216 Mr. Hardy on a Red Deer's Antler. 



to Thomas Atkynson in 1429-30 ;* perhaps the '' aliquam 

 bestiam silvestrem" of King William's endowment ; — strag- 

 glers now and then from the wild companies that the Lam- 

 mermoor shepherds were accustomed to scare from the corn- 

 fields, with " rattles made of pieces of dried skins, distended 

 round ribs with wood, that were bended into a semicircular 

 form, enclosing a few hard pebbles, and fixed to the end of 

 long poles." 



Was the gallant stag that furnished this antler, one of these 

 wanderers on the Berwickshire hills ? We think not. There 

 is no show of native venison in the Priory larder. When the 

 monks did get it, it arrived from a distance ; and was wel- 

 comed with a flourish of trumpets ; and so precious was it 

 held that they eked it out to the last morsel, salting it down 

 like their beef marts, " mutton-carcases," " pork flitches," 

 " dog-draves," salt herrings and lampreys, " stock fish," and 

 similar robust fare. This honour they owed to the heroic 

 Bruce, perhaps in remembrance of hospitable offices during 

 the siege of Berwick, by a charter given at Newbottle on the 

 26th December, 1328, in the King's declining years, and 

 during an interval of peace betwixt the realms. The witnesses 

 were the Chancellor and the Earl Marshal, Robert Bruce, jun., 

 Thomas Randolph Earl of Moray, and Sir James Douglas — 

 and more distinguished concurrents Scotland could not pro- 

 duce. He then, on account of the devotion he had towards 

 St. Cuthbert and the monastery of Durham, conferred on the 

 monks an annual donation of five harts at the feast of St. 

 Cuthbert's Translation, the 4th of September. These were 

 to be taken from his forest of Selkirk — that famed forest of 

 Ettrick where, when 



*' Its waste glens with copse were lined, 



Doe and roe and red-deer good 



Have bounded by through gay greenwood." 



The game was to be delivered up to them by the principal 

 forester, at the festival of the Assimiption of the Blessed 

 Virgin (15th August) and to be conveyed by him to the 

 Priory at Coldingham at the King's cost.f In thus promot- 

 ing the festivity of " their feast day," the king was in a man- 

 ner restoring St. Cuthbert some of his own property again, 



* Priory of Coldingham, (Surtees Society,) p. 105. Harewood is the field on 

 Brockholes farm facing Grant's House. The Brockholes mentioned is the 

 Easter Brockholes which stood near Brockholes dean, perhaps the Denewood 

 of the charters. The Atkinsons, now corrupted into Aitchison, held it for 

 generations ; and their descendants are still farmers in the neighbourhood. 



t Carr's Hist, of Coldingham, p. 267, 325. Chalmers's Caledonia, II., p. 982. 



