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Notes on some Historical and Literary Matter hearing on 

 the Works called the Gatrail. By Miss Eussell of 

 Ashiesteel. 



It was perhaps an omission that the photographs of the por- 

 tion of the Oatrail remaining at the Rink, and of the adjoining 

 fort of similar construction, presented to the Club in the summer 

 of 1880, were not accompanied by some notes about the locality 

 where the line seems to have crossed the Tweed. The most im- 

 portant circumstance about the Oatrail on the Tweed, or indeed 

 anywhere, is this : that the early church of Melrose was un- 

 doubtedly in the diocese of Lindisfarne, and therefore in North- 

 umbria, or at least on territory belonging to Bernicia ; while 

 Traquair is known from the document called the Inquest of 

 David, printed in the Ohartulary of Glasgow, to have been in 

 the early diocese of Glasgow, which is further known, in connec- 

 tion with the history of Kentigern, to have been co-extensive 

 with Cumbria ; to have been Cumbria, in fact. If these latter 

 authorities should not be thought conclusive as to a state of 

 things which was obsolete long before their date, it may be 

 added, that they are borne out by the name of Traquair ; the 

 form Travercoir seems to be the Cornish (rather than Welsh) 

 church-town or church-lands ; the choir being the old monastic 

 church, where, if the numbers allowed of it, there was probably 

 some sort of service being chanted day and night. It is the word 

 which formed Bennchor or Bangor, the high or head choir, both 

 in Wales and Ireland. And the same word appears in Duchoir, 

 the spelling given in Font's maps for Dewchar, the locality where 

 the church of Yarrow stands ; the Black Choir ; the adjective 

 being in the Welsh, not the Gaelic form. 



All these circumstances have been long in print, if not alto- 

 gether accessible to the general public ; but it does not seem 

 ever to have been distinctly observed, that as Traquair and Mel- 

 rose are both in the valley of the Tweed, and both on the south 

 side of the river, the frontier between Cumbria and Bernicia 

 must have crossed the river somewhere between them : or that 

 it is therefore in reality beyond doubt, that the works called the 

 Catrail, as suggested by Whitaker in England, and believed by 

 Sir Walter iScott in Scotland, mark the frontier ; and on the 

 Tweed, with the Saxons of Bernicia as near as Old Melrose, must 

 have been seriously intended to defend it, where the rivers 



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