152 Transactions. 



3. Old Annan. By George Neilson, F.S.A., Scot. 

 1. Origin. 



The ancient and royal burgh of Annan has few prehistoric 

 memories 3 its past becomes impenetrable in the 12th century. 

 Its earliest inhabitants have left no reminiscences in flint arrows, 

 bronze spears, or funeral urns. No storied altar, no memorial of 

 the dead attests a Roman settlement. Some places have their 

 chronicle in stone, their history in their buildings, but Annan 

 has no antique architecture. The Moat is its sole ancient 

 monument. Archseology, apart from records, can do little to 

 raise the old place and people from the grave. But a fragmentary 

 memory has been conserved in charters and musty histories, wofully 

 incomplete, except for imaginations which can build up Hercules 

 from his footprint. Tlie records pieced together, with many a 

 void between, make but a meagre outline far too faint to bid the 

 past return in " bannered pomp " again. 



The town arose, we know not when, on a gentle slope swelling 

 slowly to south and east and north, whilst the unbridged river, 

 fordable above and below, kept ceaseless watch upon the west. 

 Fertile fields lay round, rich pasture holms were spread below. 

 The river was more than a river — twice a day it was an arm of 

 the sea, and both the Annan water and the tide of the Solway 

 yielded a harvest not less surely than the fields. 



As a place-name we may be sure that the river had the priority, 

 that Annan town was so called from Annan water. This appears 

 to have been the case in a few other instances in Scotland. The 

 absolute identity of town-name and river-name is, however, a 

 relatively rare thing. What Annan as a word means no one can 

 tell. There are no collateral examples sufficiently similar, and 

 Celtic etymology, unsupported by parallel cases capable of some- 

 thing like proof, is a mere Will-of-the-wisp. We can guess with 

 some measure of probability that Lochmaben either means the 

 loch cluster, or the loch of Mabon — that Arthurian shade. We 

 know that Lockerbie — spelt in 1198 Locardebi* — derives its name 

 from the family of Locard, which, for a time represented in the 

 court of the early Bruces, ultimately took root in Clydesdale. 

 Ecclefechan is called after an Irish saint. But Moffat and 

 Annan are both unsolved, and to all intents insoluble puzzles. 



* Bain's Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, i. 2666. 



