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Readers should note that place-names which are shown on OS sheets have been quoted as they are shown on maps. Some spellings are incorrect or inconsistent with today’s rules. Accents and single missing letters have been added where these are missing and the correction is simple and obvious. Where letters should be omitted, they are enclosed in round brackets. Where they should be added, they are shown in square brackets. Entirely corrected spellings are shown in square brackets. Correct and contemporary spellings of generic and specific Gaelic place-names can be found in two indexes.

After almost a millennium of expansion, superseding both Pictish on the Mainland and Norse in the Hebrides and western seaboard, Gaelic experienced two periods of major decline. The first affected the whole of Scotland. The second was confined to what we now know as the Highlands or Gàidhealtachd. It is broadly defined along its southern and eastern boundary by the Highland Fault (ssss1), and its boundary with northeast Caithness, where Scots superseded Norse.