Transactions. 29 
that his offence is written down in history, and that he himself 
is classed among the Goths and the Vandals. 
Passing from names to things, our interest does not grow less. 
Belonging to a remote antiquity, the Lake Dwelling at Friars’ 
Carse carries us away back to a period before any history of our 
country began to be written. The island in the middle of the 
loch that lies close to the highway was long used as a place of 
refuge in times of danger. In the days of the Border raids the 
peaceful fraternity of monks, from whom Friars’ Carse derives 
its name, were often hard put to it to bestow their goods and 
gear where the wild reivers of Cumberland could not lay hands 
upon them. That little island was their safe hiding-place. At 
the first signal of danger, they conveyed their effects thither by a 
path through the water known only to themselves. No enemy 
suspected that the little wooded island concealed what they so 
greatly desired to carry away, and if any attempted to ford the 
narrow strip of water, the black yielding mud soon warned 
them of their danger, and caused them to desist. 
It was not generally known that this island refuge had been 
constructed by human hands; but in 1878, when the late Mr 
Thomas Nelson partially drained the loch, the structure was 
laid bare. It was then seen to be one of the artificial lake- 
dwellings built two thousand years ago or more as a place of 
safety by the original inhabitants of the land. A mass of stout 
oak beams rests upon the bottom of the loch, which cannot be 
less than 15 or 16 feet in depth, and forms an island of oval 
shape measuring 80 by 70 feet. On this island huts were 
erected, traces of the partitions of which remain. Near the 
middle there was a circle of small stones forming a rude pave- 
ment, evidently designed to protect the foundation of oaken logs 
from fire. A canoe, hollowed out of a single tree-trunk, and the 
paddle by which it was rowed, were found imbedded in the mud, 
showing how the people who lived on the island went to and fro. 
A stone axe and some fragments of pottery remained to show 
what sort of people they were, and give some indication of their 
habits and ways of life. Further relics might have been found, 
but for a singular and untoward accident which befell the 
rubbish removed from the surface of the oak pavement. As this 
was dug away, it was wheeled to what seemed a place of safety, 
where it was to remain until it could be carefully turned over 
and examined. (ne morning, however, the precious heap was 
