[122] I think it very improbable, if the monastery founded by Alexander be meant.—P.
[123] This is no fit place to discuss the ages of the two Round Towers of Brechin and Abernethy. But it may perhaps prove interesting to some future antiquary if it is here mentioned, that when Dr. Petrie, in his Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland (p. 410), gives "about the year 1020"[124] as the probable date of the erection of the Bound Tower of Brechin, he chiefly relied—as he has mentioned to me, when conversing upon the subject,—for this approach to the era of its building, upon that entry in the ancient Chronicon de Regibus Scotorum, etc., published by Innes, in which it is stated that King Kenneth MacMalcolm, who reigned from A.D. 971 to A.D. 994, "tribuit magnam civitatem Brechne domino." (See the Chronicon in Innes' Critical Inquiry, vol. ii. p. 788.) The peculiarities of architecture in the Round Tower of Brechin assimilate it much with the Irish Bound Towers of Donoughmore and Monasterboice, both of which Dr. Petrie believes to have been built in or about the tenth century. If we could, in such a question, rely upon the authority of Hector Boece, the Round Tower of Brechin is at least a few years older than the probable date assigned to it by Dr. Petrie. For, in describing the inroads of the Danes into Forfarshire about A.D. 1012, he tells us that these invaders destroyed and burned down the town of Brechin, and all its great church, except "turrim quandam rotundam mira arte constructam." (Scotorum Historiæ, lib. xi. 251, of Paris Edit, of 1526.)[125] This reference to the Round Tower of Brechin has escaped detection, perhaps because it has been omitted by Bellenden and Holinshed in their translations. No historical notices, I believe, exist, tending to fix in any probable way the exact age of the Round Tower of Abernethy; but one or two circumstances bearing upon the inquiry are worthy of note. We are informed, both by the Chronicon Pictorum and by Bede, that in the eighth or ninth year of his reign, or about A.D. 563, Brude, King of the Picts, embraced Christianity under the personal teaching of St. Columba. At Brude's death, in 586, Garnard succeeded, and reigned till 597; and he was followed by Nectan II., who reigned till 617. Fordun (Scotichronicon, lib. iv. cap. 12) and Wynton (book v. ch. 12), both state that King Garnard founded the collegiate Church of Abernethy; and Fordun further adds that he had found this information in a chronicle of the Church of Abernethy itself, which, is now lost; "in quadam Chronica ecclesiæ de Abirnethy reperimus." But the register of the Priory of St. Andrews mentions Garnard's successor on the Pictish throne, Nectan II., as the builder of Abernethy, "hic ædificavit Abernethyn" (Innes' Critical Inquiry, p. 800). The probability is, that Garnard, towards the end of his reign, founded and commenced the building of the church establishment of Abernethy, and that it was concluded and consecrated in the early part of the reign of Nectan. The church was dedicated to St. Brigid; and the Chronicon Pictorum (Innes' Inquiry, p. 778), in ascribing its foundation to Nectan I. (about A.D. 455) instead of Nectan II., commits a palpable anachronism, and very evident error, as St. Brigid did not die till a quarter of the next century had elapsed. (Annals of the Four Masters under the year 525; Colgan's Trias Thaumaturga, p. 619.) Again, according to the more certain evidence of Bede, another Pictish king, still of the name of Nectan (Naitanus Rex Pictorum), despatched messengers, about the year 710, to Ceolfrid, Abbot of Bede's own Northumbrian monastery of Jarrow, requesting, among other matters, that architects should be sent to him to build in his country a church of stone, according to the manner of the Romans et architectos sibi mitti petiit, qui juxta morem Romanorum ecclesiam in lapide in gente ipsius facerent. (Hist. Eccles., lib. v. c. xxi.) Forty years previously, St. Benedict or Biscop, the first Abbot of Jarrow, had brought there from Gaul, masons (cæmentarios) to build for him "ecclesiam lapideam juxta Romanorum morem." (See Bede's Vita Beatorum Abbatum.) Now it is probable that the Round Tower of Abernethy was not built in connection with the church established there by the Pictish kings at the beginning of the seventh century, for no such structures seem to have been erected in connection with Pictish churches in any other part of the Pictish kingdom; and if at Abernethy, the capital of the Picts, a Round Tower had been built in the seventh century of stone and lime, the Abbot of Jarrow would scarcely have been asked in the eighth century, by a subsequent Pictish king, to send architects to show the mode of erecting a church of stone in his kingdom. Nor is it in the least degree more likely that these ecclesiastic builders, invited by King Nectan in the early years of the eighth century, erected themselves the Round Tower of Abernethy; for the building of such towers was, if not totally unknown, at least totally unpractised by the ecclesiastic architects of England and France within their own countries.[126] The Scotic or Scoto-Irish race became united with the Picts into one kingdom in the year 843, under King Kenneth MacAlpine, a lineal descendant and representative of the royal chiefs who led the Dalriadic colony from Antrim to Argyleshire, about A.D. 506. (See the elaborate genealogical table of the Scottish Dalriadic kings in Dr. Reeves' edition of Adamnan's Life of Columba, p. 438.) The purely "Scotic period" of our history, as it has been termed, dates from this union of the Picts and Scots under Kenneth MacAlpine in 843, till Malcolm Canmore ascended the throne in 1057; and there is every probability that the Round Towers of Abernethy and Brechin were built during the period between these two dates, or during the regime of the intervening Scotic or Scoto-Irish kings,—in imitation of the numerous similar structures belonging to their original mother-church in Ireland. We may feel very certain, also, that they were not erected later than the commencement of the twelfth century, for by that date the Norman or Romanesque style,—which presents no such structures as the Irish Round Towers, was apparently in general use in ecclesiastic architecture in Scotland, under the pious patronage of Queen Margaret Atheling and her three crowned sons. Abernethy—now a small village—was for centuries a royal and pontifical city, and the capital of a kingdom, "fuit locus ille sedes principalis, regalis, et pontificalis, totius regni Pictorum" (Goodall's Scotichronicon, vol. i. p. 189); but all its old regal and ecclesiastical buildings have utterly vanished, with the exception only of its solitary and venerable Round Tower. And perhaps the preservation of the Round Tower in this, and in numerous instances in Ireland, amidst the general ruin and devastation which usually surround them, is owing to the simple circumstance that these Towers—whatever were their uses and objects—were structures which, in consequence of their remarkable combination of extreme tallness and slenderness, required to be constructed from the first of the very best and strongest, and consequently of the most durable building materials which could be procured; while the one-storeyed or two-storeyed wood-roofed churches, and other low and lighter ecclesiastical edifices with which they were associated, demanded far less strength in the original construction of their walls, and consequently have, under the dilapidating effects of centuries, much more speedily crumbled down and perished.
[124] The recollection of the error which I made by a carelessness not in such matters usual with me, in assigning this date 1020 instead of between the years 971 and 994, as I ought to have done, has long given me annoyance, and a lesson never to trust to memory in dates; for it was thus I fell into the mistake. I had the year 1020 on my mind, which is the year assigned by Pinkerton for the writing of the Chron. Pictorum, and, without stopping to remember or to refer, I took it for granted that it was the year of Kenneth's death, or rather his gift.—P.
[125] I congratulate you warmly on the discovery of this interesting and most valuable notice. Surely Boece could have had no object to serve by forging such a statement, nor had he such antiquarian knowledge as would have enabled him to forge a statement so consistent with the conclusion fairly to be drawn from the entry in the chronicle, and the characteristics of the architecture of the tower itself. It appears to me that no rational scepticism can in future be indulged as to the conclusion that the erection of this beautiful tower must be referred to the last quarter of the tenth century.—P.
[126] The determining the age of the Brechin tower—a question which I consider as now settled—must go far towards enabling us to come to a right conclusion as to the age of the tower of Abernethy; for I think that no one possessed of ordinary powers of observation and comparison, who has examined both, can for a moment doubt that the age of the Abernethy tower is much greater than that of the tower of Brechin. This is the opinion which I formed many years ago, after a very careful examination of the architectural peculiarities of each; and I came to the conclusion that the safest opinion which could be indulged as to the age of the Abernethy tower was, that it had been erected during the reign of the third Nectan, i.e. between 712 and 727, and by those Northumbrian architects of the monastery of Jarrow, for whose assistance that king, according to the high authority of Bede, had applied to build for him in his capital a stone church in the Roman style. In the features of that style, during the eighth century, as exhibited in its doorway, and, still more, its upper apertures, this tower appeared to stand alone—there is nothing similar to it to be seen either in Scotland or Ireland. The tower of Brechin has indeed a Romanesque doorway, but it is plainly of a later age, and its other features are quite Irish. The circumstance of the Abernethy doorway being placed on a level with the ground, and not, as almost universally, at a considerable height from it, seemed also to support this opinion, as it indicated that the erection of the tower was of a period anterior to the irruption of the Northmen, which rendered such a defensive feature an imperative necessity. I cannot agree with you in opinion as to the cause assigned for the preservation of the towers; for, in the first place, it is not true that their materials were stronger or better, or their construction in any way different from that of the churches with which they were connected, as proved by numerous examples in Ireland. Their walls are rarely found of greater thickness than those of their contemporaneous churches, where such have remained; and in all such cases the character of the masonry is identical. The cause which I should rather assign for this greater longevity would be their rotundity, and still more, their superior altitude. A church of moderate size, and humble height, might be easily injured, or even destroyed, by neighbouring or foreign assailants, but the destruction of a tower, or even its injury, beyond the burning of its wooden floors and doorway, would be a tedious and difficult labour, requiring ladders, with which we are not to suppose the incendiaries came provided; and hence their worst antagonist was found to be the flame from heaven.—P.
[127] Might not oratory be a safer term than habitation? Surely the clochans or monks' houses, called stone pyramids by Martin, in St. Kilda, and of which many are still perfect, are as old as Christianity in the north of Scotland, or as any similar buildings to be found in Ireland.—P.
ON THE CAT-STANE, KIRKLISTON.
The Mediæval Archæology of Scotland is confessedly sadly deficient in written documents. From the decline of Roman records and rule, onward through the next six or eight centuries, we have very few, or almost no written data to guide us in Scottish historical or antiquarian inquiries. Nor have we any numismatic evidence whatever to appeal to. In consequence of this literary dearth, the roughest lapidary inscriptions, belonging to these dark periods of our history, come to be invested with an interest much beyond their mere intrinsic value. The very want of other contemporaneous lettered documents and data imparts importance to the rudest legends cut on our ancient lettered stones. For even brief and meagre tombstone inscriptions rise into matters of historical significance, when all the other literary chronicles and annals of the men and of the times to which these inscriptions belong have, in the lapse of ages, been destroyed and lost.
It is needless to dwell here on the well-known fact, that in England and Scotland there have been left by the Roman soldiers and colonists who occupied our island during the first four centuries of the Christian era, great numbers of inscribed stones. British antiquarian and topographical works abound with descriptions and drawings of these Roman lapidary writings. But of late years another class or series of lapidary records has been particularly attracting the attention of British antiquaries,—viz., inscribed stones of a late Roman or post-Roman period. The inscriptions on this latter class of stones are almost always, if not always, sepulchral. The characteristically rude letters in which they are written consist—in the earliest stones—of debased Roman capitals; and—in the latest—of the uncial or minuscule forms of letters which are used in the oldest English and Irish manuscripts. Some stones show an intermixture of both alphabetical characters. These "Romano-British" inscribed stones, as they have been usually termed, have hitherto been found principally in Wales, in Cornwall, and in West Devon. In the different parts of the Welsh Principality, nearly one hundred, I believe, have already been discovered. In Scotland, which is so extremely rich in ancient sculptured stones, very few inscribed stones are as yet known; but if a due and diligent search be instituted, others, no doubt, will betimes be brought to light.