294 On Urns and Antiquities of the Cheviot Hills. 



of this undulating congeries of hills, or in the nooks of their 

 many winding streamlets, not readily separable ; the elder of 

 the aborigines, the more modern of the shielings of the Border- 

 ers, who summered their cattle and sheep upon the mountain 

 pastures. These are less numerous in the upper grains than in 

 commodious positions lower down the courses of the streams. 

 The remains of camps are scarce. Except the great sepulchral 

 cairns crowning some of the hill-tops as on Hogden, the Border 

 ridge near the Windy Gyle, the three cairns of Thirlmoor, and 

 a great green mound at the outcome of a feeder of the Coquet 

 below Blindburn, and another on a hillock near that place, and 

 situated to the west of it, the native tombs are rarely discernible. 

 The suggestion so frequently repeated that Barrow-burn in 

 Kidland, and the ti-ibutaiy of the same name that enters the 

 Coquet above Alwinton, derive their name from the numerous 

 barrows on their banks, is a mere etymological imagination. 

 Barrow is not a North of England term as applied to sepulchral 

 hillocks. In one of the early Charters of Newminster Abbey, 

 the land adjacent to the Kidland streamlet is written "Alri- 

 barnes." Perhaps there were "barns" attached to the ancient 

 mill here, whether it was a waulk or corn mill. Decayed alder 

 trees are still washed up by floods near the exit of the Kidland 

 Barrow-burn. I examined its course to the extreme uplands 

 with a special outlook for harroivs, and saw none. Of old the 

 stream was called Hepden burn. 



Messrs John and Eobert Anderson spoke of a cairn that stood 

 by the roadside as people proceed from Blindburn to Buckham's 

 Walls, which was dug out about 1826, for erecting Mr Telfer's 

 farm-house and other buildings at Blindburn. An urn, which 

 was broken by the pick, was obtained in it, which was orna- 

 mented in the British chevron style, and contained burnt bones 

 and ashes ; apparently a cinerary urn. 



Near Old Usway Eord, which lies lower down the water than 

 the present shepherd's residence, near the end of the Trows fir 

 plantations, a conspicuous landmark in those wild featureless 

 pastures, where a finger post once stood in a socket, a cist was 

 dug up. It " was built round about with stones," as edging to 

 it. It was hollow, and contained bones and ashes ; the bones 

 were slender and small. They were sent to Dr Eichardson, 

 Harbottle. They were probably come on by occasion of raising 

 of the planting, which is not very old. 



