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POTSHERDS AND PIPKINS. 



By R. S. FERGUSON, F.S.A. 



(Presidential Address at the Bowness Annual Meeting.) 



Antiquaries have always afforded a good deal of amusement to 

 other people, for which I doubt if those other people have always 

 been properly grateful ; and the collections we form, from Don 

 Saltero's museum downwards, have served as the whetstones for 

 many persons' wits. Sir Walter Scott, himself an antiquary rather 

 than an archseologist, has ridiculed us delightfully in one of the 

 best known of his novels ; and Burns has described Captain Grose 

 as having taken up "the antiquarian trade," of which the poet 

 makes out the stock-in-business to be 



A fouth o' auld nick-nackets, 

 Rusty aim caps and jinglin' jackets, 

 And parritch pats and auld saut-backets. 



The porridge pot business is at the bottom of a good deal that 

 I shall say to you to-day. It is evident that before you can 

 make porridge, you must have a pot of some sort, of earthenware 

 or of metal ; and that without one, you would have to be content 

 with cold "crowdy," made in a bag, or in a wooden bowl, or a 

 bison's horn, unless you could warm up the mess by help of a red 

 hot stone. 



For my present purpose, I must go back into the very early 

 history of man in this country. I dare say you have heard 



