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Grailing or Traverlinn and some other Old Names. 

 By Miss Russell. 



Attention has been called to the fact that Crailing, in 

 Roxburghshire, is called in the older documents Traverlinn. 

 While I think this unusually great change in the name is 

 merely owing to one of the errors of transcription common 

 in black letter writing, in which the T, E, and C are so like 

 that one wonders how it worked at all in legal documents, 

 the class of names this belongs to is a very interesting one. 

 Mr Skene was puzzled by it. In a note to Celtic Scotland 

 he gives a list of eight or nine names beginning with Traver, 

 none of which are now used exactly in their original form, 

 though none of the others are so much changed as Traverlinn. 

 AVhile it has a Cymric sound, Traver does not occur in Wales 

 (there is a Trevor Hall, but that is the name of the owner.) 

 Tre or Tref on the other hand, is house, village, or town 

 in Welsh. 



And it only struck me lately that the Travers are explained 

 by an opinion of Mr Skene, which he does not explain his 

 reasons for, and which may probably have been formed on 

 very slight indications, that the Welsh spoken in Scotland, 

 the language of Oumbria, or Strathclyde, or the North, as it 

 is called in the older Welsh documents, belonged to the same 

 class as the Cymric of Cornwall, of which there are literary 

 remains enough to judge by, and that of Brittany, both of 

 which differ considerably from the Welsh of the Principality. 

 In Welsh, as is well-known from names like liettws y Coed, 

 etc., etc., the and of the are equally represented by y, ys, 

 and 1/r, according to circumstances ; but in Breton and in 

 Cornish it is always ar, which satisfactorily explains the 

 Travers. 



The most important in the way of history are the Trabrouns, 

 places of rushes, for brun is distinctly Welsh, the Gaelic 

 for rushes being luchair. All the others of Mr Skene's list 

 might equally be Gaelic, or Gaelic-Latin, unless Travernant. 



