supplications with many incantations to the Bairns of Brugh, throwing stones and water behind their backs, and making the circuit of the chapel twice or thrice.” There is still a fine spring on the Brough, which doubtless had the reputation of a “holy well” in connection with these superstitious practices. The Brough was fenced with a strong stone wall toward the land side in Low’s time, and from this and the remains of the huts he concludes that it had been a rock fort subsequently converted into a sanctuary by the ecclesiastics. The old parish church of Deerness, of which Low has preserved three sketches (one of which is engraved in Hibbert’s Shetland), had the peculiarity of being twin-towered, as the church on the Brough of Birsay seems also to have been, and as many of the Scandinavian churches dating from the 13th century were.[195] Low describes it as having a vaulted chancel at the east end, of which the twin towers rose from each corner. The tower on the south-east corner of the chancel was entered by a doorway opening from the chancel (in the same manner as the one at Brough of Birsay), and a spiral staircase led to a small apartment or vestry between the towers, on the second storey. From this apartment was the entrance to the other tower. There were three towered churches in Shetland—St. Laurence in West Burra, St. Magnus at Tingwall, and Ireland Head, but, like the old church of Deerness, they have long disappeared, and there is no description of them more precise than the casual notices of Low and Brand. It is not even quite clear whether they were single-towered or twin-towered. If single-towered they may have been examples of the rare form of which Egilsey is now the only remaining instance. XI. MAESHOW AND THE STONES OF STENNIS. Maeshow, the Orkahaug of the Saga, is connected in such an interesting way with the Norse history of the Isles that it is necessary to notice briefly its most peculiar features. It stands about a mile to the north-east of the great stone ring of Stennis. Its external appearance is that of a truncated conical mound of earth, about 300 feet in circumference at the base and 36 feet high, surrounded by a trench 40 feet wide. Nothing was known of its internal structure till the year 1861, when it was opened by Mr. Farrer, M.P.,[196] but the common tradition of the country represented it as the abode of a goblin, who was named “the Hogboy,”[197] though no one knew why. When excavated, the mound was found to cover a great cairn of stones, in the centre of which was a chamber about 15 feet square, the walls of which still remained entire to a height of 13 feet. A long low passage led from the west side of the chamber to the exterior of the mound, a distance of about 54 feet, and on the other three sides of the chamber there were small cells or _loculi_ entered by openings in the walls about 2½ feet square at a height of about 3 feet above the floor.