NOTES TO LARBERT
1. Drawn up by Lieut. -Col. Dundas and W. A. Cadell,
Esq.
2. The word Poo signifies sluggish stream. It is
derived from the same root as the English word pool, and the Latin
palus. The Poo has great part of its course in the
flat ground of the carse, and consequently is a slow running stream.
Powis, two miles north of Larbert, and Powis, two miles east of
Stirling, signify Poo House, the house near the Poo.
3 The Ochills are composed of porphyritic rock, of
the trap formation. Benclach), which is the highest summit of
the ridge, is situated above the parish town of Alva5
and is about 2000 feet above the level of the sea. The trigonometrical
survey of Britain, conducted by the Board of Ordnance, had a station
at the summit of Benclach about 1816, and one of the geometers
of the detachment engraved and published a view of the whole circle
of the horizon seen from Benclach, forming a panorama of the hills
seen from that station.
4. The earliest steam engine I have heard of in this
part of the country, was one for pumping water from the colliery
of Elphinston, in the parish of Airth. This steam-engine was erected,
probably about 1745 or I 75O. The cylinder and other parts were
of brass or bronze. Cast iron had not then come unto use. About
100 years have elapsed since that time, and cast-iron during
that period has, gradually come to be used for
a very great variety of purposes.
5. The Huntingdon willow, Salix alba of Linneaus,
called in some parts of England the Leicestershire willow. There
is another species of tree willow in this part of the country,
which grows to a considerable sire, hut does not afford such straight
well-formed timber as the Huntingdon willow. The Huntingdon willow
is propagated by cuttings, which are poles of about seven feet
in length. A hole, of a foot or eighteen inches in depth and just
wide enough to admit the pole, is made by means of a cylindrical
iron bar, or by a large kitchen poker, which is rammed into the
ground, so as to form a hole, and into the hole the thick end
of the pole is inserted, and is fixed by pressing inwards the
aides of the bole.
6. James Bruce was a descendant or the Rev. Robert Bruce in the
fifth degree, I think but l have not any note of the number of
degrees. Mr Hay, of the family of Ray of Woodcockdale, in Linlithgowshire,
married the heiress of Kinnaird. James Bruce was the eldest son
or that marriage. Tom's Note: see my page
7.The river of which Mr Bruce visited the source, is the Bahar el Azrek, the Nile of the Abyssinians, the Astapus of the Romans. It is not the principal branch of the Nile. The principal and considerably lager of the two branches which join to form the Nile, I, the Bahar el Abiad, the White River, which rises in the Kumri mountains, and whose source has not yet (1838) been visited and described by Europeans.
The sources of the Baliar el Azrek, the Nile of the Abyssinians, were visited and described 150 years before Mr Bruces' time by Paiz, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary Paiz's description is inserted in Kircher's Oedipus Egyptiacus. Fair was with the King of Abyssinia and his army, and visited the sources in 1615. See Athanash Kircheri e societate Jesu Oedipus Egyptiacus Romae, 1652.
8 Habesch is the name which the inhabitants give to their country, and from this the Europeans have formed the name Abyssinia. The Amharic is the vernacular dialect of Ethiopic spoken in Abyssinia. 'The Abyssinians, it is believed, came anciently from the east coast of the Red Sea, and two-thirds of the words in the Abyssinian language are Arabic. The Abyssinian letters, however, are altogether different, and are read, as the European languages, from left to right, whilst the Arabic are read from right to left.
9. Mithridates, King of Pontus, in ancient time, was famous for his ability in speaking several different languages. L'Abbate Mesofanti, librarian in the University or Bologna, in 1817, and afterwards one of the librarians of the Vatican, was celebrated as a linguist, and spoke fluently a number of languages, although he had never been out or the Pope's territory.
10. A brother of Mr Bruce's, who was in India in
the medical service of the East India Company, also made a collection
or botanical drawings of Indian plant,, which were sold after
his death, and are now, if I recollect right, in the collection
or the learned botanist, the Vice-president of the Linnean Society,
Aylmer Bourke, Lambert, Esq.
11 ' Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory,
but, in lowliness or mind, let each esteem other better than themselves-St
Paul's Epistles. " Let another praise thee, and not thy own
lips. " Proverbs of Solomon.
12 These names are taken from a fen-charter granted
by the company in 1763.
13 Leyd or lade pronounced leed, signifies
in this part of the country, the water course, by which the water
is conducted from the river to the mill wheel. Water leyding,
Dutch, signifies the water course of a mill.
14. Petrozavodsky, a town of 7500 inhabitants the capital of the
government of Olonetz, situated near the lake Onega; Latitude
61 48,210 English miles north-east of St Petersburg, with which
it has a communication, part of the way by water carriage. At
this place the Russian government has iron smelting furnaces,
worked with charcoal of wood, an iron cannon- foundry,
anchor forges, and other works for the use of the navy and artillery.
Some of these works were established by the Czar Peter
I.
16. Gordon states that there was a stone on the inside
of the building. from which it appeared that letters had been
industriously effaced and another stone, also on the inside surface
of the wall, on which there seemed to be the vestiges of sculpture,
17.
What sheep the wasting suitors did consume,
I'll take so many as shall fill their room,
The friendly Greeks the rest will soon provide,
Till all my coats (i. e. cots,) and stalls are resupp1ied.
The Odysse, translated by John Ogilvy, Esq. Master of his Majesty's Revels, &c. 1665.
18. Engraved with its details of architecture in
the Vetusta Monuments, published by the Society of Antiquaries
of London.
19. The children were sent out to the herding,
in the language of the parish. A herd in Scotland is equivalent
to the English word a herdsman hird in Anglo-saxon,
hirt in German, der gute hirt, the good shepherd in
the gospels, hydra, Icelandic, to protect.
20 Perhaps also a little wheat. Grains of wheat reduced to a black charcoaly substance were found about 1795, at the Roman Station of Castlecary, on the vallum of Antoninus Pius, called Graeme's dike. we may suppose that this Roman wheat grew in Scotland. But the State of the country was so wild for a long time after the Romans left it, that I should have difficulty in supposing the existence of a regular yearly succession of crops of wheat in Scotland since their time. It may be doubted whether any of the wild inhabitants bad sufficient ~leisure and industry for growing wheat in the years 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, and intervening years. In these years the succession of events always going on, was of such a nature as to bring about but little progress in civilization. The cultivation of a little barley and oats was probably all that the inhabitants could effect, and these two kinds of grain, it may be supposed have been grown in Scotland from an early period, and without intermission. In the Hebrides, the summer is short and not warm, and therefore unfavourable to the production of grain. That species of barley called bear is the principal grain which is grown, and that not in any considerable quantity in 1837, some wheat was grown in Ulva, said to be the first wheat ever grown in the Hebrides The year 1837 was sunny and favourable to agriculture. Ulva, in the middle of Mull is about the 56½ degrees of latitude. The most northern point of Europe at which grain is grown, is 5 or 6 degrees farther north, viz. in a valley in Norway, in latitude 62o , where barley, oats, and even rye are grown. The summer heat at that place may perhaps be as great as in Mull. The growth of barley is carried on in different climates, and Over a very extensive portion of the surface of Europe and Africa. barley was grown by the ancient Egyptians, and bread made of coarsely ground barley, recognizable by the unground grains, has been found iin the catacombs at Thebes. We see thus that barley is grown in Etiro1,0 and Africa, from about the latitude of 22 to latitude 62 degrees, from about the tropic to within 5 degrees of the arctic circle, in a range of 40 degrees of latitude.
In old charters and conveyances of land in Scotland,
breweries (brassaria) are mentioned. I do not know whether it
is ascertained, at what time the distillation of spirit from the
fermented infusion of malted barley was introduced.
21. Miden, me-dyng, a muck heap, moeg dyng
in Danish, composed uf meeg, which signifies muck.
and dyng, a heap.
22. The butcher in the dialect of this part of the
country is called the flesher. The word flesh-er is from Vlees
houwer, Dutch, a butcher, literally a feller and cutter-up
of flesh.
23. At the old farm-steads, there used to be seen
a stone mortar in which barley was pounded. This mortar was made
of a block of sandstone,-the hollow of the mortar being about
one foot in diameter, and one foot in depth.
The mill for making pot barley by grinding off the
husk was introduced from Holland.
24 For some other particulars respecting draining, the the article
Soil in a proceeding part of this account. Under the article Soil,
are also some remarks on the hypnum or fog in pastures, and some
other matter, relating to agriculture.
25 All the ironstone used is of the species called
by mineralogists clay ironstone. -Some of it is got in the
coal measures at Carron Hall, a mile from the works. Some at
Banton, Tamrawer, and other places in the parish of Kilsyth, ten
mile, distant, and brought down by the Forth and Clyde Canal.
Some is collected at different places on the shore of the Frith
or Forth. Some is got from other places.
26 This slag swims on the surface of the liquid iron
in the furnace. It consists of all those parts of the coke, limestone,
and ironstone which are vitrifiable bythe heat of the furnace.
It consists of silicate of lime and if I recollect right, the
colour which prevails in the slag has been ascribed by some modern
chemists to silicate of titanium. In an iron smelting furnace
commonly called a blast furnace, the iron, which in the ironstone
exists dispersed in very minute particles in the state of oxide
of iron, is deprived of its oxygen by the carbon of the coke and
is thereby reduced to the state of cast-iron. The small drops
of this cast iron collect gradually during twelve hours, and falling
down, unite together into a liquid mass in a cavity at the bottom
of the furnace. On the top of the liquid iron in this cavity
the slag swim, and flows out in a liquid red-hot state. At the
end of every twelve hours, the keeper of the furnace, a strong
muscular man, taps the cavity, by perforating and demolishing
forcibly, with an iron bar, the dam of fire clay which forms the
front of the cavity. When an opening is thus made, the liquid
iron flows out in the state of cast iron, and is received in cavities
made in the sand which give it the form of pieces of about two-and-a-half
feet long, called pigs and the iron in this state is called pig-iron.
After the melted iron has been let out and cast into pigs,†
the keeper again makes up the front of the cavity with fire clay
and the cavity then receives again the melted iron, which drops
into it from the body of the furnace during the next twelve hours;
the sides of the lower part of the furnace being in form of a
funnel, which terminates in the cavity.
† Cast-iron is called in Scotch yetlin,
a word derived from the same root as gieten, Dutch; giuta,
Swedish; gyde, Danish; giessen, German; jeter,
French; all which signify to cast. Guss-eisen, German,
is from the same root. The English word, to gush, is also from
the same root.
Cast-iron appears to have been unknown to the ancient
Egyptians, Greeks, and Roman,. I do not know of any instrument
of cast-iron amongst the works of these nationss which are preserved.
Cast-iron has long been made in China and Japan.
The Chinese cast it into the form of bowls for boiling rice in
and other vessels.
About 1740-1750, no cast-iron was made in Scotland,
and the cast-iron plates used for the backs of fire-places in
rooms were imported from Holland. They had the figure of a parrot
on them in relief, and other figures ; some of these were perhaps
made at Siegen, in Germany.