182 Tue Scoto-NorseE PERIOD IN DUMFRIESSHIRE. 
Soldiers of the legions, 
Northern sea kings, 
Medieval knights, Border reivers, 
Bustle it bravely side by side. 
If the spirits of the departed Vikings ever return to the South, 
they will find much that is changed, also that time has not wholly 
obliterated their footprints by the shores of the Solway, where 
they lived, laughed, sailed, and fought, and made our world. 
One small glance. This is Friday, a Norse word; yesterday we 
said Thursday, that is Thor’s day; the day before yesterday we 
said Wednesday, which is Odin’s day. Friday, the night on 
which we are met, is the most popular night of the week in the 
South of Scotland, I am. assured, for marriages, and Frias, the 
wife of Odin, is the Norse goddess of love. There may be other 
reasons, economic and social, which dictate Friday as the night of 
the week for marriages, but I do not think that it is at all a stretch 
of the imagination to see also an association of that established 
Lowland custom with the day which in the olden time was sacred 
to the Norse goddess of love. Now, I have made an effort to sum 
up generally (1) the influence of the Northern civilisation on 
Europe ; (2) its influence on Scotland; and (3) its influence on 
Dumfriesshire. I have indicated various lines along which, I 
think, evidence can be led, and not attempting to exhaust the 
evidence. The evidence accumulates on all hands when you 
begin to look into the subject. These are lines, it seems to me, 
along which the study might be pursued, and the more they are 
developed the more clearly will be seen that there still linger 
memorials to attest the influence of the Norsemen in their occupa- 
tion of the south, not only on place-names, customs, and litera- 
ture, but, above all, on the lowland physical and mental charac- 
teristics, which have produced so many stirring scenes, so many 
daring and striking figures to play their part in the long-drawn 
romance of the Scottish Borderland. 
THE SALMON DISEASE. 
Mr S. Arnott, the secretary, brought up the question of 
“The Bacterial Origin of the Salmon Disease,’’ referring to Sir 
Herbert Maxwell’s “ Jottings of a Naturalist ’’ in the “ Scottish 
Review.’’? In it Sir Herbert said that in matters of natural 
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