarbon dates. These reinforce the argument that circular Iron Age structures in Argyll belong within the wider Atlantic milieu of brochs or Atlantic roundhouses dating to the second half of the 1st millennium cal BC.

The Western Megalithic Landscape Project has begun to uncover the reasons behind the locations of standing-stone monuments. There are hundreds of free-standing stone monuments in western Scotland and no-one really understands how they were used or why they were built. Using evidence-based, interdisciplinary investigations of such monuments and their landscapes this project has discovered statistically supported skyscape associations across time and space in western Scotland, as well as clear and constant patterns of chosen landscape forms. Using statistical analyses and 2D and 3D GIS, it will be demonstrated that vision is the main force behind locational decisions. The GIS analyses revealed that the builders chose a particular horizon shape, defined by qualities of distance, direction and relative height. Significantly, approximately half the sites in Argyll have the same locational variables as all the sites considered on the isles of Coll and Tiree (labelled 'classic sites'; Higginbottom et al. 2015), the other half are the topographical reverse and where the major 'astronomical show' differs according to whether you are at one or the other, due to the topographical differences at each site type. Each site, whilst observing one or the other pattern, still creates a unique relationship between landscape, skyscape and place.

This essay is written in Scottish Gaelic.
Nils M Holmer (1904–1994) was a Swedish-born  linguist, who spent the years 1949-1969 as professor of linguistics at the University of Lund.  In addition to his work in Kintyre, Holmer carried out pioneering fieldwork in both Ireland and Scotland, studying the Irish dialects of County Clare and the virtually-extinct dialect of County Antrim, as well as conducting detailed research on the dialect of Rathlin Island.  He published book-length studies of all of these and, in the case of Scottish Gaelic, published studies of the Gaelic dialects of Argyll and Arran.
To take the instance of his study of Kintyre Gaelic, The Gaelic of Kintyre was published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1962, but the research had been conducted in the period 1937-38.  He gives the number of Gaelic speakers in Kintyre in 1931 as 1,179 out of a population of 11, 744, roughly 10% of the total population.  However, he states that ‘it may be said that they still remember Gaelic rather than speak it:
... on the ‘Largieside,’ or the western coast of Kintyre, where Gaelic is now best preserved, people remember Gaelic being commonly spoken only ten or twenty years ago, and old people can tell about persons they knew in their own childhood who did not understand English.   
Variations in the type of Gaelic spoken within Kintyre was of particular interest to Homer and while he found few native speakers at the southern end of the penisula, he considered ‘Southend Gaelic... to have been different from the rest of Kintyre.
There was local interest in his work and he was interviewed by the Campbeltown Courier (9 April 1938).  In the interview, he stated that ‘the Gaelic spoken around Southend and Machrihanish… resemble(s) the Erse spoken in Rathlin Island and the Glens of Antrim’.
In the course of a long life, Holmer carried out work on an extensive range of minority languages and in a number of continents, including the study of native American and native Australian languages, as well as Basque and other languages.
He died in Sweden but had moved to live near Oban after his retirement.

His principal publications on Irish and Scottish Gaelic are:

1938, Studies on Argyllshire Gaelic

1940, On Some Relics of the Irish Dialect spoken in the Glens of Antrim: with an Attempt toward the Reconstruction of Northeastern Irish ; Being a Report of a Visit to the Glens of Antrim in 1937

1942, The Irish Language in Rathlin Island, Co. Antrim

1957, The Gaelic of Arran

1962a) The Dialects of Co. Clare (Part 1)

1962b), The Gaelic of Kintyre

1965, The Dialects of Co. Clare (part 2).

Like many people these days, I decided to trace my ancestral genetic legacy through a DNA test. The results were quite revelatory, revealing an entirely different genetic background than I had always supposed. This article analyzes how this new genetic background may have developed over the last 1000 years.

In 1866 the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain was founded with George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll (1823 – 1900) as first president, and patron, who served in this post for 30 years. The purpose of the society was to further the study of aerial navigation as well as to make aeronautics a respectable science, and today the society - now the Royal Aeronautical Society – serves as a professional body dedicated to the aerospace research. There were two fundamental areas of scientific knowledge key to the society in its initial decades: 1) a detailed understanding of the principles of bird flight and 2) the practical application of that knowledge in the construction of flying machines. Argyll firmly belonged to the former being a well-seasoned ornithologist and theorist of flight, and, with the publication of his best-selling book The Reign of Law (1867), was one of the first to popularize the theoretical principles of bird flight. In this paper, I will examine the relationship between bird and mechanical flight through Argyll's ornithological studies with a critical focus on the various factors early in life that led to his eventual position as president of the Aeronautical Society. By analysing the influence of his family relations, home environment and religious convictions, I show how Argyll’s scientific undertakings existed as part of a wider network of theistic Victorian aristocrats who contributed to the creation and professionalisation of scientific disciplines in a way that contrasted markedly with the methods of many of the scientific naturalists.