National Library of Scotland

B000363002 ^■Al

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ON THE

EXTINCTION OF GAELIC

IN

BUCHAN AND LOWER BANFFSHIRE.

j.v

WILLIAM BANNERMAN, A.M., M.D.

BANFF: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED AT BANFFSHIRE JOURNAL OFFICE. 1895.

PRICK THREEPENCE.

ON THE

EXTINCTION OF GAELIC

BUCHAN AND LOWER BANFFSHIRE.

BY

WILLIAM BANNERMAN, A.M., M.D.

BANFF: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED AT BANFFSHIRE JOURNAL OFFICE. 1895. These Tapers were printed in the “Banffshire Journal” in October and November 1895.

3u, Polwarth Terrace, Edinburgh, November Vh 1895. ON THE EXTINCTION OF GAELIC IN BUCHAN AND LOWER BANFFSHIRE.

L —THE EVIDENCE OF THE PLACE-NAMES OF THE DISTRICT. It may be taken as beyond all dispute that at one time the North-Eastern parts of Scotland, before their colonization by their present inhabitants of Anglian or Anglo-Norman origin, were occupied by a branch of the Celtic race. The same, no doubt, is true of all the Eastern sea-board and lowlands North of the Forth, but the present communication proposes to deal only with the district lying North of the Dee, or, as old Scots writers would have said, ‘beyond the Mounth.’ It is matter of common knowledge how distinctly the former Celtic inhabitants have left their impress on the nomenclature of the country from which they have long been banished. The rising grounds are still designated by names involving such Gaelic words as Knock, Ben, Tilly, Mel: the cliffs appear as ‘Craigs;’ the valleys as ‘Glen,’ ‘Strath,’ and ‘ Lag ’ or ‘ Logie; ’ not a few of the burns re- tain the Gaelic ‘Aid,’ and the confluence of two streams is still called ‘Inver.’ A little deeper examination serves to show that this Gaelic speaking people were not mere nomads, content to take the country as they' found it, concerning themselves only with its natural features and the wild beasts of the chase. The frequent occur- rence of the words ‘Bal’ and ‘Pet,’ which mean much the same as what we now call a ‘ farm town,’ shows that the land was divided into separate agricultural holdings. ‘Ashogle,’ rye-field or rye-ford, and ‘ Tillyorn,’ her e-hillock, indicate at least two cereals that they cropped, and their modern successors testify to the sagacity of those 4 ancient farmers in the doggerel rhyme, ‘At Tillyorn grows the corn.’ In the preparation of grain for food, they had got beyond the primitive stage ot hand-grinding and built mills, doubtless of the simple type subsequently called Scots mills, of which we have evidence in ‘Auchmull’ or ‘Auch- molyn,’ mill-field. The common appearance of ‘ Bo,’cow, in such words as ‘Tillybo,’ ‘Auchinbo,’ show that cattle rearing is no new calling in the district. They had herds of goats, gobhar, witness ‘ Inchgower,’ and sheep, caora, witness ‘ Aucheries,' ‘ Tullochery,’ places that in the Merse might be designated by the Anglian ‘Hirsel.’ The herd- loon or the cattleman had his prototype in the buachaille, whose office is commemorated in the word ‘ Culbeuchly.’ They had horses, too, as appears from ‘Aucheoch’ horse-field; and the record of their barn-yards survives in such words as ‘ Auchintoul.’ That they were great road-makers is not to be supposed, but they certainly had sufficient skill to throw a bridge, drochaid, over the smaller streams, whence ‘ Kindrought,’and to make the way easier through shallow pools by stepping-stones, sdair, whence ‘ Starnamanach.’ They could work in iron and had smiths, gobhann, who have left their name in ‘Balgownie,’ and ‘Pitgavenny,’ and ‘Allacardach’ tells of a ceardach or smithy. Whether or not their actions squared with their profession, they were Christians, and devout Church men at that—though, it is to be feared in their latter days at least, Churchmen of a debased and degraded type. Hardly a small district but had its patron saint, better known in Ireland than in the Roman calendar—St Colme, St Congan, St Donan, St Sair, and many more—to enumerate whom would involve the compiling of an extensive hagio- logy. Their churches are indicated in the numerous class of names prefixed by ‘ kil,’ and their monks manach, their clergy clcirich, their priests sag art, have left their designations to such places as ‘ Ardi- mannach,’ ‘ Cocklerachy,’ and ‘ Balhaggardy.’ For defence against armed invasion, they built ‘duns’ and ‘raths,’ whose names have survived long after the structures themselves in many cases have been levelled by the ploughshare, though more than one of their rallying words, ‘ Cairnywhing ’ or ‘Tirwathie,’ might have been heard at the break up of a market not many generations ago. This and much more may be gathered from simple investigation of the Celtic nomenclature of the district surviving to the present time. But the subject is raised from the level of mere antiquarian o research to the higher platform of documentary history by that most interesting survival of Celtic literature, The Book of Deer. From the entries of the various grants and donations forming the endowment of the primitive Columban Abbey of Deer we have contemporary evidence of the organisation of society in those days. The subject is exhaustively and interestingly treated by the late Dr John Stuart in his editorial introduction when the book was issued by the old Spalding Club. It is unnecessary and would only be presumptuous to dwell on this matter after so eminent an authority, but what really concerns the present enquiry is this —that a passage in the Book of Deer supplies us with the latest known date at which the population of Buchan remained purely Celtic and their language Gaelic. It has been thus translated:—‘Gartnait, son of Cainnech, and Ete, daughter of Gille Michel, gave Pet-mec-Cobrig for the consecration of a Church of Christ and Peter the apostle, both to Columcelle and to Drostan free from all the exactions. With the gift of them to Cormac, Bishop of Dunkeld, in the eighth year of David’s reign. Testibus ipsis Ncctan, Bishop of Aberdeen, and Leot, Abbot of Brechin, and Maledoun, son of Mac Bethad, and Algune, son of Arcell, and Ruaetri, Mormaor of Mar, and Matadin, the Brehon, and Gillie Christ, son of Cormac, and Maelpetir, son of Domnall, and Domongart, fereleginn (reader) of Turbruad. and Gillecolaim, son of Muredach, and Dubni, son of Maelcolaim.’ One can hardly conceive anything more purely and thoroughly Celtic than the state of Buchan as here revealed, and this was in the eighth year of King David—that is A.D. 1131. A good many years in the historical record have to elapse before a similar view of the state of society in the north-eastern districts is presented to us by contemporary records, and then it is with the Latin charters of feudal times that we have to deal. Take one of the earliest of these, the charter of Strathisla, granted by William the Lion in 1195, with which your columns are already familiar. It defines the boundaries of Strathisla as beginning ‘ from where the Lagyne falls into the Isla, ascend- ing b}’ a deep sike in the red moss to the summit of the Easter Balloch, and by the summit of the other Balloch, to a spring,’and so ©n, till finally it reaches a place called Clochindistone, thence descending along the Laggan back again to Isla. It is necessary here to examine the signification of the names of the various places mentioned. Lagyne is without doubt the stream now known as the Burn of Millegin; but Laggan in Gaelic signifies, not a () stream, but a hollow or valley, and no Gaelic speaker would dream of calling a stream by that name, any more than a Buchan man would call a burn a ‘ howe.’ Again, Balloch does not signify a hill, but a pass between two hills, hcalach. The name must have been given by the Celtic inhabi- tants to the pass we know as the Glack of the Balloch, and to speak as we do now of the Muckle Balloch and the Little Balloch is as repugnant to a Gael as it would be to ourselves to call the hills the Muckle Glack and the Little Glack. The word Clochindistone, now curiously modified to Clovenstone, stands in a different category, but equally with the others shows the dis- appearance of Gaelic from the district. Leaving out of account the ‘ indi,5 forming the second term in its composition, it will be seen that the first term is the Gaelic clock, a stone, while the last term is merely a reduplication of the first in English. There is only one possible conclusion, viz., that at this time Strathisla had passed from Celtic to Saxon occupation ; but it is surely a strange fact, and there seems no reason to doubt that it is a fact, that within the short space of sixty years Gaelic, from being the living spoken language of gentle and simple, should have become as utterly dead and forgotten as it is at the present day. It is interesting in this connection to compare with the names in the Book of Deer the names of the witnesses to the charter of Strathisla, which was given at the town of Elgin. After orthodox Roman bishops and feudal earls, instead of Celtic abbots and Mormaors, come 'William de Morville, the constable ; Robert de Quincey; Philip deValous, the chamberlain ; William, son of Freskin; William Cuming; William de Ha}’; Roger de Mortimer; Philip Durward; Walter Murdoch; and Herbert the Marshal. No doubt these were members of the court and attached to the King’s person, for their names appear in connection with his charters in other places ; but William, son of Freskin at least belonged to a family already settled in Moray, his father having acquired the land of Duffus in King David’s time. The only name of Celtic look is Walter Murdoch, possibly an ancestor of that Eva Morthach, lady of Rothes, and granddaughter of Peter Pollock of Rothes, who appears as a benefactress of the Church of Elgin about the year 1250. II.—REVIEW OF THE POLITICAL SITUA- TION THAT LED TO ITS EXTINCTION.

If we are to understand in what way a revolution occurred of such magnitude as thus to subvert the whole social organization, political and ecclesiastic, and practically to supplant the native race by a new people speaking a new language, it is necessary to go back a little in point of time and review an interesting period in Scottish history, during which the north-eastern corner of Scotland had to play a part in a long dispute between rival claimants for the crown. On the south were the legitimate Scot- tish kings of the line of Kenneth MaoAlpin, whose sympathies and interests were rapidly becoming more and more engaged towards the Lothians and Northumbria. On the west lay the province of Moray under its petty king, jealous of the new- fangled English ways of the southern court, and ready to disown allegiance under the pressure of its neighbours, the Caithness men and the Orkney Jarls. In the year 1014, when Malcolm, son of Kenneth, was King of Scotland, had been fought the decisive battle of Clontarf near Dublin, where the Gael of Ireland backed by a muster of their Scottish kins- men and allies succeeded in breaking the power of their Scandinavian oppressors. Among those that fell was Sigurd, the Earl of Orkney, and, thereupon, the men of Moray, whom he had brought to subjec- tion, regained their independence under their native ruler, Finlay, son of Ruaridh (or Roderick), whom the Ulster Annals style a King of Alban—though it is not to be supposed that he denied allegiance to Malcolm the Ardri or head King of Scotia. Finlay came to a violent death in the year 1020, and was succeeded by his nephew, Malcolm, son of Malbride, son of Ruaridh. In 1029, Malcolm died, and was succeeded by his brother, Gillacomgan (Gilcowan), son of Malbride, who, in 1032, as the Ulster Annals record, was burnt and fifty men with him. To him succeeded his cousin the well-known Macbeth, son of Finlay, in whose time, a.d. 1034, Malcolm, son of 8 Kenneth, died, and with whom began the pretensions to the throne and the conflict with what is generally regarded as the legitimate royal line, that was to continue with irreconcilable obstinacy for the next hundred years. "We have been so accustomed to look upon Macbeth and his successors from the stand-point of their conquerors, and to regard them as mere usurpers and rebels, that it is instructive to observe from the notitia of the Irish Annalists that the sympathies of those writers tended rather the other way ; in fact, there seems to have been among the contemporaries of the chief actors the same difference of opinion as to who was king and who pretender, that more than once in subsequent times led to similar disastrous wars in Scotland. The storj’ of Macbeth—the murder of Duncan, his alliance with Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, his successful usurpation, his ultimate defeat by Malcolm, son of Duncan, his flight over the Mounth, how he was killed at Lumphanan and his body carried for burial to the sacred island of Iona—forms one of the most familiar exnsodes in our national history. Moray was defeated but not subdued. For seven months longer the struggle was maintained under Lulach, son of Gilcomgan, till he too fell in battle in Strathbogie under the shadow of the Tap o’ Noth, A. I). 1058. During the next twenty years the Moray men ceased to disturb the peace of the kingdom and appear to have been left to manage their own affairs under Malsnechtan, son of Lulach, their ‘king.’ But in 1078 they once more suffered defeat from the Crown, and two years thereafter Malsnechtan, seemingly a fugitive, died in a remote fastness of Lochaber. "We pass over the confused period following immediately on the death of Malcolm Canmore, during which his elder sons reigned by a sort of compromise along with their uncle, Donald Ban. The men of the North acted no special part in those affairs. But in 1110, when Alexander I. had suc- ceeded to his father’s throne, the old jealousy again manifested itself in a determined attempt on his life in the neighbourhood of Invergowry. The actors in this emeute are described as a multitude of ‘ Scottysmen ’ (which then meant Celts) natives of Mearns and Moray. The king escaped to Che south, and returning with an army of Anglo- Normans, forced his way as far as the Firth of Beauly, and inflicted on Moray the most condign punishment it had yet received. So once again there was peace till the accession of another king. In 1130, six years after David I. had succeeded his brother Alexander, Angus, grandson of Lulach, now Mormaor of Moray, seized the opportunity of the King’s absence in England to follow out the hereditaiy policy of his house. He was met by Edward, constable of the King’s army, at Stracathro, as is generally supposed, and there he fell with five thousand of his men, battling desperately for the lost Celtic cause. And now the grip of the Southron was laid once and for ever on the North-Eastern lowlands, and the war of the Saxon and the Gael rolled back to Strathspey and Ross. History tells us nothing regarding the part played by the men of Buchan and Banffshire in all this long quarrel. They certainly did not fight on the King’s side ; for all the levies that from time to time took the field in behalf of the legitimate succession, are known to have been drawn from Lothian and North- umbria and the parts south of the Tay. Neutrality, on the other hand, was a condition that belligerents had not then learnt to respect; and granting that the Spey was the eastern boundary of Moray, though the medium jilum of that river may be a good geo- graphical line of division, as a strategic boundary it is an absurdity. Exposed in this way to the west, separated by the Deeside hills from the king’s party in the south, and with the Mearns unsettled and disaffected as the incident of Invergowry shows, the men of Buchan could hardly have avoided throwing in their lot with their neighbours and kinsmen of Moray, even if these had possessed no recognised previous claim to their adherence. Now, in the Book of Deer there occur certain notices, on the significance of which authorities are not agreed, but which throw some light, albeit of a doubtful sort, on the relations of Moray and Buchan at that time. Thus we find it noted that the King’s share in Biffie and some other lands was gifted by ‘ Malcoloum mac cinatha,’ in whom we have no difficulty in recognising the personage known more familiarly as Malcolm, son of Kenneth. The very next entry in the Book records that a piece of land called ‘indelerc’ was given by Malcolm, son of Malbride, who we know was .Mormaor of Moray, a ‘King of Alban,’ as the Irish chroniclers call him, and a contemporary of King Malcolm last mentioned. In those days no dispute had }'et arisen between Moray and the Crown ; but when the pretensions of Moray had been set up, and after both Macbeth and Lulach the Foolish had gone to their place, we find still another grant made by their successor Malsnechtan, who all his life was held rebel and pretender—and all these grants alike are claimed by 10 the Columban Abbot of Deer, and ratified by King David I., as being in good form and valid. With respect to many of the other grants, we are told that the donors gifted the land-rights pertain- ing to them as ‘toiseach,’ that is, chief of a clan, as Mormaor or as king ; but in what capacity or by what right the Mormaors of Moray made their gifts we are not told. Neither, unfortunately, has it yet been determined with certainty where those particular lands granted by Moray were situated. In the case of some others, such as Aberdour, Altrie, Biffie, Auchmachar, {Skillymarno, Gartlymore, the identification of the ancient with the modern names is easy, we can but regret that the same cannot be said of them all. The uncertainty on this point has given Skene the opportunity of seeking an easy way out of difficulty by surmising that those grants referred to land beyond Spey, but the probabilities are all against him. In the first place, such other lands as can be identified are all within a few miles of Deer; in the second place, parishes, tithes, and vicars were as yet unknown in the north, and how the monks of Deer could have utilized a simple glebe in Mora}' constitutes a problem as difficult as the one sought to be avoided. Nothing short of the identification of the places in cpiestion with locations in Moray could establish Skene’s supposition, and it would be equallj’ conclusive the other way could they be certainly located in Buchan. The names of the places were ‘Pett Malduib’ and ‘indelerc.’ The for- mer seems hopeless to trace, but regarding the latter one is tempted to hazard an opinion. In the original manuscript it is written as above, though in Irish character, and the letter 'n’ is represented by a contraction. As written it consists of two elements, of which the first is an inflection of the Gaelic article ‘ an ’ the, and the other consisting of the last two syllables has the grammatical form of a signi- ficant noun of unknown meaning. Professor Whit- ley-Stokes, the translator of the Gaelic portion of the Book of Deer, resolves it into ‘ in Delerc,’ and renders it in English ‘The Delerc.’ But ‘ind’ is also an inflection of the article, and, if the letter ‘ d ’ properly pertains to the article and not to the noun, the translation becomes ‘The Elerc,5 with the obvious suggestion that Elrick near Deer is the place indicated. There is, however, a difficulty. Old Gaelic differed from the modern in having a separate form for the nominative and for the accusative. The word we are dealing with occurs only once in the manuscript, and then in the accusative, a case in which Zeuss gives no instance of the importation of the letter ‘ d ’ into the article. Are we to sup- 11 pose the scribe to have made a lapse of grammar (assuredly in spelling he is lax enough) ? or was his language already in that stage where the two cases were becoming one and either form was admissible? Speakers of modern Gaelic will recognise the nature of the grammatical point by considering that it is a question of the use of the particle ‘ t ’ between the article and an open vowel. It is as if it were a question between reading 4 an Telerc ’ and ‘an t-Elerc,’ where the latter form would be now correct, but in strict old grammar would be ‘ an Elerc.’ Again, granted that Delerc is the pro- per reading, it is by no means impossible that the initial ‘ d ’ may become by aspiration the equivalent in pronunciation of the letter ‘y’ and 4 dhelerc,’ pronounced * ytillerak,’ is sufficiently recognisable in Elrick. Be that as it may, neither John Stuart nor Joseph Robertson, than whom we have no greater names among local antiquaries, agrees with Skene in his views on the subject—both are of opinion that these grants by the Mormaors of Moray were in Buchan. Robertson’s opinion is clear and decided. Bearing in mind the division of Scotland into a northern and a southern kingdom under the Pictish rule before the conquest of Kenneth Macalpin, an old regime on which it is conceded that the claims of Moray were based, he says 4 these grants would appear to mark the tenacity with which the family of Moray cling to their claim of exercising proprietary rights in that province in which both the kings who sprang from their race met their death.’ To this Stuart objects that the province of Moray did not extend eastward of Spey ; but unless he was prepared to raise an impossible argument against the genuine- ness of the grants, he only shows that the jurisdic- tion of the Mormaors of Moray extended beyond the limits of their own more immediate province. And surely such an imperinm in inipcrio is not very strange in Scotland, which in the middle ages was well acquainted with a subsidiary ‘ King of the Isles,’ and with the tragic termination of his power at the Red Harlaw ; and in more modern times knew Dukes of Athole who at the same time were Kings of Man. On the whole the views of Robertson have much the most to commend them; and there is this farther to be said for them, that they are consistent with the limitations depending on the physical geography of the country which in early days led to its division into a northern and a southern king- dom, and in later days made the Gordon Cock of the North, as king’s lieutenant beyond the Mounth —lord under the king of precisely the same tract of 12 country extending from the Dee to the Firth of Beauly, and stretching inland over Badenoch to the confines of Lochaber. It is not meant that there was no Mormaor of Buchan. Undeniably there was; but there is strong presumption that he occupied the position not of direct vassal of the crown, but of ‘ man ’ to his more powerful neighbour in the West. III. —POSITION OF the EASTERN BOUNDARY OF CELTIC MORAY.

Such being the relative standing of Buchan and Moray to each other, it may be asked what position did the district now known as Banffshire occupy. Although its subdivisions such as Boyne, Enzie, Strathisla are of ancient date, as a unity it never formed the dominion of either Celtic Mormaor or feudal earl; in fact, it became known as a separate district only when it was erected into a sheriffdom. Shaw in his history of Moray says that he sees no reason to suppose that that province ever extended east of Spey, or that the boundaries of Ancient Moray differed greatly from those of the earldom as recreated by Robert the Bruce in favour of his nephew Randolph. Skene, to whose views as we have seen Stuart assents, expresses a decided opinion that the Spey always formed a hard and fast boundary line to Moray on its eastward side ; and the grounds on which he relies consist of two documents—one of them being a statute of William the Lion, relating to the recovery of stolen goods, known by the title of Clarmathane, the other a description of Scotland of date about 1165 printed in the ‘Chronicles of the Piets and Scots.’ The statute runs thus, audit gives us a graphic picture of the progress feudalism was making at the time :—‘ Of catal stollyn and challangyt the King hes statut that in quhatsomever cuntre that catal or that thing challangyt be fundin (it) salbe brocht to that stede in ilke scherefdome whar the King David statut and stablyst catal challangyt to be brocht. And gif he that is challangyt of catal stollyn or reft allegis til his warand ony man that wonnys between Spey and Forth, he that is challengyt sal haf fra that day XV. days to bring his warand And gif ony man allegis til his warand ony that wonnys beyhond the said merchis as in Moray or in Ros or Catnes or Argyl or in Kentyre’—then he was to be allowed a month extra. It is obvious that the purpose of the Act was to facilitate the administration of justice among 14 new feudal vassals not to redd the marches between obsolete Celtic Mormaors of Moray, Mar, and Buchan ; and although it says rightly that beyond Spey was Moray land, it is certainly questionable to argue from implication that no portion of land east of Spey had belonged to the ancient patrimony of the Mormaors of Moray then in rebellion and fugitive. The other document starts with a variation of the legend of the seven sons of Cruithne MacCinge, the Eponymus of the Piets, or Cruithnech, as they called themselves, and tells how the seven brothers divided Scotland into seven kingdoms, each with a subordinate province ruled by a subordinate king. Of the seven kingdoms, one was Mar and Buchan, another was Moray and Ross, and the Spey was the boundary between them. The author tells us farther that he speaks on reliable authority, the authority, namely, of Andrew, a Scottishman, Monk of Dunfermline, and nominally at least Bishop of Caithness. Presumably he was a native of Fife ; we know farther that he was in favour with David I., for his name occurs as witness to his charters—he was, indeed, one of the Church digni- taries who witnessed the king’s charter of confirma- tion to the Abbey of Deer ; we know also that he died peacefully in his monastery of Dunfermline, a fact which, in view of the terrible fate wrought upon both his immediate successors by the resentful lambs of their flock, goes far to prove that he never set foot in his diocese. But we do not know that he had any great local knowledge of Moray and Buchan. We want better authority than this to convince us that Buchan ever extended as far west as Spey ; for, if writers on Moray assert strongly that Spey is the eastern boundary of the district with which they deal, equally strong is the testi- mony of record and tradition that Buchan never ex- tended westward of Deveron. As an old ‘Account of Buchan ’ says, ‘ All that country in old time was called Buchan, which lyeth betwixt the rivers Don and Diveran.’ There remains, however, a source to which we may look with some hope of elucidating this lost boundary line. The reign of David I., during which Moray sank from the prominent position it had before occupied, was characterised by many other important changes in Scottish affairs. Con- currently with the multifarious administrative reforms involved in the introduction of feudal law came another class of changes whose object was the reform of the church government. It was then that parishes were first erected and the kingdom 15 divided into dioce.ses under the jurisdiction of territorial bishops. To erect a parish, the typical procedure was for the lord of the manor to build a church and endow it with a tithe of the profits that accrued from the cultivation of the land, appointing a priest to the benefice thus made, who in return was bound to administer the rites of the church to him, his family, and dependents. Thus the boundaries of the manor and of the parish were identical: the manor was the parish quoad civilia; the parish was the manor quoad sacra. The same coincidence of the civil and the ecclesiastic bound- aries is to be seen in the case of at least some of the dioceses. The diocese of Glasgow consisted of that part of Scotland which had once been the kingdom of Strathclyde. The Bishopric of Ross coincided with the earldom of the same name, and regarding Caithness, the author of the ‘Origines Parochiales,’ writing of Dornoch, says ‘ The Bishopric of Caith- ness appears to have been from its erection co- extensive with the older earldom.’ It is self-evident that the dioceses of Moray and of Aberdeen simi- larly corresponded in the main with the districts that had pertained to the Mormaor of Moray on the one hand, and to Buchan and Mar on the other. It is noticeable that the line of division between the two bishoprics is devious in the extreme, exhibiting such an arrangement as might have arisen in the course of long occupation between neighbouring clans struggling for the acquisition of territory, but not at all such as would suggest itself to a ruler partitioning his kingdom de novo. In the absence of any record to the contrary, it seems fair to assume that the diocesan boundaries here, as else- where, corresponded with those of the ancient provinces, and that the few references that occur to Spey as the dividing line are nothing more than roughly approximate statements. On this assump- tion, we will proceed, with the help of the chart- ularies, to trace the line of division, and in so doing, we shall at least have the satisfaction of learning something about the introduction of medisevalism in Scotland. Somewhere between the years 1187-1203, we find that the Bishop of Moray had acquired spiritual jurisdiction over Strathaven, while Duncan, Earl of Fife, had become feudal over lord ; and we can read well between the dry legal lines of the charter the process by which the new diocesan and parochial arrangements superseded the Culdee system consist- ing of little churches scattered in groups through a district where their priests had found favour, each endowed with the half dauch of land that formed 16 the recognised ‘ living ’ of its clergy. These half dauchs of land, a dozen or more in number, as of old consecrated to the church become the property of the new bishop, not of the new baron. But the new church does not want to occupy the land ; its subsistence comes from the tithes which are its law- ful endowment, but of which the old church knew nothing, and, besides this, it claims as ‘ altarage ’ the offerings of the faithful, and the dues for church services, burials, special masses, and the like. So the bishop is quite willing to farm the old glebes to the over lord for a fixed annual rent; and this trans- action the chapter clerk duly records. A new comer from Southern Scotland, associating with the new Southron barons who have come to take the place of the forfeited Celt, ’tis little he knows or cares of the old language of the country or the significance of the names of the places he writes ; moreover he loves the old church as little as later reformers loved the Pope, and will not waste parchment to tell that the lands were once the patrimony of missions from Iona. Still he spells through the names as well as he can, and produces such a result as perhaps an educated Englishman of to-day would if called on to spell a bundle of Welsh names that he had not previously heard. With all the confusion, we are able to recognise that the old ‘cells’ had been dedicated to St Bride, St Michael, St Brandon, the Saints of Christ, St Martin, and perhaps St Mary. All these Bishop Richard sets to the Earl for a rent of two shillings a year each. Having thus disposed of the old order, Bishop Richard proceeds to consti- tute the new. The barony that the Earl of Fife had acquired is erected into a parish, and the first parish minister is placed in the person of Andrew, a priest of Brechin. One is tempted to follow the history of the parish. In course of time the Bishop dies and is succeeded by Bishop Brice; Earl Duncan dies also, and is succeeded by his son Malcolm. Then Earl Malcolm, for the salvation of his own soul and for the souls of his forbears and successors, gives his right of patronage to Brice^ and his successors in the Bishopric ; or, as he says, ‘gives, grants, and confirms to God and the Bishopric of Moray the church of S. Peter of Inveraven with one dauch of land justly pertaining to it, and the whole parish of all Strathaven, with its tithes, offerings, and all other just pertinents, reserving what service, if any, is due to our lord the King in respect of the dauch of land so given.’ Then the Bishop sets about erecting a cathedral, and devising means of supporting a superior clergy to serve as canons. So the large parish of Strath- 17 aven was made a prebend; and from the time that Andrew, Bishop of Moray, removed his seat to Elgin and built a fine new church there, the rector of Strathaven, who was also Chancellor of Moray, lived in Elgin, and drew the tithes of his parish to support his dignity there. And if he happened, as sometimes would be the case, to be too great or too busy a man to care about the people of the High- land glen that his money came from, they were left to what care and instruction they could get from the great man’s curate, poor Mess John, who lived barely enough off the altarage dues—the offertory and the fees we spoke of before. Once more church government changed. Bishops and canons followed the Columban abbots into the region of things that have been. Again the parochial clergyman became a local resident, endowed with what portion of the tithes could be wrung from the grasp of the feudal lord by the authority of a half-hearted parliament—and now- a-days we ask each other, Will the next turn of the wheel come in our time? But we have digressed from our purpose, which was to trace the boundary between the Dioceses of Moray and Aberdeen. Forming the north and eastern boundary of Strathaven and its tributary Glenlivet, is the high range of hills that, starting from Strathdon, encloses the upper valley of Deveron with G-lenfiddich, its nearer extremity terminating in the Buck of the Cabrach, its farther in the not less striking summit of Ben Hi lines. The hollows of this upland country sheltered another group of Columban churches that owed their existence to the zeal and eneigy of St Lugidius, or Moluag, of Lismore, the great island ©f Loch Linnhe. Like Columba, he seems to have journeyed through the great glen of Albyn, the line of the Caledonian Canal of our day, and, at its northern extremity, he founded the Church of Rosmarkie in the Black Isle. From the latter place, doubtless, it was that he or his emissaries or successors proceeded to the district more immediately concern- ing us. From Mortlach, which the writer of the Old Statistical Account says was a chapel dedicated to St Moluag, we can trace his churches far into the region of Mar. The old parish of Dummeth, now incorporated with Glass, was, perhaps still is, called from him Wallach [i.e. Moluag’s) Kirk, and ‘super- stitious’ resort to his ‘ Bath’ in the Deveron troubled the minds of the Presbytery of Strathbogie for many a day. The Church of Clatt was dedicated to his memory, and in the year 1501, we find King James erecting Clatt into a Burgh of Barony ‘ on account 18 of the special devotion he had for the blessed con- fessor, St Moiocus, and the singular favour which he bore to the reverend father in Christ, William, Bishop of Aberdeen.' By the same Act, he insti- tutes an annual fair to continue a week from the Saint’s day, and this is the beginning of St Molloch’s fair of Clatt. To St Moluag also was dedicated the old parish of Logymar : but was it rustic wit or rustic ignorance that converted the name of his Church of * Caw- bracht, alias Cloveth,’ to Sammy Luke’s Chapel ! All this tract of country would seem to have belonged to the province of Mar, and when the Diocese of Aberdeen was instituted, these parishes formed part of the earliest endowments of that bishopric. North-Eastward of this district we again find Moray reaching a long arm over the Spey in the direction of Aberdeen. Aberlour, Arndilly, Boharm, and Botriphnie belonged to Moray. So also did the parish of Keith, which originally included Strath- isla ; for in the year 1229, we find that a dispute had arisen between the Rector of Keith and the Abbot of Kinloss regarding the ‘ land of Strathisla, situated in the parish of Keith.' Further still from Spey the jurisdiction of Moray extended over the parishes of Strathbogie, Glass, Botary, and Ruth- ven, Rothiemay, Kinnoir and Dunbennan, Gartly, and upwards by the Strath of Bogie as far as Rhynie and Essie. Even Marnoch and Inverkeithny, which for civil purposes constituted the thanage of Aberkerdor and Conveth were claimed by the Bishop of Moray as being within his province'; and there is record of a three-cornered dispute that arose somewhere about the year 1210 between the king, the Bishop of Moray, and Gilchrist, Earl of Mar, regarding the right of patronage to the Church of Marnoch. Let Dis- ruption pundits settle why ecclesiastic like military battles are fought over again on the same fields. The dispute, at all events, shows us that the bishop was here obtruding somewhat beyond the just bounds of his diocese ; and also, what peihaps we would less expect, that Marnoch then, and no doubt for long before, was counted part of the province of Mar. We have been examining the truth of the contention that all between Don and Spey pertained to Buchan, and have been met with another tradition that the bounds of Buchan lay between Don and Deveron; yet here, half way between Don and Spey, on both sides of Deveron, and within a dozen miles or less of the shore of the Moray Firth, it is Mar we find we are dealing with, 19 not Buchan. Indeed, not for another hundred years did the Earl of Buchan acquire footing here, at which time, Symon, thane of Aberkerdor, having fallen under the royal displeasure, gave him six dauchs of land in Conveth to secure his good offices for the retention of the remainder. Lastly we come to deal with the part of Banff- shire by the seashore north of Strathisla. Co- incidently with the final defeat of Moray, and with a view to the control of the newly settled provinces, we find the Crown erecting a chain of Ro3’al castles, each the central point of a burgh and each burgh constituting a parish for ecclesiastic purposes. From Aberdeen, by Inverury, Fyvie, Banff, Elgin, and Nairn, they extended as far as Inverness, forming a series of stations a day’s march distant from each other, as Edward of England found when he traversed the country as invader a hundred years or so after. In building these castles, the Scottish king was following the method of the Norman in England and Wales ; and he copied his model still farther in attaching to his castle tracts of land set apart under Forest Law for the purpose of sport, for supplying the royal table with game, and the royal artificers with timber. Adjacent to Banff was the Forest of Boyne, and between the castle of Cullen and Spey lay the Forest of Invercolan or Enzie. Within the bounds of this last the Bishop of Moray fell heir to three half dauchs of land in precisely the same way that we saw he did in Strathaven—- oneportion wasat ‘Belethy n’or Bel lie. Again coming to the year 1236, we have record of a dispute between the bishops of Aberdeen and Moray, in which the authority of the Pope was invoked to settle in which diocese the Churches of Cullen and Farskane lay. There must have been a fair show of light on either side, for the rival claimants finally agreed to leave it an unsettled point to their successors. If we are right in the surmise that the diocesan boundaries are the best guide we have to the original civil divisions, we may safely’ infer that Buchan and Moray met in the neighbourhood of Cullen. We certainly know that the diocese of Aberdeen at its utmost fell short of Spey by the breadth of the parish of Bel lie. Such then is the eastern boundary of the Diocese and presumably of the ancient province of Moray. Reaching far eastward of Spey where the valley of Strathaven gives easy access from the west; reced- ing almost to the river where Benrinnes, backed by the hills of Strathdon and Mar, obtrudes upon the plain ; advancing again to the east, over the low 20 hills between Spey and Strathisla, and so by the continuous valley of Isla, Deveron, and Bogie, till high ground once more forbids further extension ; downward by the Deveron valley to where it narrows between the high ground whose culminating point is the Forman Hill on the one bank and the brae of Ardmeallie on the other, beyond which the river bending eastward throws the country open to Turriff and the Buchan district; from Marnoch, over rough and boggy uplands, to the gap of Glen- barry, and thence by the Knock Hill along more rough ground to where the Bin of Cullen divides the level shore of the Firth into an Eastern and a Western half. It is true that a Bull of Pope Adrian IV. con- firms to Aberdeen among other things ‘the tithes of all between the rivers called Dee and Spey ; ’ but it only shows how loosely and vaguely the rivers were used to indicate the real boundary when one considers that the other charters of the Bishopric of Aberdeen confirm in every detail the boundary we have drawn, and not only so, but within an easy walk of the Cathedral church both the Sheriff and the See of Aberdeen had jurisdiction well beyond the southern bank of the Dee. It needs no great perception to discover also that the marches thus traced from the peaceful church records form a line nevertheless that skilfully seizes upon the strategic points dominating the passes of the country from east to west. Three of these, Strath bogie, Glenbarry, and the Links of Cullen determine the routes of railway lines in our own da}*, while far back before history began the builders on Conval, Tap o’ Noth, and the Hill of Durn, if not the Castle Hill of Cullen, had found the same boundary one that was capable of military defence. IV. THE COMING OF THE SASSENACH.

Now, when King David had overcome the Moray men in the decisive battle of Stracathro, he resolved on a line of policy often followed in after days, sometimes successfully, as in the settlement of Ulster by King James, sometimes unsuccessfully, as in the attempt to plant the Lewis by the gentle- men of Fife—he forfeited and banished the Celtic over lords of Moray, and planted in their stead ‘ his own peaceful people,’the Anglo-Normans of Lothian. It was a policy that the circumstances of his time made possible, a solution ©f the difficulty that lay ready to his hand as it had not to the hand of his predecessors. It was a time when the Anglo-Norman power was in an expansile state, such as it never again attained to during the long period of its con- tinental wars with the Crown of France, and its own internecine strife of the Wars of the Roses. It was spreading from England to Lothian, to Wales, and over the sea to Ireland with a colonising energy never again equalled until the days of Queen Elizabeth. And with this first colonising impulse was associated a zeal for the implantation of Roman Church government, diocesan, parochial, and monastic, just as with the second was associated a no less zeal for the establishment of the principles of the Reformation and opposition to the Papacy. Even before the fateful rebellion of Angus the Mormaor, the ecclesiastic ardour of King David had led him to found the Priory of Urquhart, in Moray, constituting it a ‘cell’ or dependency of the Abbey of Dunfermline, the town in which he had fixed his own royal seat. This was in the year 1125, and the colony of Black Monks, Benedictines, who proceeded from the parent house of Dunferm- line to distant and unsettled Moray, are the first speakers of the Lowland tongue that history or reasonable probability points to as obtaining a footing in our north-eastern districts. At the same time, or very soon thereafter, he gave the lands of Fochabers with their salmon fishings to augment 22 the resources of the new Priory, and there doubt- less was the Scots tongue first spoken to the east of Spey. In the time of the ‘Plantation,’ we find King David founding another religious house, at Kinloss namely, and introducing another family of Southern monks, Cistercians, from Melrose. A charter of Alexander II. shows that David had himself per- ambulated the lands which he gifted to the Monas- tery, and among them ‘ the land of Heth or Eth, which had belonged to Twothel.’ From his name we gather that Twothel was a man of Celtic, if not Pictish, blood. It is a name not unknown in Scottish history, for three hundred years before this, in the time of Kenneth MacAlpin, the greatest church dignitary in Scotland was Tuathal MacArtgus, Bishop of Fortrenn and Abbot of Dun- keld ; and on the Drummond Hill above Loch Tay are the remains of a hill-fort called Caisteal Mac Tuathal, which tradition says was the stronghold of the Abbot’s son. Regarding Tuathal of Kinloss, we know nothing for certain but his name. Had he been a willing or assenting party to the aliena- tion of his lands for religious purposes, the charter would in all probability have said so; but it is silent on the subject. When, however, King Alexander II. confirmed the charter and sent a commission to ride the marches, it is recorded that one of the landmarks was a spot called Rune Two- thel. There is a grim suggestion of tragedy about the name, for it implies that it was Twothel’s memorial cairn. Ancient tradition has it that while King David was engaged in setting matters in order for building his new abbey of Kinloss he had his resilience in the Castle of Duffus, a place which he certainly bestowed on another of ‘ his own peaceful people,’ oneFreskin to wit, thereafter styled Do Moravia, the founder of a family than which perhaps none in all Scotland better learned the art of ‘conquesting’ land ; adding holding to holding by skilful alliances, the achievement of Court favour, or whatever diplomatic means lay readiest to hand. Freskin and his descendants were forceful and capable men. A near neighbour to the De Moravia family was another settler, Peter Pollock, whose name occurs in charters of William the Lion, and to whose possession came the lands of Rothes, Dundurcas, and Mulben. Strathaven, as we have seen, fell to Malcolm Earl of Fife; the descendant certainly of a line of Celtic Mormaors, but whose predecessors from the time of Queen Margaret had been daily and hourly under 23 ►Saxon influence. Of his two sons, the younger, David, acquired the lands of Strathbogie, and in his family, who from their lands assumed the name ‘ De Strathbogy,’ they remained till their forfeiture for part-taking with their kinsmen the Corny ns in the War of Independence. Meantime Fergus and Gilchrist, the former Celtic Mormaors of Buchan and Mar, were in peace and favour with the king, and henceforth appear in his charters as feudal Earls of their respective provinces. But neither peaceful nor hostile attitude could save the Celt from the aggressive newcomers. In the shelter and protection of the chain of Royal castles of which we have traced the origin, there sprang up a series of burgh towns engaged in trade, modelled on the older burghs of the South Berwick, Rox- burgh, Edinburgh, Stirling ; chief among these the ‘ Braif toun5 of Aberdeen, then as now the commercial metropolis of the north. Thus runs the charter of William the Lion—‘William, by the grace of God King of Scots, to all good men of his whole land, greeting, know all men, present and to come, me to have granted, and by this my charter confirmed, to m3' burgesses of Aberdeen, and to all burgesses of Moray, and to all my burgesses dwelling to the north of the Munth, their free Hanse, to be held where the}7 will and when they will, as freely and peaceably, fully and honourably, an their ancestors in the time of King David, my grandfather, had. their Hanse freely and honour- ably.' . . . [Needless to say, the italics are not in the original charter.] To landward of the burghs, the Celtic occupier fared no better. Take the case of Gamrie. In 1189 or soon afterwards, William the Lion gave the living of the parish of Gamrie to the monks of Arbroath ; and it must have been before that time, and sub- sequently to 1150, that one Robert Corbet b\' name had there acquired lands from which he bestowed on the House of Kinloss ‘ three bovates of land, with the right of common pasture between the church of Gamrie and Troup—to wit, Lethenoth,’ which we now call Lightnot. About the same time, the parish of St Fergus was acquired b}7 the family of Le Neym ; and in the very early years of the thirteenth century Ralph Le Neym gave the church of Inverugie and the chapel of Fetterangus to the Monaster}* of Arbroath. And where, it may be asked, did these Pollocks and Coibets and Neyms come from? Peter de Pollock of Rothes was Pollock of that ilk in Ren- frewshire. Jeryise in his Memorials of Angus and the Mearns writes:—‘The first of the family was 24 Peter, son of Fulbert, who earl}’ acquired the lands from which he assumed his surname ; for some time before the year 1199, he gifted the kirk of Pollock and its pertinents to the monastery of Paisley. The same baron witnessed a charter to the abbey of Kinloss in Moray in 1190.’ Regarding the family of Le Neym, the editor of the Spalding Club Collections writes :—‘ It had possessions on the eastern marches between Scotland and England as well as in Tweeddale and on the shores of Buchan. The earliest known member of the family is a certain Ralph Le Neym, who, about 1180, with consent of Richard, his son and heir, made a gift of land to the Chapel of Broctun in the parish of Stobo in Tweeddale. He is also witness to a charter in favour of the Monks of Melrose, along with his sons Richard and Ralph ' —the latter not at all improbably the same who acquired or heired the lands of Inverugie. Again, as we learn from the same authority, Richard Le Neym witnesses a charter to the house of Kelso made by a Walter Corbet, and once more along with another Ralph Le Neym, his son, he witnesses a charter by Robert Corbet in favour of the house of Melrose. Thus we see the same Le Neyms and Corbets living as neighbours on the southern border and settling as neighbours on the shores of Buchan. They, or such as they, were the men whose arms had overcome Angus of Moray, and if we choose to indulge in conjecture we may readily imagine that it was for good service done that the crown rewarded them with lands in the county of those they had conquered. Neither is there any difficulty in guessing how Robert Corbet gave his farm of Lightnot to the monks of Kinloss; like himself, they had come from Melrose and fair Tweedside to settle in the inhospitable north—they were ‘of his ain folk.’ Thus not beyond Spey alone did the process of plantation go on. Troup Head and Buchan Ness are far from Moray ; but if we glance for a moment in the direction of Angus and the Mearns we shall there find evidence of the same socio-political movement. Regarding the Mowats, Jervise tells us that they were stewards to the Earl of Chester, and settled in North Wales, where the business of their lives was the suppression of disaffected Welsh. It was with David I. that they first came to Scotland, and from William the Lion they obtained a giant of the lordship of Fern in Angus. The Muschets, another family of Angus, were of Roman extraction, came to England with their kinsman the Conqueror, and following William the Lion to Scotland obtained from him the lordship of Cargill. This about the year 1200. It is to be regretted (so often the regret has been expressed !) that the charter record of our country survives to us in such imperfect condition. There is so much now perhaps lost to us for ever that we would wish to know. When, for example, did the Bissets settle in Ruthven, who, in 1226, founded the Bede House there ? and who were the feudal barons of Strathisla whose people left the influence of their southern tongue on the land-names before 1198? And who were the Gael other than Twothel whom they dispossessed ? But enough remains to indicate in no doubtful way the nature and extent of the colonizing process. All over the north-eastern lowlands swept the tide of feudal barons, Normans from England, Angles of Lothian, and Anglicized Celts of Fife. With them a new church, its digni- taries drawn from those that had the direct ear of the king, a’.l that held orders high or low alike Sassenach; not even in a humble parochial charge do we find a Columban ‘ sagart,’ perhaps he would have scorned to accept a living from the stranger, or his conscience may have rebelled against it. Add to these the settlers in the burgh towns, merchants who were soon to establish the over-sea commerce of the country, men of trade, dealers in hides and wool, skinners, cordiners, websters, litsters, and walkers; salmon-curers, and coopers; brewsters and baxters; with their free hanse enjoyed ; freely and honourably ’ from the time of King David. The whole makes up the familiar picture of mediseval times; but what a contrast from the time that men even then living must have remembered when King David gave audience to the good men of Buchan, the Gaelic speaking Mormaor and toiseachs, Colbain, and Donnachae, son of Sithech, chief of Claim Morgainn, Cormac, abbot of Turriff, and the rest. And yet the men of the old race could not have entirely disappeared; else had we not inherited from them the names of our hills and streams and farm towns, our ‘ Teunon Kirk,’ or ‘ Comb’s Well,’ or ‘ St Sair’s Fair.’ Neither would our country wives call a tub a £ queed,’ not knowing that therein they are using the same language as the ‘ Hielan’ ’ folk of Inverness with their Clach-na- cuddan. Neither would Johnny Gibb’s Holey have spoken of taking a ‘ raith ’ at the school, all un- thinking that the word is Gaelic, an inheritance to us from a time when the sound of 4 th ’ had not become a shibboleth to the speakers of the mountain tongue. No race yet was ever suddenly rooted out 26 from the land on which it had long been settled; not even the strong hand of Cromwell could drive all the Irish to the wilds of Galway and Connemara ; not even the Saxon invaders of England made such a clean sweep but that Britons enough remained to transmit the names of the Thames and London, the same as when the Roman legions first visited them. While human nature endures, the helpless will find pity, the plausible will find favour, and the advan- tage of cheap labour will assert itself. So no doubt many of the lower orders of the Celts survived, accepting under the new masters the same position that they had held under the old, the position, namely, of ‘ natives and serfs,’ as the charters have it ; men fore doomed to till the land on which they were born, whose labour entitled them certainly to food and shelter, but who, legally, were mere chattels, transferred with the land from one master to another, as flocks are on a modern sheep farm. But we have also evidence, meagre but not un- certain, of the survival of Celts, who were freemen and landholders. Thus for example, before the year 1214, Fergus, Earl of Buchan, gave the lands of Aucheoch, Atherb, and others in the barony of Federate to his vassal John, son of Uthred, in excambion of the lands of Slains and Cruden. The name Uthred is reminiscent of a certain Uchtred son of Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, in days even then long bygone; beyond that it does not concern us. But the charter defines the marches of the grant with great exactness, and narrates how at a certain point they came ‘ as far as the burn of Gicht under the sheep-fank of Ruthrie Mac Can of Allethan.’ Rory Mac Oan of Allethan — what dress but the bonnet and belted plaid would befit a man of such name and designation. Such a man might have been among the followers of the great Montrose; he might have taken part in the wild charge of Killie- crankie, or been hail-fellow-well-met with the chiefs who were out in the ’45. In our own day his name would seem to have a familiar sound in a Highland agricultural showyard or at a wool fair in Inverness. He was a yeoman in the howes of Buchan when the thirteenth century began. Later in point of time, A.D. 1230-36, we come upon another owner of a Celtic name in the person of Ferchard, described as ‘judex’ of Buchan. Let it be observed that his designation is not ‘ vice-comes,’ which means sheriff, nor ‘ballivus,’ which means baron-baillie. ‘Judex’ is the word employed specifically as the Latin equivalent of the Celtic ‘ Brehon ’—such as was Matadin the Brehon, of the Book of Deer. By and by, ‘judex’ passes into English, and then the holder of the office appears under the designation of The Dempster of Buchan, who sat with the Earl at the head court on the Moot Hill of Ellon. So that, alike in name and in office, Ferchard in his time might have been pointed out as a ‘survival of the past in the present.’ From the Chamberlain Rolls, it may be ascertained that his suc- cessor in the year 1358 drew the magnificent salary of forty shillings a year, and the duties of his office or some of them are defined in the Acts of the Scots Parliament. Here is a statute of whose first enaction Ferchard might have received official in- timation, It is intituled ‘How the jugis aw to folow the kyng,’ and runs :—‘ It is statut at Munros that quhen the kyng cumis in ony centre the jugis of the centre aw til cum til hym the first nycht. Na it is not leffull to thaim to pas fra the kyngis court befor at the kyng pas off the centre, but gif it be thru licens of the kyng.’ These two then, with Fergus the Earl, give us three Celtic survivors among men above the rank of serfs. There may have been a good many more; but one feels safe in saying that it would require diligent research at this time of day to bring the list up to a dozen. Much do we find of Feudal barons, and much of the new monastic houses, but to all practical intent the Celt had vanished for ever from the country. To what distance nearer or farther he retired in the direction of the fastnesses of the Highlands it is beyond the scope of this article to trace. One would suppose that he might yet safely harbour in Cromar, Upper Strathdon, and the Garioch. Nor can one imagine that the Earl of Fife found himself able to make much impression on the race and language of Strathaven and Glen- livet. Long afterwards, in 1550, we find a memorandum of a meeting of the parishioners of Mortlach, convened to appoint a new parish priest. The list of those present is headed with ‘a noble and puissant lord John Earl of Athole, Lord Balveny ’; then come Ogilvies, Leslies, Gordons in plenty, followed by more ordinary people, such as Donald More Mac Gillereacht, Duncan MTvellas M‘Connachie Moir, Finlay M‘Connel Roy, Robbie M‘Callum Dow, and man} other such like. Clearly, the Saxon had not colonized Mortlach to much purpose. Thorough as the Saxon settlement of Lower Banffshire had been, its influence had stopped abruptly at the border of the upper part of the county; and thus the familiar division of Lower and Upper Banffshire would seem to have had a racial no less than a mere topographical origin. 28 We opened the enquiry on which we have been engaged with a slight review of the evidence of Celtic occupation afforded by the place names of the district. In Strathisla, we first found evidence from the place names that a race of new-comers had settled in the land. Let us go back once more to Strathisla, and see at what rate place names in the new tongue sprang up. A.D. 1219—1233, William Comyn had married Marjory, daughter of the last Celtic Earl of Buchan, and with her had acquired the title. The Columban Abbey of Deer had vanished none knows how ; and in its place The Comyn founded the later Cistercian Abbey of The Blessed Virgin, and suitably endowed it. Timber was never plentiful in Buchan, and that the abbey might not lack such an essential commodity, he granted it the lands of Barry in Strathisla. ‘To all who shall see or hear this charter, William Cumyn, earl of Buchan, Grace in the Lord ever- lasting, know us prompted by love for the increase of divine worship and the advancement of religion, for the grace of our own soul, for the souls of Marjory, our spouse, our heirs, forbears, and successors, our parents, and all our friends, to have given, granted, and by this our present charter confirmed to Almighty God, to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints of God, and to the religious the Abbot and Monks of Deir who there serve and shall serve God in perpetuity, all and singular our lands of Barre with their pertinents lying in the barony of Strathilay within the sheriff- dom of Banff. To have and to hold all and singular the lands of Barre with their pertinents by the saids the Abbot and Monks of Deir and their successors, in free forest, with all their woods, groves, and thickets for use in building and repairing the Monastery of Deir; as they lie in length and breadth according to their true ancient bounds and divisions under written. Beginning at Legarff of Barre as the burn flows from the greater muir of the moss between Barie and Knock, and so proceeding to the Caetrin Stryp as the course of the same proceeds as far as Thailbog, descending at Corncairn to the burn to a stone in the said burn; and so proceeding as far as the boundary of Staney croft as it descends to the lowest red ford of the said Staney croft, and from the red ford ascending to Armurdicairn at the boundary of Muirfurd, and thence ascending up to Stobstane on the top of the hill of Urilhille as far as the slope of the said hill at two stones, and thence extending to the west part of the hill as the water flows to Legarff of Barre into the burn of Knock,’ &c., &c. We would direct attention to the place names in the Lowland tongue, ‘ Caetrin-stripe,’ ‘Staney croft,’ ‘Muirfurd,’ ‘Stobstane,’ and so con- clude, remarking only that less than a hundred years previously no single word of anything but Gaelic had been known in Buchan and Lower Banffshire.

V