A more artificial, though very ancient form of hand-mill, is what is called the Pot Querne, consisting of a hollowed stone basin, with an aperture through which the meal or flour escapes, and a smaller circular stone fitting into it, and pierced, as in the simpler topstones, with a hole in the centre, through which the grain was thrown into the mill. The woodcut represents one of unusually large size, found on the farm of Westbank, Gladsmuir parish, East-Lothian, and now in the Scottish Museum. It is made of coarse pudding-stone, and measures 17 inches in diameter, and 8½ inches high. It appears to have had two handles attached to it at opposite sides, as the holes in which they were inserted still remain. The iron ring now fastened to it is a modern addition of its last possessor, who used it for securing his horse at the farm-house door. Pot quernes are common in Ireland, though somewhat differing in form from the Scottish examples. They are generally much smaller and shallower than the one described above, and are made with three, or sometimes four feet. They have likewise a cavity in the centre of the under stone, into which the upper one fits by a corresponding projection, so as to preclude the necessity for a metal axis. They are called by the native Irish _Cloch a vrone_. It is from the word _vro_ or _bro_, Gaelic _bra_, (the _v_ and _b_ in the Irish being commutable,) signifying grindings or bruised grain, that our Scottish word _brose_ is derived, rather than from the French _brouet_, _i.e._, pottage or broth, though both are probably traceable to a common Celtic root. Irish pot quernes have been frequently found at great depths in the bogs, under circumstances indicating a very remote antiquity, though they have scarcely yet fallen into total disuse in some of the remotest districts of the west. Dr. Petrie incidentally furnishes a curious evidence of the antiquity of the querne. He has in his possession the topstone of one of these primitive hand-mills, which appears to have been converted to the unlikely purpose of a tombstone after its original use had been lost sight of. It has been elaborately decorated with sculptured ornaments, part of which are effaced to make way for the name of _Sechnasach_, which its learned owner conceives is probably the "Priest of Durrow," whose death is recorded in Mageoghegan's translation of the Annals of Clonmacnoise at the year 928, and in the Annals of the Four Masters at the year 931.[190] FOOTNOTES: [184] Wallace's Orkney, p. 56. [185] Hibbert's Shetland, p. 412. [186] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xvii. p. 287.