Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 52

Britain is remarkable in Ptolemy's work for the amount of distortion and much analysis is required to understand how his errors arose, and from what material he was building. The author considers, absolute positions, coasting distances, inland distances in England, the Lowlands and the Highlands to try to ascertain what date Ptolemy used, and how he worked.

A short cist contained a crouched skeleton lying on its left side. The remains were those of an ageing adult. A long cist found nearby contained charcoal, a number of red pebbles and burnt bone identified as an adult.

The stone was built into the wall of a garden and was examined in situ. It is possibly part of the upper half of an altar comprising a very substantial remnant of a dedication to the threefold group of " mother goddesses," whose worship was so popular in certain districts during the earliest centuries of the Christian era. As many as four or five hundred monuments relating to their worship have survived. Some\r\nof these are reliefs; some are inscriptions; many are combinations of the two. It was probably set up by Roman auxiliary troops in the first or second century. There is no other evidence of Roman activity at Colinton so it is likely to have been brought from elsewhere, possibly nearby Cramond.

The mound is 15 feet high. The crest diameter is 25 feet; the diameter at base is 103 feet by 73 feet. On the north there appeared to be the outline of a ditch and rampart, and on the west a feature resembling a berm. It was concluded that the mound is largely if not entirely artificial, that it had an elevation of only 10 feet above the glacis, and now lies entirely below its covering of blown sand, that any defences must have been of an extremely light nature, and, that the occupation was spread over a considerable period, dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.

The Rehoboam set is one of two of sixteenth-century date depicting the history of Rehoboam. Two hangings in the National Museum depict Queen Elizabeth receiving\r\nan embassy, probably the proposal of marriage from Philip of Spain and the Queen of Sheba before Solomon. The story depicted in the Dalmohoy set has not been identified. A detailed analysis of the costumes is depicted with a view to determining the date of the hangings.

The cup-marks have been arranged according to their occurrence on stone circles, on standing-stones unconnected with circles, and on rock surfaces. The cup-marks on\r\nstones which form parts of circles are all found either on the recumbent stone or in its immediate neighbourhood, nor do they occur on all the circles in the county. The possible function of the cup-marks in considered.

All three cross-slabs were standing upright when found, and had been damaged, two of them very seriously, by previous grave-diggers. Two appeared to be in their original location. All have crossed and interlaced or plaited decoration. With the exception of the handle, hinge, and lid, which are of malleable iron, the crusie is of cast iron, and has been cast in a piece. The total weight is over 6 pounds. The advantage of a crusie having a lid was that tallow could be used when oil was scarce. A piece of burning peat was put on the top of the lid to melt the tallow.

The volcanic glass of Scotland and Ireland is called pitchstone, and the often more solid and homogeneous natural glass found in foreign places is known as obsidian. The pitchstone of Ireland and of Scotland, except that of the Island of Arran, is apparently too much cracked into small pieces to be of use. Pitchstone is rare in Scotland, and the Island of Arran possesses most of the outcrops. Pitchstone when splintered presents razor-like edges nearly as useful as those on flint flakes for scraping, cutting, boring, and piercing. It is more brittle than flint, and does not allow of the same delicate secondary workmanship as, for example, is entailed in the cutting out of barbs on arrowheads. No worked pitchstone seems to have been recorded from Britain outside of Arran, Bute, Ayrshire, and Wigtownshire, and the only source\r\nof supply of the raw material seems to have been Arran. No prehistoric British or Irish pitchstone drippings or anciently-worked pieces are apparently to be found in English or Irish collections. There is no clear evidence as to pitchstone chippings or implements having yet been discovered in Ireland. The use of pitchstone spans the Neolithic and Bronze Age with sporadic early Iron Age examples in Scotland. The Greek island of Melos has abundant sources of obsidian while pre-dynastic artefacts are known from Egypt.

Some time before 1888, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the subject of market rights and tolls within the United Kingdom, and the Commissioners during the ensuing years published a series of volumes dealing with the minutes of evidence taken before them, statistics regarding the various markets and fairs, and their reports thereon. Altogether nearly 900 places are mentioned in which fairs are or were held, and of the latter some 311 are specified to have been held on the anniversary day of some particular saint. A synopsis of saints' names with the places in which fairs named after them were held is presented.

The sources considered are the more ancient tombstones in St Magnus Cathedral, and certain seals attached to early fifteenth-century Orkney documents now in the Danish Record Office at Copenhagen. Of the stones dealt with, all in fact, save one, come from St Magnus. The exception is a stone that was found in Orphir churchyard. The earliest stones considered are dated to the fourteenth century. The native Orkney arms noticed in this paper are those of Paplay, Flett, Halcro, Skea, and Clouston, and very possibly of Rendall.