Dumfriesshire

“ The Dumfries coach branched off at Gretna, but nowadays only an occasional motor-car halts in the village, its driver perplexed by the multiplicity of roads, and, if he be a Southron, no less perplexed by the broad Dumfriesshire accent in which his inquiries are answered. For, of a sudden—as suddenly as the dividing-line between the two countries—Scotch have succeeded to English people. At Longtown even, the people are English; here and henceforward Scottish talk and Scottish physiognomies, if not the national dress, are prominent. There is no mingling, to this day. ”

“ Extremely few places with Scandinavian names are to be found in the Scotch Lowlands; and even those few are confined, almost without exception, to the old border land between the Cheviot Hills and the Firths of Clyde and Forth, and to the counties nearest the English border. Dumfriesshire, lying directly north of Cumberland and the Solway Firth, forms the central point of such places. Northumberland and Durham, the two north-easternmost counties of England, contain but a scanty number of them ”

“ The three longest rivers are the Nith, the Annan and the Esk, the basins of which form the great dales by which the county is cleft from north to south—Nithsdale, Annandale and Eskdale. From the point where it enters Dumfriesshire, 16 m. from its source near Enoch Hill in Ayrshire, the course of the Nith is mainly south-easterly till it enters the Solway, a few miles below Dumfries. ”

“ Leaving out those in Dumfriesshire, Ayrshire, and Haddington, where there was originally a Welsh-speaking people, ‘we find,’ he says, ‘the Cymric form of the word in the Grampians,’ which is utter nonsense, ‘the Pentland Hills,’ which is a corruption of Petland Hills, as the Pentland Firth is of the Petland Firth, ‘the Pennguaul Hills,’ which have no existence, and ‘Pendrich in Perth,’ which is a corruption of Pittindriech. ”

“ The shire is divided into three wards, the Upper, comprising all the southern section, or more than half the whole area (over 330,000 acres) ; the Middle, with Hamilton for its chief town, covering fully 190,000 acres; and the Lower, occupying the northern area of about 40,000 acres. The surface falls gradually from the uplands in the south to the Firth of Clyde. The highest hills are nearly all on or close to the borders of Peeblesshire and Dumfriesshire, and include Culter Fell (2454 ft.) ”

“ Dumfriesshire, and is now in the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh. It is represented in Fig. 25.
[61]
Another decorated celt of the same character, though with different ornamentation, is shown in Fig. 26. The curved hands on the faces are formed of lines with dots between, and the sides have a kind of fern-leaf pattern upon them, like that on the winged celt from Trillick, Fig. 98. The original was found at Dams, Balbirnie, [237] Fifeshire.
Fig. 26.—Dams. 1⁄2————Fig. 27.—Ballinamallard. 1⁄2
A very large number of flat celts of the simplest form have been found in Ireland. ”

“ In Wessex and the east the counties are either older kingdoms, like Kent, Sussex, and Essex; or else tribal divisions of the kingdom, like Dorset, Somerset, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Surrey. In Mercia, the recovered country is artificially mapped out round the chief Danish burgs, as in the case of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, and Leicestershire, where the county town usually occupies the centre of the arbitrary shire. In Northumbria it is divided into equally artificial counties by the rivers. ”

“ The county returns one member to parliament. Dumfries, the county town, Annan, Lochmaben and Sanquhar are royal burghs; Dumfries forms a sheriffdom with the shires of Kirkcudbright and Wigtown, and there is a resident sheriff-substitute at Dumfries, who sits also at Annan, Langholm and Lockerbie. The shire is under school-board jurisdiction, and some of the public schools earn grants for higher education. ”

“ But every shire and every kingdom fought for itself alone. If the Dorset men could only drive away the host from Charmouth and Portland, they cared little whether it sailed away to harry Sussex and Hants. If the Northumbrians could only drive it away from the Humber, they cared little whether it set sail for the Thames and the Solent. The North Folk of East Anglia were equally happy to send it off toward the South Folk. ”

“ He became remarkable, as he grew up, for great strength, strong love of enterprise, and amazing bodily agility, so that no man in that part of Dumfries-shire could cope with him at the games of the neighbourhood, or in personal contest. ”

“ Thus she is a true country, not a province; indeed, she is made up of many counties and provinces, and each is utterly different from other, and their different genius may be caught by the attentive in their names, which are Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire. Her variety thus lies in them and their dear, and let us hope, immortal differences and characteristics, their genius that is, which is as various as their scenery. ”

“ Telford says of him: "The Colonel seems to have roused the county of Dumfries from the lethargy in which it has slumbered for centuries. The map of the county, the mineralogical survey, the new roads, the opening of lime works, the competition of ploughing, the improving harbours, the building of bridges, are works which bespeak the exertions of no common man."—Letter to Mr. Andrew. Little, dated Shrewsbury, 30th November, 1801. ”

“ We can see at a glance that some of our counties such as Kent, Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, Surrey, represent old kingdoms or sub-kingdoms of the early “Heptarchic” period. Norfolk and Suffolk are but the two divisions of East Anglia. Yorkshire and Northumberland may stand fairly well for Deira and Bernicia, the generous endowment of St. Cuthbert’s tomb being interposed between them in the shape of the county of Durham. The formation of the three counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire out of Celtic Strathclyde and its adjoining territory is a late and somewhat obscure piece of history ”

“ The neighborhood of Dumfries, to which the last scene of our subject leads us, is very charming. The town is just a quiet country town, but the Nith is a fine river, and runs through it, and makes both town and country very agreeable. The scenery is not wild and rocky, but the vale of the Nith is rich, and beautiful in its richness. The river runs in the finest sweeps imaginable; it seems to disdain to [Pg 434] go straight, but makes a circle for a mile, perhaps, at a time, as clean and perfect as if struck with compasses, and then away in another direction ”

“ But while two branches of the race grew, flourished, and fell, a third division rose to rank and fortune in this island, becoming closely allied by links of property and title with Devon, the fairest shire in the English land—links which the space of 750 years has strengthened, the glamour of an historic name, the charm of many a noble nature, have rendered unbreakable. ”

“ Devon, again, is a perfectly separate unit, resulting from a definite political act of the early ninth century. Of Dorset and Hampshire one can say less, but with Sussex you get a unit which has been one kingdom and one diocese, set in true natural limits and lying within these same boundaries for much more than a thousand years. Kent, probably an original Roman division, has been one unit for longer still. Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex are equally old, though not upon their land boundaries equally denned ”

“ When the top of the Ferry Hills was reached we saw the town, all as dead as if the holy Sabbath lay upon it, without one evidence of life. How beautiful is Dunfermline seen from the Ferry Hills, its grand old abbey towering over all, seeming to hallow the city and to lend a charm and dignity to the lowliest tenement. Nor is there in all broad Scotland, nor in many places elsewhere, that I know of, a more varied and delightful view than that obtained from the park upon a fine day. What Benares is to the Hindoo, Mecca to the Mohammedan, Jerusalem to the Christian, all that Dunfermline is to me. ”

“ They are a fearful, fearless race, wandering about, in former times, almost during the whole year, and pitching their tents—in other words, setting their asses to graze, and themselves to forage—wherever solitude or the tolerance of the laird or farmer will permit their presence. When Scotland, in general, and Dumfries-shire in particular, from Criffell to Corsincon, were densely covered with natural wood, these people divided the woodland with the fox, the boar, and the wolf, and were extremely expert in noosing hares, rabbits, and polecats. ”

“ It was generally conceded that the Earl of Dumphreys was eccentric. He was an ardent disciple of Tolstoy, and lived on his estate in the North in the simplest fashion, unshaven and unshorn, and affecting coarse girdled robes and sandals.
Despite his titles and his lands, he was as much out of the world as though he rested with his sires beneath the gray stones of Dumphreys Abbey.
"Of course," said Nina, her face drawn, "we must wire at once for the earl." ”

“ Along the little churchyard, packed full with women, streams all the gentle blood of North Devon,—tall and stately men, and fair ladies, worthy of the days when the gentry of England were by due right the leaders of the people, by personal prowess and beauty, as well as by intellect and education. And first, there is my lady Countess of Bath, whom Sir Richard Grenville is escorting, cap in hand (for her good Earl Bourchier is in London with the queen) ”

“ Distance and difficulty, and in early times danger too, keep many people away. And though a shire is not a wide tract of country for most purposes, and according to modern ideas, it was nevertheless quite wide enough in former times to bring about the result I have mentioned. In the times before the Norman conquest, if not before the completed union of England under Edgar, the shire-mote or county assembly, though in theory still a folk-mote or primary assembly, had shrunk into what was virtually a witenagemote or assembly of the most important persons in the county. ”

“ The bone lace manufactures of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appear to have extended over a much wider area than they occupy in the present day. From Cambridge to the adjacent counties of Northampton and Hertfordshire, by Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Oxfordshire, the trade spread over the southern counties [1092] of Wiltshire, Somersetshire, [1093] Hampshire, and Dorset, to the more secluded valleys of Devon—the county which still sustains the ancient reputation of "English point"—terminating at Launceston, on the Cornish coast. ”

“ The English counties of Northumberland and Cumberland are thus separated from the Scottish shires of Berwick, Roxburghe, and Dumfries. In former times, “the frontier shifted according to the surging tides of war and diplomacy.”
Even to the eleventh century, the old Kingdom of Northumbria included part of what is now Scotland, up to the Firth of Forth and as far west as Stirling. In 1081, however, the Earl of Northumberland ceded the district which made the Tweed the southern boundary of the Kingdom of the Scots. Hence the honor of antiquity belonging to the Tweed as the eastern border-line! ”

“ In Edinburgh, the duty has been very long commuted; but in Dumfries, the finisher of the law still exercises, or did lately exercise, his privilege, the quantity taken being regulated by a small iron ladle, which he uses as the measure of his perquisite. ”

“ In the north, the Earl of Newcastle not only garrisoned the most considerable places, but even the general possession of the north was for the king, excepting Hull, and some few places, which the old Lord Fairfax had taken up for the Parliament. On the other hand, entire Cornwall and most of the western counties were the king's. The Parliament had their chief interest in the south and eastern part of England, as Kent, Surrey, and, Sussex, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, Bedford, Huntingdon, Hertford, Buckinghamshire, and the other midland counties. ”

“ If we construct for ourselves a county map from Domesday, we shall miss the names of several villages, although often of antiquity; but, on the other hand, shall meet with the names of important manors, often extending into several parishes, often suggesting by their forms a name as old as the migration, yet now represented at most by some obscure manor, and perhaps only by a solitary farm, or even, it may be, a field. In Sussex, for instance, the ‘Basingham’ of Domesday cannot now be identified ”

“ One of these lords, Belhaven, of the7 name of Douglas, who was blind, bid them set him by one of the party, and he would make sure of one. So he was set next the Earl of Dumfries. He was all the while holding him fast. And when the other asked him what he meant by that, he said, ever since the blindness was come on him, he was in such fear of falling, that he could not help the holding fast to those who were next to him. He had all the while a poniard in his other hand, with which he had certainly stabbed Dumfries, if any disorder had happened. ”

“ But Devonshire, one entire county, is so full of great towns, and those towns so full of people, and those people so universally employed in trade and manufactures, that not only it cannot be equalled in England, but perhaps not in Europe. ”