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unintelligible, the Scoto-Irish imposed their names on many places which
still remain on the county maps, and evince the numbers of the colonists
much more satisfactorily than the uncertain notices of ill-informed annalists (d).
From those intimations we may now perceive how the settlement and speech of
the aboriginal inhabitants of a country may be regarded as their most instructive
antiquities.
It is perhaps more difficult to settle with equal precision the several epochs
at which the Saxon settlers sat down in Dumfriesshire among the Scoto-Irish.
We have already seen that a few Saxons must have settled in this district
among the British Selgovæ during the seventh and eighth centuries, while
the Northumberland government remained unbroken by anarchy. The
topography, as we see it on the maps, evinces the fact; but the most extensive
and permanent colonisation in Dumfriesshire took place in a subsequent age,
after the Danes became amalgamated with the Saxon people in the northern
districts of South Britain.
When we survey the names of places from the Solway to the Clyde, we
see a considerable mixture of Danish words in the Saxon topography. As we
proceed through Galloway and Ayrshire to the Clyde, we perceive the number
of Danish words to decrease, and the Saxon to increase in numbers and in
purity ; but as we pass through Cunningham to Renfrew, we see nothing of a
Danish commixture in the localities of the country (e). This survey, then,
evinces that the chief influx of Saxons into Clydesdale, Renfrew, and Ayr,
must have passed through Tiverdale and Lothian, rather than through
Dumfries and Galloway.
The decline of the Northumbrian authority, as we have already seen, at the
end of the eighth century, must have stopped the settlements of the Saxons
among the Romanized Britons in the south-west of Scotland. Then it was
that the Irish poured into Galloway, and spread rapidly over the south-
western districts. Nithsdale, the western district of Dumfries, soon became
filled with the Scoto-Irish settlers (f). A few of those Celtic colonists pene-
(d)  See Bleau's Atlas Seotiae, No. 13-23.
(e) See Pont's Maps, in Glacie, No. 11 to 20, and in No. 23 to 27 ;  and inspect also the modern
county maps.
(f)  During the reign of David I., we see that Nithsdale still remained in possession of Dunegal
of Stranith,   a  Scoto-Irish   chief,   and  was  even  then   inhabited  by   a  Scoto-Irish  people,   who
long enjoyed their own laws.     David II. granted to Donald Edgear the captainship of the clan
Macgowan.     Robertson's  Index,   39.     The  Edgears  were  settled about   Sanquhar in Nithsdale.
Robert III. granted a confirmation of a charter by  John Lauchlanson, the laird of Durydaroch,
in Nithsdale, to Duncan Dalrympil of the office of  Toschiadaroch, in Nithsdale.    Ib., 146.    This