170 THE LIBERALIS STONE 



event of the combat. The person slain was the male 

 ancestor of the present Lord Napier." 



Thus Sir Walter's note. In one or two points his descrip- 

 tion is not quite accurate. The lines are not run into each 

 other, and the characters, except in one line, are fairly deeply 

 engraved. The difficulty of reading the inscription is largely 

 due to two causes, the roughness and consequent inequality 

 of the surface of the stone, and the fact that the letters 

 are frequently joined, a circumstance which makes decipher- 

 ment somewhat difficult. Again, the original name of the 

 place was not "Annan's Treat," but "Annan Street" — the 

 old Roman road to Annan, and the stone, as subsequent 

 investigation has shown, has nothing to do with the tragedy 

 of the Dowie Dens. It belongs to a period long anterior to 

 the ballad. 



In the immediate neighbourhood of the Stone is the 

 "Catrail," an ancient earthwork, stretching from Peel Fell, 

 on the Cheviots, to Galashiels, a distance of 45 miles. 

 This ditch is from 3 to 4 feet deep, and antiquaries are 

 generally agreed that it constituted the boundary line in 

 ancient times between the Angles of Bernicia and tlie 

 Britons of Strathclyde. Tradition says that here, on the 

 banks of the Yarrow, towards the close of the 6th century, 

 a great battle was fought, and that the Angles suffered a 

 notable defeat. The King of the Britons at that time was 

 Eydderich Hael, the patron and friend of St. Kentigern, who, 

 some years before, had been driven from the country, and 

 had to seek an asylum in "Wales. When Eydderich came to 

 the throne he determined to recall the great missionary, who 

 had planted a church and built a monastery on the banks 

 of the Molendinar, and there laid the foundations of the 

 great city of Glasgow, whose coat of arms still reminds us 

 of this significant fact in its history. The King, to show his 

 regard for St. Kentigern, met him on his way back from 

 Wales at Hoddam in Dumfriesshire, and the parish of "St. 

 Mungo " in that neighbourhood still commemorates the event. 

 In the great battle to which we have referred the King of 

 the Britons lost two sons, and the "Liberalis Stone," as we 

 shall show immediately, was erected to commemorate their 

 death. 



