found at St Andrews in 1860. 197 
they appear to be the usual burials of the people inhabiting 
St Andrews, who had come to their deaths by ordinary 
causes, and were brought by sympathizing friends to be 
laid in the grave, on a spot rendered sacred by the erection 
of a Christian church, and the supposed presence of the relics 
of St Andrew; as we know that it was the custom of this 
early age to inter bodies around, not within, places dedicated 
to religion. The fact that six of the persons interred are 
about or above seventy years of age, is decisively against 
either plague or battle, when we recollect that these occur in 
sixteen only. Many of the graves have contained the bodies 
of women, not warriors; and it appears, from what was ob- 
served in some cases, that a practice prevailed of interring 
the husband and wife in one tomb, which ever might die the 
first. We know that Christianity was propagated at an early 
age among the Picts; and also, that in this very district it 
was professed. It has been thought probable that near, if not 
upon, this hill, called the Kirkheugh, the first humble build- 
ing dedicated to Christian service in Scotland was con- 
structed.* Columba of Iona converted the Picts under their 
king, Bridei, before the middle of the latter half of the sixth 
century, a period at which this ancient aboriginal people 
may be considered to have received very small, if any, mix- 
ture of alien blood.{ There does not appear to be any certain 
authority for determining the date of the foundation of a 
Culdee church at St Andrews; and it is believed that about, 
or at least, 250 years elapsed before such church was founded. 
Whether this were the earliest church or place of worship 
erected on the Kirkhill seems very doubtful. There is, how- 
ever, no reason to suppose that even this building would be 
anything more than a structure of the simplest and rudest 
character,—perhaps scarcely better than those formed of 
wattles and mire in previous use,—for of such materials the 
best houses were built in the time of Columba, whose monks 
* Martine, “ Reliq. Div. Andr.,” 1683, p. 24. 
+ “From this epoch, the Picts may be considered as Christians, a circum- 
stance which seems not to have much changed their principles or much altered 
their customs.”—Chalmers’s Caledonia, i. 209. 
NEW SERIES.—VOL. XIV. NO. I1.—octT. 1861. DAT 8 
