Account of Ancient Urn, &c. By Eev. W. Stobbs. 117 



6. An Iron Spear-head. This was so eaten with rust that it 

 scaled on every handling and finally disappeared. No drawing 

 consequently could be given of it. It may be mentioned here 

 that all the drawings represent the natural size of the objects. 



The friends of the late Mr Hay maintain that he found the 

 urn and the articles in gold and silver just enumerated, in the 

 same place, at the same time ; and that he brought them home 

 on the same evening. They are therefore of the belief that the 

 articles in gold and silver were found imide the urn. In this, 

 however, they must be mistaken. The urn and the articles may 

 have constituted one find, but they could not constitute one deposit. 

 The urn belongs to the bronze age. It is one of the kind used 

 at interments to hold food for the dead. The cairn undoubtedly 

 marked the grave of some one great in his day ; and had some 

 person conversant with antiquities been present when it was re- 

 moved and the urn was come upon, the story of the burial would 

 have unfolded itself. The silver articles and probably — but not 

 necessarily — the gold ring, belong to the later iron age, to the 

 tenth or the eleventh century ; and the presence of the iron spear- 

 head lends confirmation to this view. The ingots seem to point 

 to a time when coined money was unknown or scarce ; and lead 

 us to suppose that we have here a hoard of the precious metals, 

 in the only form in which they were then used as a medium of 

 exchange. In times of trouble or panic a person possessed of 

 treasure would naturally consider a cairn the best place to bestow 

 it, affording as it did not only ready means for present conceal- 

 ment but a lasting mark to guide to future recovery. Possibly 

 this is the explanation of the somewhat singular circumstance, 

 that articles such as the urn and the silver ornaments belonging 

 to ages so far from each other in poiut of time, should yet be 

 found so near each other in point of place as to induce the person 

 who came upon them to believe that they formed but one 

 deposit. 



Dr. Joseph Anderson, who has been shown the articles and 

 whose remarks upon them are incorporated in the above state- 

 ment, says that this " find " is one of very great interest, and is 

 the only example of its kind on the mainland of Scotland. He 

 regrets that he was not sooner made acquainted with it, as in 

 that case he would have given a description of the articles in his 

 recently published third volume on the Antiquities of the Later 

 Iron age. 



