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.
ADDITIONAL NOTE TO BOOK NINTH.
—In Gyan land full haistely couth ryd.—
A werlik toun so fand thai in that land,
Quhilk Schenown hecht, that Inglissmen had in hand.—V. 441.
—In Schynnown still Wallace his duelling maid.—B. XI. 69.
I can find no place in Guienne, bearing any nominal resemblance. Henry’s geography, of France especially, could not be expected to be very accurate. He had most probably heard of Chinon, a village in Touraine, near Saumur, which was indeed held by the English, and which might be viewed as on the way from Paris to Guienne. Here Henry II. of England died; and here, also, that singular writer Rabelais was born.
EXPLANATION OF THE VIGNETTE IN THE TITLE-PAGE OF THIS VOLUME.
As the cruel and unmerited fate, which terminated the bright career of Wallace, appeared to that ingenious gentleman who furnished me with this design, to be the object on which the mind especially rests in contemplating the history of his life, he has given to the block the principal place here. To this melancholy symbol, the crown of laurel, which, as we learn from the English chroniclers, was contemptuously put on the head of the hero during his trial at Westminster, is with great propriety transferred. Before it appears the fatal axe; also, the target of Wallace, together with the sword of his faithful friend Longueville, exactly copied from that preserved under this name in the house of Kinfauns. The headless body appears from behind. In the back-ground, rays of light are seen to dart forth, giving ground of hope that the dark clouds, which envelope this dismal scene, should be dispelled; and intimating, according to the sense of the inscription, that this cruel act of the tyrannical Edward, by which he hoped to extinguish the spirit of liberty in our native land, should only excite it anew,—the fall of Wallace being immediately succeeded by the intrepid appearance of Bruce, as asserting his claim to independent royalty.