in that part. But the first statutory notice of messengers occurs in the act 1586, cap. 46, where James VI., with the three estates of the realm, taking into consideration that of "late zeires there is entred in the office of armes sindrie extraordinar maissers and pursevants, and ane verie great number of messengers, through importune sute of diverse parties, in sik a confused and uncertain maner that it is become doubtfull quha ar admitted, and how and quha deprived or nocht, or quhidder their cautioners be livaud or departed this life. And seeing there was always, in times of best government, a certain number of officears of armes: It is now therefore thocht expedient, statute and ordained, that in time cumming there sall be only twa hundredth persones wearand and bearand our Soveraine Lordis armes in the haill boundes of the realme of Scotland. In quhilk number Lyon King of Armes, and his brether the ordinar heraulds, maisseres, and pursevants, sall be comprehended, being in number xvij. persones, and the remanent to be divided amangst the remanent scheriff-domes of the realme."

The statute contains a distribution of the messengers throughout the various counties, but which is not now respected; and they are enjoined to behave according to the injunctions said to have been inserted at the end of the statute; these injunctions have, apparently by inadvertency, been left out, still their duty has been made well known by posterior acts and inveterate usage. At admission messengers received silver blazons, on which are impressed the Royal arms, as badges of their office, and a wand or rod usually called "the wand of peace." In times long gone by, when education had made little progress, the exhibition of official symbols was not only useful but necessary to disclose the character of the wearer, and so that his person and office might be respected. A horn had been added to the insignia of the messengers, and the virtue of the symbols was often tested. Lord Stair, in his Institutes of the Law, iv. 47-14, observes-"All messengers should have a blazon and a rod or wand. The blazon having the impression of the King's arms upon it, which is fixed upon the messenger's breast, so as the impression of the King's arms may be seen, and thereby, while he charges, his authority and warrant may appear; for if any affront be done to him when he charges without his blazon, it will not import a deforcement, unless the actor knew him to be a messenger then. From the impression of the King's arms on the blazon, messengers are called messengers-at-arms; for they are not military officers, but civil. The

rod or wand of peace hath a particular shape and impression, by which it may be distinguished from any other. The use thereof is to evidence his authority and warrant to execute captions or other exercitorials; for in the execution of captions, the messenger ought to touch the party to be taken with that rod, and then read to him the letters of caption."

In the injunctions issued to messengers by Brodie of Brodie, when Lord Lyon, early last century, it was enjoined that a messenger "execute no letters against any person without his blazon on his breast, blowing horn, and wand tipped at the two ends with two letters, one of his name, the other of his sirname, to serve for a stamp to his executions, under the pain of deprivation, and he and his cautioner incur the unlaw of 500 merks." Instead of the wand which the King's officers of the fifteenth century were enjoined to carry with them, messengers have now a small baton of ebony, six or seven inches long, tipped with silver at each end, and a loose ring of silver, which can be easily removed from end to end,—one of which, with a blazon, I exhibit. When a messenger is deforced, he moves the ring from one end to another; and, besides the use of the rod, wand, or baton for that purpose, and in apprehending debtors, it was also employed when letters of relaxation were accustomed to be issued, to relax persons from the horn, and receive them again into the king's peace. Hence it is called in our old books, the rod of peace. Debtors who were charged, and failed to pay within a limited period, were, in former times, denounced by sound of horn at the Market Cross of Edinburgh as rebels, and so were said to be put to the horn; and the letters or warrant on which the charge was given, were called, from the penal consequences which followed non-payment, letters of horning. The horn was also originally used by messengers to rouse the country to assist the sheriff in the pursuit of fugitives (which assistance every one was, by the act 1426, c. 98, bound to give, under a severe penalty), and to call the attention of the lieges to the act which the messenger was about to perform. In denunciations of hornings, the execution always bore that, besides open proclamation, three blasts of a horn had been given, though, as the ceremony was not enjoined by any statute, it is probable the omission would not have been held a nullity. The blasts, however, were a mere fiction, for not only were they never given, but no messenger in modern times ever had a horn.

The Lyon King holds a court of a quasi criminal character, in

which he acts as judge (and, indeed, it is the only characteristic of the magisterial kind he exercises), wherein complaints against his officers are tried and determined; but, fortunately, in this branch of duty he is not oppressed with the labour.

Thus, then, have I endeavoured to trace and show the rise and development of an office which, in our earlier history, exercised important influence both in the State and among the people. The office lingers, rather than continues among us, as one of the very few institutions of a dark period; it is an office into the origin and meaning of which the curious may pry with satisfaction, and the learned with profit. I shall add, in conclusion, that if my auditory have been amused by my gleanings in a measure at all commensurate with the pleasure which the labour of collecting the material of which this paper is composed gave me, they will not have thought the hour consumed in reading it misspent.

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