16 ALEXANDER GORDON, THE ANTIQUARY. 



almost every part of Scotland for three years successively. Indeed," 

 he says, " I must acknowledge that I might have been able to have 

 added many other valuable materials for the perfecting of this work 

 had I had any encouragement from the public, seeing my own cir- 

 cumstances were not sufficient to have gone to the expense of 

 searching and digging in places where I am most certainly convinced 

 many other curious and noble monuments of the Romans may yet 

 be found." 



It was due to the author of a work devoted to the antiquities 

 and traditions of Scotland, that the reviver of its old minstrel tales 

 and lays should hold him in loving regard ; for his researches were 

 carried out among the same dales and glens where Scott himself ere 

 long made his own itinerary, with results memorable to all men, in 

 his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and in the romances wrought 

 by him as the fruits of such study of Scottish legend and character. 

 In the pages of his Itinerarium, Gordon not only describes and de- 

 lineates the altars and inscribed tablets, the Roman legends, and 

 runic inscriptions of Inveresk and Cramond, of Ruthwell, Annandale, 

 and the Eildon Hills — -all favoiirite haunts of the great novelist, — but 

 he furnishes no inconsiderable part of the actual materials which 

 Scott turned to account in the creation of one of his most original 

 characters : the Laird of Monkbarns. 



According to the traditions of the Pennycuik family, as communi- 

 cated to me by the late Sir George Clerk, the author of the Itinera- 

 rium was a grave man, of formal habits, tall, lean, and usually 

 taciturn. But his silence was probably only in uncongenial society. 

 He must have had his vohible fits at times, for he was known in the 

 Pennycuik circle by the name of Galgachus. His thoughts at this 

 time, we may presume, revolved so persistently around Mons 

 Grampius and its Caledonian hero, that when they shaped themselves 

 into words, they were apt to make the enthusiastic antiquary the 

 butt of unsympathising juveniles. Of the pranks of the latter under 

 such promptings some characteristic reminiscences are preserved ; 

 and especially that of the manufacture of a Roman altar, which was 

 in due time brought to light on the Pennycuik estate, and furnished 

 the basis for speculations not less learned and ingenious than those 

 of the ever-memorable sculptured tablet, with its sacrificial ladle and 

 inscription, dug up by The Antiquary on his third day's trenching of 

 the Kaim of Kinprunes. In truth, the whole story is a genuine 



