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trated into Annandale, Eskdale, and even into Cumberland and Westmoreland.
From the facility with which the Scoto-Irish settled among the Britons, we may
infer that it was only a very thin settlement of Saxons which had preceded
them in Dumfriesshire.
It was subsequent to the Scoto-Irish settlement in Dumfries-shire that
the most considerable Gothic colonization of it took place, when the Nor-
thumbrians had become amalgamated with the Danes. Two considerations
will confirm this intimation of history. 1. Several names of places in this
shire were obviously formed, by grafting Saxon and Danish words upon the
previous epithets of the Scoto-Irish settlers (g). 2. The Gothic topography
of Dumfriesshire, as it consists of an amalgamation of Saxon and Danish, like
that of the northern shires of England, must necessarily have taken place after
the amalgamation of the Northumbrians and Danes during the ninth and tenth
centuries. Add to this consideration, that the dominion which the Scottish
kings obtained over Cumberland in 945 A.D., must have facilitated the
introduction of the Gothic settlers from that country into Dumfriesshire, where
they finally preponderated, after the fall of the Celtic government with the
demise of Malcolm Canmore (h).
But a considerable emigration of the Britons of the Strathclyde kingdom,
who were pressed on all sides, setting off to join their countrymen in Wales,
were attacked, when their leader was slain at Lochmahen in 890 A.D. It
must have been the Saxon settlers who thus were ignorant of the policy
of erecting a golden bridge for a retiring foe, and while theirs opposed
the retreat of the Britons from their ancient settlements on the Annan,
the Tweed, and the Clyde. Of this conflict there are still traces in the
office among the Scoto-Irish people existed in Argyle till late times. Saint Blaan flourished
in the eleventh century. When a church was dedicated to him here, it was called Kil-
blane. This fact evinces that the Scoto-Irish speech was then the common language in this
country.
(g) Such as, Glen-cleugh, Glen-holm, Carrie-cleugh, Pol-dean, Loch-fell, Craig-fell, Corrie-law, Drum-
law-rig. Here are a number of Saxo-Danish words added, in the nature of pleonasms, to Scoto-Irish
epithets, which already described sufficiently the thing signified; the Celtic Glen and Corrie signifying
as much as the Gothic Cleugh.
(h) The grant of Annandale by David I. to Robert de Brus must have promoted the introduction,
during that reign, of Anglo-Norman settlers, who followed the fortunes of that powerful baron. Their
footsteps may still be traced. They held their lands under him and his successors by various forms
of tenure, and some of them were even distinguished by the name of English. Robert I. granted to
Ade Barbitonsoris the toft in Moffat, with the two bovates of land adjacent, " que quondam Williel-
mus dictus Ingles ad firmam tenuit de domino vallis Annandiæ avo nostro.'' Great Seal Beg.
Rob. i. 37.