is even more so in the Scottish Lowlands, whither great immigrations of Northmen took place. Modern Scandinavian has changed considerably; but in the Icelandic, which is pure, its affinity with the ancient Scottish is great. The Lord's Prayer in the two languages, as given by Pinkerton, will show this. The orthography and pronunciation constitute the principal difference. It is obvious that the assimilation of Icelandic into Scottish was attended with no difficulty. It was considered by some writers-and truly so, we think, from the character and customs of the people, — that the Scandinavian poetry gave to the Scottish some of its wildness, added greatly to by the Celtic element. It is stated that the Scandinavian and the Scottish music scales are very similar. Worsaae mentions, as we have already stated, that it was a special trait of the Scandinavians that they very quickly accommodated themselves to the manners and customs of the countries where they settled. They even sometimes quite forgot their mother tongue, without, however, losing their original and characteristic national stamp. The well-known "raven," called the Danebrog of heathenism, which was borne for centuries, and viewed with superstitious awe in the British Isles as well as elsewhere, was not put aside for long after they became Christianized. According to Worsaae, it was borne until about A.D. 1100; but a Galloway legend brings it to a date some years later. — Galloway, Ancient and Modern, p. 112. 14 Ayrshire is divided by the rivers Doon and Irvine into three districts-Carrick, Kyle, and Cunninghame. At what period these three were erected into a sheriffdom is not precisely known. Wyntoun, the venerable and generally accurate chronicler of Scotland, speaking of the wars of Alpin with the Picts, says: "He wan of were all Galluway; Thare wes he slayne, and dede away." As the death of Alpin occurred in 741, near Dalmellington, on the north banks of the Doon, it may be inferred that Ayrshire was then an integral part of Galloway. Yet, though this was the case, it is well known that there were no sheriffs under the purely Celtic rule of the country, which prevailed until the eleventh century; and from charters of David I. it is evident that in his reign, if not previously, the boundaries of Galloway had been greatly limited. Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, p. I. “Galloway anciently comprehended not only the country now known by that name, and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, but also the greatest part, if not the whole, of Ayrshire. It had its own princes and its own laws. It acknowledged, however, a feudatory dependence on Scotland. This dependence served only to supply the sovereign with rude undisciplined soldiers, who added rather to the terror than to the strength of his armies. "Even at so late a period as the reign of Robert Bruce, the castle of Irvine was accounted to be in Galloway. There is reason to suppose that a people of Saxon origin encroached by degrees on the ancient Galloway. The names of places in Cuningham are generally Saxon. The name of the country itself is Saxon. In Kyle there is some mixture of Saxon. All the names in Carrick are purely Gaelic."- Lord Hailes, Annals of Scotland, vol. i., p. 118. 15 We cannot, certainly, infer, from this Life [of Ninian] that there were any Picts in Galloway, at this period. Ninian, as will be elsewhere seen, goes from Whithorn into the country of the Southern Picts to convert that idolatrous people. "There is extant," is reported says Usher, "among our Irish, a Life of the same Ninian, in which he to have had, also, a brother, St. Plebeia by name, as we read in his Life by John of Tinmouth.". - Ritson, Annals of the Caledonians, Picts, etc., vol. ii., pp. 140, 141. 16 In that region it is supposed in the western part of the island of Britain where the ocean stretching as an arm, and making, as it were, on either side two angles, divideth at this day [1150] the realms of the Scots and Angles, which, till these last times belonging to the Angles, is proved not only by historical record, but by actual memory of individuals to have had a king of its own.-Ailred, Vita Niniani, ch. i. 17 Ailred, Life of Ninian, ch. iv. 18 It is perhaps to Whithorn, therefore, alone among the towns of Scotland, that honour is due for having maintained the worship of the Almighty uninterrupted for fifteen hundred years.-Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 3. Whit-herne (Saxon) implies the white-house; the signification, likewise, of Louko-pibia and Candida-casa. This famous mansion was situate upon the continental peninsula of Galloway, now Wigtonshire, where, or near which, Fergus, Lord of Galloway, between seven and eight centuries afterward, founded a priory of the same name; and not (as has been asserted) upon the little island at the point of it. "Candida casa vocatur locus in extremis Angliæ juxta Scotiam finibus, ubi beatus Ninia requiescit, natione Britto, qui primus ibidem Christi prædicationem evangelizavit. Sanctum hunc Ninian præclarum virtutibus experta est antiquitas. Scribit, Alcuinus, in epistola ad fratres ejusdem loci dicens: Deprecor vestræ pietatis unanimitatem ut nostri nominis habeatis memoriam in ecclesia sanctissimi patris vestri Niniæ episcopi, qui multis claruit virtutibus, sicut mihi nuper delatum est per carmina matricæ artis, quæ nobis per fideles nostros discipulos Eboracensis ecclesiæ scholastica directa sunt, in quibus et facientis cognovi eruditionem, et facientis miracula sanctitatem." (William of Malmesbury, De Ges. Pon., book iii.)—Ritson, Annals of Galloway. 19 Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 29. 20 Bede, book v., ch. xxiii. But the Attecott Picts did undergo about this time a very important change in their foreign relations. The successors of Edwin, King of Bernicia, became, as the price of their alliance, ard-righ or over-lords of Galloway, and under them the native chiefs ruled the people.-Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 36. That part of Galloway which lay along the sea-coast, or at the greatest distance from the seat of government, was now overrun by the Northumbrian Saxons who made settlements in it. The farms which are still styled Inglestons are thought to have derived their name from the Angles who then possessed them, and motes seem generally to have been in their vicinity. Those slaves whom they employed in tilling the ground were termed boors, and the places which they inhabited or occupied are still named Boorlands. The lands called "Carletons" also obtained their name from the ceorles, or middle class of society among the Saxons; the thanes being the highest and the slaves the lowest.—Mackenzie, History of Galloway, vol. i., p. 130. These derivations are discussed by Mr. MacKerlie, who ascribes them to the Norse and Gaelic settlers, rather than to the Angles. See p. 247. 21 741, battle of Drum Cathmail between the Cruithnigh and the Dalriads against Innrechtach.-Annals of Ulster. 22 While riding through a ford in Glenapp he was killed by a man hidden in a wood, and his burial-place is marked to this day by a large stone called Laicht Alpin, Alpin's Grave, which gives the name to the farm of Laicht on which it stands.—Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 37. He crossed from Kintyre to Ayr, and then moved southwards. A great deal of misconception has accompanied his movements. Wyntoun has been implicitly believed, who wrote his Chronicle about 700 years after the event, and has not been considered altogether trustworthy in regard to other matters. And he has rendered it— "He wan of werre all Galloway, There wes he slayne, and dede away." There is no doubt that he The story of the devastation of the district rests on these lines. never overran Wigtonshire, nor was even in it. He was only on the borders of present Galloway, and there was slain, not in battle, as is generally supposed, but by an assassin who lay in wait for him at the place, near Loch Ryan, where the small burn separates Ayrshire from Wigtonshire. An upright pillar stone marks the spot, and was called Laicht Alpin, which in the Scoto-Irish means the stone or grave of Alpin.—Galloway, Ancient and Modern, p. 65. 23 Bede, continuation of Chronicle, Anno 750. Kyle, according to Buchanan, was so designated from Coilus, King of the Britons, who was slain and interred in the district. The learned historian informs us that a civil war having ensued between the Britons who occupied the south and west of Scotland, and the Scots and the Picts, who were settled in the north and north-west, the opposing armies met near the banks of the Doon; and that, by a stratagem, Coilus, who had dispatched a portion of his forces northward, was encompassed between the Scots and Picts, and completely routed. He was pursued, overtaken, and slain in a field or moor, in the parish of Tarbolton, which still retains the name of Coilsfield, or Coilus's field. Modern inquirers have regarded this as one of the fables of our early history. Tradition corroborates the fact of some such battle having been fought.-Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, vol. i., p. 2. 24 Eadberct's forces arrived in time to reinforce Innrechtach in pursuing Alpin's defeated army. The result was that all Carrick and Kyle were added to the Northumbrian realm. This was the high-tide mark of Saxon dominion in the north. Its chronicles during the latter half of the eighth century show that the domestic difficulties of the Northumbrian over-lords of Galloway had become so pressing as to divert them from all thought of further conquest. -Maxwell, History of Dumfries, p. 38. - These nations had now resumed their normal relation to each other-east against west the Picts and Angles again in alliance, and opposed to them the Britons and the Scots. Simeon of Durham tells us that in 744 a battle was fought between the Picts and the Britons, but by the Picts, Simeon usually understands the Picts of Galloway, and this battle seems to have followed the attack upon them by Alpin and his Scots. It was followed by a combined attack upon the Britons of Alclyde by Eadberct of Northumbria, and Angus, king of the Picts. The chronicle annexed to Bede tells us that in 750 Eadberct added the plain of Cyil with other regions to his kingdom. This is evidently Kyle in Ayrshire, and the other regions were probably Carrick and Cuninghame, so that the king of Northumbria added to his possessions of Galloway on the north side of the Solway the whole of Ayrshire.-Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. 294-5. Connected with the three divisions of Ayrshire there is the old rhyme of "Kyle for a man, Carrick for a coo, Cuninghame for butter and cheese, And Galloway for woo." These, and similar popular and traditionary lines, are worthy of preservation; as they constitute, as it were, popular landmarks in statistics, which supply a ready test to the changes that come over a district. Some contend for a different reading, making "Carrick for a man, but the first would seem to be the proper one. It is the one most general, and as old as the days of Bellenden.—Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, vol. i., p. 4. 95 Gradually the Viking pirates crept round the Caledonian shores; their black kyuls found as good shelter in the lochs of the west as in the fiords of Norway and the Baltic, whence they had sailed. Iona fared no better than Lindisfarne, and now it seemed as if the pagan torch must fire the sacred shrine of St. Ninian at Whithorn. But to the warlike prowess of their Attecott ancestors these Picts of Galloway seem to have added the talent of far-seeing diplomacy, by means of which the Norsemen, instead of desolating their land like the rest with fire and sword, were induced to fraternise with them and make common cause. What were the terms paid by Christians for their alliance with pagans can never now be revealed. It is plain from the place-names of Norse origin scattered through the Stewartry and the shire, among those in Gaelic and Saxon speech, that there was a permanent Scandinavian settlement there, but we are left to imagine whether the relations between the two races were those of over-lords and tributary, or whether they merely became fellow-pirates. At all events the connection cost the Galloway men the respect of other Celtic communities. The Irish chronicler, MacFirbis, declares that they renounced their baptism and had the customs of the Norsemen, and it is in the ninth century that they first appear mentioned as Gallgaidhel, or foreign Gaels, taking with the Vikings part in plundering and devastation. So it came to pass that their monastery of Candida Casa was spared.-Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, pp. 38, 39. What most hindered the complete reduction of the Danelaw was the hostility to the English rule of the states north of it, the hostility of Bernicia, of Strathclyde, and, above all, of the Scots. The confederacy against Æthelstan had been brought together by the intrigues of the Scot king, Constantine; and though Constantine, in despair at his defeat, left the throne for a monastery, the policy of his son Malcolm was much the same as his father's. Eadmund was no sooner master of the Danelaw than he dealt with this difficulty in the north. The English blood of the Bernicians was probably drawing them at last to the English monarch, for after Brunanburh we hear nothing of their hostility. But Cumbria was far more important than Bernicia, for it was through Cumbrian territory that the Ostmen [of Ireland] could strike most easily across Britain into the Danelaw. "Under Eadberht the Northumbrian supremacy had reached as far as the district of Kyle in Ayrshire; and the capture of Alclwyd by his allies, the Picts, in 756, seemed to leave the rest of Strathclyde at his mercy. But from that moment the tide had turned; a great defeat shattered Eadberht's hopes; and in the anarchy which followed his reign district after district must have been torn from the weakened grasp of Northumbria, till the cessation of the line of her bishops at Whithern (Badulf, the last bishop of Whithern of the Anglo-Saxon succession whose name is preserved, was consecrated in 791. Sim. Durh. ad. ann.) tells that her frontier had been pushed back almost to Carlisle. But even after the land that remained to her had been in English possession for nearly a century and a half it was still no English land. Its great land-owners were of English blood, and as the Church of Lindisfarne was richly endowed here, its priesthood was probably English too. But the conquered Cumbrians had been left by Ecgfrith on the soil, and in its local names we find few traces of any migration over moors from the east. "Along the Irish Channel the boats of the Norwegian pirates were as thick as those of the Danish corsairs on the eastern coast; and the Isle of Man, which they conquered and half colonized, served as a starting-point from which the marauders made their way to the opposite shores. Their settlements reached as far northward as Dumfriesshire, and southward, perhaps, to the little group of northern villages which we find in the Cheshire peninsula of the Wirral. But it is the lake district and in the north of our Lancashire that they lie thickest. While this outlier of northern life was being planted about the lakes, the Britons of Strathclyde were busy pushing their conquests to the south; in Eadmund's day, indeed, we find their border carried as far as the Derwent; but whether from the large space of Cumbrian ground they had won, or no, the name of Strathclyde from this time disappears, and is replaced by the name of Cumbria. Whether as Strathclyde or Cumbria, its rulers had been among the opponents of the West-Saxon advance; they were among the confederates against Eadward as they were among the confederates against Æthelstan; and it was no doubt in return for a like junction in the hostilities against himself that Eadmund, in 945, 'harried all Cumberland.' But he turned his new conquest adroitly to account by using it to bind to himself the most dangerous among his foes; for he granted the greater part of it to the Scottish king, on the terms that Malcolm should be his fellow-worker by sea and land.' In the erection of this northern dependency we see the same forces acting, though on a more distant field, which had already begun the disintegration of the English realm in the formation of the great earldormanries of the eastern coast. Its immediate results, however, were advantageous enough. Scot and Welshman, whose league had till now formed the chief force of opposition to English supremacy in the north, were set at variance; the road of the Ostman was closed, while the fidelity of the Scot king seemed to be secure by the impossibility of holding Cumbria against revolt without the support of his fellow-worker' in the south." -Green, Conquest of England, ch. vi., secs. 14-17. 26 Celtic Scotland, vol. i., p. 132. 27 Sir Herbert Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 51. In this battle, says Lambarde," After that the bishop of Durham had exhorted the soldiers to fighte, the Scottes cryed out Albany ! Albany!' after their own manner, as thoughe al had bene theires. But the Englishe souldyours sent amongst them suche hayle of schott that after a whyle they turned their backes, and, in fine, theare was slayne of theim to the number of 11,000, and they weare, for their brag of Albany, mocked with ‘Yry, Yry, Standard!' a terme of great reproach at that time, as Matthew Paris witnesseth"; in whose work, however, no such thing is to be found.-Ritson, Annals of Galloway, p. 264. 98 The enmity between the Strathclyde Britons and Ulstermen would tend to make the Galloway Picts throw in their lot with their congeners of Ulster, and no doubt intercourse between them was frequent and generally amicable, leading to intermarriage and relationship of blood. But there is not the least ground for believing that Galloway was overrun at this time in a hostile sense by the people from the opposite Irish coast.—Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway, p. 36. "The portion of the Pictish people which longest retained the name were the Picts of Galloway. Completely surrounded by the Britons of Strathclyde, and isolated from the rest of the Pictish nation, protected by a mountain barrier on the north, and the sea on the west and south, and remaining for centuries under the nominal dominion of the Angles of Northumbria, they maintained an isolated and semi-independent position in a corner of the island, and appear as a distinct people under the name of Picts as late as the twelfth century, when they formed one division of the Scottish army at the battle of the Standard. "We find, therefore, that in this remote district, in which the Picts remained under their distinctive names as a separate people as late as the twelfth century, a language considered the ancient language of Galloway was still spoken as late as the sixteenth century, and that language was Gaelic."-Celtic Scotland, vol. i., pp. 202–204. 29 It will thus be seen that to those in North Antrim, the Mull of Kintyre, only fourteen miles distant, being in sight, and with countrymen already settled in Argyleshire, easy means offered for leaving Hibernia; and, as recorded, a colony passed over in A.D. 498, under the leadership of Fergus Mor Mac Earca. There is not such special mention to be found of the southern movement, but there cannot be a doubt that in the same way the Irish Scoti in Down, etc.-southern Dalriada-being opposite to Galloway, only twenty-two miles distant, and always more or less to be seen, except in thick weather, it offered an inducement for them to pass over there, and more particularly as communication seems to have existed previously with Galloway, which there is reason to believe was constant. That such an exodus took place is supported by the people found in Galloway after the Roman period. As we have already mentioned, Chalmers, in his Caledonia, gives the period of the settlement in the ninth and tenth centuries. We consider that it must have begun about the same time as the emigration to Argyleshire, while it was of a more gradual character, extending over several centuries, and not an immediate rush, which will account for not a vestige of authority as argued by Dr. Skene. It is, however, mentioned in the Pictish Chronicle that the settlement was made about A.D. 850 by stratagem, when they slew the chief inhabitants, which latter statement is likely enough; but this conveys that they had been in Galloway for some time, and had become numerous, thus supporting what we have mentioned, that the colonization had been gradual.-Galloway, Ancient and Modern, pp. 52, 53. 30" Alpin, king of the Scots of Dalriada (not to be confused with him who perished in Glenapp in 741), had been expelled from his kingdom by the Northern Picts. His son Kenneth (in Gaelic, Cinaedh), afterwards renowned as Kenneth MacAlpin, had taken refuge in Galloway. By the help of his relatives there, and the co-operation of the Norsemen, he |