Galloway, an extensive district in the south-west of Scotland, once somewhat larger, but now entirely comprised in the shire of Wigtown and stewardry of Kirkcudbright. It enjoys a remarkably mild climate, and has long been famous as a pastoral country, its breed of small horses and of large hornless black cattle being well known centuries ago; but the enormous improvement of agriculture under the fostering care of two generations of singularly public-spirited landlords has made dairy-farming now the most important industry. The province is about 70 miles in length by 40 at its utmost breadth, and contains the greatest diversity of scenery—mountain, lake, and stream, as well as dreary waste and almost pathless moor. There is no mineral wealth and hardly an industry, hence the inhabitants are almost entirely concerned with the primitive occupations of man—tilling the soil, sheep and cattle rearing, and fishing. They are simple, honest, and hospitable, with almost every virtue proper to a peasantry save severe morality. A more detailed account of the country and its productions will be given under the heads KIRKCUDBRIGHT and WIGTOWN.
The province owes its name to the fact that the natives were called Gall-Gael, or foreign Gaels, at first because of their falling under the foreign rule of the Anglians; but as the Picts of Galloway they continued to be known so late as the Battle of the Standard in 1138. Their geographical position had shut them off from their northern congeners, and they continued under their ancient names a distinct people till the 12th century, and preserved their language—which was substantially identical with Gaelic—till the 16th, when it finally disappeared before the Reformation and the use of Lowland Scotch in the parish churches and schools, leaving only a rich crop of place-names wonderfully similar to those of Ireland and the south-western Highlands of Scotland. The earliest inhabitants are styled by Ptolemy the Novantæ, to the west of the Nith, with two towns, Lucophibia at Whithorn and Rerigonium on the eastern shore of Loch Ryan; and the Selgovæ, covering Dumfriesshire, with the towns Trimontium, Uxellum, Corda, and Carbantorigum, the sites of which are placed by Mr Skene on Birrenswark Hill, on Wardlaw Hill, at Sanquhar, and at the moat of Urr, between Nith and Dee. Tacitus tells us that Agricola concentrated a force in that part of Britain which looks on Ireland, and most authorities identify this with Galloway rather than, as Mr Skene, with the modern county of Argyll. This view is borne out by the discovery of Roman forts in Wigtownshire and the Stewardry in situations corresponding with those of the towns of the Novantæ described by Ptolemy as existing in the time of Hadrian. Galloway was subdued by the Northumbrian Anglians of Bernicia during the 7th century, and governed by them for about two hundred years, and it was to this period apparently that the modern name is due. After about three centuries of more or less complete independence, interrupted only by Norse ravages and at length by a period of Norse supremacy, it was recovered by Malcolm Canmore, granted as an earldom in 1107 to his youngest son David, and on his accession to the throne in 1124 formally united with Scotland. Of the native lords of Galloway we read of a doubtful 'Jacobus, rex Galwalliæ' as one of the eight tributary princes who waited on Edgar at Chester in 973. A more historical figure is Fergus, appointed first Earl of Galloway, after the fall of Ulgric and Duvenald, lords of the Galiveses, at the Battle of the Standard. With Somerled he made an unsuccessful revolt against Malcolm IV., and was obliged to give his lordship to his sons, Uehtred and Gilbert, who in their turn, when William the Lion was taken prisoner at Alnwick in 1174, attempted, but in vain, to throw off the Scottish yoke, even offering fealty to England. Roland, a son of Uehtred, did homage to Henry II. of England, and his son Alan, who succeeded in 1200, was one of the barons who forced John to sign Magna Charta, but seems later to have returned to his Scottish allegiance. At the dispute for the Scottish crown, which opened in 1291, the lordship of Galloway through descent and marriage was in the hands of John Baliol, Alexander Comyn, and two others; consequently the Galwegians resisted
Robert Bruce in his struggle with England for the Scottish crown. The province was traversed successively by Wallace, Edward I., and Bruce, and was at length subdued for his brother by Edward Bruce in 1308. Again in 1334 it was seized by Edward Baliol, but his power was at length overthrown, and in 1369 the eastern part of Galloway was granted by the crown to Archibald Douglas, surnamed the Grim, who built himself the stronghold of Threave Castle on a small island in the Dee. His haughty and turbulent descendants built up a power so formidable as to threaten the crown itself, until they fell finally in 1455, when the lordship of Galloway was attached to the crown. These ages of troubles had generated a turbulent spirit among the Galwegians, and it was long before they settled down into peaceful and industrious citizens. They achieved a more honourable eminence by their devoted loyalty to the Covenant, which they had embraced with all their ancient ardour. Not all the infamous cruelties carried out at the bidding of a corrupt government by Turner, Grierson, and Claverhouse could crush the spirit of these 'wild western Whigs' whose martyr-graves are scattered over the moors of Galloway.
See Symson's Description of Galloway, 1684 (1823); Murray's Literary History of Galloway (1822); Mackenzie's History of Galloway (2 vols. Kirke, 1841); Sir Andrew Agnew's History of the Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway (new ed. 1893); M'Kerlie's History of the Lands and their Owners in Galloway (5 vols. 1870-78); and Galloway in Ancient and Modern Times (1891); Sir H. E. Maxwell's Studies on the Topography of Galloway (1887).