British Remains near Oldcambus. By J. Hardy. 161 



two small pieces of pottery" (p. 430). Kecently in conversing 

 with Dr Joseph Anderson on his experience of cists filled with 

 sand, he said that usually in such instances, the vestiges of human 

 remains had almost become dissipated, except a few fragments of 

 the bones or the enamels of the crowns of the teeth. In the two 

 instances at the Old Pease we have both clay and sand employed, 

 but the covering of soil had been too slight to exclude the de- 

 caying influence of the external air. 



If we cross a field eastward from this to a field near the entrance 

 of Oldcambus dean, and enter by the gate, there was once a road 

 there that led to St Helen's Church, and there are some stony 

 knolls near the supposed track. On one of these, in spring of 

 1884, another short structure composed of greywacke sides, and 

 overlaid with a red sandstone, was ploughed up. The sandstone 

 was blackened on the under side. The character of the obstruc- 

 tion to the plough was not observed till afterwards. Proceeding 

 eastwards along the dean to the east end, on the slope of a fiolcl 

 probably not always cultivated, or at least not so deeply as now, 

 two graves were ploughed out of the gravelly brow of the slope, 

 one of them containing bones. This slope is called Cox's Brae. 

 Cox was an outlawed old gamekeeper, who once lived in a cottage 

 on the Langlee, on Bowshiel farm, near the Pease dean, opposite 

 the Goat fold, and was notorious for poaching. He lurked about 

 the country till he was shot by those who could not capture him. 

 The well from which he drank was at the bottom of this bank, 

 and was called Cox's Well. It is drained away, and none of the 

 present generation know the story. Going still eastward, on the 

 northern slopes, on Eeclheugh farm, on what was once a broomy 

 knowe, a grave containing a skeleton was found. 



Nearly in the middle of the dean, environed on two sides by 

 precipices, and jutting out like a peninsula into the ravine, is a 

 British camp with double ramparts and ditches on the north side, 

 where it lies on the flat. The access is from the south side, up a 

 steep ledge of rock, not passable by a carriage ; but the olden 

 people alleged that the Fairy Queen duly ascended it at nightfall 

 in a coach drawn by six horses, thus connecting the fairies with 

 the vanished camp occupants. A large funereal cairn stood on an 

 open space between the camp and the steep rocks across which 

 this slanting depression runs. The stones that composed it were 

 cast over the bank to clear the ground, and lie there still. This 

 was more than a hundred years ago. The camp is called Dean 

 u 



