Traitsactions. 1 9 



than the date usually given. In the course of the ages prior to 

 this artistic structure, the stone bridge of the 13th century, there 

 evidently must have been some practical link of communication 

 connecting the town and religious communities with their Troqueer 

 lands on the opposite shore of the Nith, and the inhabitants of 

 Galloway generally speaking. We think it probable that some 

 rudely constructed bridge of wood may have preceded this stone 

 structure. This supposition is rendered the more probable, seeing 

 that in 1609 a petition to the Privy Council anent "the brig of 

 Drumfries, which the saidis Lordis knawis is a verrie large brig 

 of mony bowis," the petitioners further allege and explain as to 

 the then threatened hindrance " of the ordinar passage over the 

 wattir of Nith, sein na boat dar ga upon that wattar but in calme 

 and fair wedder in respect it has so swift and violent a course." 

 From the earliest ages we find the Dumfriesians have cherished an 

 amiable predilection in favour of this their "Auld Brig" of Dum- 

 fries and of Nith, a predilection the depth of which, in the reign 

 of King James the Sixth, manifests itself in the fervidly amiable 

 language and prayer of their petition anent its threatened ruin, 

 as we may by and bye see in detail. The ancient King's town of 

 Dumfries, as the great seat of the courts of law, of oldest time 

 held within the Castle of Dumfries, with its monastery, mills, 

 commerce, and shipping, must in a very real sense have been the 

 natural central capital town of the shire, as well as of a much 

 wider superficial area of a land in which towns were as few as 

 far between in the undeveloped ages of the liistory of Dumfries 

 and Galloway. As the shipping of the port of Dumfries on the 

 Nith is in some sort allied with the history of the Bridge of Nith, 

 we here add what may to some extent be considered as one of 

 the foundation vouchers of its descriptive limits and history, as 

 they were understood to have been in the first year of the reign 

 of Henrie and Marie, King and Queen of Scots. We the more 

 willingly do so seeing that the preparatory narrative of the cause 

 itself contains some interesting summary of the constitutional 

 history of the ancient Burghs Royal of Dumfries and Kirkcud- 

 bright, which although otherwise not unknown here receives 

 positive and official confirmation. We need hardly say that so 

 far as the Burgh of Kirkcudbright is concerned no older surname 

 can there well have been there than that of the Maclelland of 

 Bombie, which is associated with the narrative of their Burghal 

 Charter, dated Perth, 26th October, 1455, wherein the reigning 



