34 Transactions. 



stone relics of all periods we are well favoured. A walk up the 

 right bank of the Nith, past Ellisland — home of Britain's chiefest 

 songster — past Friars' Carse, brings you to a very perfect and fine 

 stone circle, on an eminence. Here, round a circle of more than 

 100 yards in girth and 3.5 across, are set up 38 stones, mostly of 

 hard greywacke or whinstone, 5, 6, and 7 feet in height from the 

 ground, and doubtless as much buried below. In the centre, 

 straight in line with the entrance, which is marked by a single 

 outlier, as the slope of the hill does not admit of an avenue, is a 

 large pillar over six feet high, and massive, which has every 

 appearance of careful trimming. In line with these again is the 

 altar stone, a great flat-topped boulder, in an embayment at the 

 south. Behind, but without the circle altogether, is a small 

 trench, nearly square, surrounded by six smaller stones, laid flat. 

 Nearly in line between the centre stone and the altar is the most 

 extraordinary stone I have ever seen in these places. It is 23 

 inches by IG across, and the whole of the centre has been care- 

 fully hollowed out, clean through its depth of eight inches. It 

 most certainly is a socket, but for what purpose or why a tempo- 

 rary upright stone should be set in it at that point in the circle is 

 a matter quite beyond my limited knowledge. But now, what is 

 it ? A temple — a burial ground ? Is there a single person 

 breathing who could go to that weird, quiet spot among the fir 

 trees and not feel stirred with wonder and amazement at this pre- 

 historic relic ? How, in those far-off days, when mechanical appli- 

 ances were unknown, when roads and means of transport were of 

 the rudest, were these great stones brought from a distance and 

 set up here ? For the stone is not local. Who were the people ? 

 Were they, as for centuries was believed, the Druids, those highly 

 coloured people of the British or Gaulish tribes, whom the Romans 

 knew and conquered ? Or were they, as many now believe, an 

 earlier race of short, swarthy men, like the Huns, who roamed and 

 hunted and fought and feasted, clad in the skins of wild beasts, 

 and whose skeletons we sometimes find fossilised in the alluvial 

 sandstone? If so, what mighty chief lies buried here, huddled up 

 with knees touching chin, as was their fashion in burial, with his 

 rude flint weapons beside him ? What had he done so great or 

 noble, or so powerfully wicked, that his tribe should spend long 

 weary weeks in raising such a stupendous memorial — to serve in 



