Early Mediaeval

Scandinavian incursions and settlements in both Scotland and Ireland were of significance in the development of both nations. Social, political, and economic change then ensued, leaving long lasting linguistic, cultural and genetic legacies. The name Galloway contains the Gaelic words ‘Gall’, originally a foreigner and later a Scandinavian, and Gàidheil, a Gaelic speaker. Fergus of Galloway was known as ‘righ Gall-Ghàidheil’, king of the foreign or Scandinavian Gaelic speakers. Questions arise as to the geographical origins of the Gall-Ghàidheil and when they intruded into greater Galloway. That greater Galloway was Gaelicised can be seen not only from place-name studies but also from the very large number and great variety of Gaelic surnames associated with the region. The origin of Fergus of Galloway, still an unsolved problem for historians, is considered in the light of the given names of his descendants. These names suggest that Fergus was either a Gael or a very much Gaelicised individual. The focus then moves to the medieval cenéla of greater Galloway. The names of leading individuals and kindreds, in particular those of the greinours of the Clenafren, are analysed. Two Muintir groups recorded in Carrick are also examined in some detail. The tantalising but as yet unproven possibilities of Irish Dál Fiatach origins for both the Clenafren and the McKerrells are outlined. The apparent absence of well-researched genetic data which might prove helpful in illuminating the origins of the kindreds of greater Galloway is commented on. The future availability of such data could potentially assist in further unravelling Galloway’s complex past. The meanings of contractions and Gaelic words used are given at the end of the article.

The Pictish inscribed stone at Trusty’s Hill is unique in Dumfries and Galloway and has long puzzled scholars as to why this was carved here and if it is indeed genuine. As part of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society, the Galloway Picts Project was undertaken in 2012 in order to recover the evidence required to understand the archaeological context of the inscribed stone and the significance of Trusty’s Hill within Early Medieval Scotland. The following paper is intended simply as an interim summary report, in advance of a monograph reporting the full analyses and results (Toolis and Bowles forthcoming).

The meeting of Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society on 2 December 2011 was a very special occasion. The topic for the evening was ‘The Names of Rheged’ and the speaker, Dr. Andrew Breeze. It was the James Williams Memorial Lecture, held in memory of the Society’s much-revered and long-serving editor. During James Williams’ editorship of the Transactions, Dr. Breeze has published several significant research papers on the place-names of Dumfries and Galloway and he willingly agreed to travel from the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, to deliver the memorial lecture. This article is taken from a transcript of the lecture which he has generously offered for publication.

For at least 600 years, between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries, Galloway was a Gaelic speaking land. Although both the beginning and the end of Gaelic Galloway are uncertain, that Gaelic was the language of the kingdom of Galloway established by Fergus in the early eleventh century, and was still the main language of the Douglas lordship of Galloway at its end in 1455, is indisputable. In addition to the Gaelic personal and place names recorded in medieval charters, the thousands of Gaelic place names which survived to be recorded by the Ordnance Survey in the 1840s bear witness to Galloway’s Gaelic past. Furthermore, despite the language shift to Scots, there is evidence of cultural continuity between the agriculture of Gaelic Galloway and the farming practice of seventeenth and early eighteenth century Galloway. Then, at the end of the eighteenth century, the process of agricultural improvement began, a process which has continued to the present. The cumulative effect of this process in the lowlands, combined with afforestation in the uplands, has been the erasure of Galloway’s past. The Galloway landscape known to the Galloway Levellers and the Covenanters would have been familiar to the medieval Gaelic farmers who named the land, but none would recognise the landscape of the present.

Four areas of archaeological significance covering a timescale from early Neolithic to post-medieval periods were identified during initial fieldwork at Lockerbie Academy.2 The earliest site identified was the remains of a Neolithic timber hall, which was situated on top of the flat plateau towards the north-west end of the site. At the summit of the rounded knoll in the centre of the area, a Bronze Age phase consisting of a cremation and inhumation cemetery enclosed by a possible ring-cairn was identified. At the base of the rounded knoll, the remains of an Early Historic timber hall were identified. This Anglian timber hall reoccupied the site of a post-built structure, which was interpreted as a timber hall, possibly belonging to an earlier British tradition. A corn-drying kiln was identified cut into the same knoll as the Bronze Age cemetery and has been dated to the late medieval or early post-medieval period. A segmented ditched enclosure was located towards the north-east end of the site, but the poor survival of this feature combined with a lack of finds and palaeobotanical evidence means that it remains undated.

One of the characteristic archaeological features of the Machars is the series of promontory forts occupying remote headlands projecting out into Wigtown Bay, Luce Bay and the Irish Sea. They are generally characterized by one or more ramparts and ditches that appear to cut the headland off from its hinterland, but little is known about them. Morphologically they are a class of monument typical of the Iron Age and attributed very broadly to the second half of the 1st millennium BC (Armit 1997, 59; Harding 2004, 144-7).

For nearly four hundred years, historians have been perplexed by the location of ‘Rosnat’, a British monastery and house of studies mentioned in the lives of various Irish saints. It was long taken as Whithorn in Galloway, and this is still argued, as we shall see. However, what follows discusses the problem and then (on the basis of new evidence) suggests that the place was Old Kea in Cornwall, on a tidal creek between Truro and Falmouth. If so, it allows us to identify (somewhat unexpectedly) a home of Celtic learning and spirituality that for centuries enjoyed international fame, was the intellectual centre of Cornish or south-western Christianity in the sixth century, and has implications for our understanding of religion in early Scotland, as elsewhere in Britain and Ireland. The present paper may here seem ungracious in trying to show that a home of early learning was not at Whithorn. But, being published in Dumfries and Galloway, it perhaps suggests that, if there was not much learning there in the sixth century, there is a great deal in the twenty-first. 

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