at the meeting which took place, strange to say, the causes of their quarrels were thrown on the shoulders of the Clan Gunn. It was part of the arrangement that the Clan Gunn should be destroyed, but this was more easily agreed upon than executed. The two Earls made preparations to attack the Gunns on both sides, but it so happened that the Gunns and the Strathnaver men met on the borders of Caithness accidentally. They formed an alliance on the spot, and forthwith attacked and defeated the Caithness men at Aldgown. This was in the year 1586. This so enraged the Earl of Caithness that he hanged John MacRob, the head of the Gunns in Caithness, as he had him a prisoner at Girnigoe Castle. The Earls of Sutherland and Caithness met again at Ben Grinie, and the result of their proceedings proved adverse to the clan, for George Gunn, the chief, was sent as a prisoner by the Earl of Sutherland to the Earl of Caithness. He was kept a prisoner at Gernigoe Castle for some time, and afterwards liberated by the Earl of Caithness at the instigation of the Earl of Sutherland.

About 1580 the Macivers arrived in the county of Caithness, with the view of protecting the lands in Halkirk and Reay belonging to the Earl Marischal and the Oliphants from the incursions of the Gunns and others. They were favourably noticed by the Earl of Caithness; and Principal Campbell, in his "Account of the Clan Ivor," observes :-"The antagonists against whom the Macivors seem to have been most frequently pitted were the Guns, a fierce and warlike race, who, under their chief, patronymically styled MacHamish, formed at this period the border guard of Sutherland on the north-east. Between the two clans attacks and reprisals continued from the arrival of the Macivors till 1616." The principal conflict was at Pobbowar, near Harpsdale, in 1594, when the Macivors were defeated owing to the superior strategy of the Gunns. The defeat was not allowed to pass over unceremoniously, for shortly after the Macivors marched to Strathie and defeated the Gunns there. The Clan Abarach, deadly enemies of the Gunns, were on very friendly terms with the Macivors, a fellow feeling no doubt, making them wondrous kind.

There is one reason which might have induced the Gunns to lay waste the lands of the Earl Marischal or of the Oliphants, because the Regent Murray, the first husband of Lady Agnes Keith, had beheaded Alexander, the chief of the Clan Gunn, at Inverness in 1565, Revenge at that period was deep-rooted in the mind of the clansman, and could only be appeased by the murder of opponents or of their friends. Sir Robert Gordon has a complaint about the beheading of the Chief of the Clan Gunn, as he alleges, it was done in the absence of John, Earl of Sutherland, and that the cause of the execution arose out of a matter connected with the house of Sutherland. Sir Robert maintains that "the cheilf caus of his execution wes a deep malice and hatred which the Earl of Moray had conceived against him, becaus that upon a tyme when the Earles of Southerland and Huntly did happen to meet the Earl of Murray full in the face, upon the street of Aberdeen, this Alexander Gunn would not give the Earl of Murray any pairt of the way, but forced him and his company to leave the same." This is the only offence which Sir Robert admits against the Chief of the Clan Gunn, for whom he contends the Earl of Murray had laid a snare under "pretence of justice." Sir Robert therefore moralises over the matter in the following sentence:-"Such is the force of

heat and disdane in the mynds of great men, that they seldom hold it any breach of honor or justice to be revenged of those who offer them the least appearance of wrong."

The Gunns were certainly a bold and determined race, and some of them were used as tools for the purpose of committing very reckless acts. There is the instance of the Earl of Caithness inducing two or three of the Gunns, in 1615, to burn the corn of Sandside, which belonged to Lord Forbes. Of course, as the Gunns confessed at whose instance the crime was committed, the Earl of Caithness had enough to do to get out of the scrape into which he had fallen. It is further a strange circumstance that he should have selected the Gunns to carry out the crime referred to, more especially as he had some years previously executed their father. Seeing that the spirit of revenge was so strong at the time, it would seem unlikely that he should have taken into his confidence the sons of a father whom he had murdered. Perhaps the Earl, bad as he might have been, was blamed too much in the matter.

So long as the feudal broils lasted, the Clan Gunn was certainly at its post against all enemies, but days came when the house of Sutherland did not require a powerful race to defend its borders against the wily Earls of Caithness. From that time, the Clan Gunn not being required for defensive and warlike purposes, their importance gradually diminished, until at length the rights of superiority were exercised, and the Gunns after a time found that they had never been infeft in any lands. They were too careless in this respect. Had they known the value of titles there can be no doubt that they would have had extensive tracts of country when they realised the fact that they had none. Their residence at Killearnan was destroyed by fire in 1690. It is said that the chief and another of the clan were preparing for a hunting expedition, when some powder ignited, with the result that the whole buildings were destroyed by fire. The burial place of the Gunns was at Spittal, and the chiefs, on dying, were carried all the way from Kildonan, in the county of Sutherland, to Spittal-" Aut pax aut bellum" was certainly a very appropriate motto for the Gunns. Several branches have sprung from the Gunns. The Hendersons are descended from Henry, the Crowner's son. William, another of the Crowner's sons, is the the progenitor of the Wilsons in Caithness, while another of the same name claims the Williamsons. The Maclans, or Caithness Johnsons, come from John, who was slain at St Aire's by the Keiths. The Gallies, who settled in Ross-shire in troublous times, were of the Clan Gunn stock. The name is derived from Gall'aodh; and doubtless the surname Gullach has the same origin.

The late George Gunn, Esq. of Rhives, was the tenth Mac Hamish, but living as the Gunns were at Killearnan, and after they became dispersed, it is difficult to say who was the real head of the clan, as the descendants of many near relatives might never have known, or at least troubled themselves, about a chiefship to which no land was attached, on the death of William, the eighth MacHamish.

WICK.

G. M. SUTHERLAND,

(To be Continued.)

BOOKS RECEIVED.-Gregory's Highlands and Isles, and Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's Highland Rambles, from Thomas D. Morrison, Glasgow,

Literature.

SCOTLAND IN EARLY CHRISTIAN TIMES. THE RHIND LECTURES IN ARCHEOLOGY, 1879. By JOSEPH ANDERSON, Keeper of the National Museum of the Antiquaries of Scotland. Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1881.

THIS is a book of rare and surpassing interest. It reads like a romance; when we had once got interested we were unable to lay it down till we had read it through. And yet it is but a treatise on archæology, and that of the most strictly scientific kind. The things treated of are but, so to speak, the dry bones of our earliest Christian ancestors, but the author has breathed on them and they live.

As the title tells us the substance of the book consists of the second course of the Rhind Lectures, delivered to the Archæological Society in the autumn of 1879. In the first lecture the author discusses and describes the means of obtaining a scientific basis for the archæology of Scotland, its materials and its methods; and having described the aim of the science in its widest scope as being to produce "a history of man by his works, of art by its monuments, of culture by its manifestations, and of civilization by its developments," he proceeds in the subsequent lectures to describe the remains which have come down to us of the early Celtic Christian Church, and the lessons which are to be learned from them. These remains he considers in four groups, viz., the structural remains, the books, the bells, and the croziers and other relics.

Commencing with the historical and dated churches of the twelfth century, the typical features of which are that they consisted of nave and chancel, and had rounded arches with radiating joints over doors and windows with perpendicular sides, he traces back through various degrees of simplicity until he finds a structure of the rudest form and associated with the ancient Pagan form of dwelling, and this he with justice and on true scientific principles concludes, apart altogether from the question of the age at which any particular specimen may have been constructed, to be the original and typical form of the church or house of prayer and of worship of our earliest Christian ancestors.

The earliest form of domestic dwelling of which we have any remains is the circular hut constructed either of stones or of wood, with an earthen mound for foundation. When stone was the material used the dwelling assumed the form of a bee-hive, the stones projecting successively beyond those below them until they met, or nearly met, in the centre. That such was a common form of dwelling long before Christian times is a matter of which there can be no doubt. As Dr Arthur Mitchell has shown in the first course of Rhind Lectures, however, it would be unsafe to conclude of any individual specimen of this class of architecture that it was pro-Christian. He found such houses still in use as shealings in Lewis, and the present writer saw, within the last three years, a building of this class being constructed over a well within ten miles of Inverness. It is true, nevertheless, that we know of no more primitive type of dwelling, and we may therefore conclude that this was the earliest form. When therefore we find associated with these early domestic buildings a

very primitive style of building, but which was evidently a place of Christian worship, we may safely conclude that we have found the original form of Celtic Christian church. From the Brehon laws we learn that the complete homestead consisted of the dwellings of the family, with offices, houses surrounded by a ditch and rampart called a rath or cashel at the distance to which the master of the household, sitting at his door, could cast a spear or hammer. We know from various sources that the practice of the early missionary monks in Ireland and Scotland was to obtain from the chief of the tribe among which they came a grant of land. On this they formed a settlement according to the custom of the time, enclosing a space of ground by a mound and ditch, within which were built the dwellings of the brethren and the oratory, church, or place of prayer. Along the west coast of Ireland, in one or two places in the Western Islands of Scotland, and in Orkney, there are remains of such settlements associated still with traditions of early Scottish and Irish saints, and from these a sufficiently accurate idea can be formed of the appearance and construction of the church, It was a single chambered building-in the rudest form it was built of dry stones, and had no perpendicular side walls, the stones of these projecting in successive layers until they met, or nearly met, in the centre, being in fact a modification of the bee-hive construction, and giving the building somewhat the appearance of an upturned boat. But it was always rectangular in form, had the gables to the east and west, had a door in the west and a small window in the east, these having flat lintels and the jambs approaching each other at the top, and beneath the window a stone altar. It was therefore a distinct type of building, as different from the circular buildings with which it was associated as it was from any other known type of Christian church. Whence did our ancestors derive this type of building? This is a question to which we are not yet able to give an answer; but one would naturally conclude that it came from the same source as their Christianity, and that that was not from Europe.

That stone was not the only material used in the construction of churches and monastic buildings we know. In his life of St Columba Adamnan describes the monks as bringing branches from the mainland in their boats for the construction of their buildings, which were probably composed of wattles and mud, and in the old Irish life of Columba we are told that on one occasion "he sent his monks into the wood to cut wattles to make a church for himself in Derry." The probability is that the monks used the materials which were most convenient-when wood abounded, as at that time it appears to have done over the greater part of Scotland and Ireland, wood would naturally be used; on the sea coast and on islands off the coast wood would be scarce, and stones the most convenient material; and naturally it is only the stone buildings which have survived to our time. There is no reason, however, to conclude that the wood or wattle buildings were different in form from those of stone.

The only modification of this form of building which developed itself naturally in the Celtic Church was the round tower, always associated with a church, or the traditions of one, and sometimes structurally connected with a church. Of these there are only two in Scotland, at Brechin and Abernethy, but there are a number in Ireland; and the conclusion

of the author, in accordance with that of the best authorities, is that these towers were constructed as places of refuge when the Norwegians and Danes commenced to ravage our coasts. And we would venture the suggestion that when the ruins of churches are not found associated with these towers the reason is that the churches to which they belonged were constructed of wood.

Such are the structural remains of the ancient Celtic Church which have survived, and if we proceed to question them as to what manner of men the monks who used these buildings were, we should probably arrive at a very false conclusion. The buildings, both domestic and ecclesiastical, were of the very rudest kind, and entirely devoid of any pretence to architectural merit. But if we were to conclude from this that the monks who inhabited them were rude, unlettered, or uncultured men, we should be as far wrong as the Cockney tourist, who, when he sees a bothy without regular chimney, and the smoke issuing from door and window, concludes that the inhabitants are miserable ignorant savages, when they are in many cases more intelligent, and in many senses more cultured than the tourist himself, and with half his advantages would probably be in every respect his superior. On the contrary when we consider what we know of the early Celtic monks from other sources the lesson we learn is that the highest expression of a people's culture is not always or necessarily seen in their architecture. The Celtic clergy of the time of Columba, and for some centuries after, were, as we shall see, more learned than those of the rest of Europe, and as our author points out, Iceland, which had neither towns nor architecture, produced, previous to the introduction of printing, a larger native literature than any country in Europe.

As we have said, it is not easy to say whence the Celtic Church derived either its type of ecclesiastical building or its Christianity. It had developed its monastic system and had become missionary before it came in contact with the Church of Rome, and when it did it was found that many of its customs and traditions were distinct. It was not Episcopal in this sense that while it had bishops, who alone could perform certain ecclesiastical functions, they had no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and were subject to the abbots who were generally presbyters. St Columba, for instance, was a presbyter. It observed Easter at a different time, and the tonsure was different. In the Roman Church, as is well-known, the crown of the head is shaved, whereas in the Celtic Church the tonsure was from ear to ear on the front part of the head. The first contact of the Celtic Church with the Roman Church was in 590, when Columbanus (not to be confounded with St Columba), with twelve followers, went as missionaries to Gaul, and caused much surprise in the ecclesiastical world of the time. They conversed freely in Latin, and they gave the following account of themselves :-"We are Irish, dwelling in the very ends of the earth. We be men who receive naught beyond the doctrines of the evangelists and the apostles. The Catholic faith as it was first delivered by the successors of the holy apostles is still maintained among us with unchanged fidelity." And Columbanus himself gave this account of himself "I am a Scottish pilgrim, and my speech and actions correspond to my name, which is, in Hebrew Jonah, in Greek Peristera, and in Latin Columba or dove," from which we may fairly presume that he was ac