stood. During their absence, according to the Père de Moustier, in his Neustria pia, 'Deo permittente mare sylvam quantumque esset superavit et prostravit replevitque arena locos Monti Tombelino adjacentes; nuntii autem reversi 16 Octobris saltus arena refertos adeo mirati sunt ut novum orbem se ingressos putaverunt.' The Abbé de la Rue, in his Essai Historique sur les Bardes, vol ii. p. 363, quotes an ancient poem by Guillaume de St. Pair, a monk in the monastery of Mont St. Michel, who flourished in the twelfth century, who says that what was then sand was formerly a forest : 'Ceu que or est mer et areine En le forest avait un Mont,' &c. "But in monkish historians and metrical chroniclers we are naturally apprehensive of finding legends for history, in explanation of appearances the origin of which is unknown. Professor de Hericher of Avranches, in his work entitled Avranchin Monumentale et Historique, quotes certain ancient MSS. preserved in the public library in that town which belonged to the Benedictine Abbey of Mont St. Michel, but were dispersed at the Revolution, which give an account of the sudden eruption of the sea, by which the ancient forest was submerged. I availed myself of the opportunity which a visit to that place afforded me of examining them. "The volume No. 34 contains several works in different hands, but all of great antiquity. The one alluded to by M. de Hericher, which he considers from its palæography to have been written in the ninth century, has for its title, Incipit Revelatio Ecclesia sancti Michalis in Monte qui dicitur Tumba in occiduis partibus sub Childeberto Rege Francorum, Auberte Episcopo.' The account contained in it is as follows: Qui primum locus sicut a veracibus cognoscere potuimus narratoribus, opacissima claudebatur silva longe ab oceano ut estimata æstu millibus distans sex abditissima præbens latibula ferarum . . . . Mare quod longe distabat paulatim assurgens omnem silvæ illius magnitudinem virtute complanavit et in arenæ suæ formam cuncta redegit . . . . Quasi novum ingressi sunt orbem quam primum veprium densitate reliquerunt.' M. de Hericher, unwilling to admit an actual change of level, supposes that the distance 'ab oceano æstu' refers to low water, and as Mont St. Michel is six miles distant from it, concludes that no change has taken place; .... but the account of its having been surrounded by wood leaves no room for such a supposition. According to Père de Moustier, the return of the messengers took place the 16th of October, 709. This date agrees with that assigned to the event by the metrical chronicle quoted by the Abbé de la Rue, who observes, Ces revolutions durent avoir lieu suivant la poëte sous l'episcopat de St. Auberte et sous le règne de Childeberte.'-(Vol. ii. p. 303.) 6 6 "The Abbé Manet states that during the great gale of the 9th of January, 1735, the violence of the sea sur les gréves de Mont St. Michel fit sortir des sables une quantité prodigieuse de ces billes qu'on y trouva presque toutes conchées du Nord au Sud.'—(p. 53.) This is exactly the position in which the sea, rushing in to fill up a sudden depression, would lay the stems, as the Bay of St. Michel, or Cancale, is open to the north." So far the extracts from my paper. The Abbé Manet attributes the circumstance of the direction in which the buried trees of this vast forest are laid to a violent gale of northerly wind; but, as I learned upon the spot, many of the trees are of vast size, and of oak. Such was that which I examined in the sands near Avranches—the stump of a large tree, with the roots shooting out in every direction. It and many similar examples must have been broken over near the roots. Such effects appear to me to require an agent more powerful than a gale of wind, however violent. This event must have entirely changed the geography of the adjoining regions. The trees seen by Admiral White must have been at least ten fathoms below high water; but luxuriant forests, such as this was, do not grow down to the water's edge of a stormy sea. Ten fathoms is but a part, perhaps a small part, of the actual change of level which took place in October, A.D. 709; but there is no part of the sea between the Channel Islands, St. Maloes, and St. Michel so deep; hence, anterior to the event in question, they formed part of the continent. I think it extremely probable that the Cassiterides, or tin islands of the ancients, placed by them to the north of Spain, were either entirely or partially submerged. In the latter case, the Scilly Islands are the only ones which agree in geographical position, though not in geographical description. According to Strabo they consisted of ten islands, thickly inhabited, and supplying the ancient world with tin. Now there are no mines to be seen in the islands; but only one lode, and the workings are very inconsiderable. Borlase, in his account of the islands, as well as in his paper on the subject in the "Philosophical Transactions," produces evidence of a change of level of at least sixteen feet, and adds, "See how the sea has multiplied these islands; they are now reckoned 140. . . . But no circumstance can shew the great alterations which have happened in the number and extent of these islands more than this, viz., that the Isle of Scilly, from which the little cluster of these Cyclades take the name, is no more at present than a high rock of about à furlong over."-(Phil. Trans., vol. xlviii., p. 55.) With such proofs of change of the sea level during the historic period, no safe inference can be drawn with regard to duration from the occurrence of marine remains at a different level from the present. Neither can we reason on the length of time necessary to effect changes by the levels of a river in a settled country; the rights of property prevent the deviations which constantly take place before the banks are taken possession of. I do not think, therefore, that any new light has been thrown upon the antiquity of the human race from the occurrence of works of art in fluviatile or marine gravel at a different level from that of the adjoining rivers or seas. Although, however, these recent discoveries throw no new light on the actual length of time when they were deposited, yet when we consider the extreme rarity of human remains when compared with those of the other cave animals, or the rudeness of the stone implements compared with those of the valley of the Clyde, it appears to me that they belong to the earliest portion of the stone period, that which first followed the appearance of man in the earth, or to use the somewhat old-fashioned, but I consider true language, "the creation of man." NO. XXIV. ON THE ORIGIN AND INFLUENCE OF BURGHS IN SCOTLAND: BY JOSEPH IRVING, Esq., F.S.A., Scoт. [Read at a Meeting of the Society held at Glasgow on 15th February, 1864.] THE inquiry into the origin and influence of Burghs in Scotland carries us back to the very sources of our national life. It embraces, indeed, so far as time is concerned, the entire period of our wellascertained history. It touches the daily current of our lives now, and it goes back to a time when charters and deeds were just coming into use among us. "The stream of history" is a phrase with which use has made us so familiar that we are apt sometimes to overlook the springs from which it flows. In speaking of the history of burghs it is particularly necessary to keep their origin in view, for many of the peculiarities they present find an explanation in the period or circumstance in which they were created. I may explain at the outset, that it is no part of my plan to trace the ideal burgh beyond Scotland. As to the analogies and affinities it presents to the Roman "Municipia," the Saxon "Burg," or the German "Free Town," I must leave these to be described by others. It is sufficient for me that there was a time within the range of authentic history when burghs had no existence in Scotland-a time when there was in the land neither the walled town of the vassal, nor the protecting castle of the noble-a time when war was the natural condition of life, and slavery the ordinary state of the craftsman. In the erection of burghs two parties were specially benefitted, the sovereign, by rent and service; and the trader, by peace and security. Their first appearance in our history is pretty well marked. The Pictish kingdom-laws, language, and customs-had just passed away in that confused mysterious manner which is still a puzzle to all students of our national history. The sovereignty of the country, though virtually controlled by two or three of the great earls, was nominally wielded by the heir of the Scottish Mal colm and the Saxon Margaret. The kingdom was resting awhile from the bloodshed and turmoil which had distracted it for centuries. The Church was beginning to arise in her majesty, and the people following her in grateful obedience had begun to know something of knowledge and freedom when the first David made the influence of burghs to be felt in Scottish life in a certain well-defined manner. He was the first of our sovereigns who is known to have recognised the importance of this new element in the body politic, though probably not the very first under whose auspices burghs were erected in Scotland. For about a century before his accession the burgher feeling was making great strides in Europe. There were numerous successful examples in the south of the island, with some of which the sons of Malcolm III. and Margaret must have been familiar, and it is quite likely there may have been in Scotland four, or probably half-a-dozen communities enjoying burghal privileges under the reign of David's predecessor, Alexander I. The introduction of the system here is known to have been gradual, and its growth the result of many different causes. The surmise as to the existence of burghs under Alexander finds corroboration in that unique collection of laws and regulations known as the "Leges Burgorum," now generally received as of the age of David, but providing for the government of communities created possibly before his time, and with which his people were certainly familiar. Edinburgh, Berwick, Stirling, and Roxburgh, composing the Court of the Four Burghs, seem to have exercised a kind of authority before David's time; and from a fragmentary collection attached to the early Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, there is some ground for believing that Aberdeen, Lanark, and Perth also enjoyed special privileges.1 Edinburgh, indeed, may reasonably claim an antiquity reaching far into the dim Anglo-Saxon period of history. It was the "burg" or walled residence of Edwin of Northumbria, when Northumbria extended from the Humber to the Forth. In one of the oldest existing charters of David, granted to the abbot and convent of Holyrood, the capital is spoken of as "meo burgo de Edwynesburg."2 Stirling claims to have been founded by Alexander I., in terms of a charter dated at Kincardine, 1 See Acts Parliament of Scotland, vol. i. p. 359, where an opinion (afterwards embodied in the Burgh Law, c. 101) is given by the three burghs mentioned, touching the power of alienating property on death bed. 2 Municipal Reports, pt. i., p. 281. |