Note on the Market Cross and " Ringan Stane " 

 at Kirk Yetholm. 



By the Rev. James F. Leishman, M.A. 



At Kirk Yetholm in the centre of the village street, not far 

 from the Church gate, is still visible the stone base of the old 

 Market Cross. Several years ago, this stone, being found an 

 obstruction to traffic, was sunk in situ. It is of interest to 

 recall that almost the last Act passed by the Scots Parliament 

 in 1707, was one — "appointing a weekly mercat on Saturday, 

 and two Fairs yearly — one upon the sixteenth day of June, 

 and the other upon the seventeenth day of October, to be 

 kept, in all time coming, at the Kirk of Yetholme." 



Her late Majesty Esther Faa Blyth, queen of the Yetholm 

 gipsies, described on one occasion at the Manse of Linton a 

 great stone which, in her youth, was standing upon the Fair 

 Green at Kirk Yetholm. Popularly known as the " Ringan 

 Stane," because, as she maintained, it rang when struck, this 

 huge monolith has since been demolished with gunpowder, its 

 fragments, of great size, being built into a neighbouring wall. 

 Among the Scottish peasantry " Ringan " is a well-known 

 equivalent of Ninian, and that great Apostle of the Southern 

 Picts was a highly popular Saint in the Borderland. In Scot- 

 land alone there are over sixty-six churches and altarages 

 dedicated to his honoTU-. May not this tradition of the 

 ^^ Ringan Stane" afford a possible clue to the lost dedication 

 of Yetholm Church? 



