84 Anniversary Address. 



exhibits the farther progress of decay. A comparison of the 

 latter with a sketch taken last year shows, that the arches 

 occur at the very places where the breaches were greatest. 

 Scott's father, a mason at Castleton, opened the vault or 

 dungeon in which Ramsay perished some years before 

 the Statistical account by Mr. Arkle was written, in 

 1793, and found the bridle and other articles mentioned 

 by Sir Walter Scott.* His son, by desire of Lord Dal- 

 keith, when encamped at Hermitage for shooting in 1806, 

 made some farther excavations, in the course of which he 

 uncovered a fine paved floor, and among the rubbish found 

 the large key,f referred to by Leyden in the ballad of Lord 

 Soulis. This, with an iron ladle discovered on a former 

 occasion, is in possession of the Duke of Buccleugh. A silver 

 ring with the Douglas heart and a quatrefoil alternating 

 round its circumference, and a bugle horn found in the marsh 

 outside, are probably at Abbotsford, and the bridle bit taken 

 from Ramsay's dungeon was presented by Sir Walter Scott 

 to Lord Dalhousie.J 



Considerable interest was manifested by the discovery of 

 some marks on the stones forming the inner doorways, leading 

 from the kitchen to the side chambers. These, which con- 

 sisted chiefly of antique forms of the letter B, were considered 

 to have some connection with the founder of the Hermitage, 

 from which the place takes its name, Walter de Bolbeck, or 

 perhaps from the Bothwells who probably repaired and 

 enlarged the Castle. But Mr. Langlands more justly con- 

 sidered them to be masons' marks, and this view is confirmed 

 by comparing them with the interesting series of such signs 

 collected by Dr. John Alex. Smithy in whose memoir several 

 examples exactly similar are given from the old Abbeys and 

 Castles of the Borders. 



* Scott's Border Exploits, p. 357. 



t Antiquities of the Borders, by Sir W. Scott, II., 167. 



% Proc. Atiq. Soc. Scot., IV., p. 548. See plate XXI. South wall and 

 transept of Melrose Abbey, and in Jedburgh, Arbroath, &c. The letters A and B 

 both occur, sometimes upright, sometimes prostrate. In like manner those at 

 Hermitage are found to be erect, reversed, and sometimes upside down. 



