20 The Place Names of Irongray. 



pine forests over them ? He also asked what caused the opaque 

 whiteness of the stones found after the moss had worn away? 

 professor Lewis said that in many places trees could be planted 

 very successfully. The whiteness of the stones he thought was 

 due to the acids in the peat. Mr Wallace said he thought that 

 in some ways peat was growing. He also asked the lecturer 

 whether some of the older peat mosses were not formed during 

 the ice age ? Professor Lewis, in reply, said that most of the 

 peat mosses were distinctly post-glacial, in the sense that they had 

 accumulated after the last ice age. 



The lecture was illustrated with admirable lantern slides. 



liHIi November, 1909. 



Chairman — Professor G. F. Scott-Elliot, Hon. V.P. 



The Place Names of Irongray. By the Rev. S. Dunlop, B.D., 

 Minister of Irongray. 



I am frequently asked by visitors, " Why is your parish called 

 Irongray?" To answer this question I had to consult Sir Herbert 

 Maxwell's interesting book on the topography of Galloway. This 

 led me to make a collection of Irongray place names and their 

 meanings. I must confess I have no Gaelic, so my derivations are 

 all second-hand. To deal scientifically with Galloway place 

 names requires a combination of gifts to which I can lay no claim. 

 In addition to a thorough knowledge of the principles of philology 

 and phonetics, you must add a tolerably exact knowledge of Celtic, 

 not merely the spoken Gaelic, but the ancient Irish, for our Celtic 

 place names are more Irish than Scottish. After the Celts came 

 the Angles and after the Angles the Norse ; these Teutonic races 

 adopted some of the old Celtic names, modified others, and added 

 new names of their own. So the student of Galloway place names 

 must add old English, middle English, and Norse to his Celtic 

 scholarship. 



Though we cannot boast ourselves of such accomplishments, 

 yet there is a useful though humble work to be done by local anti- 

 quaries in the study of place names — a work that will help more 

 gifted students. It is brieflv this : — 



