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truiseal
The following draws upon discussion of the place-names Baile an Truiseil and Clach an Truiseil in Cox 1998a and 2022, 477–92.
In his book on the history of Lewis, Macdonald (≈ibid.) cites from oral tradition the stanza reputedly heard emanating from the stone: Is Truisealach mis’ an dèidh nam Fiann; | Is fhad’ mo thriall an dèidh chàich; | M’ uilinn anns an Àird an Iar, | ’S mi gum dhà sgiath an sàs. ‘A Truisealach am I after
I.e. ‘left behind, i.e. alone’; cf. the phrases Oisean an dèidh na Fèinne ‘Oisean after the Fiann’ (cf. Nicolson 1881, 313; Matheson 1938, 295–96) and [b]ha Oisean leis fhèin an dèidh na Fèinne (Murchison 1988, 147, 149) ‘Oisean was by himself and alone’; cf. Ir. Oisín i ndiaidh na Féinne ‘all alone in the world’ (Ó Dónaill 1977, s.v. fíann).
For SG an Fhèinn ‘the Fian, the Fingalians’, s.v. Fèinn.
Another stanza that mentions the stone reads: Sgeula leat, a Thruiseal mhòir, | Cò na slòigh [a] bh’ ann rid aois; | Robh thu ann [ri] linn nam Fiann, | Am fac thu Fionn, Fial no Fraoch? (≈Campbell 1872, 202) ‘A word with you, great Truiseal, | Who were the people around during your time; | Were you alive during the lifetime of the Fian, | Have you seen Fionn, Fial or Fraoch?’ Both stanzas appear to use (the metre) rannaigheachd mhòr in the main, with monosyllabic finals, end-rhyme between lines b : d (and between a : c in the second stanza), aicill (in each couplet, i.e. with rhyme between Fiann : phian, iar : sgiath and between mhòir : slòigh, Fiann : Fial) and alliteration between the final of d and a previous stressed word in the same line.
As the Fian fled, pursued by druids or magicians in the service of their enemies, ‘A water-carrier accompanied them with the water-skins slung on his shoulder. All went well till they reached the meadowlands and sandy flats of the north-west of Lewis. Then the water-carrier lagged behind, for every step he took he was in danger of sinking. His masters were making for the mountains of the west, and as evening approached he saw the hopelessness of his struggles to keep up with them. At length he sank to the waist, borne down by the weight of his burdens ...: “Carrier am I after the Fian, | Journeying lonely after the rest; | Westward sad my face is turned, | Bog-immersed up to the waist.” A giant monolith, Clach an Truiseal [sic], standing sharply out of the level flats of north-west Lewis, is pointed out to the traveller as the poor water-carrier, who as night approached was slowly transformed into a pillar of stone by the incantations of the Irish wizards. Under the same adverse influences the band proper of the Fian, caught by evening ere they had reached Ceann Thùlabhig [for which, see Cox 2022, 611–12], experienced a calamity similar to that which had overtaken the water-carrier, and slowly turned to stone on the slopes of Callanish. Here their grey masses tower up above the plain, the famous stones of Callanish.’ (≈MacLeod, ibid.)
Several derivations for truiseal have been proposed over the years (see Endnote), but those advocating a connection with ON þurs m. ‘giant’, itself a loan-word in Scottish Gaelic in the sense ‘standing stone’ (s.v. tursa), are probably nearest the mark.
We might conjecture that truiseal began life as a place-name that ultimately goes back to ON *Þurshǫll ‘(the) slope of the giant’.
For ON hǫll f. ‘slope’, cf. Rygh 1898, 58, and Særheim 2007, 87, s.v. hall. (Clach an Truiseil stands on a slope rather than on a hill or in a field.)
Cf. Mackenzie’s proposed Tursol (See Endnote (3)). While final ON -ll yields EG -ll -[ɫ̪] rather than -l -[ɫ], (broad) -ll and -l fall together in Scottish Gaelic.
MacLeod’s (ibid.) rendition of Truisealach as ‘water-carrier’ seems due to an association (at least within the tradition) of Truisealach directly with SG trus, truis ‘to gather etc.’.
For a loan-shift ON *Þurshǫll → SG Truiseal, cf. Pro-Scandinavian *Gait-fjall ‘(the) goat-mountain’ → SG Gaoth Bheinn ‘wind-mountain’. Gaoth Bheinn (Eng. Goatfell NR991415) is one of two Gaelic names for the Arran mountain (Cox 2009b).
A Thruiseil might be expected. There is vocative inflection in mhòir ‘great’, however.
Although the evidence is hardly conclusive, genitive inflection of Truiseal in Clach an Truiseil may also originally have been absent: cf. Martin 1703, 8: The Thrushel Stone; SAS 1797: Clach i Drushel; Chapman 1821, Thomson 1822: Clach in Trushal; OS 1843–82: Clach an Truiseil; NSAS 1845: Clach an Trushial.
The name Clach an Truiseil itself is a later development
For the relatively late place-name structure noun × article + noun, see Watson 1904: xl–xli, and Cox 2002a, 113–14.
A structure noun × article + loan-name, where an Old Norse loan-name is preceded by the Gaelic article, is improbable. Watson (1904, lvi) states that Norse loan-names are sometimes found with the Gaelic article in Lewis, citing the place-name Cnoc a’ Mhiasaid as an example. It is argued elsewhere, however, that miasaid f. ‘low, level place, basin’ is not a Norse but a Gaelic formation from SG mias (EG mías < Lat. mensa ‘table’) + suffix, e.g. SG Àird Mhiasaid ‘the headland of *Miasaid’ (Cox 1992, 143; 2002a, 149), Druim Mhiasaid ‘the ridge of—’ (MacIver 1934, 90: Druim a mhiasaoid) and Cnoc Mhiasaid ‘the hill of—’ (Watson ibid.), although MacIver and Watson take the epenthetic vowel [ə] that often occurs between generic and specific in these names to be the genitive singular (masculine) Gaelic article. While there are in fact instances of the Gaelic article being used before Old Norse loan-names in Lewis, e.g. SG Na h-Eubhatan [nə ˈheːˌvaʰt̪ən] ‘the *Eubhats’, in which initial [nə]- and final -[ən] are Gaelic plural article and plural ending morphemes, respectively, and SG *Eubhat an Old Norse loan-name (Cox 1992, 143), this and other examples (Cox 2022, 483–84) reflect (if only from a morphological point of view) similar usage in the English plural formations The Cullins and The Cairngorms, formed on SG An Cuiltheann and An Càrn Gorm, respectively. Although it might be argued that Clach an Truiseil may have developed from an earlier *Clachan Truiseil through misinterpretation (cf. SG Cnoc an Urrdhaig ← Cnocan Urrdhaig, s.v. urrdh, which shows the anomaly of a genitive singular masculine article before a genitive singular feminine noun), there are no stepping stones or village in the vicinity that the appellative clachan [ˈkʰɫ̪axan] (nominally a diminutive of clach) might have referred to.
SG Truisealach, with the agentive suffix -ach, is a further development. While Sgeula leat, a Thruiseal mhòir contains the expected seven syllables per line of rannaigheachd mhòr (fn 4), the line Is Truisealach mi(s’) an dèidh nam Fiann has nine syllables (or eight assuming aphaeresis of the preposition an), but reading *Is Truiseal mi ’n dèidh nam Fiann gives the requisite seven.
Although not relevant to the discussion here, ‘Cuideachadh Mhaighstir Ùisdean’ (Master Hugh’s help), a hyperbolic satirical poem by John Norman MacDonald, minister of Harris between 1855–1868, lists Clach an Truiseil among all those who are so impressed by Master Hugh’s poetry: Clach an Truiseil, b’ àrd a dh’èigh i, | Bha guth treun aca na lìnn-se (≈MacDonald and MacDonald 1911, 143–47: 145) ‘Clach an Truiseil, loudly it cried – they had strong voices in its day’.
In conclusion, while SG truiseal functions as a masculine appellative in the names Clach an Truiseil and Baile an Truiseil and appears to have the sense ‘gatherer’ or ‘carrier’ in Gaelic tradition, it may have begun life as a place-name Truiseal, derived (via *Tursal or similar) from ON *Þurshǫll ‘(the) slope of the giant’.
Note also the place-names Rubha an Truisealaich ‘the promontory of—’ NR705967, in Jura (Charles M. Robertson: Rudh an Truisealaich (in King 2019, 391); Gillies 1906, 137: Rudha an Truisealaich, 219: ‘gatherer’). Despite Gillies’s translation ‘gatherer’, the signifiance of the specific in this name is obscure. ?Cf. also OS 1843–82 Gill’ an Truisealaidh [sic] NF861728, North Uist.
Endnote
(1) Thomas (1876, 494) states that Clach an Truiseil ‘well deserves the title of [ON *]Tryllskar-steinn [sic] “stone of enchantment”, ... which has become Tryskall, Tryshall, by metathesis.’ He also draws a parallel with the Norwegian name Trysil, although no connection has been shown (NSL˄).
(2) MacBain ([1892] 1922, 112) reiterates Captain Thomas’s hypothesis. W. J. Watson in his Introduction to MacBain (1922, xxii) disagrees with the latter on phonetic grounds and refers instead to the derivation suggested by Mackenzie (3).
(3) Mackenzie (1903) derives SG tursa, hence the name Na Tursachan (pl.) (Eng. The Callanish Stones NB2129733011), from ON þurs ‘giant’ (s.v. tursa), and opines that ‘Tursol ... or Clach an trish-ol [sic], which is the local pronunciation, is just ON *Þurshóll “(the) hill of the giant”. The clach or stone is named after the hill. There are three words in Old Norse meaning a giant, viz þurs, risi and jotunn. If we take risi we get rish-ol (Clach an-rish-ol), with the same meaning, and this would suit the local pronunciation to a nicety. My only difficulty about accepting it is this that the Old Norse folk would not be likely to designate this giant stone with a name different from the next. In any case, Captain Thomas’s *Tryllskr stein is out of the question.’
(4) Henderson (1910, 78) associates the specific element in Clach an Truiseil with ‘ON drasill, OIce. drösull m. “a horse” ...; it is in Norse largely a poetic word, as in Yggdrasill [the name of a mythological tree]; cf. also the verb OIce. drösla “to roam about” – all of which would point to some old ceremonial of circuiting a stone sacred to some hero of old ... The phonetics are doubtful’.
Henderson’s forms appear to be from Cleasby’s (1874) Icelandic dictionary.
(5) MacIver (1934, 22) derives the specific of his etymologically driven form Clach an t-ruissail from ON *Hyrssa-huallr [sic] ‘hill of mares and foals’ [sic].
(6) Oftedal (1954, 376) writes that the etymology of truiseal is obscure, but ‘may have some connection with ON þurs m. “goblin, ogre”, although this Old Norse word has had a different development in Na Tursachan [s.v. tursa]’. However, more recently Oftedal (1979) analyses several possibilities for a derivation of truiseal: that it is (a) pre-Gaelic: but in which case we can hardly proceed further; (b) Gaelic: the difficulty here is to find a Gaelic appellative which meets ‘the formal and semantic requirements’; (c) Old Norse: in discussing the derivation offered by Henderson, Oftedal finds it ‘improbable that one Norse word [þurs] should be treated so differently in two dialects which are nearly identical and only 17 miles apart’ (ibid., 230), which is Mackenzie’s point (under (3), above); (d) Scots/English: because of Martin Martin’s rendering of Clach an Truiseil as ‘The Thrushel Stone’, Oftedal briefly examines English dialectal thrushel ‘song thrush’ and threshel ‘flail’, although he lends more weight to the possibility of a derivation from ‘Anglo-Scots [leg. Scots] thruch-stane, containing the OEng. þrūh “coffin”’, with the proviso that much would depend on when a Scots word like thruch-stane ‘(flat) gravestone’ would have been likely to have been borrowed into Gaelic; and finally (e) Sanskrit, via a Romani word in Travellers’ Gaelic: a derivation from an original Sanskrit triśūla ‘trident’ via a Gaelic Romani equivalent of Welsh Romani trušul ‘cross’ and then to a Gaelic word *truiseil ‘standing-stone’ is not impossible but is, as Oftedal acknowledges, fraught with improbability. Oftedal concludes that truiseal cannot ‘be explained quite convincingly by any of the hypotheses outlined above, yet one of them may be true’ (ibid., 231–32).
(7) In view of the tradition (above) of the water-carrier struggling and eventually failing to keep up with the remainder of his band, Cox (2022, 487–90) suggests that truiseal might be a verbal noun,
For the question of the verbal noun suffix, see Calder 1972, 252, and Ó Cuív 1980b.
A loan from Eng. truss (cf. MacBain 1911) or MScots trus(s) (DOST˄, s.v. turs). For Scottish Gaelic, cf. Dwelly (≈1911) trus vb ‘to truss, tuck up, gird; bundle together; collect, as sheep; reprimand; go to, repair to’, vn trusadh m.; and truis vb ‘to collect, truss up, gather, take up; shell’, vn truiseadh m. He gives separate entries for truis ‘(lit. “gather your tail”) a word by which dogs are silenced or driven away; also said to a person in contempt: truis a-mach! “get out! begone!” ’; truis a-mach! ‘get out, clear out altogether – an animal call (Islay etc.)’; and truis à sin! ‘get out of the way, get to one side – an animal call (Islay etc.)’. There are also separate entries for trusalaich vb ‘to gird up, prepare, make ready, bestir’ and the verbal nouns trusaladh m. and trusalachadh m. However, note that Dwelly’s truis in the senses ‘to tear or snatch away’ probably goes back to Scots truss ‘to do something in a careless perfunctory manner, to work or rake about untidily or in a slap-dash way; (of eating) to slop one’s food about, to break it up in a careless confused mess’ (SND˄), as proposed by MacBain (ibid.).