Old family; or, The Setons of Scotland and America

202 AN OLD FAMILY. [a.d.
an inscription on the inside, saving that it "is made out of a
piece of wood cut from a favorite tree that stood near the
ancient castellated mansion of the Setons of Parbroath. ' ' On
my visit to this place I saw some bits of old wall and a stone-
faced dyke; and behind the farm-house, built in 1806, some
parts of an old building once a chapel, but now used as a
barn. A sun-dial and a mitred figure — the bust only — are
set on the gable end near a chimney. They were dug up
here some years ago. An eminence on the other side of the
lane leading from the public road to the farm-house is still
called Hawk Hill, reminding the visitor that the sport of
hawking or falconry was one of the most fascinating of feudal
pastimes among the higher classes. Many agates which take
a fine polish strew the ground, one of which — larger than the
rest — the obliging tenant-farmer, Mr. Russell, picked up and
gave me. I had it polished, mounted, and inscribed on my
return to New York. At different times (besides the graves
near the chapel mentioned in the extract from the New Statis-
tical Account), cists, urns, and calcined bones — some of them
having been enclosed in thin cairns or tumuli — have been dug
up at Parbroath, and would seem to indicate that there was an
early Pictish settlement there. The word " Creich," which
gave its name to the parish, comes from the Gaelic Craigich,
meaning rocky or craggy ground, a description applicable to
some parts of Parbroath. The present farm is only a small
portion of the original estate.
SETON OF LATHRISK.
This was an offshoot of Parbroath. John, third son of Sir
Gilbert Seton, third Baron of Parbroath, and of Marion Pit-
cairn, his wife, married Janet, daughter and heiress to Lath-
risk of that Ilk, in the County of Fife, and was ancestor of
the Setons of Lathrisk and Balbirnie. About the year 1180