108 Transactions. 
As these articles bore no name of the writer of them, I may 
now mention that they were written by me, so that no charge of 
plagiarism can be made if I weave a few of their details into this 
paper. 
But I shall avoid details as much as possible, and give a 
general account more suited to the time and taste of our monthly 
meetings. In one important respect this paper is an original 
communication, inasmuch as I can now prove what was for long 
a mere theory of mine—viz., that in the olden time there was a 
village or kirktown called Troquire along the road leading to the 
Parish Church, and quite distinct from the Bridgend of Dumfries, 
now the populous burgh of Maxwelltown. 
The first thing which srikes one is the peculiarity of the name 
of the parish, the spelling of which as at present dates only from 
a little before the beginning of this century. In a charter of the 
fourteenth century it is spelt Trogwayre, and in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries it is variously spelled, according to the 
ear of the writer Trequair, Trequier, and Troquire. 
It has been suggested that the word may be derived from old 
French words trois choewrs, and mean the third of three choirs, 
of which Lincluden and Newabbey were the others. But the 
French language had scarcely any influence in this district, and 
if it had any, the words supposed would be unintelligible French 
applied to a church building. On this point Mr Cosmo Innes 
says—‘ From the names of places and persons in charters of the 
twelfth century in Galloway it appears the people were of Celtic 
or Gaelic race and language, which remained until the fifteenth 
or sixteenth century. It had its own laws of the Bretts and 
Scots, which King Edward in vain tried to abolish. The Normans 
had no secure footing, nor the court French of Queen Mary’s 
time.” 
The learned Mr Chalmers in his ‘“‘ Caledonia” derives it from 
two old British words—+tre, a small town or village, and gwyr 
(similar to the way I find it spelt in fourteenth century), the 
bend or turn of a river. 
There is but one other town in Scotland of a similar sound and 
spelling, Traquair in Peeblesshire 
winding river called the Quair. 
Here the river has been always called the Nith or Nid, but it 
certainly winds round this eastern boundary of the parish from 
near the church to Mavisgrove, a characteristic which caught 
a village situated beside a 
