246 Report of the Meetings jor 1898. 



were obtained — one of bronze, thought to be part of a horse's 

 harness ; and the other, a small bronze hollowed disk with 

 crimson enamelling inside, thought to have been possibly an 

 ornament on the trappings of a horse. None of the rude tools 

 of the northern brochs were found in it. But the collection was 

 larger and better than that found at Torwood in Stirling, and the 

 one on Cockburn Law — of which the popular name is Edin's 

 Hall. 



In passing the north side of Meigle Hill, attention was called 

 to ' Meigle Pots,' in which Conventicles were held by the Cov- 

 enanters. The wife of Pringle of Torwoodlee, and Mrs Scott of 

 Gala, and some working people from Galashiels were there 

 caught one day by Claverhouse, and all were prosecuted, Pringle 

 having to pay some £1700 to get his wife out of the scrape. 

 Asked how the pots had been made, Mr Wilson said they had 

 all been dug out by running water, probably from the melting 

 of a glacier which had one day covered valley and height up 

 to the existing 1000 feet contour line. Elibank Hill on the 

 north side was all hollowed by a similar agency, but the gullies 

 were there on a much grander scale, and hollows of the same 

 nature were common enough all over the Southern Uplands. 



On going through Clovenfords, the situation of the Tweedside 

 Yineries, it was remarked by one of the company that in Sir 

 Walter Scott's time Clovenfords was the post town for Galashiels, 

 and the letters were conveyed from and to Galashiels by a 

 pedestrian. Turning up the hill here to get to the Caddon 

 Valley, the site of Whytbank tower, the first residence of the 

 Pringles of Tair, was pointed out at the east end of what at one 

 time must have been an avenue of trees, many of which yet 

 remain. It was from about 1534 and onward one of the finest 

 residences in the county of Selkirk, and was abandoned in 1827, 

 when its eighth laird built Yair House on Tweedside. Descend- 

 ing the west end of the hill on which the ruin of Whytbank 

 stands, the track of probably the first made road from Berwick- 

 shire to Peebles was pointed out going down the slope through 

 the ruins of a hamlet tliat at one time possessed a large house of 

 entertainment ' for man and beast,' and where the clack of about 

 forty shuttles were re-echoed by the rocky cliff of Craiglatch or 

 Craiglethe, its earliest name, part of the old forest steading of 

 Newhall, mentioned in a list dated 1468 as in possession of a 

 Hoppringle, and latterly of his descendant, Pringle of Stichill. 



