. Biggar and the House of Fleming: an account of the Biggar district, archaeological, historical, and biographical. rightstones are still standing, which have been considered to bopart of a Druidical temple. Here the Druids, with their flow-ing robes, their white surplices, their long beards, and their rodsof office, may have expounded their religious opinions, andoffered up human victims in sacrifice. At the west end of thetown of Biggar is the Moat, or Moathill, which in Saxonsignifies the meeting-hill. It is of a circular form, and mea-sures 100 feet in height on the west side, 477 feet in
. Biggar and the House of Fleming: an account of the Biggar district, archaeological, historical, and biographical. rightstones are still standing, which have been considered to bopart of a Druidical temple. Here the Druids, with their flow-ing robes, their white surplices, their long beards, and their rodsof office, may have expounded their religious opinions, andoffered up human victims in sacrifice. At the west end of thetown of Biggar is the Moat, or Moathill, which in Saxonsignifies the meeting-hill. It is of a circular form, and mea-sures 100 feet in height on the west side, 477 feet in circum-ference at the base, and 225 feet at the top. The top of itis quite flat, and the sides are planted with trees. It com- SUPPOSED TRACES OF THK DRUIDS AND ROMANS AT BIGGAR. 11 mands a fine view of Westraw, the High Street of Biggar, andthe surrounding country. From it three other moats of asimilar form, though of less dimensions, are in sight, viz., oneat Roberton, a second at Wolfclyde, and a third at following wood-cut gives a fair representation of BiggarMoatknowe as it exists at In the opinion of some persons, these knolls were places onwhich the Druids held their courts of justice, as they areknown to have acted in a judicial as well as in a religiouscapacity, and to have transacted their business and performedtheir rites in the open air. Here, then, the priests of the Druid-ical superstition may have tried many trembling culprits, pro-nounced on them the terrible sentence of excommunication, orsent them to expiate their crimes on the blazing pile.* At afew miles distant, conspicuously in view, and forming a ter-mination to the vista from the main street of the town ofBiggar, is Tinto, the hill of fire, with its huge cairn, on which,on May eve, and on the 1st of November, yearly, the Druidsare said to have lighted fires in honour of Beal or Belenus, thesun. Fires at the same time would blaze on the mountainsof Lothian, Tweeddale, and others sti
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