Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/216

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NOTES AND QUERIES. p* s. m. MAR. is, m

and nine Invers. It seems most probable that aber and inver are dialectic variations of the same word, just as we find pette or pit alter- nating with both in districts where Picts and Scots have left successive linguistic land- marks.

Scottish Dalriada, C. S. informs us, included "Argyll, Inverness, and Elgin, and all west of these are contained in it." This is news indeed. Hitherto the territory of Fergus, founder of the dynasty of Scottish Dalriada, has been reckoned as corresponding pretty closely with the modern counties of Argyll and Bute (see 'Chronicles of the Picts and Scots,' pp. 130, 137). Where does C. S. find authority for including the counties of Elgin and Inverness in Dalriada ?

His definition of Lodonia may pass, though the phrase " in former times " is loosish, and it is usually believed that in the eighth cen- tury Lodonia was a district in the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia, which marched with Deira on the Tees. C. S. has rubbed out the territory of the Picts of Manann, a name remaining to this day in Clackmannan and Slamannan, and ticketed the district between the Pentlands and the Grampians as part of Lodonia.

Turning now to Strathclyde, greater vio- lence could hardly have been done to the early political geography of Scotland than to describe Galloway as part of Strathclyde at any period. TheNiduarianor Galloway Picts were the sworn foes of the Welshmen or Britons of Strathclyde ; the earthwork divid- ing the two territories, extending for sixty miles from Loch Ryan to the Nith near Sanquhar, may still be traced where the soil has not been cultivated.

Successive kings of Scotland recognized Galloway as distinct from the rest of their dominions : proclamations were addressed by them to "all good men of our whole kingdom Scottish, English, Norman, and Gallovidian "; a different code of law was maintained in assisa mea de Galweia until the year 1426, when the province was brought under the common law of Scotland by Act of Parliament.

Whereon does C. S. found his theory that Galloway was "afterwards overrun by the Irish Gael, from whom it derives its name " ? After what? Not after A.D. 1138, because there is plenty of historic record from that time downwards, and no trace of Irish in- vasion. Not before it, because in that year the Picts of Galloway claimed and obtained their privilege of fighting as the vanguard of the Scottish king's army at the Battle of the Standard.

Even Prof. Rhys, on whom I suppose C. S. relies to help him through with the imagin- ary invasion of Galloway by Irish Gaels (' Celtic Britain,' 230-40), deserts him in his etymology, deriving (erroneously, as I think) the name Galloway from Fidach, in Welsh Goddeu, one of the seven sons of Cruithne. If C. S. had bestowed a little more respect on the laborious Skene, who shows the pro- bability of Galloway=<?a^ Gaidheal=t\ie stranger Gaels, because they were always dependent on a stronger power first on the Northumbrian Saxons, and then on the Norsemen if, I say, C. S. had followed Skene's argument he would at least have found him- self in collision with a race to which he makes no reference whatever, yet which exerted a most powerful influence on the ethnology, place-names, and language of large tracts of Scotland. The Norse jarls were overlords of Galloway till Malcolm HI. married Ingioborg, widow of the great jarl Thorfinn, in 1057, thereby bringing Galloway under his own rule as King of Scotia. But it was not till the Norse King Haco was overthrown at the battle of Largs in 1263 that Sutherland and Caithness, the Western Isles, and the Isle of Man became part of the realm of Scotland under Alexander III.

There are many other statements in C. S.'s paper which invite unfavourable comment, out I refrain from following it further. I think it would be subject for regret if a gen- tleman were allowed undisputed use of the most prominent part of your paper in order to publish what must strike many readers as a very strange view of history.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

WHITE MONEY (9 th S. iii. 108). The down- ward tendency in the value of the silver currency had already set in at the date of Middleton's ' Phoenix ' (1607). Since Elizabeth had established the proportion between gold and silver at ten to one, the price of the latter hacj fallen considerably, and the only wonder is that the nominal value kept up so long. James I. established the proportion at thirteen to one, but the market price of silver continued to fall during the whole of his reign. His first depreciation, made by reducing the weight of the gold, produced a wide circulation of gold ; but the second (1612), made by raising the nominal value of the gold ten per cent., had a bad effect, and led to a great scarcity of silver. Middleton's early legal training would make him fully appreciate the effect of the further reductions in silver which in 1607 had become necessary, and were only a question of time. It is pro-