the Isle of May, Fife : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about the Isle of May. You may be able to find further references to the Isle of May in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
May, Isle of island Bartholomew
May, Isle of an extra-parochial island Groome

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to the Isle of May within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
William Camden Smaller Islands in the British Ocean 1
Thomas Pennant July 17-23: The Borders and Edinburgh 1
Thomas Pennant July 24-31: Fife and Perthshire 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Cellardyke 0 2
Anstruther Easter 0 1
Crail 2 2
Kilrenny 0 2
Innergellie 0 2
Anstruther 3 2
Anstruther Wester 0 1
Fife Ness 0 2
Balcomie 0 2
Pittenweem 1 2
Bass Rock 4 2
St Monance 0 3
Kingsbarns 0 2
Carnbee 0 2
Tantallon 3 2
Castleton 2 0
Auldhame 0 1
Elie 0 2
Dunino 0 3
Kilconquhar 0 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for the Isle of May. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
<EM>MAY</EM> ISLE Thomas Pennant A Tour in Scotland 1769 (London: Benjamin White, 1776).
ISLE OF <EM>MAY Thomas Pennant A Tour in Scotland 1769 (London: Benjamin White, 1776).
ISLE OF MAY John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
MAY John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
William Camden Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610).
MAY ISLE OF John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
F.H. Groome Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (Edinburgh: T.C. Jack, 1882-4).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.