council expends the “residue” grant in providing bursaries for science pupils, and in subsidizing agricultural classes at Kilmarnock and Edinburgh University, and the cookery classes and science department of the high schools.
History and Antiquities.—Galloway, or the country west of the Nith, belonged to a people whom Ptolemy called Novantae and Agricola subdued in A.D. 79. They were Atecott Picts, and are conjectured to' have replaced a small, dark-haired aboriginal race, akin probably to the Basques of the Iberian peninsula. They held this south-western corner of Scotland for centuries, protecting themselves from the northern and southern Picts by a rampart, called the Deil’s Dyke, which has been traced in a north-easterly direction from Beoch on the eastern side of Loch Ryan to a spot on the Nith near the present Thornhill, a distance of 50 m. Evidences of the Pictish occupation are prevalent in the form of hill forts, cairns, standing stones, hut circles and crannogs or lake dwellings (several of which were exposed when Dowalton Loch near Sorbie and Barhapple Loch near Glenluce were drained), besides canoes and flint, stone and bronze implements. The Romans possessed a small camp at Rispain near Whithorn and a station at Rerigonium, which has been identified with Innermessan on the eastern shore of Loch Ryan; but so few remains exist that it has been concluded they effected no permanent settlement in West Galloway. Ninian, the first Christian missionary to Scotland, landed at Isle of Whithorn in 396 to convert the natives. His efforts were temporarily successful, but soon after his death (432) the people relapsed into paganism, excepting a faithful remnant who continued to carry on Christian work. A monastery was built at Whithorn, and, though the bishopric founded in the 8th century was shortly afterwards removed, it was established again in the 12th, when the priory erected by Fergus, “king” of Galloway, became the cathedral church of the see of Galloway and so remained till the Reformation. In the 6th century the people accepted the suzerainty of the Northumbrian kings who allowed them in return autonomy under their own Pictish chiefs. On the decay of the Saxon power more than two hundred years later this over lordship was abandoned, and the Atecotts formed an alliance with the Northmen then ravaging the Scottish coasts. Because of this relationship the other Picts styled the Atecotts, by way of reproach, Gallgaidhel, or stranger Gaels, whence is derived Galloway, the name of their territory. With the aid of the Norsemen and the men of Galloway Kenneth Macalpine defeated the northern Picts at Forteviot and was crowned king of Scotland at Scone in 844. Henceforward the general history of Wigtownshire is scarcely distinguishable from that of Kirkcudbrightshire. A few particular points, however, must be noted. Malcolm MacHeth, who had married a sister of Somerled, lord of the Isles, headed about 1150 a Celtic revolt against the intrusion of Anglo-Norman lords, but was routed at Causewayend near the estuary of the Cree. In 1190 Roland, lord of Galloway, built for Cistercians from Melrose the fine abbey of Glenluce, of which the only remains are the foundations of the nave, the gable of the south transept, the cloisters, quadrangle and the vaulted chapter-house. In the disordered state of the realm during David II.’s reign east Galloway had been surrendered to Edward III. (1333), but Wigtownshire, which had been constituted a shire in the previous century and afterwards called the Shire to distinguish it from the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, remained Scottish territory. In 1342 Sir Malcolm Fleming, earl of Wigtown, was appointed sheriff with power to hold the county separate from the other half of Galloway, but falling into straitened circumstances he sold his earldom and estates in 1372 to Archibald the Grim, 3rd earl of Douglas, thus once more placing all Galloway under one lord. Under Douglas’s lordship the laws of Galloway, which had obtained from Pictish times and included, among other features, trial by battle (unless an accused person chose expressly to forgo the native custom and ask for a Jury), were modified, and in 1426 abolished, the province then coming under the general law. Soon after the fall of the Douglases (1455) the Kennedy family, long established in the Ayrshire district of Carrick, obtained a preponderating influence in Wigtownshire, and in 1509 David Kennedy was created earl of Cassillis. Gilbert, the 4th earl, so powerful that he was called the “king of Carrick,” held the shire for Mary, queen of Scots, when she broke with the Lords of the Congregation, but could do little for her cause. He profited by the Reformation himself, however, to acquire by fraud and murder the estate of Glenluce Abbey (about 1570). In 1603 James VI. instituted a bishop in the see of Galloway—which had not been filled for twenty years—and otherwise strove to impose episcopacy upon the people, but the inhabitants stood firm for the Covenant. The acts against Nonconformity were stringently enforced and almost every incumbent in Galloway was deprived of his living. Field-preaching was a capital crime and attendance at conventicles treason. A reign of terror supervened, and numbers of persons emigrated to Ulster in order to escape persecution. John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, having replaced Sir Andrew Agnew, who had refused the Test, as sheriff (1682), goaded the people into rebellion, the drowning of Margaret MacLachlan and Margaret Wilson within flood mark in Wigtown Bay (1685) being an instance of his ruthless methods. With the Revolution of 16S8 Presbyterianism was restored, and John Gordon, recently consecrated bishop of Galloway, retired to France. The Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 excited only languid interest, but in 1747 heritable jurisdictions were abolished and Sir Andrew Agnew ceased to be hereditary sheriff, though he was the only official able to prove continuous tenure of the post since it was granted to his family in 1451. The first sheriff appointed under the new system was Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, father of James Boswell, the biographer of Dr Johnson. In 1760 an engagement took place in Luce Bay, when the young French seaman, François Thurot, with three warships, attempting a diversion in Jacobite interests, was defeated and killed with the loss of three hundred men and his vessels.
Among ancient castles in Wigtownshire may be mentioned the cliff towers, possibly of Norse origin, of Carghidown and Castie Feather near Burrow Head, the ruins of Baldoon, south of Wigtown, associated with events which suggested to Sir Walter Scott the romance of The Bride of Lammermoor, Corsewall near the northern extremity of the Rinns; the Norse stronghold of Cruggleton, south of Garliestown, which belonged in the 13th century to de Quincy, earl of Winchester, who had married a daughter of Alan, “king” of Galloway, and to Alexander Comyn, 2nd earl of Buchan (d. 1289), his son-in-law; Dunskey, south of Portpatrick, built in the 16th century, occupying the site of an older fortress; the fragments of Long Castle at Dowalton Loch, the ancient seat of the MacDonells; Myrton, the seat of the MacCullochs, in Mochrum parish; and the ruined tower of Sorbie, the ancient keep of the Hannays.
See Sir Herbert Maxwell, History of Dumfries and Galloway (Edinburgh, 1896); Sir Andrew Agnew, The Agnews of Lochnaw (Edinburgh, 1893); The Galloway Herd-Book (Dumfries, 1880); Proceedings of the Soc. of Ant. of Scotland, passim; Gordon Fraser, Wigtown and Whithorn (Wigtown, 1877).
WIGWAM, a term loosely adopted as a general name for the houses of North American Indians. It is, however, strictly applied to a particular dome-shaped or conical hut made of poles lashed together at the tops and covered with bark. The skin tents of many of the Plains Indians are called tipis. The word “wigwam” represents the Europeanized or Anglicized form of the Algonkian wēkou-om-ut, i.e. “in his (their) house.”
WIHTRED, WIHTRED, king of Kent (d. 725), son of Ecgberht, nephew of Hlothhere and brother of Eadric, came to the Kentish throne in 690 after the period of anarchy which followed the death of the latter king. Bede states that Wihtred and Swefheard were both kings in Kent in 692, and this statement would appear to imply a period of East Saxon influence (see Kent), while there is also evidence of an attack by Wessex. Wihtred, however, seems to have become sole king in 694. At his death, which did not take place until 725, he left the kingdom to his sons Aethelberht, Eadberht and Alric. After the annal 694 in the Chronicle there is inserted a grant of privileges to the church, which purports to have been issued by Wihtred at a place called Baccancelde. This grant, however, cannot be accepted as genuine and
