I. THE FORTS, CAMPS,' AND OTHER FIELD-WORKS OF PERTH, FORFAR, AND KINCARDINE. BY D. CHRISTISON, M.D., SECRETARY. Having at various times visited and made rough plans of nearly all the forts in this large district, and being privileged to use the plans and descriptions of the few that I have not seen, but which have already been published in our Proceedings by Mr Alex. Hutcheson, I am thus able to give a tolerably exhaustive account of the whole. The course of my investigations naturally led me to see also a good many of the Roman Camps' of the district, and of the obscure fieldworks, the precise nature of which cannot be ascertained without excavating them if then. Of the latter, I have attempted to give some account, and I have referred briefly to others of the same kind that I have not seen, classing them all in a group by themselves; but I have not described the Roman Camps,' because the subject is so large as to require separate treatment. The map (Plate I.) shows the general elevation of the land by the contour lines of 500 and 1000 feet above the sea, and the principal streams. To avoid overcrowding with names, the only inhabited places entered are the larger towns and such of the villages, generally of great antiquity, as are near the forts and serve as guides to their position. Besides the forts and the obscure field-works noticed in the text, the Roman Camps,' although undescribed for the reason just given, have been introduced on the map to give some additional value to it as a record of the fortified works of the district. All the works either have their special designation attached, when they have one, or are named after the hill on which they stand, or the nearest inhabited place. The different classes are distinguished by the marks explained on the map, 1 "Notes on the Stone Circle near Kenmore, and of some Hill Forts in the neighbourhood of Aberfeldy, Perthshire," by Alexander Hutcheson, F.S.A., Architect, Broughty Ferry, Proc. S. A. Scot., xxiii. 356. and as the objects in each class are taken in the text from the south and west northward and eastward, their place on the map should be the more easily found. Certain obscure works in Glenlyon, which lie beyond the map, are given from the Ordnance Survey on a separate little chart (fig. 55). My plans are oriented with the north to the top of the Figures, and they are on the scale of 120 ft. to the inch, unless when otherwise stated. The profiles are usually on twice that scale. All heights of ramparts, etc., are perpendicular heights. A few contractions of words that occur frequently are used in the text. Most of these are easily enough understood, and all that seem to require explanation are O.M. for Ordnance Map; O.S.A. and N.S.A. for the Old and New Statistical Accounts of Scotland. GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE DISTRICT. The district dealt with nearly corresponds with the South Pietland of Skene, including the vaguely defined Fortrenn, but without Fife, which is reluctantly excluded, as I have no personal knowledge of its forts. It is a district well defined by nature as well as by the isolation of its forts from other groups. On the east it is bounded by the North Sea. On the north, a wide elevated tract destitute of forts divides it from the Aberdeenshire group. On the west, the Grampians, also entirely without forts, limit the united groups of Angus and the Mearns, and if in Perthshire the forts do creep up the Highland glens it is only to find themselves cut off by a vast space from groups further west. Finally, on the south, a tongue of high tableland projecting from the Highlands towards the Ochils opposite Gleneagles, and the Ochils running thence to the Firth of Tay, form a well marked boundary. Besides towns of importance at the present day, or in some instances long before it, the district contains Abernethy, Forteviot, and Scone, the now decayed capitals of the Picts, besides Dundurn, the probable chief stronghold of Fortrenn, also many villages whose great antiquity is testified by the carved stones still existing at them, and although the number of forts is comparatively small, there is no other district in Scotland that contains so great a proportion of large and important examples. The country people, particularly of Angus and Mearns, although allocated in our military system to Highland regiments, appeared to me to be of a marked Lowland type in character, manners, and appearance; and the very small proportion of Highland names on the tombstones in the churchyards, even those on the Highland border, indicates a small admixture of blood with the neighbouring Celts. I have been furnished by my friend Dr Beddoe with the following note on this subject: "Surnames in Laurencekirk Kirkyard.-Every tombstone was counted separately, but four or five identical surnames on one tombstone were reckoned as only one. Some of those stated to be of doubtful origin may have been really Highland ones; the 'others' were of various Lowland Scotch types, or common to England and the Scotch Lowlands. The inference I draw is that there has not been much immigration from the Highlands since this part of the country was Saxonised. In illustration, I may add the following facts extracted from the Parish Registers of Muthill in Perthshire :— Out of 200 entries of names in the years 1697 to 1700, 83, or 41.5 per cent., were of Highland type. But in 200 names taken from the Registers of the period between 1845 and 1886, only 32, or 16 per cent., were distinctly Highland. In this case the change of population seems to have been due to a current setting in from the Lowlands, or perhaps partly from the Highland families moving into the large towns." The distinction of race is also strongly brought out by the difference in the colour of hair and eyes, as ascertained by Dr Beddoe in observations made in 1898, but not yet published. CLASSIFICATION. A strictly scientific or accurate classification of objects that have suffered so much from gradual decay, and so much more from the ruthless hand of man, and which are often so overgrown with turf and weeds that without excavation we cannot even be sure whether they are of earth or stone, is obviously impossible. The best I can make of it is to divide the objects under the following chief heads: 1. Earthworks and probable Earthworks. II. Stone Forts and probable Stone Forts. III. Sites of Forts with little or no remains. IV. Dubious works or sites, marked Fort or Camp on the O.M. V. Dubious works or sites, possibly military, not marked Fort or Camp on the O.M. I. EARTHWORKS AND PROBABLE EARTHWORKS. (@) EARTHWORK RESEMBLING A TYPICAL MOTE, 1. If division of our subject be difficult, subdivision is still more so, but it may be said that only one work can be structurally classed without doubt as a Mote, This is the Cairn Beth of the O.M., the Cairn Boddie, Caer Bed, Caer Both or Macheth's Castle of the N.S.A. The true local name appears to have been Cairn Beddie, and the Caer Bed or Beth are probably interpretations to lead up to Macbeth's Castle, a title which I cannot trace to an earlier source than the N.SA. The site is 5 m. N.E. of Perth, 700 yds, N.W of St. Martin's Church at the bottom of a gentle hollow, close to a small rill, and 250 ft. above the sed, The work is much ploughed down, but still shows the plan (fig. 1) of a typical mote with a squarish base court surrounded by a trench, the mote or mound de-cending on one side into the trench. The mote is now only 8 or 10 ft, high and the trench almost filled up, but the writer in the N.SA. says that twenty four years before he wrote, a greit quantity of earth was removed, and even after his time the O.M. represents it as well preserved, the mote having a fht top 50 ft, in diameter, the base court measuring 230 by 200 ft, inside, and the trench 40 to 45 ft, in width. |