Note 200 — Chapter VI

ΕΚΣΚΥΒΑΛΑΟΡΟΝ is supposed to be the Greek for "Gold out of the dirt." Dr Irving, the author of a very carefully-written memoir of Sir Thomas Urquhart, in his Lives of Scottish Writers, vol. ii., is a little puzzled by this extraordinary name. The latter part of it was, he thought, perhaps connected with αυριον—"to-morrow"—in allusion to the fact that this "exquisite Jewel" was taken out of the kennel the morrow after the battle of Worcester. But the word is evidently αυρον—the Lat. aurum, "gold." In the "Postilla" to the Pedigree of the Urquharts, our author says that "the shire of Cromartie ... hath the names of its towns, villages, hamlets, dwellings, promontories, hillocks, temples, dens, groves, fountains, rivers, pools, lakes, stone heaps, akers, and so forth, of pure and perfect Greek." We need not be surprised that Sir Thomas's Greek has more affinity with the vernacular form of the language current in the Cromartie of his time than with the Attic of the age of Pericles,

"For Greke of Athenes was to him unknowé."

Probably in this northern dialect of the Greek tongue αὑρον was used instead of the more classical χρυσὁς. Another indication of the difference between the Cromartian and Attic forms of speech is given by Sir Thomas in the same treatise in the name Αλεξἁνδηρ, which Thucydides would have written Αλἑξανδρος.