LOCKERBIE IN ITS ORIGIN. 155 
LOCKERBIE IN ITS ORIGIN. By Tuos. R. HENDERSON. 
Lockerbie, although we cannot claim for it the honour of being 
an ancient burgh, is nevertheless a place of considerable antiquity. 
When it was first founded, or when it first received the name it now 
bears, and thenceforth became a place definite, we cannot tell. 
Its earliest history is shrouded in the impenetrable mists of the 
past. 
There exists neither British nor Roman camp, nor any 
memorial of a pre-historic age, from which we might conclude that 
in ancient days its site was occupied as a settlement, at least prior 
to the time when a slight rift in the dark cloud of the past allows 
us a momentary glimpse of its early history. Annan, Lochmaben, 
and Hutton have each their ancient moat hill ; Lockerbie has not. 
In fact, prior to the time of the Bruces we may, with a reasonable 
degree of accuracy, conclude that the site on which the town now 
stands was simply a part of the forest which then occupied practi- 
cally the whole of the valley of the Annan. 
We have one indication, however, and only one, of the origin 
of the burgh, and that is the name it bears. From the word 
“Lockerbie ’’ we have to learn what we can, and from the frag- 
mentary information which it implies read the unwritten record of 
the burgh’s early history. 
In an ancient document, executed in 1198, relating to a 
dispute between Adam de Karleolo and William de Brus, we find 
the name spelt “ Locardebi.’’ Dr Neilson, in his essay on “ Old 
Annan,’’ mentions that there was a family of the name Locard, 
which was for a time represented in the Court of the Bruce, and 
ultimately took root in Clydesdale. No doubt, this family of 
Locard would, like that of the Bruce, be Norman, and would 
occupy at the Court of the latter a position both of influence and 
favour. It is even within the range of probability that they were 
related to the Bruce himself. 
Now we know that in those days, when might was right, the 
only method of self-preservation was that of co-operation, and 
that that system of co-operation was universally in vogue.  Self- 
preservation, we are told, is the first law of nature, and our 
forefathers were as fully alive to that fact as their descendants 
have been ever since. 
Naturally, then, when a man received from the King, as a 
