Since the sheets containing the account of the Scottish monuments were printed off, I have received from Sir Henry Dryden slips of two letters which he addressed to the editor of the John o' Groat's Journal, giving an account of some explorations he had made in Caithness during this autumn. One of these contains an account of certain chapels, brochs, and circles he had examined. The first two classes do not concern us here, and are therefore omitted; but the circles are of interest as probably belonging to the same category as those in the Orkneys, and the description of them is consequently printed with the other letter, which gives an account of four alignments which are so germane to our subject that Sir Henry's description is printed in extenso. The name of the first, "The Battle Moss, Yarhouse," is of itself singularly suggestive, and I have little doubt that, if properly inquired into, the peasantry could tell what battle was fought there, and what, consequently, these lines were erected to commemorate. Taken in conjunction with the horned cairns described by Mr. Anderson,[601] and the circles, it does not seem to me doubtful that the whole of this Caithness group belongs to the tenth century. The circles, and especially the horned cairns, are the exact counterparts of the fanciful forms of the Viking graves found at Hjortehammer (woodcut No. 118) and elsewhere in Scandinavia, which resemble them in more respects than one, and the alignments are such as those at Ashdown (woodcut No. 28). Nor need we go far for the events they commemorate. Between the years 970 and 996, A.D., two great battles, at least, are recorded to have taken place in Caithness, between the sons of Thorfin, and between Liotr, the victor of the first fight, and the Scots, who in vain attempted to avenge the death of Skiuli; and besides these there may have been many subordinate frays. It is probable that both brothers were buried in Caithness, and we are distinctly told that Laudver, the last surviving son of Thorfin, was certainly buried there.[602]

The fact of these alignments and horned cairns and semicircles being unlike what is found elsewhere in Scotland, separates this group from anything existing further south. Their similarity to the Viking graves of Scandinavia, avowedly of the tenth century, points to an age from which they cannot be distant; and when it is recollected that Caithness in the tenth century formed part of the Orcadian Jarldom, it does not seem that we have far to seek for an authentic explanation of all we find in that remote corner of the isle.

J. F.