There doesn't seem to be a "good" time to get back to Elan Vow with other plans, but we'll make a trip anyway, August 10-12, to do some foliage maintenance and trash pickup (if nothing else).

Of course, we'll meet with Fiona and, perhaps, Tom.  We may miss David on the days we are visiting.  We will progress the reporting and update the timeline for completing that ... and the next Scheduled Monument Consent application.

Many thanks to Joss Durnan, our Chief Casework Officer at Historic Environment Scotland, for confirming that our Scheduled Monument Consent is valid and in full effect and that we continue to be authorized to do maintenance work on Island I Vow per that SMC.

Travel has been difficult this summer so far, but we still intend to make a visit for foliage maintenance ... and just for the pleasure of the visit.

The standing buildings report has now been edited and is being consolidated with the base report for submission to HES.

We have also crafted a number of items from the elm taken in 2013 from the doorway of the tower cellar and have conferred the the Court of the Lord Lyon on appropriate markings on the items.  These include quaiche, sgian dubh, and serving boards, for example.  Glasgow craftsman, Paul Hodgkiss, has created these for us and we are refining the designs.

The long journey continues and we thank you for your on-going support!

EVPF is still here and is still proceeding with work on the island.  We do still have challenges getting one critical piece of the HES report completed for the second SMC, but this is a side-effect of having  renowned experts on the team who are in high demand.   We have specific goals for the summer ... with completion of the HES SMC report at the top of the list.   Please feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions!

Apologies for the gap in blog posts.  Three trips have been planned and re-scheduled or cancelled in the interim.  Conflicting travel and other complications make another trip unlikely until mid-summer. The completion of the standing building assessment and final report are the progress-limiting steps in completion of the second SMC work and submission of the third SMC.

There has certainly been lots of communication and activity since January.  Fiona made a presentation to a local heritage society on March 21st and that was very well received (Thanks). 

We will say here, again, that we are grateful for the support and coverage in the published articles that arise from these types of interactions.  It is very nice to have local Scots say nice things about the American members of the team, but we will go on record here, again, to say that we repeatedly object to the notion that the projects and efforts of EVPF are American-sponsored or American-led.   The most important members of the team are the three local Scottish archaeologists and the extended team includes local Rangers, Tree Surgeons, and Academics.   We felt that both recent articles put way too much emphasis on the American members of the team.   We were able to arrange some changes in both recent articles, but the authors certainly have the right and have exercised their right to report their interpretations.   While it is true the the EVPF Board has sponsored most of the work since 2013, donations from around the world have provided the support to the works on Elanvow and we think it would be a disservice to our international donors to suggest the work is American-funded.  On the latter point, the authors of the most recent article graciously agreed to change the electronic text, but the printed text had already been committed.   Again, we are very grateful for the support and coverage.

The final draft of the site map and survey for the report is included on our home page.

We continue to mine the Hill Collection for information relevant to Elanvow research or of general value.   That has also been designed as an opportunity to do some personal technical development in python programming, computer vision, and in standards for electronic presentation of historical documents.  This is in support of the Muniments projects led by Preston McFarland and Peter McFarlin ... independent of any clan society affiliation.  Morag Cross has been helping us locally with this and we are very, very grateful for all her help!

We will continue to press to complete the second SMC report.   We are approaching our sixth year as EVPF and hope to move on to the third SMC by then.   

Since we believe our site was being electronically probed (a dozen small and unusual donations), we still have donations disabled at present.  We have created some unique items from the Elm wood taken at Elanvow in 2013 and plan to offer those as "Thank You" gifts for special donations when we start formal fundraising for SMC 3.  

Many Thanks for all your support and interest!

We wish all a wonderful New Year!

The "Name" chapter of the Historic Environment Scotland report is "in review" and we hope to compile the other sections for the experts early this new year.

Thanks for your continued support!

Apologies for missing the November update.   Much going on.  All involved are volunteers with many other parallel activities.  We are currently editing drafts and hoping for publication early next year.

We are also independently working in the Muniments Project with Preston McFarland and Peter McFarlin ... for its own merits and in hopes we might find more Elanvow information hidden there.  Even though the island doesn't seem to appear in the Index created earlier, we already see a genealogy in Walter's hand that reads "Island-vow" ... so there may be other yet undetected references.

We did have very nice support from the academic community at the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh on the 1395 charter.  Thanks to all those who helped!  We are also currently engaged with Morag Cross on additional transcription.

Thanks for your patience and on-going support.

After capturing what we could find on references for Eilean a' Bhogha and Eilean a' Bhùth, we returned to research the popular, but (we think) least credible Eilean a' bho or Island of the Cow.  We will publish articles on this shortly, with a more comprehensive treatment in the upcoming HES report, but we welcome any information of pre-1962 sources for that name.

Most of the internet sources that mention "Island of the Cow" seem to reference (directly or indirectly) either Wikipedia or other sites who reference Calder and Lindsay's "The Islands of Loch Lomond".  The Wikipedia content was entered by MacRusGail in 2008 and we have been trying to locate the author with no success.  We had a nice conversation with Lynn Lindsay and she provided sources for her 1983 dissertation that preceded the book (published with her father Sinclair).  From that, the earliest written reference we have found so far that suggests Eilean a' bho is in I.M.M. McPhail's "A Short History of Dumbarton" (1962).  There it speculates that the current name was "probably derived from Eilean A' Bho (the island of the cow)" without providing any source or reference.   So far, the Calder-Lindsay book was the earliest to suggest that the name might be Island of the Cow based on Macfarlanes' skill for rustling, but after reviewing the current research, Ms. Lindsay wrote "the cattle rustling derivation of the name certainly doesn’t stand anymore".

We also still have had two Gaelic scholars tell us that "Eilean a' bho" is grammatically incorrect.  Others still say it is a possibility.

The current internet references are clearly borrowing from other internet sources in that their wording is extremely similar.  From our recent survey, most are not aware of other forms or research, but one was aware of the other forms and simply "liked" the Island of the Cow story better.  (Everything on the internet is true, after all. :-))

Ms. Lindsay's book does also include some alternate names that are interesting and unique.  From this, we found a reference that clearly refers to the island as "Elengavahana" in 1845 in describing the boundaries of Dumbartonshire county. 

We also came across Sir Walter Scott's reference to the island as "Inch Tavoe" in a note to his historical novel "The Monastery" (1820).

Well ... at least Eilean a' Bhogha, Eilean a' Bho, and Inch Tavoe rhyme!

With busy schedules and many competing projects, we are still pressing for completion of the current report and submission of a new SMC in early 2018.   Thanks for all the contributions to research and for your on-going support.

Much of the month has been spent recovering from Hurricane Harvey and that process is still on-going.  We are still hoping for updates from the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh, but our paid researcher was not able to take on translation of the 1395 charter given his current backlog of work.  We're still looking and have a close starting point based on the updated transcription and a translation by Simon Taylor of a related charter.

Although the 1395 charter seems to be the oldest in the Hill Collection, Muniments 73 does mention a 13th century charter and we will look further into that for details.  

Thanks for your continued support!

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!