Mr. J. Hardy on Sepulchral Monuments. 109 



was finally removed about 1831. In taking it out, two or three 

 slab-formed graves were turned up ; an approach to the modem 

 custom of interring the dead among the dwelling-places of the 

 living, of which I have not met with any other instance. It is 

 possible they may have been unconnected with the fortlet, and 

 may have been placed there after it had been abandoned. At a 

 short distance from it to the north-east, on the summit of a 

 swelling height, lay another circlet, but smaller and less strongly 

 fortified. Hard by it there rose a large and conspicuous cairn, 

 and the moor adjacent offered many lesser heaps, all of which 

 have disappeared to make way for the plough. In some of those 

 lately taken up, the sides of the grave consist of three or four 

 large stones set edgewise, instead of one solid slab. It is often a 

 source of remark, that none of these sepulchres are of sufficient 

 length to contain the body of a full-grown man. Some, indeed, 

 are square rather than oblong. It is hence inferred that the 

 corpse has been doubled up. This is not, however, matter of 

 mere conjecture, since an instance occurred several years since, 

 on the farm of Thornton Loch in East Lothian, in which a skeleton 

 enclosed in a cist-vaen was laid bare in the course of tillage, placed 

 almost in a sitting position. Evidences of the prevalence of this 

 practice exist in various parts of the island. May not the popular 

 belief of the pigmy stature of the former inhabitants of the island, 

 be founded on observations made on their mode of interment ? 



On the march between Aldcambus and Penmanshiel, about 

 half a mile distant, there are still the remains of a cairn, called 

 Andrew's Cairn. It is about 30 feet in diameter, but affords 

 no coiTcct idea of these monuments, being low and flat and over- 

 grown with turf. It is composed of the large boulder stones 

 which are sparingly scattered over the adjacent moors. Like 

 several of these ancient heaps, it now serves as a boundary-mark; 

 a purpose to which these structures have been put from the 

 earliest ages*. 



The largest, however, of the cairns remains to be noticed. It 

 was called Winden Cairn, from the neighbouring small dean, 

 remarkable only for its tortuosities. It lay in a line with St. Da- 

 vid's, about half a mile to the east of it, and, like the last-men- 

 tioned, was regarded as a limes or boundary f. Like the mounds 



Galgaciis, we find, however, a distinct reference to the supplies of min that 

 the Romans had derived from those under his command ( Vit. Agnc. c. 31). 

 These millstones have been found in other ** Chesters " in the vicinity ; and 

 this, taken in connection with the situation of many of the smaller ones, 

 placed amidst cultivated fields, confirms the opinion that the cultivation of 

 the soil was not unknown to those who lived, or took refuw within them. 

 Many farm-places, as cities elsewhere, have arisen from their ruins. 



* Homer and the Charters, />as«m. 



t The farm adjacent to this and St. David's is called Harelawside, a 

 Saxon compound, signifying the side of the boundary hill. 



