104 Notes on the Catrail. By Miss Russell. 



further north ; and then a circular one nearly on the top of the 

 enclosed hill at Haltree ; it was stripped of its characteristic ring 

 of loose stones, by the tenant of the farm, ten or fifteen years 

 ago ; then, on the ridge between the deep valley of the Corsehope 

 Burn and that of the Heriot— the upper part of the Gala, before 

 it turns into the White Valley — comes the important though 

 indistinct fort belonging to Borthwick Hall. There is a Caitha, 

 or Battle, E.ig, leading up to it. Stones seem to be wanting in 

 the soil. The late Mr Lawson was interested by finding a water- 

 plant growing on this dry hill top ; which I suppose indicates a 

 rain water reservoir for a length of time. North of the Heriot, 

 up which a road leads to the Tweed at Inverleithen, I conclude 

 there must have been another fort, from George Chalmers' " high 

 circle of stones" which subsequent writers seemed to have 

 turned into a circle of high stones and dubbed a Druidical circle. 

 There are traces of a fort at the watershed of the Little Gala 

 and Fala burns. (Is Fala the Welsh Gwela, pale ?) Three or 

 four miles further north stands Borthwick or Locherward, at the 

 head of the East Lothian Tyne, where Kentigern spent eight 

 years, no doubt in the earlier part of his life. Fragments of a 

 sandstone cross with knotwork were found when the present 

 church was built. 



I had come to the conclusion that the Harits' Dyke in Ber- 

 wickshire must have been a branch of the Catrail, connecting 

 the valleys of the Leader and Whitadder as a defence against 

 the Saxons of Northumbria, before I found that that opinion 

 had been long in print ; I arrived at it by finding that William 

 Eufus regarded the Leader, the frontier of Wedale, as that of 

 Cumbria. Gordon found the tradition that the works of the 

 Catrail extended to the Firth of Forth. I connect the Harits' 

 Dyke with Llew's kingdom of Lothian, whether or not he 

 owed it so entirely to Arthur as the Welsh accounts state ; 

 and I suppose it ceased to be a fortification after Edwin's time. 

 That Edwin was actually baptised by the son of Urien and 

 nephew of Llew, I am inclined to believe, in the silence of Bede 

 on the point ; that cautious Saxon must have perfectly under* 

 stood the advantage it would give him with the Christian Welsh 

 of Lothian ; and there are some ecclesiastical indications which 

 lead me to think he had not got possession of Lothian at the time. 

 In some copies of Nennius, the writer gives his authority for the 

 tradition, and the authority of the Abbot of Whithern (for that is 



