90 Notes on the Catrail. By Miss Russell. 



Ettrick and Gala make a natural frontier. I have only lately 

 been aware that Mr Cosmo Innes had suggested this line of re- 

 search about Cumbria, as long ago as when he edited the Kelso 

 charters ; but I do not think any one could have made much of 

 the bishoprics, if the course of the Catrail had not been recorded. 

 As to the large size and defensive character of certain parts of 

 the Catrail, it is to be noted that Alexander Gordon, who must 

 have perambulated the line about 1725, and who, as far as the 

 literary world is concerned, was the discover of it, was so entirely 

 convinced of its being the fortifications of a frontier, that to 

 account for it, he, not knowing much about Scottish Cumbria, 

 formed the odd conjecture — very odd when the history and pur- 

 pose of the Eoman walls are considered — that it might have 

 been constructed by the Caledonians to keep out the Eomans, 

 after the peace made with Severus. (What really happened on 

 that occasion seems, from the inscriptions, to have been that 

 Severus re-constructed the northern Eoman wall, in Stirling- 

 shire, to keep out the Caledonians. The only difference of 

 opinion among authorities is, as to whether it was not rather that 

 in the north of England ; but the evidence is in favour of the 

 former.) 



Gordon's own observations are generally so accurate and 

 painstaking, that this queer theory is another example that one 

 must not expect a man who is good in one line to be necessarily 

 good in another. (His miles are nearly all two, " lang Scots 

 miles" in fact, but that measure does as well as any other for 

 long distances.) 



I am speaking, it must be observed, of the defensive character 

 of the Selkirkshire and Midlothian parts, properly the Picts' 

 "Work Ditch and the Gala Water forts. As to the Eoxburgh- 

 shire part, the Catrail proper, I was much struck by the way in 

 which two letters, signed respectively N. E. and W. McK., which 

 appeared in The Scotsman of October 13th and 16th, 1880, on this 

 part of the line, confirmed the opinion of the highest authorities, 

 formed on purely historical grounds, as to the old population of 

 Teviotdale. The letters agreed in saying, from what was unmis- 

 takeably fresh observation, that the Catrail proper never can 

 have been a work of any great strength, (I believe that is the 

 case with the part that still forms a boundary between two 

 estates), having no forts near it in some places, and being, where 

 the measurements were taken, only about twelve feet wide in 



