Annwersary Address. 387 



like ours, in those times, would have been in hazard of being 

 kidnapped and held out to ransom ; for the country people 

 were not trustworthy; they intercommuned with Scottish 

 thieves; and were "notable bog-trotters," amongst whom 

 "the king's writs runneth not;" and no man "would even 

 travel here that could help it." To a later and less lawless 

 period belongs that cultivation of the green tract before us, 

 which has drawn those crooked ridges that mark the hill- 

 sides far and near ; radiating from some of them as from a dome. 

 They are oxen-ploughed ridges ; the team, it is said, requiring 

 those windings, not being so readily turned at the ends of the 

 furrows as horses, from the greater space they occupied. 

 Three oblong buildings, built without lime, on the banks of 

 the Coquet, attracted our notice ; and another came in our 

 way as we passed to the Hawsden burn ravine, through a 

 slack behind the high porphyritic hills. Corresponding to 

 them, are the remains of buildings in the lower part of the 

 Langleyford vale, which the old people say had been used as 

 bughts for sheep-milking. They are rather small for bughts, 

 as bughts are now, and are in close proximity to numerous hut 

 circles of British origin, that lie hid at the base of the glitters 

 there, and ancient mounds connected with them. Moreover, 

 structures very much alike, may be seen in a camp, on the 

 south bank of Wooler water, above Langlee, and among 

 British huts and forts in more than one hollow of Homilheugh, 

 and also among huts on the hills above Akeld, and elsewhere. 

 They occur likewise in hill forts on Northfield, near St. Abb's 

 Head ; and one at the east end of Earnsheugh has been set down 

 as a small Roman camp. Those situated near camps are ob- 

 long-oval, whilst what appear to be more modern erections are 

 rectangular. They may have been sheep-bughts, or cow- 

 houses, or stables ; and in this instance why may they not 

 have been the byres for the oxen that ploughed these crooked 

 ridges? The situation was well adapted for the peculiarly 

 Augean management of their manure by the careless farmers 

 up here. " Many of them have ingeniously contrived to 

 build their houses near a 'burnside,' for the convenience of 



