Dumfries : Its Buroiial Oric.in. 17;') 



was faithful in all things, while Adam had been a thief and 

 of bad fame. Now, it is not easy in a single breath to advert 

 to all the data here which go to shew the bearings of this 

 old enquiry. Racially it is overwhelming proof that Dumfries 

 (which equated Galwegian and thief) was strongly anti-Celtic 

 in its tone. The jurors are partly burgesses and partly 

 barons, a fact which is easily paralleled elsewhere and is 

 deeply significant (i) of the as yet composite character of 

 burghal go\ernment when burgess and baron sat together, 

 (2) of the influence of the castle on the burgh, and (3) of the 

 suggestiveness of this connection — the demonstration that in 

 all probability the barons' share of the jurisdiction was due 

 directly and indirectly to their tenurial obligations towards 

 the King's castle of Dumfries. If year by year the rural 

 baron came to do military duty in the royal castle, or sent 

 his deputy for the purpose ; if, as we know, the tendency 

 asserted itself for him to own a house and croft in the town 

 where his family or that of his retainer might dwell during 

 the forty days as well as at other times ; if the military centre 

 gathered round it a social and civic influence of ever-widening 

 reach ; if in this way the best forces of both town and 

 country united their effort towards a permanent urban settle- 

 ment — we may well pause before we reject so many testi- 

 monies to the share of the knights of early Dumfriesshire 

 in the making of their county town. One remembers, with 

 a better perception of its full meaning, how there were towns 

 whose chief dignitary was the Constahularius — not so named 

 as of the castle but as of the burgh — and that so late as the 

 fifteenth century the Constable of Dundee and the bailies of 

 that burgh sat together in judgment upon the castle hill. 22 

 The links of an analogous relation in early Dumfries, though 

 slender, are yet strong. 



Viewed as originating in the defensive as well as offen- 

 sive policy of William the Lion, a centre for operations alike 

 to repress the ravages of those " Galuvets," who were 

 " thieves," and, as occasion called, to facilitate punitive 

 expeditions into their midst, the burgh of Dumfries, the 



22 -Rn,. Mag. Sifi., ii., 615. 



