The investigation I set myself is now complete. The entire matter proved with compelling force and hundreds of cases. A few would have been enough but that is not my style. This is the icing on the cake, I think. It was very difficult to do and the fact that I have been travelling all over Scotland, even in the last three years, with many more overnight stays to look at things, photograph them, interview long time residents and make screen shots of important maps, has made it possible. The effort of thought has been intense. It would make a nice book of 30,000 words and the investigation is so deep that none of the information and insight should be cut for the sake of satisfying some arbitrary number proclaimed by a journal. But I will look for one. It will be published, one way or another, in a month or two, I expect.
Errors in historians work galore, are noticed and disproved. One even in the Oxford English Dictionary and another attached to it (which have, of course, been absorbed by some of the others, given the authority of the OED). The mystery of Drypow et al is resolved and many others related. The elegant proof I mentioned appears. Numerous maps have been involved, atlases of 1750 and 1832, over half the OS maps of Scotland plus numerous very old maps of 1853 et seq, 1897, 1911, 1921, 22, 23 and other revisions, have been studied often, some interesting differences noted; all of them applied to single issues often. Of course many places have been visited on the ground, very often in some cases, because of the difficulty of understanding the issues. The bibliography is extensive. The reason for the mistakes and lack of progress in this area is investigated and what should be done about it, unlikely though it is that anything will be done. It will be resented as usual, no doubt, as if one has no right to correct the speculations of great beings in control of the subject. This I am used to and will press on regardless. I believe that particular mess is now cleared up, for the second time, by quite a different route, and a lot more besides.
© William Scott, 28 April 2020