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Cinerary urn found in preparing the foundations for the late Dr Landale’s
liouse of “The Binn.”
When I am dead and in my
grave,
And all my bones are rotten,
Take up this book and think of me,
When I am quite forgotten.”
So runs the old request,
couched in rather an Irish way. Unnumbered ages ago—an eternity before the
Binn was born, and that’s some time since—a strange tree fell in the sand
near which it grew, and was covered with blown sand from some ancient
seashore, as the robins buried the Babes in the Wood. So undisturbed was its
last resting-place, and so gradual its decay, its particles, filtering away
with the percolation of surface water, and replaced with grains of sand—that
in course of time when the sand solidified nothing-but the carbonised
sculpture of the bark remained. A portion of the trunk, 4 feet 6 inches in
height and 5 feet 5 inches in girth, one of the sigillaria beautifully
marked with pits for the leaves arranged spirally, and with vertical
moisture channels, is now standing near the entrance to Mr Lamlale’s house
of “The Binn.” It was uot found in the adjoining bed of calciferous
sandstone, but in the same stratum in a fault at Muir-edge. In the latest
volcanic period in Scotland the forces beneath burst through at Burntisland
and left this layer of sandstone at an angle of 35 degrees until it readies
the foot of the east volcanic vent of the Binn. Here, on the very lip of
this old volcano the late Dr Landale felt constrained to build him an house,
and preparing the foundations for it in 18G6 the workmen disinterred the
cinerary urn depicted at the head of this chapter. It contained fragments of
charred bones which are still preserved. The height is 15 indies and
diameter 12 A inches. In a collection of these urns, in the Antiquarian
Museum, Edinburgh, there is one found at Ceres very like this, the design
round the shoulders being the same. Authorities assign these urns to over
7000 years ago. Xo doubt there was a dwelling of some kind beside this place
of burial, so that even in those days there were people with an eye for a
good site. Previous to the finding of this urn, in building Greenmount—another
good site—a number of these urns were found together. They were much broken
in excavating, but were given to Mr Patou of Glasgow Museum. Slabs of stone
had covered the tops, and Miss Iv. J. Kirke, Hilton, thinks there were also
some flint, arrow heads. I have seen an old estate map on which tlie place
where these were found is shown as a conical tumulus, described as such. On
the same map at the base of the .south side of Craigkennochie there is
marked “ an artificial cairn probably a place of sepulture.” About 50 years
ago any illness in the neighbourhood of Craigholm was ascribed to the
influence of this burial place, a spring near here being much used. The
tumulus and cairn may be nearly of the same period, but of races with
different burial customs —the cairn usually having the stone cist with
unburned bones. And this is all we know of the inhabitants of this corner of
Fife in prehistoric times. In the beginning of the 19th century, when a good
deal of re-building seems to have been going on, in West Leven Street and
the High Street near the Harbour, frequent discovery of human bones took
place, grim relics, the gossips darkly whispered in the ear, of the tragic
end of some over-rich traveller boastful of his spoils, or fierce seaman in
some forgotten brawl. Many skeletons were also found at the Lammerlaws,
supposed by some to be the remains of witches burned there, or of soldiers
who perished in the siege. More likely most of these bones, had their
discovery been postponed till now, would be ranked as prehistoric, from the
method of their burial, or the presence of fragments of slab, cist, or urn,
which may not have been observed or not understood. .
Ages afterwards, yet 1830
years ago, in the summer of 83, a.d., the Roman Governor of Britain,
Agricola,. ‘‘sounded the havens and explored with his fleet the north side
of Bodotria” (the Firth of Forth), and, according to Sir Robert Sibbald’s
reading of Tacitus, “ found none so commodious for great vessels as that at
the town now called Bruntelin.’’ Sir Robert in a letter to his “Honoured
nephew, Alexander Orrock, laird of' Orreck,” published in his “Roman Ports,
Colonies, and Forts in the Firth of Forth” (ITU), says, speaking' of
Tacitus’ account, of Agricola, his father-in-law’s sixth year of
administration of Britain, “ the circumstances of the mountains and woods do
clearly mark out that it was at Bruntelin and the bays near it . . that
Agrieola landed . . . from the Binn-end to Kinghorne the country adjacent to
the coast has to this day the name of the Woods.” Sibbald thought it liKely
that “ Agricola placed a specula or Tower where the Castle of Bruntelin now
stands; this being the largest and most convenient port for ships and
easiest fortified because of the rocks on each side of the entry of it: and
the rising ground on which the Castle now stands was of singular advantage,
both as a specula for discoverie of enemies and invaders, and as a Phunts or
height to place night-lights on (nilidac ajtecuhhe castillaque) for the
seamen’s better and safer guidance into the harbour.”
Tacitus says that Agric-ola’s
fleets were not intended primarily to land troops, but were used mainly to
follow, feed, and encourage his army, •which recent writers believe would
march along1 the coast from Stirling.
Sir Robert was an eminent
physician, naturalist, antiquary, and writer, with great powers of
observation, and visited personally the places he describes in his books.
His active and enthusiastic nature imbibed eagerly all information bearing
on Roman remains—a fascinating fever in his day—and it is this penchant for
old-time wonders that we have to keep our weather eye on, and that firmly.
He proceeds:—“This hill here on which the Roman Specula stood had an oblong
camp upon it, with the Praetorium, that is, the Governor’s Pavilion in the
middle square of it, where the court of the Castle is now.” He describes at
length the Castilla, -and thinks an assault on it by the Caledonians in the
preceding winter was the cause of the sixth expedition. Till then there had
been a division of opinion among the Romans as to the advisability of
proceeding further north.
He finds “a vestige” of a
British Cam]) on Duncarn hill, and “Upon the ascent from the East . . .
there are outer and inner square camps with dykes of rough stone about them
. . . Barbieri, secretary to Lord Elgin, in his Historical Gazetteer of
Fife, also says Dunearn “ has a fort of the Picts of great strength.” I
recently visited Dunearn but could not trace the mounds seen by Sir Robert
about 1680. It is, however, a weird and awesome scene. The greater part, of
the top is covered deep with thousands of whin and other hard stones, about
the size suitable for building dykes. One I observed was undoubtedly cut.
Were these stones collected, by human agency!" It is too high for a terminal
moraine—an accumulation of debris torn from the sides of a valley traversed
by a glacier and dropped at its foot where it ceases to be ice. A volcanic
vent, in its dying throes these stones may be the last material ejected so
imperfectly that they 'fell back aud choked the vent. The lake is used by
the Grange Distillery in the manufacture of the cmtur. At the foot of the
hill is the summer house of James Stewart, the survivor in the famous pistol
duel between him and ’ Sir Alexander Boswell.
A friend, Mr George Blyth,
tells me that when a young man he was shooting rabbits at the edge of the
loch, and having wounded one, he enlarged a hole in which it had taken
refuge, and discovered, at a depth of several feet, a curious bottle,
wrapped in what he describes as burned straw, probably straw black with age.
It was of dark opacpie glass, one end cigar-shaped like the old style
lemonade bottle—the “bothimless” sort that bothered Handy Andy so much—but
the neck turned at a right angle. The mouth was closed with what appeared to
be wax or rotten cork. It was filled with a dark coloured very sweet wine :—
“On Tintock tap there is a
cup,
And in the cup there is a drap.”
The wine was pronounced by a
supervisor at the Grange to be very fine, and evidently hundreds of years
old, as there was a deposit of an eighth of. an inch on the inside of the
glass. My friend has always regretted that the wine was consumed and the
bottle broken. Dr Anderson of the Antiquarian Museum informs me bottles of
this description were in use in Holland in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Sibbald goes on to give “an
account of Orrea” (a Homan town in Fife, held by Small in his Roman
Antiquities to have been at Cupar), “which I conjecture stood where the
house of Orrock now stands: there have been medals found near to it . . . a
military way passeth close by it called the Cross-gate . . . many antique
instruments and armaments have been found near the Boroughs or Tumidi, near
to where the Prnetorum stood . . . many rings were found . . . some of an
inch diameter . . . some the ordinary size of a (finger) ring, all these are
covered with a green crust, so it does not appear what metal they are of,
some have an aperture in the side . . . and seem to have been used as
Fibulae” (brooches), (hi page 18 he gives a drawing of a stylus or Roman pen
found at Orrock.
Sir Robert had “a crap for a’
corns.” he writes “The lands of Orrock afford British diamonds of various
colours, some four, some six-sided, equal to the Bristol stones.” These
“diamonds” were rock crystals, and their presence in the vicinity no doubt
gave rise to the old tale of sailors seeing-in the night a diamond
glittering in the Binn :—
“At lowest ebb yer eliafts
ye’l lay,
AŤ laicli’s ye Šail, to Mary pray,
Atween the Knaps and Cot-burn-dell,
Aboon the Green about an ell,
Ye’l see a ferlie;
Whytes blazin’ out a fiery peat,
Noo glowerin’ low as blue’s a slate,
Or flickerin’ marlin o’ the twa,
Syne spluterin’ like a burs tin ’ ba’,
O’ red hot iron ;
But w'hsn the mune her chin has laid,
Across the Bass, slie’l quickly fade,
Wi’ sword? o’ blue, an’ spears o’ gowd,
The Binn she’l leave as cauld’s a shroud,
And black’s a whale.”
Sibbald presses on to mention
a “vitriolic spring” at Orrock; chronicles a hailstorm he experienced, in
the summer of 1687, at Burntisland, when the hailstones were “ A an inch in
diameter, the thickness of a rix dollar, and hexagonal”; and expatiates on
the wonder of a horn growing out of a lady’s toe. A dangerous weapon ! This
vitriolic spring reminds us that there used to be a medicinal spring near
Alexander’s monument, called tne Waliacepaw (Well o’ the Spa—Spa well),
frequented by the patients of the once famous Dr Anderson, physician to
Charles I.
According to Bohn’s Tacitus,
after Agricola's great victory of Mans Gnunpus he retired southwards “to the
confines of the Horesti” (natives of Fife). At the same time his fleet
starting' from the Forth or Tay circumnavigated Britain, “and returned
entire to its former station.” To Tacitus he described Caledonia as covered
with forest, and the Caledonians as being' large limbed, and having-ruddy
hair indicating a German origin. In fighting at Mons Grampus they used
chariots and horses, the foot being armed with long' swords and short
targets.
The derivation of the name
Burntisland has occasioned some debate. To many it presents no
difficulty.—There’s a little island in the harbcur and the rocks look
“burnt.” This tendency to swallow plain English in these latitudes is
common. Silverbarton, for instance. Sibbald quotes: —“Richard, Abbot of
Dunfermline, on 3rd June, 1458, gave a charter to David, eldest son and heir
of * William de Orrock, of Silliebabe et Dunliern.” And Silliebabe it
remained till comparatively recent times. Then there’s lvinghorii—King and
horn. So evident! Yet the word is Kin-gorne, pronounced so by the aged
natives to this day, spelt Kingorn in the 12th century, and undoubly Members
of this ancient family were bailies, tacksmen, and litigants in Burntisland
for hundreds of years. The family owned Orrock previous to 1458, over 450
years since.
Sibbald refers to the
legendary burning of fishermen’s huts on the island, and a supposed attempt
of the Homans to destroy the town by fire, and quotes the lines of a “native
poet” :—
“Brave ancient isle, thy
praise if I should sing,
The habitation of a Pictish King,
Dreftus, who made against the Roman strokes,
Forth’s snakie arms thee to enclose with rocks,
They often pressed to vanquish thee with fire,
A- Macedon did the sea embordering Tyre,
But thou did’st eoorn Rome’s captive for to be,
And kept thyself from Roman legions free.”
Sibbald says “Brintlandt” is
a place-name in Denmark, but his pet theory is that “elen in the old
language signifies a bay bowed like the flexure of the elbow, and brunt, in
the Gothic tongue, a fire burning—that is the Homan night light on the tower
at the harbour.” The name often occurs without the d in early Council
records—Jirintilun and Hrint llun—and in this form is very like the sound
given to it by old residenters now. It is written variously in the early
Council Records and Exchequer Rolls:—“Ye 1Briiit
Eland” and “Ye said I hind” (1040), “Ye Brynt Yland” (1540), “Brint Iland”
(1592) “ Brintiland” (1592). At first sight these seem proof positive that
the name was derived from “ Burned” and “ Island.’ But the name existed
previous to 1540 in the form Bertiland, probably pronounced Bert ilund. The
names given above, written by Edinburgh clerks under the growing influence
of English, were lieadiugs to accounts of the harbour works, Avliich
involved what we call the green island at both ends, and with this in their
mind it was easy to change Bert ilund into Brint Hand. Speed shows that, in
150G when the town was a Burgh of Regality under the monks of Dunfermline,
the name was Byrtiland, and it is Byrtiland in the second Burgh Charter of
1585. Fernie, who had powers, quoting an old document, spells it Bertiland.
Miss Blackie in her Etymological Geography gives Bertiland as the earliest
form, and considers it of Scandinavian origin. The harbour would be useful
for those robber Danes. “Ye said Hand ” is very misleading. It is common in
Fife to prefix the definite article to the name of a place:—The Raitli, the
Kettle, the Metliil, the Elie, and even to leave out a portion of the name,
as “the Dour” for Aberdour, “the Horn” for Ivinghorn ’
In 1538, in the Cliartulary
of Dunfermline, there is a grant of the fort of "Wester Ivingorn and the
lands of “Erefland and Cunyingayrland ” adjacent to it. Eref may be the
Gaelic araf—gentle or quiet water, and elin a bay or haven. Cunning-ayrland
has been thought to mean rabbit warren (cony, a rabbit). It may be a form of
Erefland adapted to an adjoining- portion of land at the harbour—Cyni ng (a
King’)—arland (Erefland contracted—a haven)—Kings Haven. |
