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of the early Northmen-the elder and younger Eddas-the Mytholo gical Lexicon-all are mute as the voices of the rude and remote generation who elevated these vast blocks to their vertical position.

In order to lay before my readers the most exact and correct account of these interesting relics of antiquity that ever was published, I must have recourse to a work, now out of print, published in 1822, by my late friend, Alex. Peterkin, Esq., Sheriff-substitute of Orkney, whose antiquarian knowledge, research, and accuracy have seldom been exceeded.

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"From Stromness I went to the Stones Stennis, or Stenhouse, about four or five miles on the road to Kirkwall. These are very singular monuments of antiquity. They cannot, however, be compared to Stonehenge; and whether they be Druidical or Scandinavian, it is impossible to survey these relics of ancient devotion or superstition, in their present state of neglect, without regret. They consist of two clusters; one of these is a complete circle, sixty fathoms in diameter, including the wide ditch which surrounds the circle of stones, many of which are now thrown down. This circle stands conspicuously on a peninsula, gently elevated on the north side of the Loch of Stennis, and dividing that sheet of water nearly into two equal parts, of five or six miles in extent each. On the southern side of the lake, (which is connected with the opposite promontory by a low mound of stones, having openings for the tide to pass,) there are now only three pillars remaining of what seems to have been another circle, or part of a circle of larger dimensions, and one detached stone at the south end of the bridge of Broigar. Each of the remaining pillars is about eighteen feet above ground: one was lately thrown down, but has not been broken; three were in the month of December, 1814, torn from the spot on which they had stood for ages, and were shivered to pieces. A similar detached pillar, with a hole cut through it, was likewise destroyed at the same time; it stood on the east side of the larger stones, and seems to have been the rude altar to which the victims for sacrifice were bound."

In later times it was a consecrated spot for the meeting of lovers; and when they had joined hands through the stone, the pledge of love and troth thus given was held as sacred as the solemn vow of marriage, and rarely, indeed, if ever, was it violated by the romantic visionaries who resorted to this shrine.

This unfortunate act of destruction was thoughtlessly perpetrated by the tenant of the adjacent farm, for the purpose of building" cowhouses!" The whole would have shared the same fate, had not the historiant of Scotland interposed, in conjunction with two other gentlemen, who formally made application to the Sheriff Court of the county to arrest the hand of the spoiler, and stay the work of destruction. For the honour of our hyperborean region, be it said, that this same defacer was not a native thereof; he had been recently imported, for the purpose, no doubt, of civilizing the aborigines, and introducing an improved system-not certainly of taste and the love of vertu, but of husbandry. Did it never occur to this worthy that he was doing an + Malcolm Laing, Esq.

*Notes on Orkney and Zetland.

irreparable injury, not only to this, but to all succeeding generations, -that he was removing beacons in the ocean of time-mile-stones in the high-way to eternity-links in the chains of our theories relative to the past the nucleus, around which some future profound thinker might rear a moral pharos to illumine that which had previously been enwrapt in darkness?

"It is not my purpose," says the writer above quoted, "to engage in a controversy, whether these stones at Stennis be Druidical or Scandinavian. But it is quite obvious that some of the arguments which have been employed to show that they could not be Druidical, are quite inconclusive; and, on the other hand, it is not improbable that they were used as places of assemblage for administering the rude laws and still ruder orgies of the Scandinavians."

There remains not a doubt on my mind but that these remarkable relics of some remote age were formed into a greater and less circle, and elevated into their vertical position in honour of the sun and moon, by a Druidical race, every vestige of whom have disappeared from the face of the earth:

"

Antiquity appears to have begun

Long after their primeval race was run;"

and that the skin-clothed barbarians, whom Harald Haarfager and his Vikingrs found roaming the Orcadian morasses, were as ignorant of the precise era of their erection and consecration as we are.

To a certainty, however, the Pagan flamens of the North would at once see the propriety of adapting these primitive circular temples to their own gory* ritual. The rude perforated altar-the fosse, wide, deep, and situate in the vicinity of an inexhaustible lake-the large, prostrate or horizontal slab in the middle of the original semicircle, all tell of "deeds without a name," an impure priesthood, an unhallowed ritual, and the immolation of human victims, previous to the introduction of Christianity among the Scandinavian nations; in seasons of imminent danger or distress, the blood of animals was deemed an insufficient price, and that of human beings was substituted. Captives and slaves were first selected; but to render the offering more acceptable, fathers did not spare their children, nor kings their subjects. Aun, a prince of Sweden, immolated nine of his sons to obtain extreme old age. Hakon, Jarl of Norway, perpetrated the same cruelty to obtain a victory over his enemy, Harald Graenske; and Olaf Fraetelia, a petty chief of Wermeland, was burnt to appease Odin, and put an end to a severe famine. The early northern Chronicles teem with such harrowing narratives; but the fulness of time came-the word went forth with irresistible power and majesty-the idols were thrown to the moles and to the bats-the Sun of Righteousness arcse with healing in his wings: debased and brutalized humanity was emancipated from worse than Egyptian thraldom, and the ferocious savage

"At Lethra, says Dithmar, bishop of Merseburg, in the eleventh century, every nine years in the month of January, the Danes flock together in crowds, and offer to their gods 99 men, as many horses, dogs, and cocks, with the certain hope of appeasing them by their victims."

resumed the image of Him who created him, and received that liberty wherewith Christ makes his disciples free; a liberty—

"Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the powers
Of earth and hell confederate take away;

A liberty which persecution, fraud,
Oppression, prisons, have no power to bind ;
Which whoso tastes can be enslaved no more.
'Tis liberty of heart derived from heaven,
Bought with His blood who gave it to mankind,
And sealed with the same token; it is held
By charter, and that charter sanctioned sure
By th' unimpeachable and awful oath
And promise of a God. His other gifts

All bear the royal stamp; that speaks them his,
And are august; but this transcends them all."

A few miles southward of these wondrous fragments of an unknown age, and within the precincts of the aforesaid parish of Stennis, is the valley of Summerdale, or Bigswell, a place of high local celebrity, in consequence of a sanguinary battle having been fought there, on the 18th May, 1529, between John, Earl of Caithness, and Sir James St. Clair, a left-handed scion of the same family tree, and governor of the castle of Kirkwall. Ever since the insular earldom had been received in pledge from Christian I. of Denmark, by James III. of Scotland, as a security for the due payment of his bride's dowery in 1468,-a dowery, by the way, which was never paid ;-until the death of that monarch in 1488-it was leased to the bishops, whose avaricious conduct and "gripping" propensities float on the breath of tradition to this day. On the accession of James IV. to the throne of his ancestors, this high-spirited monarch, who was more attached to the sword than the mitre, and had more faith in the efficacy of a plump of Scottish spears, than in all the ghostly artillery of Rome, granted a lease of the earldom to Henry Lord Sinclair, who subsequently went with his master to Flodden, where they both perished. Lady Margaret, the widow of the heroic Lord Henry Sinclair, continued to enjoy her husband's lease in Orkney after he fell on the fatal field of Flodden, and in 1520, it was renewed and prolonged to her for 19 years more; but the cupidity of the Caithness Earl was aroused, and, aided by Lady Margaret's unfilial son, Lord Sinclair, the earl's retainers were embarked,-landed at Howton, marched over the heathy hills of Orphir in great glee, in the hopes of easily wresting the country from the feeble hands of a fe male feudatory, and returning in triumph to their own territory with additional military glory, and the possession of a second earldom.

But the Earl for once reckoned without his host: he was met in the valley of Summerdale by Sir James Sinclair, above alluded to, who, with a band of hardy insular adherents, in whose stalwart bodies the heroic spirit of the old Northmen still lingered-the hostile parties at once closed-the battle was long, obstinate, and bloody-they fought hand to hand for hours. The Earl, and five hundred of his followers fell, and Lord Sinclair, together with the surviving wreck of the invaders, were taken prisoners. Some accounts state that all the Caith

ness men were cut off: be this as it may, it is stated by Sir Robert Gordon that the rout and slaughter were complete. The scene of conflict bears evident marks of it to this day. The prevailing heath colour is diversified with faint green spots, and the level of the surface by little grassy mounds pointing in various directions; the" poor inhabitants" being earthed as they fell amidst the tumult of the deadly strife. The heath-clad hills throw their shadows over the gloomy moss of Bigswell,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his shallow cell for ever laid,

The rude retainers of a despot sleep.

The hero of Summerdale was rewarded by his sovereign for this piece of good service by a grant of the islands of Sanda and Eday; but his majesty's topographical knowledge had been somewhat imperfect; this deficiency was more than suspected; and the story goes that a deceit was practised on the poet-king, which in the end produced a melancholy catastrophe.

Sir James, it was said, represented to his liege lord that the two islands above mentioned were mere petty holms or islets, fit only for the grazing of a few black cattle and a score or two of sheep, whereas, in truth, they are two of the most important islands in the whole Orcadian group. Alas! the imposture was discovered-the royal vengeance began to fulminate-terror seized on the deceiver-and in his delirium, he threw himself from a precipitous rock, and perished in

the sea.

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Imperishable honour to the memory of the "Gudeman o' Ballangeich," "king o' the commons," and "Lord of the Gaberlunzies"the immortal Makker," James the V., whose inimitable ballads, after more than three hundred years have rolled away, appear as fresh, vigorous, and graphic to the present generation as they did to the revellers of Hallirude, or the wassailers of Falkland in the early part of the 16th century. As Johnson said of Shakspeare-" he assumes the dignity of an ancient, and claims the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration;" his characters are grouped with all the artistic skill of Wilkie or Teniers ;

"And rustic life and poverty

Grow beautiful beneath his touch."

Not content with repressing the manifold tyrannies of his nobles in various parts of his kingdom-not satisfied with his far-famed expedition through the border counties, when earldoms were forfeited and earls incarcerated, barons and lairds committed to ward-chiefs of septs and clans publicly executed, and poor Johnie Armstrang, together with thirty-six of his "chyvalrie." hanged upon "growing trees,"-the ardent and adventurous spirit by which he was eminently distinguished, and his intense love of justice prompted him to brave dangers far greater than those of Chyribdis and Sylla, and risk his royal person and life on a visit to the outskirts of his dominions. The troubles of Orkney had not escaped his penetrating eye, and the cries of the op

pressed had reached his ear; he therefore planned the romantic project of a tour of inspection to his hyperborean territories, including the Hebrides. Accordingly, in the spring of 1535, he put his council on the wrong scent, by inducing the members thereof to suppose that he intended to visit France on a nuptial speculation. But though he loved to dally with the myrtle, it was of far higher importance to him to wield the sword of justice; for this purpose a royal squadron set out, consisting of five vessels, the élite of the Scottish fleet, under the superintendence of Lindsay, one of the ablest navigators of his day. Having reached the insular capital in safety, and moored in its capacious bay, the silver cross of St. Andrew floated proudly over the royal squadron; and amidst the thunders of artillery, the harmonies of St. Magnus' bells, and the loyal shouts of a dense population, the majesty of Scotland landed; literally and emphatically a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to those who did well. The glorious old cathedral bells had not emitted their sonorous peals into royal ears since they saluted Hakon of Norway, after his disastrous expedition to the west of Scotland in 1263, a period of 272 years; and, without doubt, a jubilee would be held by the loyal and well-disposed portion of the lieges. The episcopal palace gates flew open to receive the august visitor, and Bishop Edward Stewart, himself a scion of royalty, who should have been made a Cardinal for his princely generosity and regal magnificence, received his sovereign in a manner befitting his high rank and dignity. The banquets were such as had never been seen in these northern regions, and the richest wines flowed freely to all comers of mark or note. Of the Latin orations which may have been pronounced I have heard little or nothing. James loved his own vernacular too well to encourage the use of a dead language; such tomfoolery was reserved for his grandson, "the wisest fool in Christendom." His levees were attended by the insular magnates, from whom he received homage; the "leal and loyal" portion of them were treated with kingly courtesy, but the turbulent and dangerous were carried off to the seat of justice. He ordered hydrographical surveys to be made among the intricacies of the surrounding friths; and by this important operation no doubt learned that Sanda and Eday were not two insignificant islets, as had been represented by Sir James Sinclair, whose melancholy end has been already mentioned. This unfortunate monarch, as all the world knows, died in his palace of Falkland of a broken heart, at the early age of 32-a heavy loss to the great bulk of the inhabitants of a kingdom torn by intestine dissentions, and crushed by the tyrannies of an all-grasping and irresponsible nobility. He balanced the scales of justice so equally, and held her sword so firmly, that

The rush-buss held the widow's cow,
The latch the orphan's door;

And the peasant's but was a fortalice
As strong as the noble's tower.

* This prelate built the pillars and pointed arches at the east end of the cathedral at his own expense.

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