HEPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1906 27 



seems to have been likewise roofless. In front of it lies a 

 well-paved court-yard. Beyond are other outworks, but in 

 no sense can they be said to have been enclosed with built 

 walls. In none of the buildings is there any trace of a 

 spring or well. Should the features thus indicated suffice 

 to identify the fortress with those in the North of Scotland, 

 belonging to a period subsequent to the colonisation of Britain 

 by the Romans, and extending from the 6th to nearly the 10th 

 century, the conjecture hazarded by Sir John Sinclair in his 

 account of the parish of Duns in 1792, namely, that " Edin's 

 Hall was a British building, and afterwards was used as a 

 military station for an army of occupation, in view of the 

 frequent invasion of Scotland by the Danes both by sea and 

 land," may perhaps prove as near the true history as any 

 other that has been submitted.* Through the aid of the 

 proprietor and the Ancient Monuments' Protection Act, the 

 ruins are preserved, and retain the traces of labour having 

 been bestowed upon their restoration. No report of the 

 examination of "any other of the antiquities on Cockburn 

 Law" has as yet been made. As illustrative of the nature 

 of the masonry and the bulk of the stones employed in the 

 construction of the fort, a photograph taken in the course 

 of the meeting is gratefully reproduced. (Plate II.) 



Leaving the hill at half-past twelve, the members descended 

 by a shepherd's track in the direction of AUer Dean, in 

 which the Otter Hounds seldom fail to find a drag, and 

 skirting the banks of the river joined the Duns road in the 

 near neighbourhood of the mansion of Abbey St. Bathans. 

 Crossing the Chapel field to the South, they entered a 

 shrubbery of Rhododendron, which encloses the foundations 



of St. Bathan's Chapel, rediscovered by the late 

 St. Bathan's Mr John Turnbull in 1870. Favoured with 

 Chapel. the presence of the author of " Pre-Reformation 



Churches in Berwickshire," Mr John Ferguson, 

 F.S.A. (Scot.), Duns, they obtained from him the scanty 



* For the discussion of the sabject of Brochs, reference may be 

 made to Dr Joseph Anderson's "Scotland in Pagan Times" (Rhind 

 Lecture), in which the various theories with regard to their origin 

 and use are subjected to close examimation, and Edin's Hall is 

 specially referred to. 



