6

of moss in the parish of Longside, which may have surmounted a helmet or formed part of the trappings of some of the horsemen who crossed the district during the civil war in the reign of Edward I., or of the knights of Ludquharn, who had a castle adjoining the moss.'

There would seem to have been a primeval factory of weapons of war of the stone age in the moss of Loch Lundy in the parish of Slains, and another at Aldie in Cruden; so common are the flakes formed by the chipping of the flints found there. Other relics of early man are numerous. A few years prior to 1795 there were said to be twelve Druidical circles in the parish of Deer, one of which, with a large altar or execution stone, remains in good preservation to this day, while more or less perfect vestiges of others exist. They occur also at Newark in Crimonmogate; at Cortes in Rathen, where the estate takes its name from the circle; and at Culsh in New Deer, where the stones were used to build a manse. The district has also furnished two examples of the type of sculptured stones which is so characteristic of the country of the Picts. One was found at Old Deer, and, when seen by Dr. Stuart, was placed at the end of the ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of Deer. It was of whinstone, having the crescent and other tracings on one side, while on the other, probably at a later time, had been carved a rude cross. It has now disappeared, and is said to have been built into the walls of a neighbouring house. The other stone, which bears the figure of a bird and other devices, was found at Tyrie on the north of Mormond. It is remarkable that in the vicinity of the former stone there existed the ruins of a small village called by the country people Peights or Picts Houses. It consisted of fifty or sixty mossy huts, from six to twelve feet square, irregularly huddled together: hence it got the name of the bourachs. The walls were built of small stones and clay; the floors were paved with stones.' Under a considerable depth of peat-moss were also preserved the ruins of an ancient village at Aberdour, a locality which shares with Deer the distinction of being recorded as a 'town' when the first light of written history breaks on the darkness of Celtic Buchan. The Den of Boddam, near Peterhead, contains a number of excavations, which local tradition calls the houses of the Picts; and a so-called Pictish village existed till within recent years in the vicinity of the old battlefield at Cairn Catta.

Sequestered as for many generations the province was, it bears evidence of having been in earlier ages the scene of sanguinary strife. Here and there are found the stone coffins,

with clay urns and calcined bones, which are all that remains of the love and veneration felt by the people for their chiefs of old; and many a parish has (or had, for the vandals of progress have been very ruthless in Buchan) its frequent graves, its huge cairns, and its clustering tumuli, which bear silent witness to a stricken field, recorded only by local tradition, or passed altogether from the minds of men. Tradition generally connects these cairns with incursions of the Danes; but it is remarkable that their vicinity often yields rich stores of flint arrow-heads and stone weapons. On one side of a valley the heathery slopes are studded with small stone circular erections, said to have covered the fires of a bivouacking army; and in the rear a neighbouring knoll is crowned with the remains of a mighty cairn, still called Cairn Catta, or the Cairn of the Battle. The opposite slope retains the name of the Camp Fauld, and there is still pointed out a tumulus called the King's Grave. As to what armies fought, and what monarch fell, no record survives. "Omnes illacrimabiles

Urgentur ignotique longa

Nocte carent quia vate sacro.'

We are, however, fortunate in finding firm ground at a very early period in the history of Buchan. This outlying region, strangely enough, furnishes probably the earliest authentic written record of Scotland, and it is one which in few words throws much light on Celtic polity and social conditions throughout a long series of years. There is no trace of the district being penetrated by the Romans, though at Glenmailen the mouldering lines' of the Statio ad Itunam look across the Ythan, and the Roman road from the Dee to the shores of the Moray Firth indicates that the Emperor Severus skirted its confines when on his way to his astronomical investigations in the far north. The 'Book of Deir' lifts the veil which shrouded the Celtic life of the north-eastern Lowlands, and gives us the first glimpse into Buchan. Laithers in Turriff, by the 'streams of Duvranna,' has been identified with the Dun Lathmon of Ossian, but authentic written history begins some time between 563 and 597, when the great evangelist of Scotland having converted Brude the king of the Northern Picts at Inverness, pursued his mission in his eastern territories. The quaint words of the Book of Deir' tell us that

'Columcille and Drostan, son of Cosgrach, his pupil, came from I, as God had shown them, unto Abbordobhoir, and Bede the Pict was Mormaer of Buchan before them, and it was he that gave them that town in freedom for ever from Mormaer and tosech. They came

after

after that to the other town, and it was pleasing to Columcille because it was full of God's grace, and he asked of the Mormaer, to wit Bede, that he should give it to him; and he did not give it ; and a son of his took an illness after refusing the clerics, and he was nearly dead. After this the Mormaer went to intreat the clerics that they should make prayer for the son that health should come to him, and he gave in offering to them from Cloch in tiprat to Cloch pette mic Garnait. They made the prayer, and health came to him. After that Columcille gave to Drostan that town and blessed it, and left as his word, "Whosoever should come against it let him not be

many yeared (or) victorious." Drostan's tears (deara) came on parting with Columcille. Said Columcille, "Let Dear be its name henceforward.""

At Aberdour are the ruins of a very old church dedicated to St. Drostan, and his well is shown by the seaside. He was also the patron saint of Old Deer, where a well exists called by his name. St. Drostan's market is held in December; and 'Aiky Fair' in July, of old a famous gathering, commemorates the translation of part of his relics. No two spots in the whole region could be selected better suited for a seaboard and for an inland Christian settlement, than those chosen by Columba, with that eye for natural beauty as well as for the purposes of his work which distinguished him. Gordon of Straloch speaks of the Abbey of Deer as being in depressâ valle olim totâ sylvestri'; and the Cistercian Abbey, as well as the older Celtic house, which was apparently further down the river Ugie, where the ruins of an older church than the abbey still exist, were situated in the most central, sheltered, and fertile spots that the district affords. Tradition records that the original builders of the old church tried one spot after another, but were always haunted by a supernatural voice which repeated,—

It is not here, it is not here,

That ye're to big the kirk o' Deer,
But on Tap Tillery,

Where mony a corp shall after lie,'—

until they selected a beautiful knoll on a horse-shoe loop formed by a bend of the river. The prediction was fully justified. The View of the Diocese of Aberdeen '-written in the beginning of last century-says, 'This church has an isle for the Keiths'; and its venerable ruins, which bear a stone graven with the Keith arms and the words Georgius Comes Mariscalli Dominus Keytheus Altreus et Patronus,' have since the time of the Keiths been a place of sepulture for the families of Kinmundy and Pitfour. The received etymology of the name Deer derives it from the Gaelic word for an oak; and it is

probable

probable that the spreading oaks, of which a record still remains in another tongue, in the name Aiky Brae, reminded the saint of his earlier foundations at Derry and Durrow in his native land, which took their name from the same tree. At the same time it may be borne in mind that Dairthech or Deirthech, the usual name given to the early wooden church, is derived alternatively from dair, an oak,' and from dear, a tear.' St. Columba left Drostan in charge of the new foundation, but tradition also associates his presence with another locality. On a knoll close to the beach and overlooking the sea, at the extreme northeastern limit of Scotland, stand the remains of St. Colm's kirk. Its situation recalls the beautiful lines of which the authorship is attested by the words Columcille fecit:

'Delightful would it be to me to be in Uchd Ailean,
On the pinnacle of a rock,

That I might often see

The face of the ocean;

That I might see its heaving waves

Over the wide ocean,

When they chant music to their Father

Upon the world's course;

That I might see its level sparkling strand,

It would be no cause of sorrow;

That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;

That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks;

That I might hear the roar by the side of the Church

Of the surrounding sea.'

The history of old churches often throws a curious light on stages of social development and changes of national policy. In far-away Buchan, we have the original Columban foundations -Deer, Aberdour, and their offspring; an example of the dedications to St. Peter, which are associated with the Pictish change of church policy carried out by King Nectan in 710; the formation of parishes and new religious foundations under the Comyns; the diminution of religious staffs that followed the Reformation; the increase in the number of parishes that was carried out in the reign of Charles I. under the supervision of Bishop Patrick Forbes of Corse; and the ecclesiastical changes that followed the Revolution. The early saints specially associated with Buchan, in addition to St. Drostan, who was of the royal family of the Scots, were St. Fergus, said to be of Pictish blood, who, having performed the office of a bishop in Ireland and preached in Caithness, came to Buchan and ministered near the coast in the

parish still called by his name, after which he settled at Glamis, where he erected fresh cœnobia to God, choosing this as the place of his rest'; St. Ethernan or Mernan, who lived an eremitical life in Rathen,' and whose hermitage probably occupied a hollow known as St. Eddran's Slack on the side of Mormond; and St. Modan of Philorth. The ruins of a chapel dedicated to St. Adamnan exist in Slains. Peterugie, or Peterhead, is the only example of a dedication to St. Peter, and Fyvie of one to St. Andrew. Turriff was dedicated to the Celtic St. Congan, but no tradition of his personal ministrations exists. In later years the Templars seem to have had a foothold there.

·

In the parish of Cruden a peculiar dedication to St. Olave, the patron saint of Norway, is connected with traditions relating to the most prominent facts in the civil history of the region during the years while the Celtic foundation flourished on the banks of the Ugie. These were the invasions and the battles with the Sumarlidi, or Summer Wanderers, as the Norse pirates were called. On the shores of the Bay of Cruden on the east, and on the cliffs of Gamrie in the north-west, the legends take most specific form. In Gamrie,' says an old writer, 'was a battle of Danes upon a very high promontory called the Bloody Pits to this day.' It is said that after the battle of Aberlemno, in which the Scots were victorious, the remains of the Danish army, when sailing round to join their compatriots who then held the province of Moray, were driven by bad weather on the coast of Buchan. Having landed to forage, they were attacked and cut off from their ships by Mernane, the so-called Thane of Buchan. Their final stand was made on a steep hill near Gamrie, where the Scots put every one to the sword. Three skulls of Danish chiefs were built into the walls

of the church.

The Bloody Pits to this day can tell,

How the ravens were glutted with gore,

And the church was garnished with trophies fell,

Jesu Maria shield us well!

Three grim skulls of three Norse kings,

Grinning a grin of despair;

Each looking out from his stony cell,

They stared with a stony stare.

Did their spirits hear how the old church fell,

They'd grin a ghastlier smile in hell,

Oh! it would please them passing well!'

In the following year Sueno is said to have made a final effort for the conquest of Scotland, and to have fitted out a large army under the command of his son, the famous Canute,

afterwards