NO. XIII.

MEMORANDUM AS TO OBJECTS FOUND IN A SMALL TUMULUS ON THE LANDS OF BLOCHAIRN, BALDERNOCK PARISH, OPENED AUGUST 4, 1859 :

BY

ALEXANDER GALLOWAY, Esq.

[Read at a Meeting of the Society held at Glasgow on 11th February, 1861.]

Ar the time when these remains, now on our table, and a few others of a similar kind, were disinterred, my attention was directed, for a short while, to considerations of relative objects, circumstances, and history, local and general. A small treatise issued last month by the Rev. John B. Pratt, has reminded me of the Baldernock Tumuli. Its title-page bears a vignette of The Auld Wives' Lift, copied from Wilson's Archæology, over which are those awe-inspiring words, "The Druids."

The spot where the objects before us were found may be thus described:-Due north from our city, say from its suburb of Springbank, Baldernock Church stands 43 miles distant, in a straight line; eastward thence a main road leads past the farm steading of Dykehead, and in, or by the south side of this road, at a point 1100 yards from the church, was the mound or little tumulus.

The general features of the locality may be apprehended by those not already acquainted with them when we say that it lies on the north side of the Kelvin, where a broad level valley containing some 700 acres of rich land next the river is succeeded by a number of small hills rising gently from the south and east, broadening westwards towards the Kilpatrick range, and, after uniting in an east and west line, and attaining a height of about 300 feet above sea level, descending rapidly northward into the valley of the Glazert and the Blane. From their summit can be seen Arthur's Seat and the Pentlands, the Ochils, and the fine valley of the Forth, Tinto, and much of the lower lands of Renfrewshire. The tall chimney stalks of Glasgow and Paisley on the one side, and the loftier long

wall-like range of the Campsie Fells on the other, are the most prominent of the nearer objects. Between these all the land is devoted to agriculture, with the exception of a portion of the heights between Baldernock Church and the Blane, where the moorcock's note may be heard in August, and where a few roe-deer may sometimes be seen. These heights bear evidence of having been, at some long distant time, well clothed with wood; heath and coarse natural grasses are now their only covering, unless at a few spots where modern plantations of forest trees have again superseded the humbler occupants of the soil.

Until towards the end of last century, when the spirit of land improvement and road making revived, the principal line of thoroughfare between Dumbarton and Stirling-towns long among the chief in Scotland-passed in a straighter course than now; namely, by Old Kilpatrick, Duntocher, Longfauld, Barloch (Milngavie), and Baldernock, into the Campsie and Kilsyth valley. From Baldernock Church another road led right north to the Blane valley, and near that road, about 1200 yards from the church, are to be seen the ruins of Craigmaddie Castle, known to have been occupied during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by the Galbraith family, and believed to have been, in much more early times, a fortified place of some importance, and the centre of a considerable rural population. Near it, eastward, is the famous object called locally "The Auld Wives' Lift," and in some of the maps "Druidical Cromlech." South and eastward a little farther are the lands and houses called Bardowie, Blochairn, Blairskaith, and Fluchter. On these lands stone cairns and earth tumuli, large and small, have been levelled down or removed to supply materials for fences, or to make way for the plough, and many large memorial stones have been removed for the same purposes. A few of the old mounds and stones remain, and, probably, are worthy of investigation by those who still wish to examine such things.

The worthy clergyman who wrote the Statistical Account of Baldernock in 1794, recorded that-"not far from thence (Craigmaddie Castle) to the eastward, are several of those large loose heaps of stone called cairns, some of them oblong, and others of a circular shape. One of the circular ones not yet broken up, is about eighty yards in circumference. At the bottom of two that have been broken up, there appeared large flags placed on edge, in two parallel rows, three or four feet apart, lidded over with flags laid across, and the

cavity thus formed divided by partitions into cells of six or seven feet long. In one of the long cairns lately broken up were found fragments of a large coarsely fabricated urn, and some pieces of human bones. Tradition says that in this place, called Craigmaddie Moor, a battle was fought with the Danes, in which one of their princes was slain." There are still living in the district men who recollect the removal or levelling down of earth mounds which stood in fields near these cairns, and the disinterment of urns and flagstones.

Memorial stones and mounds, and cists and cinerary urns, are subjects with which archæologists, here and everywhere, are familiar. So common are they, and so much have they been written about, that it may seem almost trifling with this Society to submit to their notice specimens of the contents of the little mound in this locality, or to offer any remarks regarding them. Still, the subject is not altogether without interest, although it may have ceased to be one ready to excite discussion among well read antiquarians.

The specimens before us consist of portions of a clay urn, with a piece of bone and a bronze arrow-head, or lance head, and its rivet, found in that urn. Three urns of the same sort and size stood in line about a foot apart. No metal nor article, except black earth and small fragments of bone, with traces of more bone, was found in the urns besides this arrow-head and its rivet. A flagstone was below them, but no stone of the kind at the sides nor ends, nor over them. Their shape was that of a round jar, about seven inches in diameter and eight inches deep, narrowing at the mouth, hardly at all ornamented, unless with slight scratches and a small bead moulding. They were accidentally discovered at the depth of only two feet from the road surface, but there had been a little cutting formerly for the road in passing the mound. The object of the digging in the present instance was to improve the road level, there being beyond the height a little hollow, and beyond the hollow another height, probably a larger and yet inviolate tumulus. Earth was being taken from the two heights to fill up the hollow. The workman who found the arrow-head, supposing it likely to be of more valuable material than bronze, tried to clear away its rust, and a portion at the point was broken off in the process.

The prevailing idea during last century and the first quarter of the present one, was that sepulchral mounds and cairns, and particularly cromlechs and other standing stones, were Druidical. The

books of the time taught that all such old things as were not in accordance with things then usual, were either Roman or Druidical. French writers indulged largely, and more learnedly than our own, in corresponding speculation. Since then, however, researches extended over much of the continents of Europe, Asia, and America, have shown that the area of such monuments is vastly broader than had been supposed, and that in early times, as now, corresponding customs had prevailed in many, or in most countries. Incremation, urns, and tumuli, had been but the fashion of a period. It may have been that in our own country rock altars and cromlechs, sacred groves and the sacrifice of human victims, belonged only to the Druids. Many and strange have been the speculations of inquiring minds. about the mysterious British Druids. We may turn, if we wish to know more of these ghostly fathers, to Mr. Pratt's little book, for he undertakes "to give a synoptical history of them, gathering into as brief a compass as possible the principal statements which in modern times have been made respecting them-the ancient historical evidence the more recent monumental discoveries, and the probable reasons for believing that the Druidical system was a corruption of primitive and revealed truth."

Mr. Pratt addresses himself to general readers, and mentions that his sketch is compiled from Toland and Huddlestone, Davies, Jones, Wilson, Worsaae, Hibbert, and a few others, including Dr. Lindsay Alexander's recent book on Iona. Very little reference is made to ancient classical evidence, although a few statements by Cæsar, Pliny, Cicero, Suetonius, and Strabo are entered; two lines are quoted from Virgil's Eneid about the mistletoe; also, a short sentence from Tacitus about Druid's houses, one from Diodorus Siculus about sacrifices, and one from Lucan about the bards. In one paragraph he refers to Giraldus, Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Henry of Huntingdon, and the Welsh Triads; and in another to the Edda. He relies chiefly on the Welsh bards and the Triads, as commented on by Davies and Toland.

To call this brochure a Synoptical History of the Druids, containing the principal statements and evidences, ancient and modern, about them, may be somewhat ridiculous; and it might have been thought unnecessary to expend much time in trying to persuade people that the Druidical system was a corruption of primitive and revealed truth; for all believe that "God made man perfect, but he found out many inventions." Every system of religion which has

deviated from primitive truth is therefore so far corrupt. Yet Mr. Pratt's essay has an aim and a conclusion of very interesting nature. He wants to show by "inductive reasoning from the few facts that remain to us," that Davies is right in believing the religious system of the Druids to be "originally Arkite, embracing the memory of the great preservation from the Deluge, and the idolatrous worship given to Noah, his ark, and his family." But waxing warm with the idea, he becomes enthusiastic, and, proceeding to make out that the word Druid is a Celtic term for magician, exclaims-"Here, then, we have the first fact on which to establish our superstructure-Druid and Magician-Druidity and Magic are convertible terms." Next he makes them astronomers and astrologers as well as magicians, and thinks he has evidence enough that "the Druids, the Eastern magi, and the Chaldean astrologers, were only different titles for one and the same class of men"-in short, that the magi, or wise men of the East "probably were Druids, who detected the star which indicated the fulfilment of Balaam's prophecy." He believes, because the Welsh Triads tell him, that "Noah was called Hu or Hee, the sun, the Pryddian or glancing Hu-the sovereign of heaven-the victorious Bel." He believes also the old story of the name Beltane being from Bel, and the feast in honour of the great Bel, symbolizing either the Flood or the heavenly bodies. He believes in Dr. Smith's "grand orrery of the Druids at Stonehenge-in cromlechs being places of worship so called by the Celts-in the mystical cauldron of the Druids in their sacrifices of human victims, as alleged by Cæsar and Pliny (who confessed that they wrote from hearsay)-and in the Druids having an Archdruid and four inferior orders of priests; the authority for the first being Cæsar, who, on being referred to, is found to say"His autem omnibus Druidibus præest unus, qui summam inter eos habet auctoritatem;" so that the preses priest may have been a Druid pope, and as for the cardinals and other subordinates he only knows of them from Toland. Moreover, our author believes in the other old story about the Maypole as being a Druidical institution, and is convinced that Hallow Fires (perhaps also Hallowe'en and Hallow Fair) were Druidical; and as for the sacred mistletoe, he makes conscience of it that this was eminently Druidical. About as assuredly he is satisfied that the Druids wore tartan or striped breeks (bracca) "as still worn by the Highlanders of Scotland," only of somewhat longer make, and of six colours, over which they "had on a white surplice whenever they religiously officiated," and gold chains. To follow him over the