On the Name Dumfries 233 



" There was one William Wilson, a Merchant, the first Com- 

 piler of that useful Book, the Merchant' s Companion, (tho' to 

 save himself the Expense of printing it, he allowed William 

 N'ewall, likewise a Drumfriesman born, to prefix his name 

 thereto), who told me that being at Lynn-Regis in England, he 

 fell into the company of the Captain of a ship, who, finding, 

 after some Conversation with him, that he was a Scotsman, born 

 in Nithsdale, asked him, if he knew Tinwall-lsles? Mr Wilson 

 told him. That he knew them \er\ well. Upon which the 

 Captain said, That he had read in a Spanish History That 

 Tinwall-lsles were the best Harbour in Scotland.'"' On this Rae 

 bases his derivation. "There is some," he says, modestly, 

 " who bring an Argument to support this Opinion, [that the sea 

 flowed over Lochar Moss] from the Name of the principal Town 

 on the other side of that Moss, viz., Drumfries ; as if it signified 

 dorsum freti (the Backside of the Frith) : Because Mr Buchanan, 

 in his Hhtory of Scotland, renders drum, dorsum, and fretum 

 signifies a Frith or narrow Sea : So the People who inhabit those 

 Towns above mentioned [Tinwald, Torthorwald, etc.] use yet to 

 call the other side beyond the Moss.'"^ 



Robert Edgar, in his MS. History, written about 1746, 

 gives another theory that, with a difference, still receives support. 

 It is, he says, from " Dun, a rising ground or hill, and Freash 

 Scrogie bushes growing on it." Dr Campbell, in his "Survey 

 of Great Britain," 1791, supports this explanation. 



More romantic than any of the foregoing is the deri\ation 

 suggested by the author of " An Enquiry into the Ancient History 

 of Scotland," published in 1789. "Castra Puellarum is a mere 

 translation of Dun-fres. Dun signifying Castellum, and Free or 

 Fri, Virgo Nobilis in the Icelandic Tongue." J. Pinkerton, in 

 notes to Barbour's Bruce, 1790, calls the town "the celebrated 

 Castra Puellarum, Dun, mons, castellum; Fre, puella nobilis." 



I am at a loss to know where and why " Castra puellarum ' ' 

 was celebrated, unless it is the "Castle of the Maidens " in the 

 " Morte Darthur," generally, I think, taken to be Edinburgh 

 Castle. 



Chalmers in his " Caledonia " (1824) offers the variant on 



4 Letter from the Reverend Mr Peter Rae in relation to Locliar 

 Moss. Select Transaction.s oi the Honourable The Society of 

 Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland. Edin- 

 burgh, 1743. 



