List of Ayrshire place-names beginning with 'Y'

Yarngallows Knowe

New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Relief
Grid reference: NS625067
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 475m
Elements: Sc iron or Sc yarn + Sc gallows + Sc knowe

Description:

‘A knowe or small hill on which gallows stood’. Gallows often stood beside major thoroughfares, with the corpses left hanging, as a grim warning to passers-by of the fate of wrong-doers. As Robert Guthrie points out, although relatively remote, it lay on the Afton Road, one of the key routes between Ayrshire and Galloway. He also points out that less than a mile away from Yarngallows Knowe to the northeast, in a little field between Afton Road and Afton Water is the Witch Knowe and Witch Pool, where women condemned as witches were judicially murdered.

The first element yarn is more problematic. It appears to represent Sc yarn ‘yarn’, with reference to the hangman’s rope. However, there is a small hill called Irongallows in Carsphairn parish KCB, also on an old routeway, and it might be so called because some part of its structure was iron rather than the usual wood (Place-Names of the Galloway Glens). It may therefore be that yarn here is a local variant of Sc iron. This is the more plausible explanation.

‘A Knowe at the southern end of Craigdarroch Rig’ OS1/3/49/188.

Yellow Moss

New Cumnock (NCU)
Classification: Vegetation
Grid reference: NS608141
Certainty: 1
Altitude: 184m
Elements: SSE yellow + SSE moss

Description:

‘A yellow moss, bog or tract of wetland’. The colour yellow probably describes the pale yellow colour of the rough grass and reeds. This colour is well shown in Robert Guthrie’s photographs on the New Cumnock History website under Yellow Moss – NEW CUMNOCK HISTORY. These also show a contrast between the more reddish vegetation on the eastern side (heather?) with the yellowish vegetation to the west. As Robert Guthrie points out, it belongs to a small group of moss-names in the parish which are described by their colour, namely Black Moss, Burnt Moss and Blood Moss.

It is described in the OS Name Book (1857) as: ‘A moss through which a branch Railway passes from the G&SW [Glasgow & South Western] Railway to the Iron works at the Bank’ (OS1/3/49/).