Peter McFarlin and Preston McFarland kindly provided images of the 1395 charter from Duncan, Earl of Lennox, to Duncan Macpharlane that they had taken at Dunbarton from the Hill Collection. (Thank you!) This is part of the important work they are proposing to record, preserve and publish the information there.
They also granted us permission to involve some researchers in analysis of the charter. Specifically, we wanted to confirm the spelling of "Elanvow" and of the other island place names in the charter. The 1395 charter is the oldest extant written reference to the island that we know of.
We are working with experts at the University of Edinburgh as well as at the University of Glasgow and with correspondence from experts as far away as Tunisia! There will be more to follow on this with specifics per their permission. One researcher applied SLIC superpixels to images of the charter to see if we could better identify and confirm the text there. Several researchers and professors are reviewing the paleography of the charter to confirm spellings and to provide an updated transcription ... based on expert analysis. We had mapped Cartalarium Comitatus de Levanax (p 64) ... word-by-word to the charter and have found some gaps, transpositions, and untranslated words. The spelling of some of the previously translated words is also questionable. For example, the transcriptions of the 1395 charter typically transcribe "Elandowglas" as the third island mentioned. We transcribed that as "Elanin[ver]dowglas" where the "in" is an abbreviation of "inver" (inbhir) and was missed earlier. This is our Inveruglas or inbhir dubh glas. Two independent experts have since confirmed that. The use of abbreviations is common throughout the charter.
We have also commissioned a researcher to translate the Latin for this charter to English based on an updated transcription and we plan to contribute this back to the work to be published by Preston and Peter.
We believe we have confirmed the spelling "Elanvow", but will await the expert reports to definitively confirm that ... or not.
Thanks for your continued support!
They also granted us permission to involve some researchers in analysis of the charter. Specifically, we wanted to confirm the spelling of "Elanvow" and of the other island place names in the charter. The 1395 charter is the oldest extant written reference to the island that we know of.
We are working with experts at the University of Edinburgh as well as at the University of Glasgow and with correspondence from experts as far away as Tunisia! There will be more to follow on this with specifics per their permission. One researcher applied SLIC superpixels to images of the charter to see if we could better identify and confirm the text there. Several researchers and professors are reviewing the paleography of the charter to confirm spellings and to provide an updated transcription ... based on expert analysis. We had mapped Cartalarium Comitatus de Levanax (p 64) ... word-by-word to the charter and have found some gaps, transpositions, and untranslated words. The spelling of some of the previously translated words is also questionable. For example, the transcriptions of the 1395 charter typically transcribe "Elandowglas" as the third island mentioned. We transcribed that as "Elanin[ver]dowglas" where the "in" is an abbreviation of "inver" (inbhir) and was missed earlier. This is our Inveruglas or inbhir dubh glas. Two independent experts have since confirmed that. The use of abbreviations is common throughout the charter.
We have also commissioned a researcher to translate the Latin for this charter to English based on an updated transcription and we plan to contribute this back to the work to be published by Preston and Peter.
We believe we have confirmed the spelling "Elanvow", but will await the expert reports to definitively confirm that ... or not.
Thanks for your continued support!
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