1 9 1 3-1 9 1 4.] A ncient Monuments of Gorebridge District. 93 



the district, of such a nature that they cannot be removed, 

 though they could be destroyed. It should be interesting to 

 the members of our Society to know where they are, and to 

 try to understand the story which they tell. We are a 

 sheltered land in these days in which we live. But it was 

 not always so. 



One wave of invasion after another swept over our country. 

 It has been the meeting-place for quite a variety of races. It 

 has furnished a melting-pot where they were mingled together 

 to produce the virile sons of Britain. The Iberians have been 

 here, a small dark people who are believed to have come to 

 our shores from the Basque Provinces of Spain. There has 

 been more than one Celtic wave of invasion. The Brythonic 

 Celts came first, and drove the Iberians into the fastnesses of 

 the country, or absorbed them as slaves or bondsmen. Then 

 came the Goclelic Celts, who conquered a large part of the 

 country, and pinned up the Brythons in Wales and in the 

 kingdom of Strath clyde. Then followed the Eomans, who 

 occupied at least the South of Scotland for over 400 years. 

 This was succeeded by a Saxon invasion, and in no other part 

 of Scotland did they find a securer or more general lodgment 

 than in our own county of Midlothian. Then over the 

 Northern Sea came the Scandinavians, to run up the rivers 

 of the land, to plunder the natives, and to make many a 

 Danish and Norse settlement on our coasts. All that strand 

 of the past has gone on, and relics of it have been discovered, 

 and are still being discovered. Many of the place-names tell 

 of the Saxon colonisation, others suggest the older Celtic 

 settlements. In Gorebridge district, Carrington, Harvieston, 

 Halkerston, and Yorkston breathe of the Saxon occupation ; 

 while Catcune, Vogrie, and Stobhill have a Celtic origin. 

 This is no dry-as-dust study, but one which sparkles with 

 living interest, and is iridescent with the glow of a romantic 

 past. 



The curtain rises upon the first stage. Our land is in a 

 very primeval state. The hills and the rivers, the glens and 

 the valleys may have been much the same as they are to-day, 

 all else is different. The face of the country was almost 

 covered with forests, through whose thickets vast herds of 

 wild cattle broke their way. Carnivora preyed upon the 



