4 Place Namks. 



Communications. 



The Place Names of the Cairn Valle;/. 



By Dr J. W. Martin, Holywootl. 



I do not know that I shall have much to offer yon by way of 

 Avhat is new and nndiscovered, but I have thought it might be 

 useful to bring up before the members of the Societ}' the subject 

 of place names, and for that purpose I have selected the locality 

 with which I am best acquainted, and which is most easy of 

 access to me, namely, the region of the Cairn from its source till 

 it joins the Nith, and which very aptly comprehends the three 

 parishes of Glencairn, Dunscore, and Holywood, or a length of, 

 let us a&Y, 30 miles, by a breadth of 1\ at the broadest point. It 

 may be that the members of the Society may be stimulated into 

 working up other parts of Dumfriesshire not so accessible to those 

 of us in this district, and thus the usefulness of the Society may 

 be extended and enhanced. 



Place names are derived from tlie nomenclature given by the 

 ancient inhabitants of a county or district to the different land- 

 marks and rural ol)jects in the neighbourhood, as well as to the 

 dwellings frequented by them or the new-comers. The names of 

 places of any antiquity in the south and west of Scotland are for 

 the most part either of Celtic or Anglo Saxon origin, sometimes 

 spoken of as Northern English. Goedilic or Gaelic was a branch 

 of the Celtic employed by the Picts of Galloway ami Avest of the 

 Nith. It goes without saying that place names have retained 

 much of their original form, as far as Goedilic Celtic is concerned, 

 though the inliabitants and people have changed ; and a good 

 instance of retention of names of places is found in Bible lands, 

 Avhere, to this <lay, rudiments of the names of places now almost 

 lost to civilization, are identical with their most ancient names 

 recorded in the Bible and secular history. This is noticeable to 

 any one reading books dealing with Arabia and Palestine, but I 

 need not trouble you with instances. As it is classically jjut, 

 " Conquest has little power in changing the place names of a 

 county." I need not point uut to you that the investigation of 

 the names of places has a considerable bearing on the history, as 

 well as the ethnology and geography, of a county. Unfortunately 

 many names get twisted and changed by mispronunciation and 

 mis-spelling. ]\Iuch valuable information is thus lost, and identi- 

 fication uf the uriginal names is rendered impossible. A 



