198 Mr Joseph Barnard Davis on Human Skulls 
were clothed in the skins of animals. The legend is, that 
Hungus, the king of the Picts, whose death is placed in the 
year 833, was the founder of the religious house of Kil-rule, - 
or the Church of Regulus, who brought the relics of St An- 
drew to this spot.* How soon after this time the Christian 
people, who have so long occupied the rude cists in the Kirk- 
hill, were placed in them, as their last resting place, it is 
impossible to tell. From the inartificial character of these 
cists, which, I am informed on good authority, were con- 
structed of undressed flags of the natural stone of the district, 
piled at the sides, with other stones of the same description 
covered over the top, but without any pavement at the bottom, 
and which seem to be only one stage in advance of the 
scarcely less rude, short, primeval cists of the unconverted 
Picts,—a step in advance taken in obedience to ecclesiastical 
rule for extending the body, with the face regarding the east,— 
I am inclined to conclude, that the interval of time to that at 
which these cists were constructed could not have been long, 
possibly not more than one hundred years. If we might rely 
with unhesitating confidence on the cranial relics of the 
cists, it is likely that the period of their formation was at 
least as early as that we have mentioned, when the Pictish 
blood was still pure, and that the relics of the cists belong to 
the ninth century, if not earlier. Those derived from the 
tombs and the graves are probably of a later age. In support 
of this view, we have both the superior construction of the 
tomb, with a further departure from the primeval cist, and 
the more modern aspect of the skulls. This latter seems to 
me to indicate an admixture of extraneous blood with that of 
the Picts. Judging from cranial evidence alone, and with the 
little knowledge I possess of the skulls of the Scandinavian 
nations, I am inclined to think that the mixture is not derived 
from a northern source—the Danes—but, more likely, from a 
Saxon source. Still this, like all the rest that I have said, 
I wish to be taken, not as by any means definite, but merely 
for as much as it may be worth. I fear that it may be 
* Chalmers’s Caledonia, i. 429. 
