gradations became so thoroughly identified with the 'peel' that it is now difficult to conceive that 'peel' ever meant anything except what it means -a small tower. Moreover the term is now applied to many towers to which the name was never given in the 16th century. It is in scores upon scores of cases a mere modern misnomer,2 of savant not traditional origin. now One further remark shall close my attempt to trace an eventful development -the progress of 'peel' starting from a palisade and ending in a stone tower. The original palisade or stockade, first called 'peel' when Edward I. was warring against Scottish independence, was in itself no new thing in this country. It may have had distinctive features marking it off from any previous work of the kind, but generically a moated palisade is a structure belonging to primeval times.3 In Scotland most of the prehistoric forts and camps were probably provided with that defence. The system was widely prevalent in the 13th century, as we know from two incidents in the annals of Inverness. King William the Lion granted to the burgesses there a charter which narrates that he agreed to make a fosse about the burgh, and that they agreed to erect a good palisade (bono palitio) and to maintain it. Many years later, in 1228, a marauder having burnt certain wooden forts (quasdam munitiones ligneas) in Moray, burnt also a great part of Inverness, showing that the fosse 6 I 1 I confess I cannot say when the word came absolutely to mean a stone tower. Sporadic English examples of 'pile' with that sense come first. Peel had certainly not acquired its completely modern sense before the 17th century. Examples need careful examination. know cottages near the Solway known as The Clay Daubings,' which have been stone buildings so far back as most people's memory goes, although persons still alive remember the original houses of clay. 2 The man who tries to gainsay this will perhaps be good enough to show us how many existing so-called peels were known by that name in the 16th century. He will find them few and far between. In Dumfriesshire (not forgetting Sanquhar) I doubt he will find not one example. 3 As to its military service, see Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary of Architecture, voce palissade. * Boadicea in her address to her troops in A.D. 61 reminded them that they had stockades and walls and ditches. See Xiphilin in Monumenta Historica Britannica, I. lvii. * Scots Acts (Thomson), i. 88. 6 Bower, ii. 57-S. and palisade had ceased to be sufficient for their purpose, or had been ill guarded. The most singular thing about the word is the tenacity with which it clung to its primitive meaning as a fort or fortification of wood work. It was a palisade or stockade in the time of Edward I. It was still a stockade in the time of Henry VIII. It did not lose that sense-the old wood was not petrified until peace and the growth of law and order had ended the long chapter of Border broils and depredations, and the purpose of the thing it signified had become a mere matter of historical curiosity. Biographers usually begin with the ancestry of their hero, but in this biography of 'peel' the etymological pedigree comes last. It has been made tolerably plain that from the stone peel as it now stands, we must go back to earlier peels of wood and earth or clay, and from them still further back to peels of wood. Even in the 13th century a wooden peel might be made after the fashion of a tower. The Romancer it says Richard did mak a pele On castelle wise, all wais wrouht of tre fulle well.1 'Pel' in the sense of palisade was in literary use as a military term. Exeter, an Old-English poet tells us,2 was in the days of King Arthur made Defensable vyth wyth bretaxes and pel. These words, which may be compared with an early Anglo-French romancer's references to the bresteches' and 'paliz' used in fortifying Scarborough," would have been no less applicable, as we have seen, at Linlithgow, Perth, 1 Hearne's Robert of Brunne, p. 157. 2 Robert of Brunne (R. S.), line 15912. 3 Dunc funt les granz fosses lever Pur ens garir e rescetter Levent bresteches od kernels Ke cuntrevalant bons chastels -Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey (R.S.), ii. 144. The date of the poem cited is about 1240. No. VII. THE INSCRIPTION IN THE CHAPTER-HOUSE BY THE MOST REVEREND ARCHBISHOP EYRE, LL.D., D.D. BEFORE bringing under your notice an old inscription in the Cathedral Chapter-House, I would wish to point out two mistakes commonly, if not universally made, and to hope that persons writing about the Cathedral or taking their friends through it, and also that the custodians of the venerable fabric, would use the correct terms. One mistake is the calling the building below the choir by the term crypt. It is not a crypt, nor was it ever in old times called by any other name than "the low church," bassa ecclesia (see Diocesan Registers of Glasgow, Vol. II. pp. 470, 500, 503, etc.); or "the lower church," ecclesia inferior (see Registrum Epus Glasg.. No. 455, p. 463; and No. 486, p. 519). It is a church, and was always so styled. The other mistake is the calling the higher of the two structures at the N.E. angle of the building by the name of chapter-house, and the lower one by the name of the crypt under the chapter-house.' The lower building was undoubtedly the chapter-house, and the one above it was the vestry, and is called Vestiarium (see Diocesan Registers, Vol. II. pp. 129, 130, 324, 394, 430). The ambries in the higher building shew that it was the vestry, or sacristy, where the sacred vessels and vestments were kept, and where the clergy put on their vestments; and the stone seat of the Dean, 1 Mr. Collie, though an architect, has fallen into both these mistakes, thinking that the upper building was the chapter-house, and calling the lower one a crypt. The little guidebook, sold in the Cathedral to visitors, falls into the same mistakes, pp. 70 and 71, Jas. Pagan's History of the Cathedral and See. |