Transactions. 39 



From Southwick, beginning at the estuary of Southwick 

 Burn, and tracing the coast round by Douglas Hall, Port o' 

 Warren, Barcloy Head, and onward to the Scaur and estuary of 

 the TJrr, the parish for a third of its circumference is bounded 

 by the sea. On this side of the parish, therefore, the sea-side, 

 the people had no neighbours with whom they could associate 

 with and form connections, and with England they had little or 

 no communication. 



At a time indeed anterior to that to which my paper relates, 

 they had very close communication with the Isle of Man, but it 

 was of an illicit and contraband character. At that time there 

 was a regular smuggling traffic candied on between the two 

 places, and there were men living in the parish when I came to 

 it fifty years ago who remembered it and possibly profited by it. 

 Captain John Crosbie, Laird of Kipp, himself a seafaring man, 

 had a cellar under the floor of his dining-room, approached by a 

 secret trap-door, which the carpet covered, and which was doubt- 

 less designed for the safe custody of such commodities. I myself 

 have seen him go down through the trap-door in question, and 

 bring up a bottle, whether of wine or spirits T cannot remember. 

 There is a similar cellar under the dining-room floor of the 

 manse, approached also by a trap-door, and concealed in the same 

 manner. On the rocky coast leading from Port o' Warren to 

 Douglas-Hall there are several caves and deep fissures in the 

 rocks, admirably fitted for the concealment of contraband goods, 

 until such time as removal could be safely efiected. And on the 

 other side of Port o' Warren, in the rocks leading to what is 

 called the Cormorants' Dookers' Bing, there are other caves and 

 fissures, larger and deeper, which can only be approached at low 

 water, and then only by wading. One on the Torr or Douglas- 

 Hall shore is known as the Brandy Cave, a name significant of 

 the use to which it was put. On the Island of Heston, whicli 

 lies at the mouth of the TJrr, less than a mile from the Colvend 

 shore, there are also caves and fissures, larger, I am told, than 

 those on the Torr oi- Boreland Htmghs. This is the island 

 which the author of the spirit-stirring fiction of "The Raiders" 

 calls " Rathan." 



Colvend, as everyone knows who has lived in the parish, and 

 as the least observant sees at a glance, is intersected by rocky 

 ridges and strewed with boulders, so much so that Mr M'Diarmid 

 of the Courier characterised the parish as the " Riddlinfs of 



