ADDITIONAL NOTE TO BOOK SIXTH.
———— Syne couth to Braid wood fayr,
At a consaill thre dayis soiornyt thai.
At Forest kyrk a metyng ordand he;
Thai chesd Wallace Scottis wardand to be.—V. 765.
The tradition at Biggar is, that it was in the old church there that Wallace was chosen Guardian of Scotland. But this seems to be a mistake. For we have no proof of the erection of a church there till the year 1545, when the college of this place was founded by Malcolm Lord Fleming. Spottiswood’s Relig. Houses, c. 19.
The opinion that by the Forest kyrk we are to understand Selkirk, has far greater probability. Thomas Crawford, in his MS. History of the House of Douglas, says that this meeting was held “at the Forest Kirk in the sheriffdom of Selkirk.” Comment. in Relat. A. Blair, p. 22. Keith, in his List of Parishes, thus mentions Selkirk: “Vulg. Selkrig, alias the Forrest.” Catalogue of Bishops, p. 223.
In a deed of David, the son of Malcolm, (while he was yet Earl of Huntington) founding an abbey here, which was afterwards translated to Kelso, it is called Scelechyrca and Selechyrche. Sir J. Dalrymple’s Collect. p. 403. The name, it is said, in Celtic, “signifies the kirk in the wood or forest; expressing thus, in one word, the situation of the place itself, and the state of the surrounding country.” Statist. Acc. II. 434. But there seems to be no authority for this etymon. The last part of the word is undoubtedly from Anglo-Saxon circ, circe, cyrc, cyric, church. Mr Chalmers’s derivation is highly probable. “As the occasion of the church in the forest,” he observes, “arose from the circumstance of the king’s having a hunting-seat here, the place of his worship may have been called Sele-chyrc, from the Saxon Sele, a hall, a prince’s court.” This idea receives a considerable degree of confirmation from what follows: “When a second church was built, nearly on the same site, after the establishment of the monastery at this hunting-seat, the prior place was distinguished by the name of Selkirk-Regis, while the village of the monks was called Selkirk-Abbatis.” Caledonia, II. 963.