ks and spreading its deposit of alluvial soil. Its tributaries--the
Lednock, with its "Deil's Cauldron," and the Turret and Barvick, oft
visited for their pleasing cascades, along with many another rivulet
and spring--call up the Promised Land of old--"a land of hills and
valleys which drinketh water of the rain of heaven." In climate, also,
this part of Strathearn is singularly favoured, sheltered as it is from
the biting east wind and fortified from the northern blasts by its
mountain barriers. Its rainfall, also, is far from excessive; for many
sky-piercing hill-tops tap the rain clouds from the Atlantic long
before they reach Central Perthshire.

The name of the parish, now called Monzievaird, but formerly Monivaird,
and anciently Moivaird, is believed to be Gaelic, and to signify, not
the hill, but rather the "mossy plain" of the bards. It is difficult
to say how far this carries us back. The Bards are not to be
confounded with the Druids, a religious class from which they were
quite distinct. The bards seem to have been the seanachies,
antiquaries, poets, and genealogists. It was their special function to
compose and to chant verses or rhymes in praise of their heroes or
benefactors, and in the absence, so far as we know, of any method of
recording past transactions or histories, we may believe that our
ancestors transmitted orally, in lines composed by the bards, the
memorable sayings and deeds which they wished to hand down to
generations after them. How far they were worthy of credit, and how
far they were subject to the vices of flattery or detraction we cannot
tell, but we may be sure that those who were accounted great in these
ancient times were anxious to have their doughty deeds immortalised,
and perhaps were as sensitive to the tone of public criticism thus
represented as is the statesman or warrior of to-day. What would we
not give to hear from the living voice of one of those bards, were it
only possible, the stores of traditionary lore of which they were the
sole depositories! As it is, we can but lament the almost total
absence of reliable information regarding their genius, perhaps also
the jealous competition for the laureate's place in these pre-historic
times.

Remains at the western end of the parish are supposed to represent two
Druidical temples. Cairns and barrows have been numerous, and in one
of these, on Ochtertyre, there was discovered, near the close of last
century, a stone