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The Catrail, or Picts-Work-Ditch in 1880. By James 

 Smail, F.S.A., Scot. 



There is no great wall, or road, or ditcli, of ancient date about 

 which so little reliable history is extant, as the Catrail or Picts- 

 Work-Ditch. In point of fact it has no authentic history. Its 

 ancientness is undoubted ; and although historians do not agree 

 on several matters connected with it, no disputes have ever 

 arisen in which its antiquity was called in question. No war- 

 weapons, implements, coins, or other relics have ever been found 

 in its course, or in the forts or camps, so-called, through which 

 it runs, by which its makers could be traced, or the exact time 

 fixed when it was made, hence the difficulty of historians to give 

 definite information regarding it. And yet its length from end 

 to end is, or was rather, 48 miles — in Selkirkshire 28, and in 

 Eoxburghshire 20. The crow-line length of the Catrail in the 

 former county is only 18 miles — from Torwoodlee "Eings" to 

 Hoscote ; and from Hoscote to Wheelrig at the Peel fell, on the 

 edge of Northumberland, the crow-line (in Eoxburghshire) is 

 nearly 15 miles. The Catrail must thus have been well known 

 to a large number of inhabitants of the Borders for many genera- 

 tions ; and it is therefore both odd and perplexing that so little 

 is known of its history. So far as I can learn it is not men- 

 tioned in any of the many Eoyal and other Grants or Charters of 

 lands in its, vicinity. My friend, Mr Craig-Brown, of Selkirk, 

 who is writing a history of Selkirkshire, and who has had access 

 to nearly all the charters and papers of the county families, has 

 informed me that he has in no instance found the Catrail men- 

 tioned in any of these documents ; and yet there are miles of the 

 Catrail still strongly marked in the county. 



■WKITERS ON THE CATRAIL, OR PICTS-WORK-DITCH. 



/ Alexander Gordon, A.M., was the earliest writer on the Cat- 

 rail, in "Itinerarium Septentrionale," London, 1726, fol. He 

 thought it a boundary-line of the era of Severus, between the 

 Eoman Province and the Caledonians. He seems to have been 

 the only writer who traced it nearly from end to end. He made 

 several mistakes, however, as to places, and in a few instances 

 he seems to have travelled backward a little ; and he names some 

 places where he said he found it on which the Catrail could not 



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