Volume 6

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Dalrymple, the revenues whereof formed one of the prebends of that chapel (a).
The cure of the church was meantime served by a curate. The patronage of
the prebend of Dalrymple belonged to the king, and even after the church
ceased to be connected with the chapel royal, the king continued to the present
times the patron of the same church. The existing parish church was built in
1764, and stands at the village of Dalrymple, which contained in 1811 upwards
of 200 people. [The present parish church (1849) has 471 communicants:
stipend, �343. A Free church has 98 members.]
22. MAYBOLE parish in Carrick, contains the two old parishes of Maybole
and Kirkbride. The parish of Maybole derived its name from the town of
the same name, which though formerly a small place, has risen to be the
chief town in Carrick. The name of Maybole is merely an abbreviation of
Maybotle, which appears to have been the original name (6). In 1193
Duncan of Carrick, the son of Gilbert of Galloway, granted to the monks of
Melrose, the lands of Maybotle-loeg (c). Botle, in the Anglo-Saxon, signifies
a house or dwelling-place, a farm, a village, and appears in the termination
of several names in the south of Scotland, as Newbotle, Elbotle, Mere-
botle. The prefix May, in Maybotle, may be derived from a man's name.
Or it may be the Anglo-Saxon Maey, May, signifying a kinsman a cousin.
So May-botle would signify the dwelling of the kinsman or cousin. The
church of Maybole was dedicated to St. Cuthbert. In the reign of Alex-
ander II., Duncan of Carrick, the son of Gilbert of Galloway, granted the
church of St. Cuthbert, at Maybole, with its lands, and tithes to the Cistercian
nunnery of North Berwick, which was founded soon after 1216. This grant
was repealed, and confirmed by Niel, the son of Duncan of Carrick (d).
(a) The account of that re-establishment.    MS. Harley, 4628, Part I.
(b) The minister not being aware of this, says that Maybole seems to have derived its name
from the ancient game called the Maypole, Stat. Account, iii. 219, by the Reverend Dr. James
Wright.
(c) Charter quoted in Douglas's Peerage, 399 ; and Ohron. of Melrose, 179, wherein the lands are
called Maybotil, without the Scoto-Irish adjunct leg, signifying little. So the name of the lands was
Maybotil, the little.
(d) Duncan obtained the whole territory of Carrick by the settlement made in 1186. He was
created Earl of Carrick by Alexander II., between 1225 and 1230, and he died about 1240. He was
succeeded by his son Niel, who was the second Earl of Carrick, and died in 1256. These short
notices will correct some of the errors of the genealogists and peerage makers in their accounts
af the first Earls of Carrick, and they will also expose the very erroneous mis-statement of the
same writers in appropriating the above two persons under the designations of Duncan de Oarrick
and Nicolas de Carrick, as the progenitors of the family of Kennedy, who were afterwards
created Earls of Cassilis. [See Nisbet's Heraldry, ii. App. 39 ; Douglas' Peerage, 138 ; Wood's
Peerage, i. 324.] Neil, being called in the Latin charters Nigellus, this was easily converted into
Nicolas.