Note 395 — Chapter VI · THE KINGDOM OF SCONE.

741 Bellum Droma Cathmail inter Cruithniu et Dalriati for Innrechtac.—An. Ult. The only notice the author has been able to find of a place called Cathmail is in a poem attributed to Saint Columba in honour of Saint Cormac ua Liathan, mentioned in Adamnan’s Life, when he came to Iona. One stanza is this:—

When the blooming sweet man had arrived

At Cross Cormac, at his church,

Then rang the soft-toned bell

Here at the city of Cathmail.

(See Reeves’s Adamnan, orig. edit., p. 270.) The translation has been made a little more literal, and the only church which bears Cormac’s name in Scotland is Kirk Cormac, in the parish of Kelton in Galloway, some miles north of Kirkcudbright. The writer of the Statistical Account says that ‘its surface abounds with small hills of a conical figure called Drums;’ and ‘on the north-east is the green hill of Dungayle, whose summit was once crowned with a strong fort.’ Dungayle is probably a corruptioncorruption from Dun G-cathmhail, the aspirated consonants being quiescent.—N. S. A. vol. iv. pp. 144-5.