152 Transactions. 
3. Old Annan. By Georce Nettson, F.S.A., Scot. 
1. Origin. 
The ancient and royal burgh of Annan has few prehistoric 
memories ; its past becomes impenetrable in the 12th century. 
Its earliest inhabitants have left no reminiscences in flint arrows, 
bronze spears, or funeral urns. No storied altar, no memorial of 
the dead attests a Roman settlement. Some places have their 
chronicle in stone, their history in their buildings, but Annan 
has no antique architecture. The Moat is its sole ancient 
monument. Archeology, apart from records, can do little to 
raise the old place and people from the grave. But a fragmentary 
memory has been conserved in chartersand musty histories, wofully 
incomplete, except for imaginations which can build up Hercules 
from his footprint. The records pieced together, with many a 
void between, make but a meagre outline far too faint to bid the 
past return in “ bannered pomp ” again. 
The town arose, we know not when, on a gentle slope swelling 
slowly to south and east and north, whilst the unbridged river, 
fordable above and below, kept ceaseless watch upon the west. 
Fertile fields lay round, rich pasture holms were spread below. 
The river was more than a river-——twice a day it was an arm of 
the sea, and both the Annan water and the tide of the Solway 
yielded a harvest not less surely than the fields. 
As a place-name we may be sure that the river had the priority, 
that Annan town was so called from Annan water. This appears 
to have been the case in a few other instances in Scotland. The 
absolute identity of town-name and river-name is, however, a 
relatively rare thing. What Annan as a word means no one can 
tell. There are no collateral examples sufficiently similar, and 
Celtic etymology, unsupported by parallel cases capable of some- 
thing like proof, is a mere Will-of-the-wisp. We can guess with 
some measure cf probability that Lochmaben either means the 
loch cluster, or the loch of Mabon—that Arthurian shade. We 
know that Lockerbie—spelt in 1198 Locardebi* derives its name 
from the family of Locard, which, for a time represented in the 
court of the early Bruces, ultimately took root in Clydesdale. 
Kecclefechan is called after an Irish saint., But Moffat and 
Annan are both unsolved, and to all intents insoluble puzzles. 
* Bain’s Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland, i. 2666. 
