tion assigned as the burial-place of St. Donnan, the patron saint of the isle.' In this, however, we can be at no loss to recognise the spurious traditions of an age long subsequent to that in which the mound was reared. The works of many savage tribes suffice to show that such expenditure of laborious effort on the most intractable materials, invariably precedes the simpler, but more ingenious plastic arts; and the choice of material for such sepulchral urns or cists, confirms their origin in an age of primitive and unskilled workmanship. They appear to have been fashioned out of the most easily wrought rocks of the district; though even then they

must have involved much time and labour to their rude artificer, with his imperfect tools; and were reserved, we may presume, for the rare honours conferred on some distinguished chief, or perchance on the Arch-Druid or high-priest of their long-forgotten faith.

Another and much more common stone vessel is a small cup or bowl (Fig. 28), generally measuring from five to six inches in diameter, and with a perforated or indented handle projecting from one side. Many of these are more or less ornamented, chiefly with the same chevron patterns which occur on cinerary urns of rudest workmanship. They have been found of all the commoner varieties of stone, from the easily wrought steatite or

1 Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xvii. p. 287.

sandstone to the hardest porphyry; and are familiarly known to the antiquary by the name of Druidical pateræ. The striking analogy presented to them by a class of stone vessels still in use in the Feroe Islands, is deserving of notice from the very suggestive elements of comparison thereby furnished. Insulated in those

remote and rarely visited northern islands, where the themes of the Nibelungen Lied have survived in the traditional verse of the native popular songs, it is not difficult to conceive of arts and usages undergoing slight changes through unnumbered centuries; and there accordingly the form at least of the ancient stone patera is retained. The accompanying woodcut is engraved

from one selected from a collection of such vessels brought from the Feroe Islands, and described by Sir Walter C. Trevellyan, when presenting this example to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, as a stone vessel in use by the islanders at the present day as a lamp or chaffing-dish in which they carry about live embers. The old chevron pattern is retained in the modern ornamentation, and the only special difference from the ancient Scottish vessel is the greater length of the handle; an improvement consonant to the inevitable refinement, or degeneracy as some would call it, of modern progress, designed to increase its adaptation for carrying glowing embers without injury to the bearer.

The correspondence traceable in the simple arts of the Feroe Islanders, though there only applied to domestic

uses, is in no degree inconsistent with the idea implied in the designation of the Scottish relics as vessels originally consecrated to the mysterious rites of the so-called Druidical temples, or megalithic circles. Certain it is, at any rate, that they have been repeatedly dug up within the charmed area of those long-deserted fanes; though by no means limited to such localities. In 1828 two of them were discovered under an ancient causeway leading from a circle of standing-stones on Donside, in the parish of Tullynessle, Aberdeenshire; both of which are now in the Scottish Museum. A similar relic was found some time before, when trenching the area of another stone circle on the farm of Whiteside in the same. county; and a third is described, which was dug up within the famous Hebridean circle of Callernish. The very great labour involved in the construction of some. of those stone vessels from the hardest whin and granite, seems at first sight to confirm the idea of their original destination for some special or sacred object. But this is a deceptive mode of reasoning. Time, which is of so much value in a civilized state of society, is of little moment to the rude barbarian. Captain Inglefield, in his Arctic voyage undertaken in search of Sir John Franklin, witnessed the Esquimaux on the shores of Whale Sound, engaged in the laborious process of hollowing out a stone vessel in which to melt their blubber, with no other implements than stone tools. Dr. Rae informs me that while the Esquimaux of Copper River make knives and lances of the native copper of that region, and haft them with bone, their lamps and cooking vessels are wrought of stone. The stone lamp is trimmed with moss wicks set in lard or oil; and over this he has seen them suspend their stone pot filled with melted snow, and so cook their food of whale or seal blubber. Rude as is the social condition which accompanies such

VOL. 1.

ingenious Esquimaux arts, we can scarcely imagine it to be ruder than that of the ancient whalers whose lances and harpoons have been brought to light alongside of the gigantic cetacean fossils of the Blair-Drummond Moss.

Some of the forms of stone vessels of rarest occurrence among those found in Scotland, are much more suggestive of their original construction for domestic purposes than the small lamp or patera; and it is worthy of note that while the latter is one of the least rare among the Scottish antiquities of its class, it appears to be scarcely known either in England or Ireland. The only example figured among the antiquities of the Royal Irish Aca

demy, is described by Mr. Wilde as "this great rarity found in the Shannon excavations;" while from the indestructible nature of their materials it is inconceivable that such relics could have altogether disappeared, had they ever existed in any great number. Of the commoner forms, one, in my own possession, found in Glen Tilt, is a neatly formed shallow saucer, wrought in native green marble, with two handles, not unlike the modern quech. Another in the Scottish collection, found in Athole, is like a stone ladle; and a third, found within the area of a " Pech's Burgh" at Brough, in Shetland, of oblong form, as shown here, and measuring 12 by 8 inches, can hardly be more fitly described than as a stone tureen with a handle carved at each end. Others

met with under similar circumstances are wide and shallow, and nearly resemble the large stone basins found in the chambers of the celebrated cairn of Newgrange in the neighbourhood of Drogheda. In some of the remoter districts of Scotland such ancient vessels were regarded till very recently with somewhat of the same awe and dread as is still attached to the Elf-arrow and the perforated witch-stone; and Mr. Colin M'Kenzie, in describing the great circle of Callernish, towards the close of last century, refers to a stone bowl found there, which was afterwards thrown, through a superstitious dread, into the hollow round the central stone.1

The Scottish querne, which abounds wherever the traces of ancient population are met with, and appears to have undergone little alteration since its introduction in the infancy of agricultural arts, must be ranked among the stone vessels employed for domestic use. The rudely fashioned oaken querne, or mortar for pounding grain, already noticed among the strange disclosures of Blair Drummond Moss, may be regarded as the oldest type of the primitive hand-mill, coeval with remarkable traces of human art recovered in the same alluvial valley. It is simply the section of an oak tree, measuring nineteen inches in height by fourteen inches in diameter. The centre has been hollowed out to a depth of about a foot, so as to form a mortar; in which with the help of a stone or wooden pestle, its original possessor was doubtless wont to bruise and pound his nuts or grain, preparatory to their conversion into food. But the stone hand-mill is also an invention of remote antiquity, and one so well adapted to the wants of a primitive community, that it has been perpetuated among the islanders of the western Hebrides to our own day. Its abandonment in some of the remoter districts of the mainland is

1 Archaol. Scot. vol. i. p. 284.