14 Antiquities of Eskdalemuir. 



as our grenial and candid critic (by implication) himself allows, 

 there is to be found (here and there) a sprinkling of liuman beings 

 who, I am happy to say, make up in intelligence what they lack in 

 numbers. The fact is that that wild stretch of moorland which 

 lies between the two Kirks of Hutton and Eskdalemuir, and which 

 is unredeemed by a single feature of interest to break its bleak 

 monotony, represents but a fraction, and that the least attractive 

 fraction, of the whole extent of the parish, which covers an area 

 of 66 square miles, and is facile princeps the largest parish in 

 Dumfriesshire. But if this five miles of unmitigated moorland be 

 in itself the ne plus ultra of dreariness and desolation, it acts as a 

 magnificent foil and introduction to the real beauty of the Dale of 

 Esk itself — a Dale that rivals in sweetness and pastoral attractive- 

 ness any of the other great Dales of the Borderland (as Tweed- 

 dale, Teviotdale, Liddesdale, Annaudale, Clydesdale). To all 

 lovers of the beautiful, to all who would steep their senses in what 

 Veitch finely calls " the pastoral melancholy of the Lowlands," 

 Eskdalemuir holds out inducements irresistible as they are 

 innumerable. The student of ancient lore may here have his 

 appetite for the mythical and the marvellous stimulated and 

 strengthened by the tales and traditions that hover round and lend 

 an indescribable charm to almost every square foot of land he 

 treads or looks upon ; while the Archseologist or Antiquarian will 

 find in this sequestered vale "far from the madding crowd" a 

 veritable happy hunting ground full of objects of interest and 

 importance that will call forth all his powers of observation, and 

 tax all his ingenuity to explain. Along that far-stretching line of 

 river-flow, that extends from the water-shed of the parish down 

 to its southern extremity, at the famous King pool, there stand 

 out on either bank of the river, camps, forts, rings, and other 

 remains, constituting the very earliest inhabited dwelling places on 

 the Borders, dating back to the time of the Cymri, who were here 

 during the Roman occupation, if indeed they were not here before 

 it. These forts, mounds, and rings have been popularly designated 

 Roman, though I am persuaded that in the vast majority of 

 instances they have little or no claim to the title ; for a careful 

 examination of the root forms that enter into the names of many 

 of the places and objects of the district would appear to point to a 

 Cymric rather than a Roman derivation. As Professor Veitch has 

 remarked in his references to the Border valleys generally, and 



