If you find the same
language in distant countries, you may be sure that the inhabitants of
each have been the same people; that is to say, if you find the
languages a good deal the same; for a word here and there being the
same, will not do. Thus Butler, in his _Hudibras_, remembering that
_Penguin_, in the Straits of Magellan, signifies a bird with a white
head, and that the same word has, in Wales, the signification of a
white-headed wench, (_pen_ head, and _guin_ white,) by way of ridicule,
concludes that the people of those Straits are Welsh[621].'
A young gentleman of the name of M'Lean, nephew to the Laird of the isle
of Muck, came this morning; and, just as we sat down to dinner, came the
Laird of the isle, of Muck himself, his lady, sister to Talisker, two
other ladies their relations, and a daughter of the late M'Leod of
Hamer, who wrote a treatise on the second sight, under the designation
of THEOPHILUS INSULANUS[622]. It was somewhat droll to hear this Laird
called by his title. _Muck_ would have sounded ill; so he was called
_Isle of Muck_, which went off with great readiness. The name, as now
written, is unseemly, but it is not so bad in the original Erse, which
is _Mouach_, signifying the Sows' Island. Buchanan calls it INSULA
PORCORUM. It is so called from its form. Some call it Isle of _Monk_.
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