James M. (James Murray) Mackinlay

James M. Mackinlay, usually identified in library records as James Murray Mackinlay, was a Scottish writer and researcher whose surviving works focus on folklore, antiquities, church history, and place-names. Project Gutenberg and major library catalogs identify him as the author of Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs and list him as deceased in 1916.

His best-known books include Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs (1893), Influence of the Pre-Reformation Church on Scottish Place-Names (1904), and the two-volume Ancient Church Dedications in Scotland (1910 and 1914). A 1915 notice in The Spectator described him as a "painstaking and trustworthy student of Scottish antiquities," which neatly matches the tone of his work: patient, wide-ranging, and deeply interested in the meeting point between faith, landscape, and folk memory.

Basic biographical details are not easy to confirm from widely available sources, but a grave record gives the dates 18 June 1853 to 4 December 1916. Even with so little personal information readily available, his books leave a strong impression of a writer devoted to Scotland's older traditions and to preserving the stories attached to its wells, churches, saints, and sacred places.