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Old Highland Industries. 389
I ncod not go into tlie very early forms of lake dwellings,
traces of such being found in almost all the islands, natural and
artificial, in our lochs under the name of crannogs. Nor shall T
t )uch on the beehive and eird houses so common in Aberdeenshire
and Caithness, and into which the early Pict could barely crawl.
{V>y the way, Pennant says the origin of the name Pict, is from
Pieteich a Thief—an origin, I daresay, some of you may be inclined
to disput(.\ Their houses were simply little domes of stone 8 or 10
feet diameter, into which the native crept and lived in the rudest
and most primitive fashion. At this stage only the simplest instruments
were available, such as stone hatchets and hammers,
Hint arrow heads, bone needles, ifec, yet by means of these and the
action of tire the ancient savage was able to cut down trees, scoop
out and form them for canoes, dress stones to form the quern,
and rubbing stones to bruise and gi-ind the grain and roots for
food. He was also able to foi*ni a mortar pestal of stone, and by
tish bones form needles to sew the fibre of various plants and
hooks wherewith to catch a further supply of fish.
A little further on and metals came to his aid, and we find
bronze and iron taking the place of stone implements, and gold
and silver ornaments coming into use, many of tliem exhibiting
very high culture and taste.
When our forefathers took to roofing their dwellings with
timber instead of stone, the form seems to have been generally
circular, and we have this type in the hut circles, which, as a
rule, are just of sutticient diameter to permit the space to be
covered in by cabers placed on the ground or low turf dyke, and
to converge at the top into a point, and so far a tent, or like a
conical house. This would seem to have been the usual form of
dwelling of the native Briton at the time of the Roman Inva-
sion, for we find the "Candida Casa" at Whithorn of St Ninian in
the sixth century much thought of as the first stone and lime
built whitehouse.
In England the progress in castle building and also of church
work was progressive, and culminated in the grand cathedrals and
castles of the thirteenth century.
In Scotland the jirogress was not so marked and steady, and
we have no church work to show older than the eleventh century,
nor of domestic work anything so early. I would, however, remark,
that from the beginning of the eleventh century till the
sixteenth century, Scotland can hold her own with any country
both in ecclesiastical and baronial architecture. Still alongside
the srreat advances made in baronial and ecclesiastical architecture