Carlingnose
Carlingnose IKG S NT135806 2
Carlingnose 1683 Adair/Forth
Carlin Knowes Quarry 1856 OS 6 inch 1st edn.
the Carlin’s Nose 1921 Stephen 1921, 313
Sc carline + Sc nose
‘Old woman’s nose’, referring to a headland on the steep, rocky coast between Inverkeithing and North Queensferry. Sc carline can also sometimes imply ‘witch’, and it is perhaps no coincidence that OS 6 inch (1856) shows Witch Knowe at NT125822, about 1 km to the north of Carlingnose. Stephen states that witches were burned here, and we can assume it is the place mentioned in an account of 1643 regarding the burial of a woman accused of witchcraft: ‘Isobel Marr being delaittit be the rest of her nybor witches for a witch, and being deteined th<e>rfre in the laiche theives hole, shoe hangit herself and was cairyed to the Witche Knowe and Yirdit’[152] (Stephen 1921, 437, 445).
The generic element is Sc nose, earlier nos, nose, nois ‘nose of a person or animal’ (DOST). This has later been reinterpreted as Sc and SSE knowes, plural of Sc knowe ‘hillock, knowe’. For the wider implications of this, see Hough 2009, 40. See also Carlinknowes # BUI.
The name survives in OS Pathf. Carlingnose Barracks NT133807, as well as in various street-names in North Queensferry.
This place-name appeared in printed volume 1