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Or it may not have been so: the conquering Scots may have looted the cairns, and borne the Pictish cairn-dwellers into captivity. Looking at any broch, or hill fort, or crannog, the fancy dwells on the last day of its occupation: the day when the canoe was left to subside into the mud and decaying vegetable matter of the loch.
Joseph Anderson, there was a crucible . . . with a portion of melted bronze, a bronze ring, moulds for ingots, an ingot of bronze, bits of Roman "Samian ware," but no iron. We can be sure that the broch folk were at some time in touch of Roman goods, brought by traffickers perhaps, but how can we be sure that there were no brochs before the arrival of the Romans?
A superstition which has certainly endured to the nineteenth century may obviously have existed among the Picts, or whoever they were, of the crannog and broch period on Clyde.
In these brochs the farmer lived, and his women-kind span and wove and plied their querns or hand-mills, and, in raids, they shut themselves up, and possibly some of their poorer neighbours took refuge in the brochs, deserting their huts and crowding into the broch; but of this practice there is no evidence, and the nearest hut-circles are often far from the remains of any broch.
For defence the broch was as nearly as possible perfect against any engines or weapons then available for attacking it; and we may note that it existed in Scotland and mainly in the north and west of it, and nowhere else in the world. It was a roofless block-house, aptly described by Dr. Joseph Anderson as a "safe."
The hunter shouted out in his dream, if there was any one in the broch, to let him in for the Holy One's sake. Deirdre heard the voice and said to her foster-mother: "O foster-mother, what cry is that?" "It is nothing at all, Deirdre merely the birds of the air astray and seeking each other. But let them go past to the bosky glade. There is no shelter or house for them here."
The majority of the following worked objects of stone, bone, and shell are so remarkable and archaic in character that their presence in a fort, which cannot be placed earlier than the Broch period, and probably long after the departure of the Romans from North Britain, has led some archaeologists to question their genuineness as relics of any phase of Scottish civilisation.
You may imagine their surprise and disgust to hear, on arriving at Broch, that Yaspard restored to all his wonted spirit and energy by a good night's rest had borrowed a boat, and accompanied by Harry and Lowrie, and a clever seaman who knew well how to clamp the broken ribs of a boat, had gone to Swarta Stack to repair and bring home the Osprey.
Jarl Thorfinn Hausa-kliufr, who flourished between 920 and 963, is described as a great chief and fighter; but he, like his father, died a peaceful death, and was buried at Hoxa, Haugs-eithi or Mound's-isthmus, which covers the site of a Pictish broch, near the north-west end of South Ronaldshay.
Meanwhile the Osprey had gone to Gloy's geo, and deposited on a safe ledge of rock all which our Viking-boys had carried away from Trullyabister; and when that was done the marauders returned to their homes. At the breakfast-table Yaspard said to his uncle, "The Yarl of Broch asked me to come to Burra Isle to-day, if you have no objections. The Lunda boys are to be there.
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