404 Notes on Yarrow. By James Hardy. 



and earliest stage would be well represented as soon as people 

 know what to look for. 



The first notice of the Yarrow monuments is by Sir Walter 

 Scott in the Introduction to the ballad of the " Dowie Dens of 

 Yarrow, " in the " Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders. " The 

 late Dr Eussell in the "Statistical Account" of the parish of 

 Yarrow in 1833, devotes a paragraph to it ; subsequently it is 

 referred to by Dr Daniel Wilson in his " Prehistoric Annals of 

 Scotland " ; and then it falls to be discussed in an article by the 

 late Dr J. A. Smith, entitled "Notes on some Sepulchral Cists 

 and on the Latin Inscription upon one of the Standing Stones 

 near Yarrow Kirk, Selkirkshire, " read July 13, 1857, and prin- 

 ted in vol. ii. of the " Drooeedings of the Scottish iSoeiety of 

 Antiquaries, p, 489; and again in vol. iv ; in "Additional 

 Notes " &c., pp. 524 — 540. This same volume also has some 

 remarks of Sir James Simpson, on the inscription, — p. 134 and 

 note. 



I have nothing more to suggest about the reading of the in- 

 scription, (see present vol. p. 107) further than that I give up 

 the subdivision of the word PEINCIPEI, in favour of the view 

 that it is either an imperfect genitive, or that the supposed period 

 may be a minuscle S, as is suggested by Dr Smith may be the 

 intention of a rude mark after the similarly truncated word 

 LIBER ALI PRINCIPEIS might thus be an archaic form of 

 PEINCIPIS. 



As is well known the cast of the stone now in the Museum of 

 the Society of Antiquaries was taken by Mr Currie. When 

 engaged with it, he made some subsidiary discoveries of very 

 considerable service for estimating the age of some of the remains 

 in that locality. " At the time, " he writes, " when I took the 

 cast from the inscribed upright stone, the shepherd of the ground 

 had previously turned up in his garden ground a bronze battle- 

 axe, and a polished black ring, like an optician's eye-glass. 

 This I got from him, and it is now in the Antiquarian Museum. 

 I failed to get the bronze axe, which was used as a useful chopper 

 in the shepherd's house, but I made a sketch of it at the time." 

 The drawing represents a celt, 4 inches long and 2^ broad at the 

 edge, with a socket to admit a handle, and a lateral loop. It 

 belongs to the latest bronze period. The celt was afterwards 

 lost by the shepherd's children. 



A fuller description of some of the objects obtained by Mr 



