In attempting to read the cypher of these legends aright, let us guard against one fault which was unfortunately too often committed in former days, and which is perhaps sometimes committed still. Let us not fall into the mistake of fancying that everything antiquarian, which we do not see at first sight the exact use of, must necessarily be something very mysterious. Old distaff-whorls, armlets, etc., have, in this illogical spirit, been sometimes described as Druidical amulets and talismen; ornamented rings and bosses from the ancient rich Celtic horse-harness, discovered in sepulchral barrows, have been published as Druidical astronomical instruments; and in the last century some columnar rock arrangement in Orkney was gravely adduced by Toland as a Druidical pavement. It is this craving after the mysterious, this reprehensible irrationalism, that has brought, indeed, the whole subject of Druidism into much modern contempt with many archaeologists. No doubt Druidism is a most interesting and a most important subject for due and calm investigation, and the facts handed down to us in regard to it by Caesar, Diodorus, Mela, Strabo, Pliny, and other classic and hagiological authors, are full of the gravest archaeological bearings; but no doubt also many antiquarian relics, both large and small, have been provokingly called Druidical, merely because their origin and object were unknown. We have not, for instance, a particle of direct evidence for the too common belief that our stone circles were temples which the Druids used for worship; or that our cromlechs were their sacrificial altars. In fact, formerly the equanimity of the old theoretical class of archaeologists was disturbed by these leviathan notions about Druids and Druidesses as much as the marine zoology of the poor sailor was long disturbed by his leviathan notions about sea-serpents and mermaids.

In our archaeological inquiries into the probable uses and import of all doubtful articles in our museums or elsewhere, let us proceed upon a plan of the very opposite kind. Let us, like the geologists, try always, when working with such problems, to understand the past by reasoning from the present. Let us study backwards from the known to the unknown. In this way we can easily come to understand, for example, how our ancestors made those single-tree canoes, which have been found so often in Scotland, by observing how the Red Indian, partly by fire and partly by the hatchet, makes his analogous canoe at the present day; how our flint arrows were manufactured, when we see the process by which the present Esquimaux manufactures his; how our predecessors fixed and used their stone knives and hatchets, when we see how the Polynesian fixes and uses his stone knives and hatchets now; how, in short, matters sped in respect to household economy, dress, work, and war, in this old Caledonia of ours, during even the so-called Stone Age, when we reflect upon and study the modes in which matters are conducted in that new Caledonia in the Pacific—the inhabitants of which knew nothing of metals till they came in contact with Europeans, not many years ago; how, in long past days, hand and home-made clay vessels were the chief or only vessels used for cooking and all culinary purposes, seeing that in one or two parts of the Hebrides this is actually the state of matters still.

The collection of home-made pottery on the table—glazed with milk—is the latest contribution to our Museum. It was recently brought up, by Captain Thomas and Dr. Mitchell, from the parish of Barvas, in the Lewis. These "craggans," jars, or bowls, and other culinary dishes, are certainly specimens of the ceramic art in its most primitive state;—they are as rude as the rudest of our old cinerary urns; and yet they constitute, in the places in which they were made and used, the principal cooking, dyeing, and household vessels possessed by some of our fellow-countrymen in this the nineteenth century.[13] In the adjoining parish of Uig, Captain Thomas found and described to us, two years ago, in one of his instructive and practical papers, the small beehive stone houses in which some of the nomadic inhabitants of the district still live in summer. Numerous antiquarian remains, and ruins of similar houses and collections of houses, exist in Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Switzerland, and perhaps in other kingdoms; but apparently they have everywhere been long ago deserted as human habitations, except in isolated and outlying spots among the Western Islands of Scotland. The study of human habits in these Hebridean houses, at the present day, enables us to guess what the analogous human habits probably were, when, for example, the old Irish city of Fahan—consisting of similar structures only—was the busy scene of human life and activity in times long past. These, and other similar facts, besides teaching us the true road to some forms of archaeological discovery, teach us also one other important lesson,—namely, that there are in reality two kinds of antiquity, both of which claim and challenge our attention. One of these kinds of antiquity consists in the study of the habits and works of our distant predecessors and forefathers, who lived on this earth, and perhaps in this segment of it, many ages ago. The other kind of antiquity consists of the study of those archaic human habits and works which may, in some corners of the world, be found still prevailing among our fellow-men—or even among our own fellow-countrymen—down to the present hour, in despite of all the blessings of human advancement, and the progress of human knowledge. By one kind of antiquity we trace the slow march and revolutions of centuries; by the other we trace the still slower march and revolutions of civilisation, in countries and kingdoms where the glittering theories of the politician might have led us to expect a different and a happier state of matters.

Besides the antiquarian relics of a visible and tangible form to which I have adverted, as demanding investigation and collection on our part, there are various antiquarian relics of a non-material type in Scottish Archaeology which this Society might perhaps do much to collect and preserve, through the agency of active committees, and the assistance of many of our countrymen, who, I doubt not, could be easily incited to assist us in the required work. One of these matters is a fuller collection and digest than we yet possess of the old superstitious beliefs and practices of our forefathers. And certainly some strange superstitions do remain, or at least lately did remain, among us. The sacrifice, for example, of the cock and other animals for recovery from epilepsy and convulsions, is by no means extinct in some Highland districts. In old Pagan and Mithraic times we know that the sacrifice of the ox was common. I have myself often listened to the account given by one near and dear to me, who was in early life personally engaged in the offering up and burying of a poor live cow as a sacrifice to the Spirit of the Murrain. This occurred within twenty miles of the metropolis of Scotland. In the same district a relative of mine bought a farm not very many years ago. Among his first acts, after taking possession, was the inclosing a small triangular corner of one of the fields within a stone wall. The corner cut off—and which still remains cut off—was the "Goodman's Croft"—an offering to the Spirit of Evil, in order that he might abstain from ever blighting or damaging the rest of the farm. The clergyman of the parish, in lately telling me the circumstance, added, that my kinsman had been, he feared, far from acting honestly with Lucifer, after all, as the corner which he had cut off for the "Goodman's" share was perhaps the most worthless and sterile spot on the whole property. Some may look upon such superstitions and superstitious practices as matters utterly vulgar and valueless in themselves; but in the eyes of the archaeologist they become interesting and important when we remember that the popular superstitions of Scotland, as of other countries, are for the most part true antiquarian vestiges of the pagan creeds and customs of our earlier ancestors; our present Folk-lore being merely in general a degenerated and debased form of the highest mythological and medical lore of very distant times. A collection of the popular superstitions and practices of the different districts of Scotland now, ere (like fairy and goblin forms vanishing before the break of day) they melt and disappear totally before the light and the pride of modern knowledge, would yet perhaps afford important materials for regaining much lost antiquarian knowledge. For as the palaeontologist can sometimes reconstruct in full the types of extinct animals from a few preserved fragments of bones, possibly some future archaeological Cuvier may one day be able to reconstruct from these mythological fragments, and from other sources, far more distinct figures and forms than we at present possess of the heathen faith and rites of our forefathers.

Perhaps a more important matter still would be the collection, from every district and parish of Scotland, of local lists of the oldest names of the hills, rivers, rocks, farms, and other places and objects; and this all the more that in this age of alteration and change many of these names are already rapidly passing away. Yet the possession of a Scottish antiquarian gazetteer or map of this kind would not only enable us to identify many localities mentioned in our older deeds and charters, but more—the very language to which these names belong would, perhaps, as philological ethnology advances, betimes serve as guides to lead our successors, if they do not lead us, to obtain clearer views than we now have of the people that aboriginally inhabited the different districts of our country, and the changes which occurred from time to time in these districts in the races which successively had possession of them. In this, as in other parts of the world, our mountains and other natural objects often obstinately retain, in despite of all subsequent changes and conquests, the appellations with which they were originally baptised by the aboriginal possessors of the soil; as, for example, in three or four of the rivers which enter the Forth nearest to us here—viz., the Avon, the Amond, and the Esk on this side; and the Dour, at Aberdour, on the opposite side of the Firth. For these are all old Aryan names, to be found as river appellations in many other spots of the world, and in some of its oldest dialects. The Amond or Avon is a simple modification of the present word of the Cymric "Afon," for "river," and we have all from our schooldays known it under its Latin form of "Amnis." The Esk, in its various modifications of Exe, Axe, Uisk, etc., is the present Welsh word, "Uisk," for "water," and possibly the earliest form "asqua," of the Latin noun "aqua." Again, the noun "Dour"—Douro—so common an appellative for rivers in many parts of Europe, is, according to some of our best etymologists, identical with, or of the same Aryan source as the "Uda," or water, of the sanskrit, "[Greek: hydor]" of the Greeks, and the "Dwr" or "Dour" of the Cambrian and Gael. The archaeologist, like the Red Indian when tracking his foe, teaches himself to observe and catch up every possible visible trace of the trail of archaic man; but, like the Red Indian also, he now and again lays his ear on the ground to listen for any sounds indicating the presence and doings of him who is the object of his pursuit. The old words which he hears whispered in the ancient names of natural objects and places supply the antiquary with this kind of audible archaeological evidence. For, when cross-questioned at the present day as to their nomenclature, many, I repeat, of our rivers and lakes, of our hills and headlands, do, in their mere names, telegraph back to us, along mighty distances of time, significant specimens of the tongue spoken by the first inhabitants of their district—in this respect resembling the doting and dying octogenarian that has left in early life the home of his fathers, to sojourn in the land of the stranger, and who remembers and babbles at last—ere the silver cord of memory is utterly and finally loosed—one language only, and that some few words merely, in the long unspoken tongue which he first learned to lisp in his earliest infancy.

The special sources and lines of research from which Scottish inductive Archaeology may be expected to derive the additional data and facts which it requires for its elucidation are many and various. Let me here briefly allude to two only, and these two of rather opposite characters,—viz. (1), researches beneath the surface of the earth; and (2), researches among olden works and manuscripts.

In times past Scottish Archaeology has already gained much from digging; and in times to come it is doubtless destined to gain yet infinitely more from a systematised use of this mode of research. For the truth is, that beneath the surface of the earth on which we tread—often not above two or three feet below that surface, sometimes not deeper than the roots of our plants and trees—there undoubtedly lie, in innumerable spots and places,—buried, and waiting only for disinterment,—antiquarian relics of the most valuable and important character. The richest and rarest treasures contained in some of our antiquarian museums have been exhumed by digging; and that digging has been frequently of the most accidental and superficial kind—like the discovery of the silver mines of Potosi through the chance uprooting of a shrub by the hand of a climbing traveller.

The magnificent twisted torc, containing some L50 worth of pure gold, which was exhibited in Edinburgh in 1856, in the Museum of the Archaeological Institute, was found in 1848 in Needwood Forest, lying on the top of some fresh mould which had been turned up by a fox, in excavating for himself a new earth-hole. Formerly, on the sites of the old British villages in Wiltshire, the moles, as Sir Richard Hoare tells us, were constantly throwing up to the surface numerous coins and fragments of pottery. We are indebted to the digging propensities of another animal for the richest collection of silver ornaments which is contained in our Museum: For the great hoard of massive silver brooches, torcs, ingots, Cufic and other coins, etc., weighing some 16 lbs. in all, which was found in 1857 in the Bay of Skaill in Orkney, was discovered in consequence of several small pieces of the deposit having been accidentally uncovered by the burrowings of the busy rabbit. That hoard itself is interesting on this other account, that it is one of 130 or more similar silver deposits, almost all found by digging, that have latterly been discovered, stretching from Orkney, along the shores and islands of the Baltic, through Russia southward, towards the seat of the government of those Eastern Caliphs who issued the Cufic coins which generally form part of these collections—this long track being apparently the commercial route along which those merchants passed, who, from the seventh or eighth to the eleventh century, carried on the traffic which then subsisted between Asia and the north of Europe.

The spade and plough of the husbandman are constantly disinterring relics of high value to the antiquary and numismatist. The matchless collection of gold ornaments contained in the Museum of the Irish Academy has been almost entirely discovered in the course of common agricultural operations. The pickaxe of the ditcher, and of the canal and railway navvies, have often also, by their accidental strokes, uncovered rich antiquarian treasures. The remarkable massive silver chain, ninety-three ounces in weight, which we have in our Museum, was found about two feet below the surface, when the Caledonian Canal was dug in 1808. One of the largest gold armlets ever discovered in Scotland was disinterred at Slateford in cutting the Caledonian Railway. Our Museum contains only a model of it; for the original—like many similar relics, when they consisted of the precious metals—was sold for its mere weight in bullion, and lost—at least to Archaeology—in the melting-pot of the jeweller, in consequence of the former unfortunate state of our law of treasure-trove. And it cannot perhaps be stated too often or too loudly, that such continued wanton destruction of these relics is now so far provided against; for by a Government ordinance, the finder of any relics in ancient coins, or in the precious metals, is now entitled by law, on delivering them up to the Crown for our National Museum, to claim "the full intrinsic value" of them from the Sheriff of the district in which they chance to be discovered—a most just and proper enactment, through the aid of which many such relics will no doubt be henceforth properly preserved.

But the results of digging to which I have referred are, as I have already said, the results merely of accidental digging. From a systematised application of the same means of discovery, in fit and proper localities, with or without previous ground-probing, Archaeology is certainly entitled to expect most valuable consequences. The spade and pickaxe are become as indispensable aids in some forms of archaeological, as the hammer is in some forms of geological research. The great antiquarian treasures garnered up in our sepulchral barrows and olden kistvaen cemeteries, are only to be recovered to antiquarian science by digging, and by digging, too, of the most careful and methodised kind. For in such excavations it is a matter of moment to note accurately every possible separate fact as to the position, state, etc., of all the objects exposed; as well as to search for, handle, and gather these objects most carefully. In excavating, some years ago, a large barrow in the Phoenix Park at Dublin, two entire skeletons were discovered within the chamber of the stone cromlech which formed the centre of the sepulchral mound. A flint knife, a flint arrow-head, and a small fibula of bone were found among the rubbish, along with some cinerary urns; but no bronze or other metallic implements. The human beings buried there had lived in the so-called Stone Period of the Danish archaeologists. Some hard bodies were observed immediately below the head of one of the skeletons, and by very cautious and careful picking away of the surrounding earth, there was traced around the neck of each a complete necklace formed of the small sea-shells of the Nerita, with a perforation in each shell to admit of a string composed of vegetable fibres being passed through them. Without due vigilance how readily might these interesting relics have been overlooked!

The spade and mattock, however, have subserved, and will subserve, other important archaeological purposes besides the opening of ancient cemeteries. They will probably enable us yet to solve to some extent the vexed question of the true character of our so-called "Druidical circles" and "Druidical stones," by proving to us that one of their uses at least was sepulchral. The bogs and mosses of Ireland, Denmark, and other countries, have, when dug into, yielded up great stores of interesting antiquarian objects—usually wonderfully preserved by the qualities of the soil in which they were immersed—as stone and metallic implements, portions of primaeval costume, combs, and other articles of the toilet, pieces of domestic furniture, old and buried wooden houses, and even, as in the alleged case of Queen Gunhild, and other "bogged" or "pitted" criminals, human bodies astonishingly entire, and covered with the leathern and other dresses in which they died. All this forms a great mine of antiquarian research, in which little or nothing has yet been accomplished in Scotland. It is only by due excavations that we can hope to acquire a proper analytical knowledge of the primaeval abodes of our ancestors,—whether these abodes were in underground "weems," or in those hitherto neglected and yet most interesting objects of Scottish Archaeology, namely, our archaic villages and towns, the vestiges and marks of which lie scattered over our plains and mountain sides—always near a stream, or lake, or good spring—usually marked by groups of shallow pits or excavations (the foundations of their old circular houses) and a few nettles—generally protected and surrounded on one or more sides by a rath or earth-wall—often near a hill-fort—and having attached to them, at some distance in the neighbourhood, stone graves, and sometimes, as on the grounds about Morton Hall, monoliths and barrows.

Last year we had detailed at length to the Society the very remarkable results which Mr. Neish had obtained by simple persevering digging upon the hill of the Laws in Forfarshire, exposing, as his excavations have done, over the whole top of the hill, extensive Cyclopic walls of several feet in height, formerly buried beneath the soil, and of such strange and puzzling forms as to defy as yet any definite conjecture of their character. No doubt similar works, with similar remains of implements, ornaments, querns, charred corn, etc., will yet be found by similar diggings on other Scottish hills; and at length we may obtain adequate data for fixing their nature and object, and perhaps even their date. Certainly every Scotch antiquary must heartily wish that the excellent example of earnest and enlightened research set by Mr. Neish was followed by others of his brother landholders in Scotland.

At the present time the sites and remains of some Roman cities in England are being restored to light in this way—as the old city of Uriconium (Wroxeter), where already many curious discoveries have rewarded the quiet investigations that are being carried on;—and Borcovicus in Northumberland (a half-day's journey from Edinburgh), one of the stations placed along the magnificent old Roman wall which still exists in wonderful preservation in its neighbourhood, and itself a Roman town, left comparatively so entire that "Sandy Gordon" described it long ago as the most remarkable and magnificent Roman station in the whole island, while Dr. Stukely spoke of it enthusiastically as the "Tadmor of Britain." I was lately told by Mr. Longueville Jones, that in the vicinity of Caerleon—the ancient Isca Silurum of the Roman Itinerary—the slim sharpened iron rod used as a ground-probe had detected at different distances a row of buried Roman houses and villas, extending from the old city into the country for nearly three miles in length. Here, as elsewhere, a rich antiquarian mine waits for the diggings of the antiquary; and elsewhere, as here, the ground-probe will often point out the exact spots that should be dug, with far more certainty than the divining rod of any Dousterswivel ever pointed out hidden hoards of gold or hidden springs of water.

But it is necessary, as I have already hinted, to seek and hope for additional archaeological materials in literary as well as in subterraneous researches. And certainly, one especial deficiency which we have, to deplore in Scottish Archaeology is the almost total want of written documents and annals of the primaeval and early mediaeval portions of Scottish history. The antiquaries of England and Ireland are much more fortunate in this respect than we are; for they possess a greater abundance of early documents than we can boast of. Indeed, after Tacitus' interesting account of the first Roman invasion of Scotland under Agricola, and a few meagre allusions to, and statements regarding this country and its inhabitants by some subsequent classic authors, we have, for a course of seven or eight centuries, almost no written records of any authority to refer to. The chief, if not the only, exceptions to this general remark, consist of a few scattered entries bearing upon Scotland in the Irish Annals—as in those of Tighernach and Ulster; some facts related by Bede; some statements given in the lives and legends of the early Scottish, Welsh, and Irish saints;[14] and various copies of the list of the Pictish kings.

When we come down beyond the eleventh and twelfth centuries, our written memorials rapidly increase in quantity and extent. I have already alluded to the fact that three hundred quarto volumes—nearly altogether drawn from unpublished manuscripts—have been printed by the Scottish clubs within the last forty years. Mr. Robertson informs me that in the General Register House alone (and independently of other and private collections), there is material for at least a hundred volumes more; and the English Record Office contains, as is well known, many unedited documents referring to the building of various Scottish castles by Edward I., and to other points interesting to Scottish Archaeology and History. The Welsh antiquaries have obtained from the Government offices in London various important documents of this description referring to Wales. Why should the antiquaries of Scotland not imitate them in this respect?

Modern experience has shown that it is not by any means chimerical to expect, that we may yet recover, from various quarters, and from quite unexpected sources, too, writings and documents of much interest and importance in relation both to British and to Scottish Archaeology. Of that great fossil city Pompeii, not one hundredth part, it is alleged, has as yet been fully searched; and, according to Sir Charles Lyell, the quarters hitherto cleared out are those where there was the least probability of discovering manuscripts. It would be almost hoping beyond the possibility of hope to expect that in some of its unexplored mansions, one of the rich libraries of those ancient Roman times may turn up, presenting papyri deeply interesting to British antiquaries, and containing, for example, a transcript of that letter on the habits and character of the inhabitants of Britain which Cicero himself informs us that he desired his brother Quintus to write, when, as second in command, he accompanied Julius Caesar in his first invasion of our island;—or a copy of that account which Himilico the Carthaginian, had drawn up of his voyage, some centuries before the Christian era, to the Tin Islands, and other parts northwards of the Pillars of Hercules;—or a roll of those Punic Annals which Festus Avienus tells us that he himself consulted when (probably in the fourth century) he wrote those lines in his "Ora Maritima" in which he gives a description of Great Britain and Ireland.

The antiquaries of Scotland would heartily rejoice over the discovery of lost documents far less ancient than these. Perhaps I could name two or three of our colleagues who would perfectly revel over the recovery, for instance, of one or two leaves of those old Pictish annals (veteres Pictorum libri) that still existed in the twelfth century, and in which, among other matters, was a brief account (once copied by the Pictish clerk Thana, the son of Dudabrach, for King Ferath, at Meigle) of the solemn ceremony which took place when King Hungus endowed the church of St. Andrews, in presence of twelve members of the Pictish regal race, with a grant of many miles of broad acres, and solemnly placed with his royal hands on the altar of the church a piece of fresh turf in symbolisation of his royal land-gift. We all deplore that we possess no longer what the Abbot Ailred of Rievaulx, and the monk Joceline of Furness possessed, namely, biographies, apparently written in the old language of our country, of two of our earliest Scottish saints—St. Ninian of Whithorn, and St. Kentigern of Glasgow; and we grieve that we have lost even that Life of St. Serf, which, along with a goodly list of service and other books (chained to the stalls and desks), was placed, before the time of the Reformation, in the choir of the Cathedral of Glasgow, as we know from the catalogue which has been preserved of its library.

But let us not at the same time forget that Scottish archaeological documents, as ancient as any of these, have been latterly rediscovered, and rediscovered occasionally in the most accidental way; and let us not, therefore, despair of further, and perhaps even of greater success in the same line. Certainly the greatest of recent events in Scottish Archaeology was the casual finding, within the last two or three years, in one of the public libraries at Cambridge, of a manuscript of the Gospels, which had formerly belonged to the Abbey of Deer, in Aberdeenshire. The margin and blank vellum of this ancient volume contain, in the Celtic language, some grants and entries reaching much beyond the age of any of our other Scottish charters and chronicles. The oldest example of written Scottish Gaelic that was previously known was not earlier than the sixteenth century. Portions of the Deer Manuscript have been pronounced by competent scholars to be seven centuries older.

The most ancient known collection of the laws of Scotland—a manuscript written about 1270—was detected in the public library of Berne, and lately restored to this country. In 1824, Mr. Thomson, a schoolmaster at Ayr, picked up, on an old bookstall in that town, a valuable manuscript collection of Scotch burghal laws written upwards of four centuries ago.

Sometimes, as in this last instance, documents of great value in Scottish Archaeology have made narrow escapes from utter loss and destruction.

I was told by the late Mr. Thomas Thomson—a gentleman to whom we are all indebted for promoting and systematising our studies—that a miscellaneous, but yet in some points valuable collection of old vellum manuscripts was left, at the beginning of the present century, by a poor peripatetic Scottish tailor, who could not read one word of the old black letter documents which he spent his life and his purse in collecting. Being a visionary claimant to one of the dormant Scottish peerages, he buoyed himself up with the bright hope that some clever lawyer would yet find undoubted proofs of his claims in some of the written parchments which he might procure. Sir Robert Cotton is said to have discovered one of the original vellum copies of the Magna Charta in the shop of another tailor, who, holding it in his hand, was preparing to cut up this charter of the liberties of England into tape for measuring some of England's sons for coats and trousers. The missing manuscript of the History of Scotland, from the Restoration to 1681, which was written by Sir George Mackenzie, the King's Advocate, was rescued from a mass of old paper that had been sold for shop purposes to a grocer in Edinburgh. Some fragments of the Privy Council Records of Scotland—now preserved in the General Register House—were bought among waste snuff-paper.[15] Occasionally even a very small preserved fragment of an ancient document has proved of importance. Mr. Robertson informs me that, in editing the old Canons of the Scottish Church, he has derived considerable service from a single leaf of a contemporary record of the Canons of the sixteenth century, which had been used and preserved in the old binding of a book. This single leaf is the only bit of manuscript of the Scotch sixteenth century Canons that is known to exist in Scotland.

In 1794 eight official volumes of the Scottish Secretary of State's Register of Seisins were discovered in a bookseller's shop in Edinburgh, after they had remained concealed for more than 185 years.

Among the great mass of interesting Scottish manuscripts preserved in our General Register House, there is one dated Arbroath,—April 1320;—perhaps the noblest Scottish document of that era. It is the official duplicate of a letter of remonstrance addressed to Pope John XXII. by the Barons, Freeholders, and Community of Scotland, in which these doughty Scotsmen declare, that so long as a hundred of them remain alive, they will never submit to the dominion of England. This venerable record and precious declaration of Scottish independence, written on a sheet of vellum, and authenticated by the dependant seals of its patriotic authors, was detected by a deceased Scottish nobleman in a most precarious situation; for he discovered it ruthlessly stuck into the fire-place of his charter-room.

Contested points in Scottish Archaeology and history have been occasionally settled by manuscript discoveries that were perfectly accidental.

After the blowing up of the Kirk of the Field, the only one of Darnley's servants that escaped was brought by the Earl of Murray before the English Council, and there gave evidence, implying that Queen Mary—that ever-interesting princess, who has been doubtlessly both over-decried by her foes and over-praised by her friends—was cognisant of the intended murder of her husband, inasmuch as, beforehand, she ordered an old bed to be placed in Darnley's room, and the richer bed that previously stood in it to be removed. Nearly three hundred years after that dark and sordid insinuation was made, a roll of papers was casually found, during a search among some legal documents of the early part of the seventeenth century, and one of the leaves in that roll contained a contemporary and authenticated official return of the royal furniture lost by the blowing up of the King's residence. Among other items, this leaf proved, beyond the possibility of further cavil, that the bed which stood in Darnley's room was, up to the time of his death, unchanged, and was not, as alleged by Mary's enemies, an old and worthless piece of furniture, but, on the contrary, was "a bed of violet velvet, with double hangings, braided with gold and silver (ung lictz de veloux viollet a double pante passemente dor et argent)."

The finest old Teutonic cross in Scotland is the well-known pillar which stands in the churchyard of Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire. It was ignominiously thrown down, by a decree of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, in 1642; but its broken fragments were collected, as far as possible, and the cross itself again erected, by the late clergyman of the parish, Dr. Henry Duncan, who published in the Transactions of this Society correct drawings of the Runic inscription on this ancient monument. Two Danish antiquaries, Repp and Finn Magnusen, tried to read these Runic lines, and tortured them into very opposite, and let me simply add, very ridiculous meanings, about a grant of land and cows in Ashlafardhal, and Offa, a kinsman of Woden, transferring property to Ashloff, etc., all which they duly published. That great antiquary and Saxon scholar, the late Mr. Kemble, then happened to turn his attention to the Ruthwell inscription, and saw the runes or language to be Anglo-Saxon, and in no ways Scandinavian, as had been supposed. He found that the inscription consisted of a poem, or extracts from a poem, in Anglo-Saxon, in which the stone cross, speaking in the first person, described itself as overwhelmed with sorrow because it had borne Christ raised upon it at His crucifixion, had been stained with the blood poured from His side, and had witnessed His agonies,—

"I raised the powerful King, The Lord of the heavens; I dared not fall down," etc. etc.

Who was to decide between the very diverse opinions, and still more diverse readings, of this inscription by the English antiquary and his Danish rivals? An accidental discovery in an old manuscript may be justly considered as having settled the whole question. For, two or three years after Mr. Kemble had published his reading of the inscription, the identical Anglo-Saxon poem which he had found written on the Ruthwell cross was casually discovered in an extended form under the title of the "Dream of the Rood." The old MS. volume of Saxon homilies and religious lays from which the book containing it was printed, was found by Dr. Blum in a library at Vercelli, in Italy.

With these rambling remarks I have already detained you far too long. Ere concluding, however, bear with me for a minute or two longer, while I shortly speak of one clamant subject—viz. the strong necessity of this Society, and of every Scotsman, battling and trying to prevent, if possible, the further demolition of the antiquarian relics scattered over Scotland.

Various human agencies have been long busy in the destruction and obliteration of our antiquarian earth and stone works. At no period has this process of demolition gone on in Scotland more rapidly and ruthlessly than during the last fifty or a hundred years. That tide of agricultural improvement which has passed over the country, has, in its utilitarian course, swept away—sometimes inevitably, often most needlessly—the aggers and ditches of ancient camps, sepulchral barrows and mounds, stone circles and cairns, earth-raths, and various other objects of deep antiquarian interest. Indeed, the chief antiquarian remains of this description which have been left on the surface of our soil are to be found on our mountain-tops, on our moors, or in our woods, where the very sterility or inaccessibility of the spot, or the kind protection and sympathy of the old forest-trees, have saved them, for a time at least, from reckless ruin and annihilation. Some of the antiquarian memorials that I allude to would have endured for centuries to come, had it not been for human interference and devastation. For, in the demolition of these works of archaic man, the hand of man has too generally proved both a busier and a less scrupulous agent than the hand of time.

Railways have proved among the greatest, as well as the latest, of the agents of destruction. In our island various cherished antiquities have been often most unnecessarily swept away in constructing these race-courses for the daily rush and career of the iron horse. His rough and ponderous hoof, for example, has kicked down, at one extremity of a railway connected with Edinburgh (marvellously and righteously to the dispeace of the whole city), that fine old specimen of Scottish Second-Pointed architecture, the Trinity College Church; while, at the other extremity of the same line, it battered into fragments the old Castle of Berwick, a fort rich in martial and Border memories, and a building rendered interesting by the fact, that in connection with one of its turrets there was—at the command of Edward I. "the greatest of the Plantagenets," (as his latest biographer boastfully terms him)—constructed, some six centuries ago, a cage of iron and wood, in which he immured, with Bomba-like ferocity, for four weary years, a poor prisoner, and that prisoner a woman—the Countess of Buchan—whose frightful crime consisted in having assisted at the coronation of her liege sovereign, Robert the Bruce. In the construction of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway the line was driven, with annihilating effect, through the centre of the old and rich Roman Station on the Wall of Antoninus at Castlecary. Some years ago, as I passed along the line, I saw the farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of this station busily removing a harmless wall,—among the last, if not the very last remnants of Roman masonry in Scotland. The largest stone circle near the English Border—the Stonehenge or Avebury of the north of England—formerly stood near Shap. The stone avenues leading to it are said to have been nearly two miles in length. The engineer of the Carlisle and Lancaster railway carried his line right through the very centre of the ancient stone circle forming the head of the chief avenue, leaving a few of its huge stones standing out on the western side, where they may be still seen by the passing traveller about half a mile south of the Shap station. If the line had been laid only a few feet on either side, the wanton desecration and destruction of this fine archaic monument might have been readily saved. Railway engineers, however, and railway directors, care far more for mammon and money than for mounds and monoliths.

But other and older agents have overturned and uprooted the memorials transmitted down from ancient times, with as much wantonness as the railways. Towards the middle of the last century the Government of the day ordered many miles of the gigantic old Roman wall, which stretches across Northumberland and Cumberland, to be tossed over and pounded into road metal. About the same time a Scottish proprietor—with a Vandalism which cast a stigma on his order—pulled down that antique enigmatical building, "Arthur's Oven," in order to build, with its ashlar walls, a mill-dam across the Carron. At its next flood the indignant Carron carried away the mill-dam, and buried for ever in the depths of its own water-course those venerable stones which were begrudged any longer by the proprietor of the soil the few feet of ground which they had occupied for centuries on its banks.

In many parts of our country our old sepulchral cairns, hill-forts, castles, churches, and abbeys, have been most thoughtlessly and reprehensibly allowed, by those that chanced to be their proprietors for the time, to be used as mere quarries of ready stones for the building of villages and houses, and for the construction of field-dikes and drains. In the perpetration of this class of sad and discreditable desecrations, many parties are to blame. Such outrages have been practised by both landlord and tenant, by both State and Church; and I fear that the Presbyterian Church of Scotland is by no means free from much culpability in the matter. But let us, at the same time, rejoice that a better spirit is awakened on the whole question; and let us hope that our Scottish landlords will all speedily come to imitate, when required, the excellent example of Mr. Baillie, who, when some years ago he found that one of his tenants had pulled down and carried off, for building purposes, some portions of the walls of the four grand old burgs standing in Glenelg, in Inverness-shire, prosecuted the delinquent farmer before the sheriff-court of the county, and forced him to restore and replace in situ, as far as possible, and at his own expense, all the stones which he had removed.

Almost all the primaeval stone circles and cromlechs which existed in the middle and southern districts of Scotland have been cast down and removed. The only two cromlechs in the Lothians, the stones of which have not been removed, are at Ratho and Kipps; and though the stones have been wantonly pulled down, they could readily be restored, and certainly deserve to be so. In 1813 the cromlech at Kipps was seen by Sir John Dalzell still standing upright. In describing it, in the beginning of the last century, Sir Robert Sibbald states that near this Kipps cromlech was a circle of stones, with a large stone or two in the middle; and he adds, "many such may be seen all over the country." They have all disappeared; and latterly the stones of the Kipps circle have been themselves removed and broken up, to build, apparently, some neighbouring field-walls, though there was abundance of stones in the vicinity equally well suited for the purpose.

Among the most valuable of our ancient Scottish monuments are certainly our Sculptured Stones. Most of them, however, and some even in late times, have been sadly mutilated and destroyed, to a greater or less degree, by human hands, and converted to the most base uses. The stone at Hilton of Cadboll, remarkable for its elaborate sculpture and ornamental tracery, has had one of its sides smoothed and obliterated in order that a modern inscription might be cut upon it to commemorate "Alexander Duff and His Thrie Wives." The beautiful sculptured stone of Golspie has been desecrated in the same way. Only two of these ancient sculptured stones are known south of the Forth. One of them has been preserved by having been used as a window-lintel in the church of Abercorn—the venerable episcopal see, in the seventh century, of Trumwine, the Bishop of the Picts. The other serves the purpose of a foot-bridge within a hundred yards of the spot where we are met; and it is to be hoped that its proprietors will allow this ancient stone to be soon removed from its present ignominious situation to an honoured place in our Museum. I saw, during last autumn, in Anglesey, a stone bearing a very ancient Romano-British legend, officiating as one of the posts of a park gate—a situation in which several such inscribed stones have been found. Still more lately, I was informed of the large central monolith in a stone circle, not far from the Scottish border, having been thrown down and split up into seven pairs of field gate-posts.

"Standing-stones"—the old names of which gave their appellations to the very manors on which they stood—have been repeatedly demolished in Scotland. An obelisk of thirteen feet in height, and imparting its name to a landed estate in Kincardineshire, was recently thrown down; and a large monolith, which lent its old, venerable name to a property and mansion within three or four miles of Edinburgh, was, within the memory of some living witnesses, uprooted and totally demolished when the direction of the turnpike road in its neighbourhood happened to be altered.

* * * * *

A healthier and finer feeling in regard to the propriety of preserving such national antiquities as I have referred to, subsists, I believe, in the heart of the general public of Scotland, than perhaps those who are their superiors in riches and rank generally give them credit for. Within this century the standing-stones of Stennis in Orkney were attacked, and two or three of them overthrown by an iconoclast; but the people in the neighbourhood resented and arrested the attempt by threatening to set fire to the house and corn of the barbaric aggressor. After the passing of the Parliamentary Reform Bill, during a keen contest for the representation of a large Scottish county, there was successfully urged in the public journals against one of the candidates, the damaging fact that one of his forefathers had deliberately committed one of the gross acts of barbarism which I have already specified, in the needless destruction, in a distant part of Scotland, of one of the smallest but most interesting of Scottish antiquarian relics; and the voters at the polling-booths showed that they deemed a family, however rich and estimable, unfit to be intrusted with the parliamentary guardianship of the county, which had outraged public feeling by wantonly pulling down one of the oldest stone memorials in the kingdom.

* * * * *

In the name of this Society, and in the name of my fellow-countrymen generally, I here solemnly protest against the perpetration of any more acts of useless and churlish Vandalism, in the needless destruction and removal of our Scottish antiquarian remains. The hearts of all leal Scotsmen, overflowing as they do with a love of their native land, must ever deplore the unnecessary demolition of all such early relics and monuments as can in any degree contribute to the recovery and restoration of the past history of our country and of our ancestors. These ancient relics and monuments are truly, in one strong sense, national property; for historically they belong to Scotland and to Scotsmen in general, more than they belong to the individual proprietors upon whose ground they accidentally happen to be placed. There is an Act of Parliament against the wilful defacing and demolition of public monuments; and, perhaps the Kilkenny Archaeological Association were right when they threatened to indite with the penalties of "misdemeanour" under that statute, any person who should wantonly and needlessly destroy the old monumental and architectural relics of his country. Many of these relics might have brought only a small price indeed in the money-market, while yet they were of a national and historical value which it would be difficult to estimate. For, when once swept away, their full replacement is impossible. They cannot be purchased back with gold. Their deliberate and ruthless annihilation is, in truth, so far the annihilation of the ancient records of the kingdom. If any member of any ancient family among us needlessly destroyed some of the olden records of that one family, how bitterly, and how justly too, would he be denounced and despised by its members? But assuredly antiquarian monuments, as the olden records of a whole realm, are infinitely more valuable than the records of any individual family in that realm. Let us fondly hope and trust that a proper spirit of patriotism—that every feeling of good, generous, and gentlemanly taste—will insure and hallow the future consecration of all such Scottish antiquities as still remain—small fragments only though they may be of the antiquarian treasures that once existed in our land.

Time, like the Sibyl, who offered her nine books of destiny to the Roman king, has been destroying, century after century, one after another of the rich volumes of antiquities which she formerly tendered to the keeping of our Scottish fathers. But though, unhappily, our predecessors, like King Tarquin, rejected and scorned the rich antiquarian treasures which existed in their days, let us not now, on that account, despise or decline to secure the three books of them that still perchance remain. On the contrary,—like the priests appointed by the Roman authorities to preserve and study the Sibylline records which had escaped destruction,—let this Society carefully guard and cherish those antiquities of our country which yet exist, and let them strive to teach themselves and their successors to decipher and interpret aright the strange things and thoughts that are written on those Sibylline leaves of Scottish Archaeology which Fate has still spared for them. Working earnestly, faithfully, and lovingly in this spirit, let us not despair that, as the science of Archaeology gradually grows and evolves, this Society may yet, in full truth, restore Scotland to antiquity, and antiquity to Scotland.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: An inaugural Address delivered to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Session 1860-61]

[Footnote 9: As an illustration of this primitive pastoral idea of wealth, Dr. Livingstone told me, that on more than one occasion, when Africans were discoursing with him on the riches of his own country and his own chiefs at home, he was asked the searching and rather puzzling question, "But how many cows has the Queen of England?"]

[Footnote 10: As some confirmation of the views suggested in the preceding question, my friend Captain Thomas pointed out to me, after the Address was given, that the name of the fort in St. Kilda was, as stated by Martin and Macaulay, "Dun Fir-bholg."]

[Footnote 11: Including the works of Homer, Plato, Sophocles, etc. Her library catalogue shows also a goodly list of "Latyn Buikis," and classics. In a letter to Cecil, dated St. Andrews, 7th April 1562, Randolph incidentally states that Queen Mary then read daily after dinner "somewhat of Livy" with George Buchanan.]

[Footnote 12: See these stories in Mr. Dasent's Norse Tales, and in Mr. Campbell's collection of the Popular Tales of the West Highlands.]

[Footnote 13: Among the people of the district of Barvas, most of them small farmers or crofters, a metal vessel or pot was a thing almost unknown twelve or fourteen years ago. Their houses have neither windows nor chimneys, neither tables nor chairs; and the cattle and poultry live under the same roof with their human possessors. If a Chinaman or Japanese landed at Barvas, and went no further, what a picture might he paint, on his return home, of the state of civilisation in the British Islands.]

[Footnote 14: One of these Lives—that of St. Columba by Adamnan—has been annotated by Dr. Reeves with such amazing lore that it really looks as if the Editor had acquired his wondrous knowledge of ancient Iona and Scotland by some such "uncanny" aids as an archaeological "deputation of spirits."]

[Footnote 15: This alludes to the portion of a mutilated volume for the year 1605, which came into Mr. Laing's hands, and was given by him to the Deputy Clerk Register. But singular enough, as Mr. Laing has since informed me, the identical MS. of Sir George Mackenzie, above noticed, was brought to him for sale as probably a curious volume; it having by some accident been a second time sold for waste paper! Having no difficulty in recognising the volume, he of course secured it, and, agreeably to the expressed intention of the Editor of the work in 1821, the MS. has been deposited in the Advocates' Library, where, it is to be hoped, it may now remain in safety.]



ON AN OLD STONE-ROOFED CELL OR ORATORY IN THE ISLAND OF INCHCOLM.[16]

Among the islands scattered along the Firth of Forth, one of the most interesting is the ancient Aemonia, Emona, St. Columba's Isle, or St. Colme's Inch—the modern Inchcolm. The island is not large, being little more than half-a-mile in length, and about a hundred and fifty yards across at its broadest part. At either extremity it is elevated and rocky; while in its intermediate portion it is more level, though still very rough and irregular, and at one point—a little to the east of the old monastic buildings—it becomes so flat and narrow that at high tides the waters of the Forth meet over it. Inchcolm lies nearly six miles north-west from the harbour of Granton, or is about eight or nine miles distant from Edinburgh; and of the many beautiful spots in the vicinity of the Scottish metropolis, there is perhaps none which surpasses this little island in the charming and picturesque character of the views that are obtained in various directions from it.

Though small in its geographical dimensions, Inchcolm is rich in historical and archaeological associations. In proof of this remark, I might adduce various facts to show that it has been at one time a favoured seat of learning, as when, upwards of four hundred years ago, the Scottish historian, Walter Bower, the Abbot of its Monastery, wrote there his contributions to the ancient history of Scotland;[17] and at other times the seat of war, as when it was pillaged at different periods by the English, during the course of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.[18] For ages it was the site of a monastic institution and the habitation of numerous monks;[19] and at the beginning of the present century it was temporarily degraded to the site of a military fort, and the habitation of a corps of artillery.[20] During the plagues and epidemics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it formed sometimes a lazaretto for the suspected and diseased;[21] and during the reign of James I. it was used as a state-prison for the daughter of the Earl of Ross and the mother of the Lord of the Isles[22]—"a mannish, implacable woman," as Drummond of Hawthornden ungallantly terms her;[23] while fifty years later, when Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St. Andrews, was "decernit ane heretique, scismatike, symoniak, and declarit cursit, and condamnit to perpetuall presoun," he was, for this last purpose, "first transportit to St. Colmes Insche."[24] Punishments more dark and dire than mere transportation to, and imprisonment upon Inchcolm, have perhaps taken place within the bounds of the island, if we do not altogether misinterpret the history of "a human skeleton standing upright," found several years ago immured and built up within the old ecclesiastic walls.[25] Nor is this eastern Iona, as patronised and protected by St. Columba,—and, at one period of his mission to the Picts and Scots, his own alleged dwelling-place,[26]—devoid in its history of the usual amount of old monkish miracles and legends. The Scotichronicon contains long and elaborate details of several of them. When, in 1412, the Earl of Douglas thrice essayed to sail out to sea, and was thrice driven back by adverse gales, he at last made a pilgrimage to the holy isle of Aemonia, presented an offering to Columba, and forthwith the Saint sped him with fair winds to Flanders and home again.[27] When, towards the winter of 1421, a boat was sent on a Sunday (die Dominica) to bring off to the monastery from the mainland some house provisions and barrels of beer brewed at Bernhill (in barellis cerevisiam apud Bernhill brasiatam), and the crew, exhilarated with liquor (alacres et potosi), hoisted, on their return, a sail, and upset the barge, Sir Peter the Canon,—who, with five others, was thrown into the water,—fervently and unceasingly invoked the aid of Columba, and the Saint appeared in person to him, and kept Sir Peter afloat for an hour and a half by the help of a truss of tow (adminiculo cujusdam stupae), till the boat of Portevin picked up him and two others.[28] When, in 1385, the crew of an English vessel (quidam filii Belial) sacrilegiously robbed the island, and tried to burn the church, St. Columba, in answer to the earnest prayers of those who, on the neighbouring shore, saw the danger of the sacred edifice, suddenly shifted round the wind and quenched the flames, while the chief of the incendiaries was, within a few hours afterwards, struck with madness, and forty of his comrades drowned.[29] When, in 1335, an English fleet ravaged the shores of the Forth, and one of their largest ships was carrying off from Inchcolm an image of Columba[30] and a store of ecclesiastical plunder, there sprung up such a furious tempest around the vessel immediately after she set sail, that she drifted helplessly and hopelessly towards the neighbouring island of Inchkeith, and was threatened with destruction on the rocks there till the crew implored pardon of Columba, vowed to him restitution of their spoils, and a suitable offering of gold and silver, and then they instantly and unexpectedly were lodged safe in port (et statim in tranquillo portu insperate ducebantur).[31] When, in 1336, some English pirates robbed the church at Dollar—which had been some time previously repaired and richly decorated by an Abbot of Aemonia—and while they were, with their sacrilegious booty, sailing triumphantly, and with music on board, down the Forth, under a favouring and gentle west wind, in the twinkling of an eye (non solum subito sed in ictu oculi), and exactly opposite the abbey of Inchcolm, the ship sank to the bottom like a stone. Hence, adds the writer of this miracle in the Scotichronicon,—and no doubt that writer was the Abbot Walter Bower,—in consequence of these marked retaliating propensities of St. Columba, his vengeance against all who trespassed against him became proverbial in England; and instead of calling him, as his name seems to have been usually pronounced at the time, St. Callum or St. Colam, he was commonly known among them as St. Quhalme ("et ideo, ut non reticeam quid de eo dicatur, apud eos vulgariter Sanct Quhalme nuncupatur"[32]).

But without dwelling on these and other well-known facts and fictions in the history of Inchcolm, let me state,—for the statement has, as we shall afterwards see, some bearing upon the more immediate object of this notice,—that this island is one of the few spots in the vicinity of Edinburgh that has been rendered classical by the pen of Shakspeare. In the second scene of the opening act of the tragedy of Macbeth, the Thane of Ross comes as a hurried messenger from the field of battle to King Duncan, and reports that Duncan's own rebellious subjects and the invading Scandinavians had both been so completely defeated by his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, that the Norwegians craved for peace:—

"Sueno, the Norways' King, craves composition; Nor would we deign him burial of his men Till he disbursed, at Saint Colmes Inch, Ten thousand dollars to our general use."

Inchcolm is the only island of the east coast of Scotland which derives its distinctive designation from the great Scottish saint. But more than one island on our western shores bears the name of St. Columba; as, for example, St. Colme's Isle, in Loch Erisort, and St. Colm's Isle in the Minch, in the Lewis; the island of Kolmbkill, at the head of Loch Arkeg, in Inverness-shire; Eilean Colm, in the parish of Tongue;[33] and, above all, Icolmkill, or Iona itself, the original seat and subsequent great centre of the ecclesiastic power of St. Columba and his successors.[34] An esteemed antiquarian friend, to whom I lately mentioned the preceding reference to Inchcolm by Shakspeare, at once maintained that the St. Colme's Isle in Macbeth was Iona. Indeed, some of the modern editors[35] of Shakspeare, carried away by the same view, have printed the line which I have quoted thus:—

"Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme's-kill Isle,"

instead of "Saint Colmes ynch," as the old folio edition prints it. But there is no doubt whatever about the reading, nor that the island mentioned in Macbeth is Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth. For the site of the defeat of the Norwegian host was in the adjoining mainland of Fife, as the Thane of Ross tells the Scotch king that, to report his victory, he had come from the seat of war—

"from Fife, Where the Norwegian banners flout the sky."

The reference to Inchcolm by Shakspeare becomes more interesting when we follow the poet to the original historical foundations upon which he built his wondrous tragedy. It is well known that Shakspeare derived the incidents for his story of Macbeth from that translation of Hector Boece's Chronicles of Scotland, which was published in England by Raphael Holinshed in 1577. In these Chronicles, Holinshed, or rather Hector Boece, after describing the reputed poisoning, with the juice of belladonna, of Sueno and his army, and their subsequent almost complete destruction, adds, that shortly afterwards, and indeed while the Scots were still celebrating this equivocal conquest, another Danish host landed at Kinghorn. The fate of this second army is described by Holinshed in the following words:—

"The Scots hauing woone so notable a victorie, after they had gathered and diuided the spoile of the field, caused solemne processions to be made in all places of the realme, and thanks to be giuen to almightie God, that had sent them so faire a day ouer their enimies. But whilest the people were thus at their processions, woord was brought that a new fleet of Danes was arriued at Kingcorne, sent thither by Canute, King of England, in reuenge of his brother Suenos ouerthrow. To resist these enimies, which were alreadie landed, and busie in spoiling the countrie, Makbeth and Banquho were sent with the Kings authoritie, who hauing with them a conuenient power, incountred the enimies, slue part of them, and chased the other to their ships. They that escaped and got once to their ships, obteined of Makbeth for a great summe of gold, that such of their friends as were slaine at this last bickering, might be buried in Saint Colmes Inch. In memorie whereof, manie old sepultures are yet in the said Inch, there to be seene grauen with the armes of the Danes, as the maner of burieng noble men still is, and hieretofore hath beene vsed. A peace was also concluded at the same time betwixt the Danes and Scotishmen, ratified (as some haue written) in this wise: that from thencefoorth the Danes should neuer come into Scotland to make anie warres against the Scots by anie maner of meanes. And these were the warres that Duncane had with forren enimies, in the seuenth yiere of his reigne."[36]

To this account of Holinshed, as bearing upon the question of the St. Colme's Isle alluded to by Shakspeare, it is only necessary to add one remark:—Certainly the western Iona, with its nine separate cemeteries, could readily afford fit burial-space for the slain Danes; but it is impossible to believe that the defeated and dejected Danish army would or could carry the dead and decomposing bodies of their chiefs to that remote place of sepulture. And, supposing that the dead bodies had been embalmed, then it would have been easier to carry them back to the Danish territories in England, or even across the German Ocean to Denmark itself, than round by the Pentland Firth to the distant western island of Icolmkill. On the other hand, that St. Colme's Inch, in the Firth of Forth, is the island alluded to, is, as I have already said, perfectly certain, from its propinquity to the seat of war, and the point of landing of the new Scandinavian host, namely, Kinghorn; the old town of Wester Kinghorn lying only about three or four miles below Inchcolm, and the present town of the same name, or Eastern Kinghorn, being placed about a couple of miles further down the coast.

We might here have adduced another incontrovertible argument in favour of this view by appealing to the statement, given in the above quotation, of the existence on Inchcolm, in Boece's time, of Danish sepulchral monuments, provided we felt assured that this statement was in itself perfectly correct. But before adopting it as such, it is necessary to remember that Boece describes the sculptured crosses and stones at Camustane and Aberlemno,[37] in Forfarshire, as monuments of a Danish character also; and whatever may have been the origin and objects of these mysteries in Scottish archaeology,—our old and numerous Sculptured Stones, with their strange enigmatical symbols,—we are at least certain that they are not Danish either in their source or design, as no sculptured stones with these peculiar symbols exist in Denmark itself. That Inchcolm contained one or more of those sculptured stones, is proved by a small fragment that still remains, and which was detected a few years ago about the garden-wall. A drawing of it has been already published by Mr. Stuart.[38] (See woodcut, Fig. 1.) In the quotation which I have given from Holinshed's Chronicles, the "old sepultures there (on Inchcolm) to be seene grauen with the armes of the Danes," are spoken of as "manie" in number.[39] Bellenden uses similar language: "Thir Danes" (he writes) "that fled to thair schippis, gaif gret sowmes of gold to Makbeth to suffer thair freindis that war slane at his jeoperd to be buryit in Sanct Colmes Inche. In memory heirof, mony auld sepulturis ar yit in the said Inche, gravin with armis of Danis."[40] In translating this passage from Boece, both Holinshed and Bellenden overstate, in some degree, the words of their original author. Boece speaks of the Danish monuments still existing on Inchcolm in his day, or about the year 1525, as plural in number, but without speaking of them as many. After stating that the Danes purchased the right of sepulture for their slain chiefs (nobiles) "in Emonia insula, loco sacro," he adds, "extant et hac aetate notissima Danorum monumenta, lapidibusque insculpta eorum insignia."[41] For a long period past only one so-called Danish monument has existed on Inchcolm, and is still to be seen there. It is a single recumbent block of stone above five feet long, about a foot broad, and one foot nine inches in depth, having a rude sculptured figure on its upper surface. In his History of Fife, published in 1710, Sir Robert Sibbald has both drawn and described it. "It is (says he) made like a coffin, and very fierce and grim faces are done on both the ends of it. Upon the middle stone which supports it, there is the figure of a man holding a spear in his hand."[42] He might have added that on the corresponding middle part of the opposite side there is sculptured a rude cross; but both the cross and "man holding a spear" are cut on the single block of stone forming the monument, and not, as he represents, on a separate supporting stone. Pennant, in his Tour through Scotland in 1772, tells us that this "Danish monument" "lies in the south-east [south-west] side of the building (or monastery), on a rising ground. It is (he adds) of a rigid form, and the surface ornamented with scale-like figures. At each end is the representation of a human head."[43][44] In its existing defaced form,[45] the sculpture has certainly much more the appearance of a recumbent human figure, with a head at one end and the feet at the other, than with a human head at either extremity. The present condition of the monument is faithfully given in the accompanying woodcut, which, like most of the other woodcuts in this little essay, have been copied from sketches made by the masterly pencil of my esteemed friend, Mr. James Drummond, R.S.A.



It is well known that, about a century after the occurrence of these Danish wars, and of the alleged burial of the Danish chiefs on Inchcolm,—or in the first half of the thirteenth[47] century,—there was founded on this island, by Alexander I., a monastery, which from time to time was greatly enlarged, and well endowed. The monastic buildings remaining on Inchcolm at the present day are of very various dates, and still so extensive that their oblong light-grey mass, surmounted by a tall square central tower, forms a striking object in the distance, as seen in the summer morning light from the higher streets and houses of Edinburgh, and from the neighbouring shores of the Firth of Forth. These monastic buildings have been fortunately protected and preserved by their insular situation,—not from the silent and wasting touch of time, but from the more ruthless and destructive hand of man. The stone-roofed octagonal chapter-house is one of the most beautiful and perfect in Scotland; and the abbot's house, the cloisters, refectory, etc., are still comparatively entire. But the object of the present communication is not to describe the well-known conventual ruins on the island, but to direct the attention of the Society to a small building, isolated, and standing at a little distance from the remains of the monastery, and which, I am inclined to believe, is of an older date, and of an earlier age, than any part of the monastery itself.



The small building, cell, oratory, or chapel, to which I allude, forms now, with its south side, a portion of the line of the north wall of the present garden, and is in a very ruinous state; but its more characteristic and original features can still be accurately made out.



The building is of the quadrangular figure of the oldest and smallest Irish churches and oratories. But its form is very irregular, partly in consequence of the extremely sloping nature of the ground on which it is built, and partly perhaps to accommodate it in position to three large and immovable masses of trap that lie on either side of it, and one of which masses is incorporated into its south-west angle. It is thus deeper on its north than on its south side; and much deeper at its eastern than at its western end. Further, its remaining eastern gable is set at an oblique angle to the side walls, while both the side walls themselves seem slightly curved or bent. Hence it happens, that whilst externally the total length of the north side of the building is 19 feet and a half, the total length of its south side is 21 feet and a half, or 2 feet more. Internally, also, it gradually becomes narrower towards its western extremity; so that, whilst the breadth of the interior of the building is about 6 feet 3 inches at its eastern end, it is only 4 feet and 9 inches at its western end. Some of these peculiarities are shown in the accompanying ground-plan drawn by Mr. Brash (see woodcut, Fig. 4), in which the line A B represents the whole breadth of the building; A the north, and B the south wall of it. Unfortunately, as far as can be gathered amid the accumulated debris at the western part of the building, the gable at that end is almost destroyed, with the exception of the stones at its base; but, judging from the height of the vaulted roof, this gable probably did not measure externally above 8 feet, while the depth of the eastern gable, which is comparatively entire, is between 14 and 15 feet. The interior of the building has been originally, along its central line, about 16 feet in length; it is nearly 8 feet in height from the middle of the vaulted roof to the present floor; and the interior has an average breadth of about 5 feet. Internally the side walls are 5 feet in height from the ground to the spring of the arch or vault.

Three feet from the ground there is interiorly, in the south wall, a small four-sided recess,[48] 1 foot in breadth, and 15 inches in height and depth. (See C in ground plan, Fig. 4; and also Fig. 8.) In the same south-side wall, near the western gable, is an opening extending from the floor to the spring of the roof. It has apparently been the original door of the building; but as it is now built up by a layer of thin stone externally, and the soil of the garden has been heaped up against it and the whole south wall to the depth of several feet, it is difficult to make out its full relations and character. There is a peculiarity, however, about the head of this entrance which deserves special notice. The top of the doorway, as seen both from within and from without the building, is arched, but in two very different ways. When examined from within, the head of the doorway is found to be composed of stones laid in the form of a horizontal arch, the superincumbent stones on each side projecting more and more over each other to constitute its sides, and then a large, flat, horizontal stone closing the apex. (See woodcut, Fig. 5.) On the contrary, when examined from without, the top of the doorway is formed by stones laid in the usual form of the radiating arch, and roughly broken off, as if that arch at a former period had extended beyond the line of the wall. (See woodcut, Fig. 6.) This doorway, let me add, is 5 feet high, and on an average about 4 feet wide,[49] but it is 2 or 3 inches narrower at the top, or at the spring of the arch, than it is at the bottom.[50] The north side wall of the building is less perfect; as, in modern times, a large rude opening has been broken through as an entrance or door (see woodcut, Fig. 7, and ground-plan, Fig. 4), after the original door on the other side had become blocked up.



The eastern gable is still very entire, and contains a small window,[51] which, as measured outside, is 1 foot 11 inches in height, and 10 inches in breadth. But the jambs of this window incline or splay internally, so as to form on the internal plane of the gable an opening 2 feet 3 inches in breadth.



The squared sill stone of the window is one of the largest in the eastern gable. Its flat lintel stone projects externally in an angled or sharpened form beyond the plane of the gable, like a rude attempt at a moulding or architrave, but probably with the more utilitarian object of preventing entrance of the common eastern showers into the interior of the cell. The thin single flat sandstones composing the jambs are each large enough to extend backwards the whole length of the interior splay of the window, and, from the marks upon them, have evidently been hammer-dressed.[53] Internally, in this eastern gable, there is placed below the window, and in continuation of its interior splay, a recess about 18 inches in depth, and of nearly the same breadth as the divergence of the jambs of the window. The broken base or floor of this recess is in the position of the altar-stone in some small early Irish chapels.

The accompanying sketch (see woodcut, Fig. 7) of the exterior of the eastern gable shows that the stones of which it is built have been prepared and dressed with sufficient care—especially those forming the angles—to entitle us to speak of it as presenting the type of rude ashlar-work. The stones composing it, particularly above the line of the window, are laid in pretty regular horizontal courses; lower down they are not by any means so equable in size. The masonry of the side walls is much less regular, and more of a ruble character. The walls are on an average about 3 feet in thickness.[54] The stones of which the building is composed are, with a few exceptions, almost all squared sandstone. The exceptions consist of some larger stones of trap or basalt, placed principally along the base of the walls. Both secondary trap and sandstone are found in situ among the rocks of the island. A roundish basalt stone, 2 feet long, forms a portion of the floor of the building at its southern corner. At other points there is evidence of a well-laid earth floor. The whole interior of the building has been carefully plastered at one time. The surface of this plaster-covering of the walls, wherever it is left, is so dense and hard as to be scratched with difficulty. The lime used for building and cementing the walls, as shown in a part at the west end which has been lately exposed, contains oyster and other smaller sea-shells, and is as firm and hard as some forms of concrete.

I have reserved till the last a notice of one of the most remarkable architectural features in this little building, namely, its arched or vaulted stone roof,—the circumstance, no doubt, to which the whole structure owes its past durability and present existence.

Stone roofs are found in some old Irish buildings, formed on the principle of the horizontal arch, or by each layer of stone overlapping and projecting within the layer placed below it till a single stone closes the top. A remarkable example of this type of stone roof is presented by the ancient oratory of Gallerus in the county of Kerry; and stone roofs of the same construction covered most of the old beehive houses and variously shaped cloghans that formerly existed in considerable numbers in the western and southern districts of Ireland, and more sparsely on the western shores of Scotland. In the Inchcolm oratory the stone roof is constructed on another principle—on that, namely, of the radiating arch—a form of roof still seen in some early Irish oratories and churches, whose reputed date of building ranges from the sixth or seventh onward to the tenth or eleventh centuries.

The mode of construction of the stone roof of the Inchcolm cell is well displayed in the accidental section of it that has been made by the falling in of the western gable. One of Mr. Drummond's sketches (see woodcut, Fig. 9) represents the section as seen across the collection of flower-tipped rubbish and stones made by the debris of the gable and some accumulated earth. The roof is constructed, first, of stones placed in the shape of a radiating arch; secondly, of a thin layer of lime and small stones placed over the outer surface of this arch; and, thirdly, the roof is finished by being covered externally with a layer of oblong, rhomboid stones, laid in regular courses from the top of the side walls onwards and upwards to the ridge of the building. This outer coating of squared stones is seen in the external surface of the roof to the left in one sketch (see woodcut, Fig. 9); but a more perfect and better preserved specimen of it exists immediately above the entrance-door, as shown in another of Mr. Drummond's drawings (see woodcut, Fig. 6).



The arch or vault of the roof has one peculiarity, perhaps worthy of notice (and seen in the preceding woodcut, Fig. 9). The central keystone of the arch has the form of a triangular wedge, or of the letter V, a type seen in other rude and primitive arches. Interiorly, a similar keystone line appears to run along the length of the vault, but not always perfectly straight; and the whole figure of the arch distinctly affects the pointed form.

Several years ago I first saw the building which I have described when visiting Inchcolm with Captain Thomas, Dr. Daniel Wilson, and some other friends, and its peculiar antique character and strong rude masonry struck all of us, for it seemed different in type from any of the other buildings around it. Last year I had an opportunity of visiting several of the oldest remaining Irish churches and oratories at Glendalough, Killaloe, Clonmacnoise, and elsewhere, and the features of some of them strongly recalled to my recollection the peculiarities of the old building in Inchcolm, and left on my mind a strong desire to re-inspect it. Later in the year Mr. Fraser and I visited Inchcolm in company with our greatest Scottish authority on such an ecclesiological question—Mr. Joseph Robertson. That visit confirmed us in the idea, first, that the small building in question was of a much more ancient type than any portion of the neighbouring monastery; and, secondly, that in form and construction it presented the principal architectural characters of the earliest and oldest Irish churches and oratories. More lately I had an opportunity of showing the various original sketches which Mr. Drummond had made for me of the building to the highest living authority on every question connected with early Irish and Scoto-Irish ecclesiastical architecture—namely, Dr. Petrie of Dublin; and before asking anything as to its site, etc., he at once pronounced the building to be "a Columbian cell."

The tradition, as told to our party by the cicerone on the island on my first visit, was, that this neglected outbuilding was the place in which "King Alexander lived for three days with the hermit of Inchcolm." There was nothing in the rude architecture and general character of the building to gainsay such a tradition, but the reverse; and, on the contrary, when we turn to the notice of a visit of Alexander I. to the island in 1123, as given by our earliest Scotch historians, their account of the little chapel or oratory which he found there perfectly applies to the building which I have been describing. In order to prove this, let me quote the history of Alexander's visit from the Scotichronicon of Fordun and Bower, the Extracta e Cronicis Scocie, and the Scotorum Historia of Hector Boece.[55]

The Scotichronicon contains the following account of King Alexander's adventure and temporary sojourn in Inchcolm:—

"About the year of our Lord 1123, under circumstances not less wonderful than miraculous, a monastery was founded on the island Aemonia, near Inverkeithing. For when the noble and most Christian Sovereign Alexander, first of this name, was, in pursuit of some state business, making a passage across the Queensferry, suddenly a tremendous storm arose, and the fierce south-west wind forced the vessel and sailors to make, for safety's sake, for the island of Aemonia, where at that time lived an island hermit (eremita insulanus), who, belonging to the service of St. Columba, devoted himself sedulously to his duties at a certain little chapel there (ad quandam inibi capellulam), content with such poor food as the milk of one cow and the shell and small sea fishes which he could collect. On the hermit's slender stores the king and his suite of companions, detained by the storm, gratefully lived for three consecutive days. But on the day before landing, when in very great danger from the sea, and tossed by the fury of the tempest, the king despaired of life, he vowed to the Saint, that if he should bring him and his companions safe to the island, he would leave on it such a memorial to his honour as would render it a future asylum and refuge to sailors and those that were shipwrecked. Therefore, it was decided on this occasion that he should found there a monastery of prebendaries, such as now exists; and this the more so, as he had always venerated St. Columba with special honour from his youth; and chiefly because his own parents were for several years childless and destitute of the solace of offspring, until, beseeching St. Columba with suppliant devotion, they gloriously obtained what they sought for so long a time with anxious desire. Hence the origin of the verse—

'M.C, ter, I. bis, et X literis a tempore Christi, Aemon, tunc ab Alexandro fundata fuisti Scotorum primo. Structorem Canonicorum Transferat ex imo Deus hunc ad alta polorum.'"[56]

The preceding account of King Alexander's visit to Inchcolm, and his founding of the monastery there, occurs in the course of the fifth book (lib. v. cap. 37) of the Scotichronicon, without its being marked whether the passage itself exists in the original five books of Fordun, or in one of the additions made to them by the Abbot Walter Bower.[57] The first of these writers, John of Fordun, lived, it will be recollected, in the reigns of Robert II. and III., and wrote about 1380; while Walter Bower, the principal continuator of Fordun's history, was Abbot of Inchcolm from 1418 to the date of his death in 1449.

In the work known under the title of Extracta e Variis Cronicis Scocie,[58] there is an account of Alexander's fortuitous visit to Inchcolm, exactly similar to the above, but in an abridged form. Mr. Tytler, in his History of Scotland,[59] supposes the Extracta to have been written posterior to the time of Fordun, and prior to the date of Bower's Continuation of the Scotichronicon,—a conjecture which one or more passages in the work entirely disprove.[60] If the opinion of Mr. Tytler had been correct, it would have been important as a proof that the story of the royal adventure of Alexander upon Inchcolm was written by Fordun, and not by Bower, inasmuch as the two accounts in the Scotichronicon and in the Extracta are on this, as on most other points, very similar, the Extracta being merely somewhat curtailed. As evidence of this remark, let me here cite the original words of the Extracta:—

"Emonia insula seu monasterium, nunc Sancti Columbe de Emonia, per dictum regem fundatur circa annum Domini millesimum vigesimum quartum miraculose. Nam cum idem nobilis rex transitum faciens per Passagium Regine, exorta tempestas valida, flante Africo, ratem cum naucleris, vix vita comite, compulit applicare ad insulam Emoniam, ubi tunc degebat quidam heremita insulanus, qui seruicio Sancti Columbe deditus, ad quamdam inibi capellulam tenui victu, utpote lacte vnius vacce et conchis ac pisiculis marinis contentatus, sedule se dedit, de quibus cibariis rex cum suis, tribus diebus, vento compellente, reficitur. Et quia Sanctum Columbam a juventute dilexit, in periculo maris, ut predicitur, positus, vouit se, si ad prefatam insulam veheretur incolumis, aliquid memoria dignum ibidem facere, et sic monasterium ibidem construxit canonicorum, et dotauit."[61]

I shall content myself with citing from our older Scottish historians one more account of Alexander's adventure upon Inchcolm—namely, that given by Hector Boece, Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, in his Scotorum Historia, a work written during the reign of James V., and first published in 1526. In this work, after alluding to the foundation of the Abbey of Scone, Boece proceeds to state that—(to quote the translation of the passage as given by Bellenden)—"Nocht long efter King Alexander come in Sanct Colmes Inche; quhair he was constrainit, be violent tempest, to remane thre dayis, sustenand his life with skars fude, be ane heremit that dwelt in the said inche: in quhilk, he had ane litill chapell, dedicat in the honoure of Sanct Colme. Finaly, King Alexander, becaus his life was saiffit be this heremit, biggit ane Abbay of Chanonis regular, in the honour of Sanct Colme; and dotat it with sindry landes and rentis, to sustene the abbot and convent thairof."[62]

As Bellenden's translation of Boece's work does not in this and other parts adhere by any means strictly to the author's original context, I will add the account given by Boece in that historian's own words:[63]

"Nec ita multo post Fortheae rex aestuarium trajiciens, coorta tempestate in Emoniam insulam appulsus descendit, repertoque Divi Columbae saccllo, viroque Eremita, triduo tempestatis vi permanere illic coactus est, exiguo sustentatus cibo, quem apud Eremitam quendam sacelli custodem reperiebat, nec tamen comitantium multitudini ulla ex parte sufficiente. Itaque eo periculo defunctus Divo Columbae aedem vovit. Nec diu voto damnatus fuit, coenobio paulo post Regularium, ordinis Divi Augustini extructo, agrisque atque redditibus ad sumptus eorum collatis."

That the very small and antique-looking edifice which I have described as still standing on Inchcolm is identically the little chapel or cell spoken of by Fordun and Boece as existing on the island at the time of Alexander's visit to it, upwards of seven centuries ago, is a matter admitting of great probability, but not of perfect legal proof. One or two irrecoverable links are wanting in the chain of evidence to make that proof complete; and more particularly do we lack for this purpose any distinct allusions or notices among our mediaeval annalists, of the existence or character of the building during these intervening seven centuries, except, indeed, we consider the notice of it which I have cited from the Scotichronicon "ad quandam inibi capellulam," to be written by the hand of Walter Bower, and to have a reference to the little chapel as it existed and stood about the year 1430, when Bower wrote his additions to Fordun, while living and ruling on Inchcolm as Abbot of its Monastery.

But various circumstances render it highly probable that the old stone-roofed cell still standing on the island is the ancient chapel or oratory in which the island hermit (eremita insulanus) lived and worshipped at the time of Alexander's royal but compulsory visit in 1123. I have already adduced in favour of this belief the very doubtful and imperfect evidence of tradition, and the fact that this little building itself is, in its whole architectural style and character, evidently far more rude, primitive, and ancient, than any of the extensive monastic structures existing on the island, and that have been erected from the time of Alexander downwards. In support of the same view there are other and still more valuable pieces of corroborative proof, which perhaps I may be here excused from now dwelling upon with a little more fullness and detail.

The existing half-ruinous cell answers, I would first venture to remark—and answers most fitly and perfectly—to the two characteristic appellations used respectively in the Scotichronicon and in the Historiae Scotorum, to designate the cell or oratory of the Inchcolm anchorite at the time of King Alexander's three days' sojourn on the island. These two appellations we have already found in the preceding quotations to be capellula and sacellum. As applied to the small, rude, vaulted edifice to which I have endeavoured to draw the attention of the Society, both terms are strikingly significant. The word used by Fordun or Bower in the Scotichronicon to designate the oratory of the Inchcolm anchorite, namely "capellula," or little chapel, is very descriptive of a diminutive church or oratory, but at the same time very rare. Du Cange, in his learned glossary, only adduces one example of its employment. It occurs in the testament of Guido, Bishop of Auxerre, in the thirteenth century (1270), who directs that "oratorium seu capellulam super sepulchrum dicti Robini construent." This passage further proves the similar signification of the two names of oratorium and capellula. The other appellation "sacellum," applied by Boece to the hermit's chapel, is a better known and more classical word than the capellula of the Scotichronicon. It is, as is well known, a diminutive from sacer, as tenellus is from tener, macellus from macer, etc.; and Cicero himself has left us a complete definition of the word, for he has described "sacellum" as "locus parvus deo sacratus cum ara."[64]

Again, in favour of the view that the existing building on Inchcolm is the actual chapel or oratory in which the insular anchorite lived and worshipped there in the twelfth century, it may be further argued, that, where they were not constructed of perishable materials, it was in consonance with the practice of these early times to preserve carefully houses and buildings of religious note, as hallowed relics. Most of the old oratories and houses raised by the early Irish and Scottish saints were undoubtedly built of wattles, wood, or clay, and other perishable materials, and of necessity were soon lost.[65] But when of a more solid and permanent construction, they were sometimes sedulously preserved, and piously and punctually visited for long centuries as holy shrines. There still exist in Ireland various stone oratories of early Irish saints to which this remark applies—as, for example, that of St. Kevin at Glendalough, of St. Columba at Kells, those of St. Molua and St. Flannan at Killaloe, of St. Benan on Aranmore, St. Ceannanach on Inishmaan, etc. etc. Let us take the first two examples which I have named, to illustrate more fully my remark. St. Kevin died at an extreme old age, in the year 618; and St. Columba died a few years earlier, namely in the year 597. When speaking of the two houses at Glendalough and Kells, respectively bearing the names of these two early Irish saints, Dr. Petrie—and I certainly could not quote either a higher or a more cautious antiquarian authority—observes, "I think we have every reason to believe that the buildings called St. Columba's House at Kells, and St. Kevin's House at Glendalough, buildings so closely resembling each other in every respect, were erected by the persons whose names they bear."[66] If Dr. Petrie's idea be correct, and he repeats it elsewhere,[67] then these houses were constructed about the end of the sixth century, and their preservation for so long an intervening period was no doubt in a great measure the result of their being looked upon, protected, and visited, as spots hallowed by having been the earthly dwellings of such esteemed saints.

In the great work on The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, which I have just quoted—a work, let me add, overflowing with the richest and ripest antiquarian lore, and yet written with all the fascination of a romance—Dr. Petrie, after describing the two houses I speak of, St. Kevin's and St. Columba's, farther states his belief that both of these buildings "served the double purpose of a habitation and an oratory."[70] They were, in this view, the residences, as well as the chapels, of their original inhabitants; and subsequently the house of St. Kevin at Glendalough, of St. Flannan at Killaloe, etc., were publicly used as chapels or churches.[71] In all probability the capellula of the hermit on Inchcolm was, in the same way, at once both the habitation and the oratory of this solitary anchorite, and apparently the only building on the island when Alexander was tossed upon its shores. The sacred character of the humble cell, as the dwelling and oratory of a holy Columbite hermit, and possibly also the interest attached to it as an edifice which had afforded for three days such welcome and grateful shelter to King Alexander and his suite, would in all probability—judging from the numerous analogies which we might trace elsewhere—led to its preservation, and perhaps its repair and restoration, when, a few years afterwards, the monastery rose in its immediate neighbourhood, in pious fulfilment of the royal vow.[72]