THE aUIGRICH. 441 



and details, from the sketcli furnished to the Scottish Antiquaries iu 

 1785, and copied in the Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, with an au- 

 thentication of its general accuracy, on the authority of a correspon- 

 dent at whose request the original had been inspected in its new Cana- 

 dian reliquary. In its general form it most nearly resembles the head 

 of the short episcopal cambutta borne by St. Luke, in the beautifully 

 illuminated Gospels of MacDurnan, in the Library at Lambeth Palace, 

 which have had the middle of the ninth century assigned as their 

 date.* It is an exceedingly simple form, suggestive of a primitive 

 age of art, and yet adorned with such rich and tasteful skill as to 

 constitute — apart from its singularly interesting historical associa- 

 tions, — a valuable example of the workmanship of the early age to 

 which it must be assigned, and of the primitive civilization which 

 followed in the wake of that Christianity taught by St. Fillan and 

 other Christian missionaries, to the first converts from among the 

 pagan Celts of North Britain. 



This ancient Scottish relic is still in the possession of Alexander 

 Dewar, the lineal representative, in all probability, of the favoured 

 follower of King Robert, to whom, according to no improbable tradi- 

 tion, it was confided on the field of Bannockburn, five hundred and 

 forty-five years ago. Could the protection which the prejudices and 

 superstition, no less than the national and family pride of earlier 

 generations, secured for it as a sacred and chartered heirloom, be 

 guaranteed to it under the charge of a Canadian yeoman, its fittest 

 place would still be in the keeping of the Dewars, to whose custody it 

 was entrusted, under such remarkable circumstances, and who have 

 been, through poverty and exile, faithful to their trust. But removal 

 from StrathfiUan to the clearings of the New World has broken the 

 charm. It only remains in the keeping of its present custodier be- 

 cause no one has hitherto been found able or willing to pay the price 

 he demands for the precious relic ; and it is earnestly to be desired 

 that, ere it is too late, it should be secured within the safe keeping of 

 one of our great national collections, before, as apprehended by its 

 former describer in 1785, it "find a ready passage to the melting 

 pot ;" or, like the documents which accompanied it to Canada, it 

 perish in some chance conflagration, such as yearly consume hundreds 

 of the frail wooden houses of Canadian settlers. 



* Archseol. Journal, vol. vii. p. 20- 



