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extent or magnificence.

Until the building is finish

ed, any furniture of the old house which exquisite art or antiquity has rendered valuable, cannot be seen; but, we are sorry to say, the regret of the visitor need not be extreme, for little of it has any such claim to notice. Part of the aisle of the ancient abbey still remains, and is used as a receptacle for the ashes of the noble family * to whom it belongs. It contains one monument of tolerable sculpture †. The Tay

* The family of Stormont, now Mansfield.

must

† Mr. Adamson celebrates Scone in very high terms indeed : "As we thus talk'd, our barge did sweetly pass By Scone's fair palace, sometime abbey was; Strange change indeed! yet is it no new guise, Both spiritual lands and men to temporize ? But palace fair, which doth so richly stand,

With gardens, orchards, parks on either hand,

Where flowers, and fruits, the hart, and fallow-deer,
For smell, for taste, for venison and cheer,

The nose, the mouth, the palate, which may please,

For gardens, chambers, for delight and ease,
Damask'd with porphyry and alabaster,

Thou art not subject for each poetaster,

But for a poet, master in his art,

Which thee could whole describe, and every part;

So to the life, as 'twere, in perspective,

As readers that they see thee might believe."

Mr. Cant subjoins the following note:--

"Scone stands about a mile and a half north from Perth, on the opposite side of the river. It was an abbey founded by Alexander I. A. D. 1114, and was dedicated to the Trinity and Michael the Archangel. Our kings were accustomed to be

growned

must be ferried in a fisherman's boat, and a short walk succeeds to the mouth of the Almond, where, on the northern bank, stands a very little village, retaining the ancient name of Bertha. Here, some historians have fabled, that Perth originally stood; but the researches of more correct investigators have satisfactorily proved the existence of that city in its present situation long before the inundation (1210)

crowned here; and here the fatal marble chair in which they were crowned was kept, which was sent by Edward Longshanks to Westminster, where it still remains, with this inscription on the stone

Ni faliit fatum, Scoti quocunque locatum,

Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem.

Buchanan and other writers say, that the abbacy formerly belonged to the Culdees. This abbacy, with other religious houses at Scone, was burnt down in a barbarous manner at the time of the Reformation, 27th June, A. D. 1559. The monks were found to be a profligate and impious fraternity. It was erected into a temporal lordship by K. James VI. A.D. 1604, in favour of Sir David Murray, of Gospetrie, a cadet of the house of Tullibarden. The present Lord Viscount Stormont (1774) is his lineal descendant and heir. The ground that surrounds the remains of the ancient church is considerably raised, and is called omnis terra."

Hume, in his History of the Douglases, gives us the origin of this name:

"When Robert Bruce was crowned 27th March A.D. 1306, Sir James, the eighth Lord Douglas, assisted, and cast into a heap, as did the other barons, a quantity of earth of his lands of Douglas, which, making a little hill, is called omnis terra. This was the custom of those times; by which homage, they who held the King of Scotland supreme under God, were distinguished from

others."

(1210) which was said to have swept it away from this place. But, although there is no reason to sup pose a Scottish town of any consequence ever existed here, yet it has undoubtedly been a Roman station, probably of some importance. Various vestiges of that people have been dug up, and, when the Tay is very low, the remains of a bridge may yet be seen *. Farther

others." It is said that the Barons of Scotland could receive investiture of their lands as lawfully, by delivering earth and stone from this spot, as from their own lands. We are also informed, that anciently the conventions of the nobles were held in this place.

The following, another note of Mr Cant's, would lead us to believe this hillock of more ancient origin

"The most ancient council in Scotland, which we have on record, was holden at Scone, the sixth year of the reign of our king Constantine, the son of Ethus, A. D. 906, in which Constantine, and Kellach the bishop, with the Scots, solemnly vowed to observe the laws and discipline of faith, the rights of the churches, and of the gospel, on a little hill, from thence called "Collis Credulitatis," (Knoll Creidimh, I suppose in the vulgar language), near the royal city of Scone; it is like, it was the place so famous afterwards by the name of the Matehill of Scone, called Omnis terra."

*The following lucubrations of Mr Cant, on the subject of Bertha, are not devoid of interest :

"There is a small village at the conflux of Tay and Almond, called to this day Bertha, where are some lanes in it known by the name of Vennals, a name by which several narrow bye-streets in Perth are known.

"The river Almond anciently had its course by Ruthven castle, now Huntingtower; and there is a small rivulet about half a mile below the present Almond, generally dry in the summer-season, known by the name of Old Almond. Almond, in its course,

is

Farther walking is unnecessary till we arrive at Luncarty, four miles from Perth, on the right. This place, which in former times was the scene of a very bloody

is cutting the grounds towards the north, and the village of Bertha, which anciently stood on Tay, stands now at the conflux of Almond and Tay, and, in a few years, may be carried off, as the Old Bertha was, by the waters undermining it.

"About fifteen years ago, a country labouring man observed the appearance of an earthen pot jutting out of the bank, a little above the surface of the water on the north side, about 160 yards to the west from Bertha: suspecting it to be a pot filled with money, he went and digged it out, and found it closely cemented on the top. Overjoyed with his acquisition, he carried it home with all secrecy, broke it, and was sufficiently mortified to find nothing in it but burnt ashes.

"I examined this shred of antiquity, now lying in ruins by means of avaricious hands. It was the largest urn I ever beheld, above half an inch in thickness, made of very fine clay of a light brown colour, plated on the inside with brass almost consumed, and covered with verdigrease; it contained about ten English gallons. I observed, on the face of this bank, six semi-circular pillars of earth, about eighteen feet in height from the surface of the ground to the bed of the river; the earth of these pillars is quite different from that of the bank, being of a dark hazle colour-the earth of the bank is reddish. Round pits had been dug out the urns deposited at the bottom, and filled ture of glutinous earth rammed down.

up

with a mix

"About two years after, I observed another pillar making its appearance after an inundation of the river, which had washed away part of the bank, about 150 yards on the west side of Bertha. This discovery was communicated to a learned and inquisitive gentleman of Perth. We went to the place, got a fishingboat, and, by the assistance of a country-man, who, by our direc tions, digged cautiously at the bottom of the pillar, we found a small urn; but, notwithstanding of all our care and caution, he

broke

bloody conflict between our ancestors and a plundering army of Danes, is now converted into a bleachfield, we believe the most extensive in the kingdom *. Stanley,

broke it with his spade. The contents were a few ashes of oakwood, and part of a lachrymatory, which was a small glass phial, the eighth of an inch in thickness. This urn would contain about an English quart and a half. Excepting the first, all the urns that were found were of like dimensions with the last described. It is very probable that, as the river washes away the bank, more urns may be discovered. These pillars are lines, about ten feet distant from one another.

"If I may be indulged a conjecture, there is reason to believe that the Romans had a castellum, or station, near to Bertha.

"Agricola, after having subdued the Britons, determined to fortify that neck of land which divides the two Friths of Forth and Clyde, to prevent the incursions of the warlike and fierce Caledonians; he erected a chain of forts betwixt the two Friths, and left the ninth legion to defend them. The Caledonians, finding themselves straitened by these bulwarks, and cut off from all communication with the Britons, in the seventh year of Agricola's proconsular government, surprised them in the night-time, and, after killing the guards, they attacked the camp with their usual bravery.

"The

"Luncarty is famous for the decisive battle gained by the Scots over the Danes, in the reign of Kenneth III. towards the close of the tenth century. The victory was, in a great measure, owing to the valour of one Hay and his two sons, who were ploughing in sight of the engagement. Buchanan informs us, that the Danes were victorious, until Hay and his two sons came up, and turned back the fugitive Scots, who fell upon the Danes with redoubled fury, animated by Hay. They drove the Danes into the river. There is great probability that there had been several separate engagements, from the situation of the tumuli, of

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