Dolly
Dolly DFL S NT064921 1 185m
le Harstane de Douely 1250 x 1300 Dunf. Reg. no. 333 [‘the stone called the Harestane of Dolly’; see SLN Introduction for more details]
Dowly Mosse 1642 Gordon MS Fife
Dowly Moss 1654 Blaeu (Gordon) Fife
Dolly 1775 Ainslie/Fife [mistakenly showing it in SLN]
G do - + ? G baile or ? G bail + ? G – in
‘Bad farm or non-farm’ i.e. ‘place unsuitable for farming or difficult to farm’; a less likely derivation of the second element is from G bail (OIr bal, later bail), ‘luck, prosperity’, in modern G ‘thrift, economy’, with the locational suffix, so ‘place of no prosperity’. Both explanations relate to the poverty of the land. Devilla CUS contains the same elements, as does the now lost Devillie by Woodmill FAL (Diuelly Moss 1654 Blaeu (Pont) East Fife; the Divilla 1788 Sasines no. 1856). All three are on poor land, as the later specific moss ‘moss, myre’ also indicates.
Dolly exists on the OS Pathf. map as Dolly Farm.
This place-name appeared in printed volume 1