108 Transactions. 



As these articles bore no name of the writer of them, I may 

 now mention that they were written by me, so that no charge of 

 plagiarism can be made if I weave a few of their details into this 

 paper. 



But I shall avoid details as much as possible, and give a 

 general account more suited to the time and taste of our monthly 

 meetings. In one important respect this paper is an original 

 communication, inasmuch as I can now prove what was for long 

 a mere theory of mine — viz., that in the olden time there was a 

 village or kirktown called Troquire along the road leading to the 

 Parish Church, and quite distinct from the Bridgend of Dumfries, 

 now the populous burgh of Maxwelltown. 



The first thing which srikes one is the peculiarity of the name 

 of the parish, the spelling of which as at present dates only from 

 a little before the beginning of this century. In a charter of the 

 fourteenth century it is spelt Trogwayre, and in the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries it is variously spelled, according to the 

 ear of the writer Trequair, Trequier, and Troquire. 



It has been suggested that the word may be derived from old 

 French words trois choeurs, and mean the third of three choirs, 

 of which Lincluden and Newabbey were the others. But the 

 French language had scarcely any influence in this district, and 

 if it had any, the words supposed would be unintelligible French 

 applied to a church building. On this point Mr Cosmo Innes 

 says — " From the names of [daces and persons in charters of the 

 twelfth century in Galloway it ai)pears the people were of Celtic 

 or Gaelic race and language, which remained until the fifteenth 

 or sixteenth century. It had its own laws of the Bretts and 

 Scots, which King Edward in vain tried to abolish. The Normans 

 had no secure footing, nor the court French of Queen Mary's 

 time." 



The learned Mr Chalmers in his " Caledonia " derives it from 

 two old British words — tre, a small town or village, and ffwyr 

 (similar to the way I find it spelt in fourteentli century), the 

 bend or turn of a river. 



There is but one other town in Scotland of a similar sound and 

 spelling, Traquair in Peeblesshire — a village situated beside a 

 ■winding river called the Quair. 



Here the river has been always called the Nith or Nid, but it 

 certainly winds round this eastern boundary of the parish from 

 near the church to Mavisgrove, a characteristic which caught 



