Ainmean Charraige is compiling a database of as many historic forms of place and personal names from Carrick. This will enable analysis of their meanings, distribution and character. We believe they will tell us a lot about the history of Carrick. The database already has c.8000 entries and is growing all the time. Interim results will be presented by Colin Mackenzie at the conference: Carrick’s Gaelic Heritage, The Carrick Centre, Maybole 14 Sept 24.

One thing we have noticed already: there seems to have been a significant ‘extinction event’ for the Gaelic version of many Carrick farm-names around the time of the reformation.

DULE is Scots ‘grief, sorrow, misery; suffering’ and a dule-tree is a ‘gallows tree’. [1] This term appears three times in our database of Carrick place-names: Dule Tree, Maybole; The Dool Trees, Straiton; and The Dule Tree (Kirkmichael). The Kirkmichael tree is famous from the folktale of John Faa who, along with his men, was hanged on it by the Earl of Cassillis.