English / Map Form: Barbauchlaw
Gaelic Form: Baile Bachlach
Post Town: BATHGATE
Postcode area: EH48
County: West Lothian
Local Authority: West Lothian
English / Map Form: Barbauchlaw
Gaelic Form: Baile Bachlach
Sources
terra de Balbaglagh 1335-6 Bain’s Cal. vol. 3, p. 330
terra de Balbaghelathe 1337 Bain’s Cal. vol. 3, p. 388
“Barbauchlaw is Balbaghloch, 1336 (Bain’s Cal.), for Baile Bachlach, identical in form with Baile Bachallach, near Churchtown, Cork. Bachlach comes from bachall, a crozier (Lat. baculum), and Joyce explains the Irish name as probably ‘church land, belonging to a bishop.’ This may be the explanation here; an alternative is that the land was held in respect of the custody of a pastoral staff” Watson 1926, 141
“Barbachlaw, otherwise unrecorded, may be Balbaghloch 1336 Bain ‘farm of the crozier’ v. baile bachlach; ‘Crozier land’ is interpreted by Watson (CPNS 141, 266) as ‘church land, land attached to a monastic establishment’, v. bachall G., O.Ir.: ‘bishop’s crook’; and his contention that the grant made to Dunfermline Abbey by David I. c. 1128 was that of Barbachlaw is most probable; Dunfermline Abbey held land in Inveresk for several centuries” Dixon, 253