406 JN'otes on Yarrow. By James Hardy. 



moor, till about fifty years ago (written in 1857), when it was formed into 

 a number of cultivated enclosures. Some diggings at the base of the 

 eastern monument, the one connected with the cists, laid bare a considerable 

 pile of small bones, while around the one in the centre, there was formerly 

 a large cairn, under which lay a quantity of decomposed bones ; on more 

 than twenty different spots were similar cairns, in many of which fine 

 yellow dust, and in one, part of an old iron spear, much worn away by rust) 

 was found. The real tradition simply bears, that here a deadly feud was 

 settled by dint of arms ; the upright stones mark the place where the lords 

 or leaders fell, and the bodies of their followers were thrown into a marshy 

 pool, called the Dead Lake, in the adjoining haugh. " (Proc. Soc. Ant. 

 gcot. ii., pp. 487-8.) 



Mr Currie learned recently from an aged lady in Yarrow tliat 

 the Annan or Warriors' Eest field at the beginning of the century 

 was a " field of graves," and covered with cairns and large stones 

 before it was brought into cultivation. The story of the old 

 people — and Mr Currie heard of it when he was a youth — is that 

 old Dr Eussell of Yarrow carted away loads of bones from the 

 place at the beginning of the century, and applied them for man- 

 ure to what is called " the Glebe. '' The parish glebe has always 

 been near St. Mary's Loch, and much too far for Dr, Eussell's 

 carts and horses on any such errand. But he rented from his 

 son-in-law, Mr Ballantyne, Whitehope. fields in the vicinity of 

 the manse, which the people in a ready way might term his 

 Glebe. This is avouched in a letter from the old lady just referred 

 to. " Many a cart load was taken to the Glebe — and much horror 

 expressed. " I quote this as an evidence of the vast quantity of 

 human remains that had been here interred. 



In 1876, in company with another lady, Miss Eussell paid a visit 

 to view the inscribed stone. Her account in some measure con- 

 tinues the preceding details, and supplies some apt explanatory 

 suggestions and comments. 



" Dr Russell got into the carriage and drove up with us to the stones 

 first. I do not remember that he told us anything particular about them. 

 He said the inscription was sometimes very clear in the morning light ; I 

 could only see the which must be that of Dumnogeni ; it was a dark after - 

 noon. Then we got into the carriage again, as he wanted to shew us the 

 place where the bones were found when the cottage named the Warrior's 

 Eest was built. He shewed us the end of a stone cist, or rather stone 

 built grave, with the bones of a human skeleton in it ; this was discovered, 

 I do not know exactly when, by a rabbit being seen running out of it ; this 

 is the skeleton, I think, that was sent to Edinburgh for examination and 

 then replaced in its grave. 



But some time before this, I think, he said it had been, when that cottage 



