dumfries-1920/04-022

Transcription

HISTORICAL MONUMENTS (SCOTLAND) COMMISSION.

The same characteristic also determined the great historical jurisdictions.
Dumfries is of the type of shires which take their name from the principal town, that
town having achieved its original importance as a military centre. The town of
Dumfries had a royal castle and a sheriff about the end of the twelfth century. Later
the sheriffdom of Dumfries becomes synonymous with Nithsdale, but in its fullest
extent included Galloway east of the river Cree. Annandale, when it became a
Crown holding, ranked as a stewartry (see p. xxvi.) having its courts at Loch-
maben. The lordship of Eskdale was erected into a regality for the Douglases.
These jurisdictions became hereditary, and compensation had to be paid to their
owners on their abolition in 1747.

II.

EARLY HISTORY.

The Romans found in Dumfriesshire a people whom they call Selgovæ, a word
which may contain the Celtic root selg, "hunting," and so mean "the huntsmen."
In Ptolemy's map the Selgovæ are given four towns or fortified sites, of which two
are east of Novii ostia or mouth of the Nith: Uxellum meaning "the height," ¹ which
has been allotted to the enclosure with ramparts and ditch on Wardlaw Hill (No. 35)
and Trimontium "triple hill," identified with the fortified summit of Birrenswark or
Burnswork ² (No. 272). But the calculations underlying the map are not likely to be
even approximately accurate, and "Trimontium" is generally placed, with all possible
plausibility, at the "triple peak" of Eildon. Birrenswark is the best-defined and
farthest-seen "height" of southern Dumfriesshire, but identification with Uxellum
or of the more inland Corda with Sanquhar is little better than guesswork.
That a Roman route went northwards through Dumfriesshire to the limes
between the Forth and Clyde is very probable, though to lay it out is another matter. ³
Various indications go to suggest that the station at Birrens was about the last place
in Scotland to be held in the clutches of the imperial eagle. There is evidence of an
early occupation, and abundant evidence of an occupation in the second half of the
2nd century. The Roman camps at Gilnockie (No. 45) and Raeburnfoot (No. 172)
suggest operations in the Esk valley, either as a short route to the Tweed valley at
Peebles, where there is another camp, or as the scene of an expedition against the tribes
who then occupied this tract of ground and have left so many impressive traces of
their presence in the hill forts of Eskdalemuir, particularly in Castle O'er (No. 177) and
Bailiehill (No. 640).
The first historic figure to be associated with Dumfriesshire was Kentigern or
St Mungo. The county was then part of the "Cambrian region," ⁴ which, in its
fullest extent, extended from the neighbourhood of the Clyde to the English Channel,
and explains the saint's personal connection also with Cumberland and North Wales.
Later this continuous strip of land, held by the resisting Britons, was broken up
by Saxon intrusion.

1 Cf. "Ochil" Hills: the phonetic change x to ch is Brittonic, not Gaelic.
2 Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. p. 72. Skene suggests that Trimontium represents a native word with the
Welsh form Tre or Tref, "town," and so Trefmyndd or "the town on the mountain."
3 On "Roman" and other early roads in Dumfriesshire see articles by Dr. James Macdonald, Proc.
Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. xxviii. (1893-4). pp. 43-4, 298-320; and Hislop's Langholm As It Was, pp. 113-7.
4 "regionis Cambrensis," Vita St. Kentig., cap. xi. But this use of the name is late (cf. p. xxiii.);
Jocelyn wrote the life in the twelfth century.

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