Page:The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland - Murray - 1873.djvu/30

16 of the Cumbrian Britons fled after the battle of Caltraeth. It is as Bretts and Welsh, moreover, that the inhabitants of Cumbria or Strathclyde are referred to by the contemporary Saxon chroniclers, and in the charters and proclamations of David I., Malcolm IV., and William the Lion. So late as 1305, it was enacted by Edward I., in revising the laws of Scotland, that "the usages of the Scots and Bretts should be abolished and no more used." Finally, it is to the ancient British or Welsh that we must still look for the etymology of the names of the great natural features of the country, "the ever-flowing rivers and the ever-lasting hills." It is to this tongue that we look for the derivation of the names of the Tweed, the Teviot, the Clyde, the Nith, and the Annan, the numerous Esks, Edens, Tynes, Avons, Calders, and Alns or Allans; that we explain Cheviot, and the other border hills, which were conspicuous enough to retain the names given by the earlier race. The eminences of the south country, when not hills, fells, laws, or knows, are pens like Pennygent, Pen-maen-maur, and the other Pens of Wales and Cornwall. In Teviotdale we have Penielheugh, Pen-chrise Pen, Skelf-hill Pen, and the obsolete Penango and Penangoishope; on the watershed between Teviotdale and Liddesdale, Pennygent repeats a southern name in its entirety. At the head of Eskdale rises Ettrick Pen; in the vicinity of Innerleithen in Tweeddale, the Lee Pen. There is no trace of any Gaelic element at this time in the south-east of Scotland; the occupation of Galloway and Carrick by a colony of Scots from Ireland took place some centuries later. A few monastic and missionary settlements of the Scoto-Irish church like Melrose have a Gaelic etymon; but these are isolated, and, from their very nature as exceptions, prove the rule. Many of the Celtic local names which occur along the southern borders of the Firth of Forth doubtless belong to the period when the Scottish kings first extended their authority over Lothian, and Celtic Scots were mixed with the Angles who occupied the district.

§ 6. An Angle or Engl-ish dialect has been as long established in the South-east of Scotland as in any part of England, with the exception, perhaps, of Kent. According to accredited accounts, the district was entirely abandoned by the Britons after the battle of Caltraeth, and even though we allow of a much less sweeping change of population, it is evident that Northumbria north of the Tweed and Cheviots was as completely peopled by the Angles as Northumbria south of these lines. In confirmation of this we find that the geographical names of the Southern Scottish counties, so far as they refer to the dwelling-places of men, or even to the smaller streams or burns, the hursts, shaws, morasses, and lower hills, are as purely Teutonic as the local names of Kent or Dorset. Such names as Coldingham, Redpath, Haliburton, Greenlaw, Mellerstane, Wedderburn, Cranshaws, in Berwickshire; Linton, Morebattle, Newbigging,