courts and other fora. 34 In the twelfth century it was not uncommon for royal charters to have racial address to all the kings subjects, Franci, Anglici' and, north of Forth,Scoti. This seems to refer to the various languages of the king's subjects - French, English(to be understood as the arly form of what we have so far called Scots), and Gaelic. 35 Certainly the law was centrally concerned with the feudal land- hold ings of the anglo-Norman incomers and their descendants and it borrowed heavily from the common law of England, which was in later centuries to develop its own remarkable vemacular, "law French. There is some written evidence that French was also one of the languages of early Scots law, and this, it is suggested, must reflect oral use of that language in legal business. The earliest evidence of which I am aware is the so-called Leges inter Brettos et Scotos. In the edition of the Leges printed in the first volume of the Acts of the Parliament of scotland(published in 1875), three parallel texts are given, going across the page from left to right in latin french and Scots 36 the earliest is in fact the french text which comes from the earliest surviving Scottish legal manuscript, the Berne MS, which is to be dated c.127037 There are several points of interest and importance about this particular text, some of which I have dealt with elsewhere. 38 Here its language is the important point. The text deals with compensation payments due when particular persons are slain or injured. These payments are variously referred to in the French, Latin and Scots texts as cro, gaines, enach and gelchach or kelchin. These are evidently not French words, and nor are thayn and ogettheyrn, which also appear in the text as indicators of personal status affecting the amount of compensation recoverable. All but the anglo-Saxon than come from the celtic trad ition and have parallels in Wales and Ireland. They were evidently untranslatable not only into French but also into the later Latin and Scots Behind the texts that have come down to us, it would seem, there lies a text originally in a Celtic language or languages. If this is right, then we have to explain why it was seen fit to provide a French version. Perhaps it owed something to the integration of the Anglo-Normar settlers and their descendants into the native society of western and northern Scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example through marriages between men of french descent and the daughters of Gaelic earls such as that of William Comyn with the heiress of Buchan R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350 (London, 1993) pp.212-14 Regesta Regum Scottorum(RRS), ed. G W.s. Barrow et al.(Edinburgh, 1960-),i, pp. 73-75; il, p. 77 G W. Barrow."Witnesses and the Attestation of Form al documents in Scotland. Twelfth-Thirteenth Centuries subjects of the king See further on the French influence in twelf addresses to the Welsh'and to the French Influences, in Who Are the Scots,, ed G Menzies( London, 1971), and his The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History(Oxford, 1980) APS,i,pp.663-65 The MS is in the National Archives of Scotland, call no. PA 5/1.a digital version is available at chttp://wwwstairsocietyorg>.ThetextoftheLegesinterBrettosetScotosisatf6lr-v 990),Pp90-2; andThe Laws of Galloway: A Prelim inary Survey, in Galloway: Land and Lordship, ed righ 38 In"Scots Law under Alexander Ill, in Scotland in the Reign of Alexander Ill, ed N.H. Reid(Edinb Oram and G.P. Stell(Scottish Society for Northen Studies, Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 135-6courts and other fora.34 In the twelfth century it was not uncommon for royal charters to have a racial address to all the king’s subjects, ‘Franci, Anglici’ and, north of Forth, ‘Scoti’. This seems to refer to the various languages of the king’s subjects - French, English (to be understood as the early form of what we have so far called Scots), and Gaelic.35 Certainly the law was centrally concerned with the feudal land-holdings of the Anglo-Norman incomers and their descendants, and it borrowed heavily from the common law of England, which was in later centuries to develop its own remarkable vernacular, ‘law French’. There is some written evidence that French was also one of the languages of early Scots law, and this, it is suggested, must reflect oral use of that language in legal business. The earliest evidence of which I am aware is the so-called Leges inter Brettos et Scotos. In the edition of the Leges printed in the first volume of the Acts of the Parliament of Scotland (published in 1875), three parallel texts are given, going across the page from left to right in Latin, French and Scots.36 The earliest is in fact the French text, which comes from the earliest surviving Scottish legal manuscript, the Berne MS, which is to be dated c.1270.37 There are several points of interest and importance about this particular text, some of which I have dealt with elsewhere.38 Here its language is the important point. The text deals with compensation payments due when particular persons are slain or injured. These payments are variously referred to in the French, Latin and Scots texts as cro, galnes, enach and gelchach or kelchin. These are evidently not French words, and nor are thayn and ogettheyrn, which also appear in the text as indicators of personal status affecting the amount of compensation recoverable. All but the Anglo-Saxon thayn come from the Celtic tradition and have parallels in Wales and Ireland. They were evidently untranslatable not only into French but also into the later Latin and Scots. Behind the texts that have come down to us, it would seem, there lies a text originally in a Celtic language or languages. If this is right, then we have to explain why it was seen fit to provide a French version. Perhaps it owed something to the integration of the Anglo-Norman settlers and their descendants into the native society of western and northern Scotland in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example through marriages between men of French descent and the daughters of Gaelic earls such as that of William Comyn with the heiress of Buchan 34 R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950-1350 (London, 1993), pp. 212-14. 35 Regesta Regum Scottorum (RRS), ed. G.W.S. Barrow et al. (Edinburgh, 1960- ), i, pp. 73-75; ii, p. 77; G.W. Barrow, ‘Witnesses and the Attestation of Formal Documents in Scotland, Twelfth -Thirteenth Centuries’, Journal of Legal History, xvi (1995), p. 6. There are also one or two instances of addresses to the ‘Welsh’ and to the ‘Galwegian’ subjects of the king. See further on the French influence in twelfth-century Scotland, idem, ‘Anglo￾French Influences’, in Who Are the Scots?, ed. G. Menzies (London, 1971), and his The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History (Oxford, 1980). 36 APS, i, pp. 663-65. 37 The MS is in the National Archives of Scotland, call no. PA 5/1. A digital version is available at <http://www.stairsociety.org>. The text of the ‘Leges inter Brettos et Scotos’ is at f. 61r-v. 38 In ‘Scots Law under Alexander III’, in Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, ed. N.H. Reid (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 90-2; and ‘The Laws of Galloway: A Preliminary Survey’, in Galloway: Land and Lordship, ed. R.D. Oram and G.P. Stell (Scottish Society for Northern Studies, Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 135 -6