IV. DWELLINGS
Before proceeding to examine in detail the varied contents of the Scottish tumuli, it may be well to glance at the evidence we possess of the nature of the habitations reared and occupied by the constructors of such enduring memorials of their dead as have been described in the preceding chapter. Scattered over the uncultivated downs both of England and Scotland, there still remain numerous relics of the dwellings of our barbarian ancestry, which have escaped the wasting tooth of centuries, or the more destructive inroads of modern cultivation. Sir Richard Colt Hoare remarks, in his "Ancient Wiltshire,"--"We have undoubted proofs from history, and from existing remains, that the earlier habitations were pits, or slight excavations in the ground, covered and protected from the inclemency of the weather by boughs of trees and sods of turf." Of these primitive pit-dwellings numerous traces are discernible on Leuchar Moss, in the parish of Skene, and in other localities of Aberdeenshire; on the banks of Loch Fine, Argyleshire; in the counties of Inverness and Caithness; and in various other districts of Scotland still uninvaded by the plough. They are almost invariably found in groups, affording evidence of the gregarious and social habits of man in the simplest state of society. The rudest of them consist simply of shallow excavations in the soil, of a circular or oblong form, and rarely exceeding seven or eight feet in diameter. Considerable numbers of these may be observed in several districts both of Aberdeenshire and Inverness-shire, each surrounded with a raised rim of earth, in which a slight break generally indicates the door, and not improbably also the window and chimney of the aboriginal dwelling. To this class belong the "pond barrow," already referred to as erroneously ranked among sepulchral constructions. Within a few miles of Aberdeen are still visible what seem to be the remains of a large group, or township, of such rude relics of domestic architecture. These, Professor Stuart suggests, may mark the site of the capital of the Taixali, when the Roman legions passed the river Dee in the second century.[91] They consist of some hundreds of circular walls scattered over more than a mile in extent, of two or three feet high, and from twelve to twenty feet in diameter. Their varying sizes may be presumed to indicate the gradations of rank which, we know, were established among the northern Britons, who were undoubtedly, at the period of the Roman invasion, a race far in advance of the first constructors of the rude pit-dwelling or "pond barrow" previously referred to. Nothing, however, has yet been discovered on this site to indicate any traces of Roman influence. On digging within the area of the pit-dwellings, a mass of charred wood or ashes, mingled with fragments of decayed bones and vegetable matter, are generally found; and their site is frequently discernible on the brown heath, or the grey slope of the hill-side, from the richer growth and brighter green of the grass, within the circle sacred of old to the hospitable rites of our barbarian ancestry, and where the accumulated refuse of their culinary operations have thus sufficed to enrich the soil.
The first indication of a slight advancement in the constructive skill of the primitive architect is discernible in the strengthening of his domestic inclosure with stone. This is not infrequently accompanied with small circular or oblong field inclosures, as if indicating the dawn of civilisation, manifested in the protection of personal property, and the rudiments of a pastoral life, in the folding of sheep and cattle. Still greater social progress would seem to be indicated in those examples, also occasionally to be met with in various districts, where a commanding site appears to have been chosen for the location; and traces still remain of an earthen rampart inclosing the whole, as on the Kaimes Hill, in the parish of Ratho, Mid-Lothian. Such, perhaps, may be the remains of a British camp, or of a temporary retreat in time of war.
With this class also may be grouped the "Picts' kilns," on which Chalmers, Train, Sir Walter Scott, and other antiquaries, have expended much conjecture and useless learning. These are of frequent occurrence in Wigton and Kircudbright shires, as well as in parts of the neighbouring counties. They consist of elliptical or pear-shaped inclosures, measuring generally about sixteen feet in length and seven or eight feet in breadth. Externally the walls appear to be of earth, sometimes standing nearly three feet high. On removing the surface they are found to be constructed internally of small stones, frequently bearing marks of fire. They are popularly believed to be ancient breweries reared by the Picts for the manufacture of a mysterious beverage called heather ale. Sir Walter Scott suggests, with not much greater probability, that they are primitive lime kilns. They are said by Mr. Train to be invariably constructed on the south side of a hill, close to the margin of a brook, and with the door or narrow passage facing the stream. Future excavations on their sites may perhaps furnish more conclusive evidence of their original purpose.
Greater art is apparent in the relics of another class of ancient Scottish dwellings occasionally met with in different parts of the country. In the Black Moss, already referred to, on the banks of Etive, Argyleshire, at various points where some advance has been made in recovering the waste for agricultural purposes, the progress of cultivation has uncovered rough oval pavings of stone, bearing marks of fire, and frequently covered with charred ashes. These are generally found to measure about six feet in greatest diameter, and are sometimes surrounded with the remains of pointed hazel stakes or posts, the relics, doubtless, of the upright beams with which the walls of the ancient fabric was framed. Julius Cæsar describes the dwellings of the Britons as similar to those of the Gauls;[92] and these we learn, from the accounts both of Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, were constructed of wood, of a circular form, and with lofty tapering roofs of straw. Such apparently were the structures, the remains of which are now brought to light within the limits of the Dalriadic possessions. These ancient Caledonian hearths, now quenched for so many centuries, are discovered beneath an accumulation of from eight to ten feet of moss, under which lies a stratum of vegetable mould about a foot deep, resting upon an alluvial bed of gravel and sand; the original soil upon which the large sepulchral cairns of the same district have been reared.
A discovery made at Dalgenross, near Comrie, in 1823, though described in a communication to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland as an ancient tomb, manifestly furnishes another example of the same class of primitive dwellings. At Comrie, as in twenty other equally probable localities, antiquaries of the district have pronounced some imperfect and half-obliterated earth-works to be the remains of a Roman camp, and the scene of Agricola's famous victory of Mons Grampius! The writer, learning that workmen were trenching this interesting spot, remarks,--"I hastened to where the men were at work, and found that they had come upon a circle of flat stones set on edge, and at the bottom a paving of large flag-stones. The cavity was filled with a kind of black earth, pieces of charred wood, and also some fragments of iron, but so completely defaced with rust that it is impossible to say to what purpose they have been applied." On pursuing the investigation further, pieces of charcoal and burned wood were found, along with charred wheat, which might possibly suggest its having been a granary; but its general characteristics much more nearly assimilate it to a native dwelling, to which, it may be, the torch of the Roman legionary applied the brand that reduced it to a blackened ruin.
Among the relics of primitive domestic architecture brought to light in later times, no class is more remarkable than the weems, or subterranean dwellings which have been discovered in different parts of Scotland. Of this class are two structures discovered under ground in the parish of Tealing, Forfarshire. One of them consisted of several apartments formed with large flat stones without any cement; and in it were found wood-ashes, several fragments of large earthen vessels, and an ancient stone hand-mill, or querne. The other was a single vault constructed in the same manner, measuring internally about four feet both in height and width, and in which were found a broad earthen vessel, and a stone celt or hatchet.[93] In another opened in the parish of Monzie, Perthshire, a stone celt and bronze sword were found, both of which are preserved at Monzie House. Chalmers supplies a curious list of similar subterranean dwellings discovered at various times in Forfar, Perth, Aberdeen, Ross, Sutherland, and Inverness shires, and in the Orkney Islands.[94] The like structures are noted by Martin, among the antiquities of the islands of Walay, Erisca, and Skye;[95] and by Pennant also in the latter island. They are described by Martin as "little stone-houses, built under ground, called earth houses, which served to hide a few people and their goods in time of war."
The general name applied in Scotland to these subterranean habitations is Weems, from the Gaelic word uamha, a cave; and as this name is in use in the low countries, where nearly all traces of the Celtic dialect have been lost as a living language, probably since the era of the "Saxon Conquest," it may be accepted as no insignificant evidence of their Celtic origin or use. In Aberdeenshire, where they have been found in greater number than in any other single district, they are more generally known, as in the Hebrides, by the name of eirde (i.e., earth) houses.
An interesting account of a large group of weems discovered in Aberdeenshire, is given by Professor Stuart in the Archæologia Scotica,[96] and since then many more have been brought to light in the same district. Several of these opened of late years in Strathdon are described with great minuteness in the Statistical Account of that parish.[97] On a bleak moor in the adjoining parish, not far from the old castle of Kildrummie--which, from many large fossil trees dug up in it, appears to have once been an extensive forest--the largest assemblage of these singular habitations occurs which has yet been discovered in Scotland. Others have been found about six miles further up the country, at Glenkindrie, at Buchan, and near the source of the Don, one of the wildest districts of the Highlands. They are indeed scarcely less common than the sepulchral cairn. My object, however, is not so much to accumulate numerous examples, as to select a few characteristic types of each class of Scottish antiquities; though these weems appear to possess peculiar claims to minute description, from their very frequent occurrence. In general, no external indication affords the slightest clue to their discovery. To the common observer, the dry level heath or moor under which they lie presents no appearance of having ever been disturbed by the hand of man; and he may traverse the waste until every natural feature has become familiar to his eye, without suspecting that underneath his very feet lie the dwellings and domestic utensils of remote antiquity.
The Aberdeenshire weems are constructed of huge masses of granite, frequently above six feet in length, and though by no means uniform either in internal shape or dimensions, a general style of construction prevails throughout the whole. Some of them have been found upwards of thirty feet long, and from eight to nine feet wide. The walls are made to converge towards the top, and the whole is roofed in by means of the primitive substitute for the arch which characterizes the cyclopean structures of infant Greece, and the vast temples and palaces of Mexico and Yucatan. The huge stones overlap each other in succession, until the intervening space is sufficiently reduced to admit of the vault being completed by a single block extending from side to side. They have not infrequently smaller chambers attached to them, generally approached by passages not above three feet in height; and it affords a curious evidence of the want of efficient tools in the builders of these subterranean structures, that where these side apartments are only separated from the main chamber by the thickness of the wall, the stones, though placed flush with the walls of the latter, project irregularly into the small cells, giving them a singularly unshapely and ragged appearance. Similar structures, but of smaller dimensions, have been discovered in Lanarkshire, at Cartland Craigs, in the neighbourhood of Stonebyres, and at a place called Cairney Castle. In these last were found quernes, deers' horns, and bones. In one uncovered in the parish of Auchterhouse, Forfarshire, a brass ring was discovered; and both there, and in another in the same parish, were ashes, bones, and quernes.[98] The Rev. Thomas Constable furnishes a very interesting description of one near Lundie House, in the latter county, which was minutely surveyed by the eminent antiquary, Lord Hailes. Its contents were of the usual description, including several quernes about fourteen inches in diameter.[99] So also, in a minute account of similar structures in Caithness and Sutherland, furnished to Pennant by the parish minister of Reay, the writer remarks:--"We found in them nothing but hand-mills, or what the Highlanders call quernes, which were only eighteen inches in diameter, and great heaps of deers' bones and horns, as they (the Picts) lived much more by hunting than any other means."[100] The discovery, indeed, of the primitive hand-mill in these ancient dwellings is so frequent as to be worthy of special notice, and might seem to indicate that their original destination had been for store-houses or granaries, did not the constant occurrence of the bones of domestic animals, or of those most prized in the chase, and frequently in considerable quantities, leave no room for doubt that they must have been occupied as places of habitation. They agree very nearly with the description furnished by Tacitus of the winter dwellings of the Germans, whom he represents as digging caves in the earth, in which they lay up their grain, and whither they retire in the winter, or on the advance of an enemy to plunder the open country.[101] The entrance to such of these subterranean dwellings as have been found sufficiently perfect to afford indications of their original character, appears to have generally been by a slanting doorway between two long, upright stones, through which the occupant must have slid into his dark abode. Occasionally a small aperture has been found at the further end, apparently to give vent to the fire, the charcoal ashes of which lie extinguished on the long-deserted floor. In some a passage of considerable length has formed the vestibule; but so far as now appears, a solitary aperture served most frequently alike for doorway, chimney, ventilator, and even window, in so far as any gleam of daylight could penetrate into the darkened vault. One is forcibly reminded, while groping in these aboriginal retreats, of Elia's realisations of the strange social state to which they pertain, in his quaint rhapsody on Candle-light, "our peculiar and household planet! Wanting it, what savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and unilluminated fastnesses! They must have lain about and grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed, when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbour's cheek to be sure that he understood it! This accounts for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a sombre cast, derived from the tradition of these un-lanterned nights!" The grave humorist goes on to picture a supper scene in these unlighted halls, rich with truthful imaginings, mingled with his curious but thoughtful jests:--
"Things that were born, when none but the still night, And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes."
In truth, these dwellings, constructed with such laborious ingenuity in every district of Scotland, seem to throw a strange light upon that dim and remote era to which they belong, giving us some insight into the domestic habits and social comforts of a period heretofore dark as their own unillumined vaults.
Adjoining many of the weems small earthen inclosures are discernible; some of which are square, measuring about fifteen paces each way, with the area somewhat below the surrounding soil, and have probably been constructed for folding sheep or cattle. Others are circular, and so small as to leave little doubt that there must have stood the slight huts, constructed of turf and branches of trees, in which the architect of the cyclopean structure dwelt during the brief warmth of summer, while he sought refuge from the frosts and snows of our northern winter in the neighbouring subterranean retreat. The number of weems frequently found together appears altogether inconsistent with the idea of their construction as mere places of concealment. They are manifestly the congregated dwellings of a social community, though strangely differing from any that have dwelt in the land within the era of authentic history. When we compare these dwellings with the clay huts still common in many a Highland district, or with such humble Lowland biggings as those which have won a new sacredness as the birthplaces of Hogg or Burns, it is impossible to overlook the remarkable differences presented by the two states of society, separated not more widely by time than by variance of habits and ideas. How striking is the contrast between the artlessness of the Ayrshire cottage, that sufficed, with its straw roof, to satisfy the wants of one among the great master-spirits of all times, and the labour and ingenuity expended in producing these retreats of the Scottish aborigines. In rudeness of result perhaps both are on a par. The ingenious and methodic skill, however, entirely belongs to the old builders. Their mode of constructing with huge unhewn stones, frequently brought from a considerable distance, seems to point them out as the architects of that same remote era in which the rude monumental standing stones and circular groups of monoliths were reared, which still abound in so many districts of the Scottish mainland and surrounding isles.
Similar subterranean structures have been discovered at different times in Orkney, some of them of considerable extent, and including various recesses and chambers branching off from the chief central apartment. An unusually minute and interesting account of one in the parish of Shapinshay is given in the Old Statistical Accounts,[102] by the Rev. Dr. George Barry, the historian of Orkney, in which was found a beautiful torquated ring, evidently of primitive workmanship.
Structures of the same character, on the mainland of Orkney, were explored by Lieutenant F. W. L. Thomas, R.N., while engaged in the Admiralty Survey in 1848. In the course of his investigation of one of these at Savrock, about a mile to the westward of Kirkwall, and close to the sea-shore, some curious evidence was disclosed, showing the primitive arts of its builders, and their inability to overcome an obstacle requiring unusual skill or effective tools. In excavating the site for this subterranean dwelling they appear to have cleared away the soil till they reached the natural rock, which forms the floor of the vault. Pillars constructed at irregular intervals admit of the whole being covered by immense slabs resting on them, where the width is too great to be overarched at so slight an elevation by converging walls. A long passage leads from this chamber, floored, like it, with the natural rock. In one place, however, an irregular elevation of the strata occurs. Such an obstacle was either beyond the skill of the laborious architects, or at least demanded more exertion than they cared to expend on its removal; and the roof has accordingly been elevated so as to admit of free passage by ascending and descending over the superimposed rock. The passages, as in nearly all the structures of this class which have been carefully explored, are extremely straitened. Unfortunately this primitive dwelling supplied materials for building a neighbouring farm-house and offices before Lieutenant Thomas had an opportunity of exploring it; so that what remained was in a very imperfect and dilapidated state. Portions of the roof still entire, constructed of huge masses of unhewn stone--one of them measuring about five feet long--afforded abundant evidence that no amount of mere physical labour was grudged in the completion of the edifice, and seem to justify the probable assignment of it to a period prior to the introduction of metallic tools. In another of these subterranean buildings, however, situated on the Holm of Papey, Lieutenant Thomas observed some doubtful indications of the use of tools. "On the side wall, near the entrance," he remarks, "and about six feet from the floor, there is a neatly engraved circle, about four inches in diameter; there is also another stone, with the appearance of two small circles touching each other, cut upon it; but it is so common to find geometrical figures upon the Orkney flags, arising from a semi-crystallization of the pyrites which they contain, that I am unable to decide whether these are natural or not." The height of the passage where it remains perfect is only two feet seven inches; but nearly one-half of it is unroofed, and heaps of large stones lying scattered about afford evidence of the great extent of the building when complete. Within and around the area of this ancient structure abundant indications were discovered of its having been used as a dwelling-place. A large accumulation of wood or peat-ashes shewed that it must have been occupied for a lengthened period; and this was further proved by the great quantity of the bones of domestic animals scattered about the place. Those of sheep, apparently of the small northern breed still found in Orkney, were the most numerous; but besides these, there were skulls and bones of horses and oxen, the skull and portions of the horns of a deer, and a large bone of a whale. A thick layer of the shells of the periwinkle, L. Littoralis, covered the building and the adjacent ground, mixed sparingly with the oyster, the escallop, the common whelk, and other edible mollusca, which had evidently been consumed in great quantities on the spot. Along with these were also found a few extremely rude implements, the relics of the primitive arts of the builders, besides an antler of a deer artificially severed from the complete tyne. These objects were roughly fashioned from the thigh-bone of an ox, and designed apparently as handles for some weapon or cutting implement, most probably of shell or flint. Other Orkney relics of the same interesting class, but exhibiting more completeness of design, and accompanied with attempts at ornament, are described and figured in a subsequent chapter.
This large, though very imperfect example of the dwellings of primitive communities of the ancient population of the Orkneys, may be properly classed with the weems of the Scottish mainland, though it is not entirely subterranean. The floor is nine feet below the natural surface of the ground; and from the mode by which the whole appears to have been in-roofed with immense overlapping stones, it must have projected somewhat above the surface, and was probably covered over with a raised mound of earth. In this respect it approaches, in some degree, to another class of buildings, which appear to be peculiar to Orkney and the neighbouring districts of Caithness and Sutherland, though it is possible enough that they may have been at one time no less common on the whole Scottish mainland. These structures, for which it may be convenient to retain the popular name of Picts' houses, are not strictly speaking, subterranean, but erected generally on the level ground, or, at furthest, excavated in part out of the side of a hill, so as to admit of a level entrance. Externally they are scarcely distinguishable from the larger tumuli, but on digging into the green mound it is found to cover a series of large chambers, built generally with stones of considerable size, and converging towards the centre, where an opening appears to have been left for light and ventilation. These differ very little from many of the subterranean weems, excepting that they are erected on the natural surface of the soil, and have been buried by means of an artificial mound heaped over them. Barry has minutely described one, which he calls an "ancient Pick house," opened at Quanterness, near Kirkwall.[103] Another relic of the same class was explored during the past year by Mr. George Petrie of Kirkwall, to whose valuable communications on kindred subjects I have already had occasion to refer. Through his kindness I have been favoured with a minute account of the result of his labours, as well as with the plans engraved, drawn from careful measurements taken at the time.
In the month of October 1849, Mr. Petrie's attention was directed to a large tumulus or green knoll, which stands about half-way up the western declivity of Wideford-hill, overlooking the beautiful bay of Frith on the mainland of Orkney, and within a short distance of the Pict's house of Quanterness, described in Barry's History of Orkney. Being on a steep and unfrequented part of the hill, it appears to have almost entirely escaped observation. An opening, however, had been attempted at some former period, but abandoned after an excavation of about a couple of feet in depth had been effected. Mr. Petrie employed men to make a section into the mound, and himself superintended and assisted in the operation, which proved one of considerable time and labour, from the large stones and the quantity of clay used in completing the external mound, as well as in the masonry of the structure found underneath. The building appears to have been constructed in the following manner:--A place for the site having been scooped out of the side of the hill, the cells or apartments were built of large unhewn stones, the walls being made gradually to converge as they rose in height, until they approached to within a foot at top. Externally the work was bounded by a wall of about two feet high. The entire structure was then brought to a conical shape with stones and clay; the stones being disposed with considerable regularity, and over all a thick layer of turf or peat had been laid. The mound which encloses the whole is about one hundred and forty feet in greatest circumference, and forty-five feet in diameter. The work of exploration was commenced by making a cut, six feet in breadth, upon the north side, and clearing away the stones and clay in the direction of the highest part of the mound. On penetrating towards the centre, at about six feet from the top, a stone was exposed placed on edge, about eighteen inches long and nine inches thick, underneath which lay another, which was found to cover a hole of about a foot square, at the top of the chamber marked D in the plan. (Plate I.) On obtaining entrance to this chamber or cell, it proved, like those subsequently opened, to be constructed with walls gradually converging on all sides towards the top, and to measure five feet nine inches in length from north to south, four feet eight inches in breadth, and five feet six inches in height. On the west side of the chamber, the small passage, marked h, was observed appearing to communicate with another apartment, but it was so blocked up with stones and rubbish, that excavation had to be resumed from the exterior. After working for upwards of an hour, the large stone, marked m, was reached, and on removing it an entrance was effected into the central chamber A. This was about three-fourths filled with stones and rubbish, heaped up under the opening marked i, on digging into which bones and teeth of the horse, cow, sheep, boar, &c., were discovered mixed with the rubbish, and also some which were supposed to be those of deer, but not a vestige of human bones.
The general plan will convey the best idea of the form and arrangement of the chambers. The central apartment, A, is an irregular oblong vault, ten feet long, five feet in greatest width, and 7½ feet in height from the bottom to the lower edge of the stones marked o o. Above this extends the opening i, which had no other covering than the outer layer of turf. Mr. Petrie came to the conclusion, after a thorough examination of the whole, that the rubbish found in this large chamber was the debris of some later building erected above the mound, the materials of which must have been precipitated through the narrow opening, as no part of the subterranean structure was found imperfect with the exception of the passage g. From the floor of the chamber to the extreme height of the mound is twelve feet. At the north end of the central chamber the passage e leads to the cell C, measuring five feet seven inches long, four feet wide, and six feet high. From the east side of this a passage extends a considerable way, until it is abruptly terminated by the native rock. The chamber D, which was first entered, communicates with the central apartment by a short passage h, directly opposite to which is the long gallery b, which formed the entrance to the building from the western side of the mound. A third passage, a, proceeds in an oblique direction from the central chamber to a cell B, the proportions of which are six feet in length, three feet seven inches in width, and 6½ feet in height. Nothing found in this or any of the previously explored "Picts' houses" gives the slightest countenance to the idea that they were designed as places of sepulture. The most remarkable feature about them, however, and the one least compatible with their use as continuous dwelling-places, is the extremely circumscribed dimensions of the passages. The whole of them measure about fifteen inches in height by twenty-two inches in breadth, so that entrance could only be obtained by crawling on the ground. The arrangement affords a very striking confirmation of the barbarous state of the people, who were yet capable of displaying so much skill and ingenuity in the erection of these cyclopean structures. It is curious indeed that as civilisation progressed, primitive architecture became not only simpler but meaner, the ingenious builder learning to supply his wants by easier methods; while also the gregarious social ties which such laborious and extensive structures indicate were exchanged for the more refined separation into families, with, as we may assume, the gradual development of those virtues and affections which flourish only around the domestic hearth.
The first step in the descending scale indicative of the abandonment of the cyclopean architecture for simpler and less durable modes of construction, appears in a class of dwellings of similar character to the "Picts' houses," but inferior in their masonry, and generally smaller in size and less complete in design. Examples of this class have also been found in various parts of Scotland. They are generally more entirely subterranean than the "Picts' houses," partaking in this respect more of the character of the weems. They occupy, however, an intermediate position, being excavated for the most part in the side of a hill, so as to admit of an entrance level with the ground. They are also found more frequently in groups, and have probably been each the dwelling-place of a single family.
In these, oaken rafters appear to have supplied the place of the more ancient cyclopean arch, and the walls are generally built of smaller stones. Weems of this more fragile character have been discovered at Prieston, near Glammis, in Forfarshire; at Alyth and Bendochy, Perthshire; and at Pennycuick, Mid-Lothian, as well as in other districts. One in particular, found at Alvie, Inverness-shire, measured sixty feet in length. These may be regarded as works of a later age than the more massive and enduring structures previously described, when the domestic habits of the old builders had survived their laborious arts and monolithic taste. One of the most singular groups of this latter class is a series of contiguous excavations, on the ridge of a hill immediately to the north of Inchtuthill, Inverness-shire, known in the district by the name of "the steed's stalls." Seven circular chambers are cut in the side of a steep bank, separated by partitions of about twelve feet thick. The floors are sunk about twenty feet, and each chamber measures fifteen feet in diameter. A long passage of about four feet wide has formed the original way of ingress, but the rafters, which most probably formed the roof, have long since disappeared, and only a very partial estimate can now be formed of the appearance presented by these singular chambers when complete.
With the same class also may be reckoned certain structures described by Pennant as the repositories of the ashes of sacrifices. One of these, within a few miles of Edinburgh, in the neighbourhood of Borthwick Castle, was brought to light by the plough coming in contact with its rough masonry, at a depth of only a foot below the surface. It may be described as pear-shaped, and with a passage continuing from the narrow end, measuring fifteen feet in length by two and a half in breadth. The masonry was of the rudest description, and nearly the whole space between the walls was filled with a rich black mould, irregularly interspersed with charcoal, fragments of bone, and the teeth of sheep and oxen.[104] A similar building was discovered about the same time in the east of Fife, and one closely corresponding to it has recently been disclosed by railway operations at Newstead, in the neighbourhood of Melrose. In this, as in the example above referred to, the narrow passage pointed nearly north-west; and its masonry was equally rude; but among its contents were various carved stones, apparently corresponding with Roman remains frequently found in that neighbourhood, and one in particular with the cable-pattern, or woollen fillet, so commonly employed by the Anglo-Roman sculptors.
Akin to such subterranean dwellings are the natural and artificial caves which, in Scotland, as in most other countries, have supplied hiding-places, retreats for anchorites, and even permanent native dwellings, and may be described along with this class, though belonging to many different periods. Such caves abound in Scotland, and especially along the coast, but in general their interest arises rather from the associations of popular traditions, than from any intrinsic peculiarity of character pertaining to them. Few such retreats are more remarkable, either for constructive art, or historic associations, than the well-known caves beneath the old tower of Hawthornden, near Edinburgh. They have been hewn, with great labour and ingenuity, in the rocky cliff which overhangs the river Esk. No tradition preserves the history or date of their execution, but concealment was evidently the chief design of the excavators. The original entrance is most ingeniously made in the shaft of a very deep draw-well, sunk in the court-yard of the castle, and from its manifest utility as the ordinary and indispensable appendage of the fortress, it most effectually conceals its adaptation as a means of ingress and communication with the rock chambers beneath. These are of various forms and sizes, and one in particular is pierced with a series of square recesses, somewhat resembling the columbaria of a Roman tomb, but assigned by popular tradition as the library of its later owner, Drummond the Scottish poet. Whatever was the purpose for which these were thus laboriously cut, the example is not singular. A large cave in Roxburghshire, hewn out in the lofty cliff which overhangs the Teviot, has in its sides similar recesses, and from their supposed resemblance to the interior of a pigeon-house, the cavern has received the name of the Doo-cave. Authentic notices of the Hawthornden caves occur so early as the reign of David II., when a daring band of Scottish adventurers made good their head-quarters there, while Edward held the newly fortified castle of Edinburgh, and the whole surrounding district. In the glen of the little river Ale, which falls into the Teviot at Ancrum, extensive groups of caves occur, all indicating, more or less, artificial adaptation, as human dwellings; and in many other districts similar evidences may be seen of temporary or permanent habitation, at some remote period, in these rude recesses. Along the coast of Arran there are several caves of various dimensions, one of which, at Drumandruin, or Drumidoon, is noted in the older traditions of the island as the lodging of Fin M'Coul, the Fingal of Ossian, during his residence in Arran. Though low in the roof, it is sufficiently capacious for a hundred men to sit or lie in it. In this, as in the previous example, we find evidences of artificial operations, proving its connexion with races long posterior to those with whose works we have chiefly to do in this section of archæological inquiry. In the further end a large detached column of rock has a two-handed sword engraved on it, surmounted by a deer, and on the southern side of the cave a lunar figure is cut, similar in character to those frequently found on the sculptured pillars and crosses which abound in Scotland. It is now more frequently styled the king's cave, and described as the retreat of Robert the Bruce, while he lurked as a fugitive in the Western Isles; but like many other traditions of the Bruce this seems to be of very recent origin. Other caves in the same island are also of large dimensions, and variously associated with popular traditions, as, indeed, is generally the case wherever subterranean retreats of any considerable extent occur. Some are the supposed dwellings of old mythic chiefs, whose names still live in the traditional songs of the Gael. Others are the retreats which the primitive confessors of Scotland excavated or enlarged for their oratories or cells. Of the latter class are the caves of St. Molio, on the little island of Lamlash, or the Holy Isle, on the east coast of Arran; of St. Columba and St. Cormac, on the Argyleshire coast; of St. Ninian, in Wigtonshire; of St. Serf, at Dysart, on the Fifeshire coast; and the celebrated "ocean cave" of St. Rule, in St. Andrew's Bay. This last oratory consists of two chambers hewn out of the sandstone cliffs of that exposed coast. The inner apartment is a plain cell, entered from the supposed oratory of the Greek saint. The latter is nearly circular, measuring about ten feet in diameter, and has a stone altar left hewn in the solid rock on its eastern side. Possibly the singular dwarfie stone of Hoy, in Orkney, owes its origin to a similar source. A huge mass of square sandstone rock, which appears to have tumbled from a neighbouring cliff, has been hollowed out into three apartments, with a fire-place, vent, stone-bed, pillow, &c. The traditions of the island preserve strange tales of a giant and his wife who dwelt in this abode, and the "Descriptio Insularum Orchadium," written by Jo. Ben., (John the Benedictine,) in 1592, adds to the account of its internal accommodation the following somewhat whimsical provision for the comfort of the latter,--"Tempore camerationis fœmina gravida fuit, ut lectus testatur; nam ea pars lecti in qua uxor cubuit effigiem habet ventri gravidi." Others of the Scottish caves and oratories are less artificial in their character. They are especially abundant in the Western Isles, and on the neighbouring coast, where the waves of the Atlantic have wrought out caverns far surpassing in extent and magnificence the largest in the interior of the country. Few of these, however, possess such marked features as to distinguish them from similar relics pertaining to no definite period, which are to be met with on every rocky coast exposed to the rude buffets of the ocean waves. One exception, indeed, may well claim to be singled out as unmatched by any other work of nature or art, though belonging to an older system than the primeval period of the archæologist. Amid scenery unsurpassed in the interest of its historic associations, or its venerable relics of medieval skill, stands the wondrous natural cave which popular tradition has associated with the favourite name of Fingal.
"Nor doth its entrance front in vain To old Iona's holy fane, That nature's voice might seem to say-- Well hast thou done, frail child of clay! Thy humble powers that stately shrine Tasked high and hard--but witness mine!"[105]
To those who are curious in investigating such ancient relics, Chalmers furnishes a very ample list of "Natural Caves in every part of North Britain, which have been improved into hiding-places by artificial means."[106] The associations with many of these retreats are of the most varied and romantic character; and few districts of the country are without some wild or thrilling legend or historic tradition relating to such caverned shelters of the patriot, the recluse, or the persecuted devotee.
FOOTNOTES:
[91] Archæol. Scot. vol. ii. p. 54.
[92] Bell. Gall. lib. v. c. xii.
[93] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. iv. p. 101.
[94] Caledonia, vol. i. p. 97. Vide also New Stat. Acc. vol. vii., Renfrewshire, 502, &c.
[95] Martin's Western Isles, pp. 67, 87, 154.
[96] Archæol. Scot. vol. ii. p. 52.
[97] New Statist. Acc. vol. xii. p. 545.
[98] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xiv. p. 526.
[99] Sinclair's Statist, Acc. vol. xiii. p. 117.
[100] Pennant's Tour, vol. i. Appendix, p. 339.
[101] De Moribus Germanorum, c. 16.
[102] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. xvii. p. 237.
[103] History of Orkney, p. 99.
[104] Pennant's Tour, vol. iii. p. 454.
[105] Lord of the Isles, Canto iv.
[106] Caledonia, vol. i. p. 97.
V. TEMPLES AND MEMORIAL STONES
The ideal associations with the future and the past, which seem to find some outward manifestation even in the rudest state of society, spring from "that longing after immortality" which affords so strong an evidence of its truth. To this principle of the human mind is clearly traceable the origin of the commemorative erections which abound wherever man has fixed his resting-place. The most primitive of these ancient memorials are the rude unhewn columns or standing stones, as they are called, which abound in nearly every district of Scotland. Occasionally they are found in groups of two or three, and even in greater numbers, as the celebrated "standing stones of Lundin," near the Bay of Largo, Fifeshire, the largest of which measures sixteen feet in height above ground. Three only now exist, singularly rude and irregular in form, but the stump of a fourth remained when the account of Largo parish was written in 1792.[107] It has since been destroyed by treasure-seekers, tempted probably by the good fortune of others; for in the vicinity have been discovered, during the present century, some of the most interesting and valuable antiquities ever found in Scotland.
Of single memorial stones examples might be cited in nearly every Scottish parish; nor are they wanting even in the Lothians, and in the immediate vicinity of Edinburgh, where the presence of a busy population, and the unsparing operations of the agriculturist, have done so much to obliterate the traces of older generations. But nearly all are of the same character, differing in nothing but relative size, and the varying outlines of their unhewn masses. They have outlived the traditions of their rearers, and no inscription preserves to us the long-forgotten name. We are not left, however, to look upon them as altogether dumb and meaningless memorials. The history of a people contemporaneous, it may be, with their builders, reminds us how even the unsculptured obelisk may keep alive the records committed to its trust, and prove faithful to those for whom it was designed. "It came to pass," says Joshua, "when all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the Lord spake, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, that when your children ask, in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? then ye shall answer them." Some of these rude memorials still remaining in the districts immediately surrounding the Scottish capital, suffice to show the enduring tenacity of popular tradition. The Hare Stane on the Borough Moor of Edinburgh, celebrated in the lay of Marmion as the support of Scotland's royal banner,
"The massive stone, Which still in memory is shown,"
affords one example of this. Mr. William Hamper, an ingenious English antiquary, has elaborately elucidated the derivation of the name as applied in England, and the use of the HOAR STONES,[108] the menhars, or bound stones, as stones of memorial, like "the stone of Bohan, the son of Reuben," and other ancient landmarks of Bible story.[109] Probably we shall justly esteem the "Hare Stane" as the memorial of the western boundary of the ancient chase, claimed from time immemorial by the neighbouring capital; but if so, its name has long survived all popular recollection of the meaning which it bore. The same term, hair stanes, is applied to a circular group of stones near Kirkdean, in the parish of Kirkurd, Peeblesshire. It would appear, however, to have been more frequently used in Scotland in the most sacred sense of a memorial, if we judge from the examples of its application as the designation of cairns, some of which, at least, and probably all, are sepulchral monuments. Among these are the Haer Cairns in the parish of Clunie; the Haer Cairns of Blairgowrie and Kinloch, Perthshire; the Hier Cairns of Monikie, Forfarshire; the Herlaw, a gigantic cairn in the parish of East Kilbride, Lanarkshire; the more celebrated Harlaw of Aberdeenshire; the Harelaw at Lochhore, Fifeshire, and another in the same county, near Burntisland, where were found underneath the cairn a cist containing a skeleton with a bronze spear-head lying beside it.
Not far from the Hare Stone on the Borough Moor of Edinburgh, formerly stood another monolith termed the Camus Stone, but which, though it gave name to a neighbouring estate, and formed the march stone of its eastern bounds, was barbarously destroyed within memory of the present generation, to furnish materials for repairing the road! This name, whatever be its true derivation, is attached to numerous Scottish localities. Both in the example here referred to, in the Camus Stone of Kintore, Aberdeenshire, and in that near the village of Camustown, Forfarshire, vague tradition associated the stones with the name of a supposed Danish chief; but this is more probably the invention of modern topographers, than a genuine heirloom of popular tradition. The name of Combust figures among the list of Pictish kings as a contemporary of Marcus Antoninus Philosophus,[110] but the authority, though older, is not much more trustworthy; and we shall perhaps seek the meaning of the term more correctly in the correspondence of local peculiarities, as in Cambusbarron, Cambuslang, Cambusnethan, &c., where it is understood to indicate a promontory or bank inclosed by a crooked stream, from the Celtic, cam, crooked.[111] These Cambus-stones have all probably served as landmarks, or hoar stones; though answering also, it may be presumed, at times, like Laban and Jacob's Pillar, as the memorial of some high contract between friendly or rival chiefs.
Other stones, however, are associated with a variety of historical and legendary traditions, as the "Witch Stane" near Cairnbeddie, Perthshire, where, according to ancient local belief, Macbeth met by night with two celebrated witches to advise on the fate of his kingdom. It is fully as probable that this tradition may have existed in Shakspeare's time, as that it is derived from the marvellous conception of his great tragedy. When Cairnbeddie Mound was opened partially, about thirty years since, a quantity of very small iron horse shoes, with fragments of swords, and other weapons of the same metal, were found; so that it, doubtless, forms the tumulus on the site of some old and hard-fought battle-field, in which, perchance, the great usurper may have played his part. Another stone in the neighbouring parish of Meigle, a huge mass of unhewn trap, bears the name of "Macbeth's Stane," and various local traditions with which his name is associated, add to the probability of some true foundation for popular belief.
Evidence of the use of such rude columns as landmarks is frequently found of a comparatively recent date. The mention of standing stones, or circles, is not uncommon in charters and other deeds relative to the holding of courts and the boundaries of lands. More than one curious example of this occurs in the Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, as in the following, which also suffices to show the ancient application of the term standing stones:--"Thir are the boundis own my lord of Athollis syde, the stannande staine merkit like a horse-sho, and the dik passande fra the samme staine to the burg, and syne be zound the stripe beweste the smedy of Balmany." The Saxum Falconis, or "Hawk Stane," at St. Madoes, Perthshire, which stands on the marches of what is known to have been the ancient possessions of the Hays of Errol, and still bounds the parishes of St. Madoes and Inchture, is referred to by Boece as existing in his day, (1500,) and as having been set up immediately after the defeat of the Danes in the Battle of Luncarthy, fought circa A.D. 990. The victory is ascribed, according to a well-known tradition--still commemorated in the armorial bearings of the Hays--to the timely interference of a Scottish peasant and his two sons:--"Sone efter ane counsal was set at Scone, in the quhilk Hay and his sonnis war maid nobil, and dotad, for thair singular virtew provin in this feild, with sindry landis to sustene thair estait. It is said that he askit fra the King certane landis liand betwix Tay and Arole; and gat als mekil thairof as ane falcon flew of ane mannis hand, or scho lichtit. The falcon flew to ane toun four milis fra Dunde, called Rosse, and lichtit on ane stane, quhilk is yit callit The Falcon Stane; and sa he gat al the landis betwix Tay and Arole, six milis of lenth, and four of breid; quhilk landis ar yit inhabit be his posterite."[112]
The sacredness which naturally attached to landmarks, in early times, and of which we have remarkable evidence in the Old Testament references to them, was doubtless no less strongly felt in relation to all stones of memorial, the enduring parchments of an unlettered age. They seem accordingly to have been sometimes regarded, like the medieval altar, as the inviolable witness of any agreement. The following curious evidence of this feeling occurs in a deed in the possession of W. H. Fotheringham, Esq., dated at Kirkwall in 1438:--"Till all and synd lele folk in Cryste, to quhais knawledge yir pnt. wris. sal cum, Henry Randall, lawman of Orknay, John Naraldson, balze off Kirkwaw, Jamis off Lask, Greeting in Gode ... make kend that we the forsaide bystude saw and onherde, and for witnesse wes tane quhene yt John off Erwyne and Will. Bernardson swor on the Hirdmane Stein before owre Lorde ye Erle off Orknay and the gentiless off the cuntre, that thay bystude saw and onherde, and for witnesse wes tane quhene that Thos. Sincler, ye son off quhiln Davy Syncler, callit in ye vestre in Sant Mawing Kirk, John of Kirkness," &c. In this comparatively recent transaction we have probably a very accurate illustration of the ceremonial which accompanied the erection of a hoare-stone, or stone of memorial, whether as a landmark or the evidence of some solemn treaty. The document from which it is extracted has a further interest in connexion with early Scottish history. Its date is thirty years prior to the marriage of James III. of Scotland with Margaret of Denmark, when Orkney was first annexed to the Scottish Crown; yet it is written throughout in the Scottish tongue.
Of an entirely opposite character are the Cat Stanes found in various parts of Scotland, apparently deriving their name from the British Cad or the Celtic Cath, signifying a battle, and therefore marking the scene of some ancient conflict. In the immediate neighbourhood of the Camus Stone near Edinburgh, formerly stood two very large conical cairns, styled the Cat-stanes, until demolished by the same irreverent utilitarians who had found covetable materials in the rude memorial stone. Underneath the cairns were cists containing human skeletons and various bronze and iron weapons. Two iron spear-heads found in them are now preserved in the neighbouring mansion of Mortonhall; and according to the description of other relics formerly possessed by a neighbouring farmer, they would appear to have also contained celts and other weapons of bronze. A few yards to the north-west of the site which these cairns occupied, there still stands the Kel or Caiy Stone, a mass of the red sandstone of the district, measuring above eleven feet in height. On digging in the neighbourhood of this primitive monument a quantity of human bones have been found, irregularly interred, without cists or urns, and not far from it are still visible the rude earth-works of a British camp. Much more extensive intrenchments of an oval form existed in the immediate neighbourhood, prior to the construction of the new road, and are described by General Roy in tracing one of the Roman iters.[113] There is another standing-stone within the Mortonhall grounds, at about half a mile distant from the site of the Cat-stanes, and also two larger masses lying together, which are not improbably the remains of a ruined cromlech. Here, in all likelihood, has been the battle ground of ancient Scottish chiefs, contending, it may be, with some fierce invader. The locality is peculiarly suited for the purpose. It is within a few miles of the sea, and though inclosed in an amphitheatre of hills, it is the highest ground in the immediate neighbourhood, and the very spot on which a retreating host might be expected to make a stand ere they finally betook themselves to the neighbouring fastnesses of the Pentland Hills. A few miles to the westward of this is the oft-noted CATT STANE, in Kirkliston parish, on which the painful antiquary may yet decipher the imperfect and rudely lettered inscription--the work most probably of much younger hands than those that reared the mass of dark whinstone on which it is cut--IN [H]OC TVMVLO IACET VETTA . . VICTR . . About sixty yards to the west of the Cat-stone a large tumulus formerly stood, which was opened in 1824, and found to contain several complete skeletons, but nearly all traces of it have now disappeared.
The rearing of stones of memorial on the scenes of victory is a custom of many early nations, and one which has not even now entirely fallen into disuse. The Bauta-stein of Norway and Denmark corresponds in its signification with the Cat-stane of Scotland, nor are there wanting examples of Scottish monoliths surrounded like the Danish ones with a pile of small stones at their base. Such is the case with the CLACH STEIN at Bible in Lewis, and the remarkable CLACH AN DRUIDEAN, or Stone of the Druids, in the same island, which stands above sixteen feet high.
"The Gaelic people," says Chalmers,[114] "did sometimes erect memorial stones; which as they were always without inscription, might as well have not been set up." But independently of the fact that these monuments of the remote past have long since accomplished the original purpose of their erection, it is obvious that some of them can still furnish an intelligible response to those who ask, "What mean these stones?" Many of them, however, it is true, have waxed dumb in the lapse of ages, and hold a more mysterious silence than that which surrounded the long-guarded secrets of Egypt's memorial stones. Some of these are perhaps the last solitary column which marks the site where once the "Druid circle" and its mystic avenue covered the plain. Remote and widely severed stones may thus be parts of the same systematic design, as is rendered sufficiently probable when we remember that that of Avebury numbered even in the days of Stukeley six hundred and fifty stones, though then by no means perfect, and that that of Carnac in Brittany extends over an area of eight miles in length. So common are they still in Scotland that Chalmers dispenses with his usual laborious accumulation of references, and contents himself with this very comprehensive one: "See the Statistical Accounts everywhere!"
Other monoliths are probably the TANIST STONES,[115] where the new chief or king was elected, and sworn to protect and lead his people. One at least, the most famous of Scottish Tanist Stones, still exists, and mingles with the gorgeous rites of coronation services in Westminster Abbey the primitive elements of our most ancient popular elective monarchy. The celebrated Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny, is that which, according to Scottish chroniclers, Gathelus, the Spanish King, a contemporary of Romulus, sent with his son when he invaded Ireland; and on equally trustworthy authority it is affirmed to have been the veritable pillow of the patriarch Jacob, which he set up as a memorial stone, on the scene of his wondrous vision!
"A gret stane this Kyng than had, That fore this Kyngis sete wes made, And haldyne wes a gret Jowale Wytht-in the Kynryk of Spayne hale. This Kyng bad this Symon ta That stane, and in-tyl Yrland ga, And wyn that land and occupy, And halde that stane perpetually. Fergus Erc son fra hym syne Down discendand ewyn be lyne In to the fyve and fyfty gre, As ewyne recknand men may se, Broucht this Stane wytht-in Scotland, Fyrst quhen he come and wane that land. * * * * * Now will I the werd rehers, As I fynd of that Stane in wers; _Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocumque locatum Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem_."[116]
The Lia Fail is believed to have served for many ages as the coronation throne of the monarchs of Ireland; and according to Irish bardic traditions, to have borne testimony to the divine right of sovereignty by roaring beneath the legitimate monarch when seated on it at his inauguration! It was removed to Scotland, and deposited at Icolmkil or Iona, for the coronation of Fergus Erc, or Mac Eark, a prince of the blood royal of Ireland;[117] from which it was finally translated to the Abbey of Scone, when the Scottic kings had extended their sovereignty over the ancient kingdom of the Picts. In Scotland it bore the name of the "King's Stone," and was regarded as the national palladium, until Edward I. in 1296, ordered it to be conveyed to Westminster as an evidence of his absolute conquest of Scotland.[118] But the evidence failed, and the older prophecy holds good that wherever that stone rests princes of Scottish blood shall rule the land, though the Lia Fail no longer gives audible testimony to the legitimate heir. It can hardly fail to impress the thoughtful mind, as a singular link between eras so widely severed, not by time only but by every social and political change, that the rude Tanist Stone belonging to a period dimly cognizable in the remotest past, still forms a part of the coronation chair of the British sovereign in Westminster Abbey. The use of the Tanist Stone is, like so many other primitive customs, of Eastern origin, and traceable to a very remote era. Thus when Abimelech was made king, it was by the pillar which was in Shechem;[119] and when Jehoash was anointed king by Jehoiada, the king stood by a pillar, as the manner was.[120] The standing stone appears indeed to have been the most sacred attestation of every solemn covenant between contracting parties, including that between the elected chief or king and his people; and hence the super-addition of those peculiar virtues supposed to attach to the ancient Scottic Lia Fail.
One other stone is deserving of some note, from the vague records which tradition has preserved of its connexion with the rites of a long extinct creed. Mr. Wakeman remarks, in his Archæologia Hibernica,[121] "Perforated stones, very similar to the ordinary pillar stone, are found in many parts of Ireland, Scotland, and even, as appears from Mr. Wilford's Asiatic Researches, in India. Abroad as well as at home their origin is shrouded in the deepest obscurity, nor is it likely that the subject can ever be elucidated." They are by no means so common, however, as this would imply. At Applecross, in the west of Ross-shire, a perforated stone occupies the centre of a stone circle; and at Tormore, in the parish of Kilmorie, Buteshire, there is a celebrated monolithic circle, styled Siudhe choir Fhionn, or Fingal's cauldron seat, one of the columns of which is perforated, and is commemorated in old Highland traditions as the stone to which the Celtic hero was wont to tie his dog Bran. Immediately adjoining the circle are three huge unhewn columns, about fifteen feet in height above the surface of the moor. Along with these examples may be noted a curious group in the parish of Maddern, Cornwall, consisting of three stones, the centre one of which is pierced with a large circular hole, through which, Borlase informs us,[122] rheumatic patients were wont to crawl as a sovereign remedy for their disease. Perforated stones must once have been common in England, and probably in Scotland also, as the Anglo-Saxon laws repeatedly denounce similar superstitious practices; but they are now of the rarest occurrence. Tradition has preserved some curious associations with one of the most interesting Scottish examples, which may perhaps be thought to throw some doubtful light on the use to which such perforated pillars were devoted at a comparatively late period of our island history. The celebrated STONE OF ODIN, near the Loch of Stennis, in Orkney, which has had a new interest added to it by being interwoven with the romantic incidents of the "Pirate," was one of the remarkable monolithic group called The Stones of Stennis. It formed no part, however, either of the Great Ring of Brogar, or of the neighbouring circle of Stennis, but stood apart, to the north-east of the latter group; though it can scarcely be doubted that it bore some important relation to these ancient and mysterious structures. The Stone of Odin is described as standing about eight feet high, and perforated with an oval hole large enough to admit a man's head. A curious, though rudely executed bird's-eye view of the Stones of Stennis is given in the Archæologia Scotica,[123] from a drawing executed by the Rev. Dr. Henry, about the year 1780, and there a man and woman are seen interchanging vows, plighted by the promise of Odin, which Sir Walter Scott refers to as "the most sacred of northern rites yet practised among us." The vow was sworn while the engaging parties joined hands through the perforation in the stone; and though it is difficult to decide how much of the tradition may be ascribable to modern embellishment and the adaptation of a genuine heirloom of primitive superstition to the preconceived theories of local antiquaries, there cannot be a doubt of the popular sacredness attached to this sacramental stone in former times. An illustration of the practice from which this originated is supposed to be traceable in an ancient Norse custom, described in the Eyrbiggia Saga, by which, when an oath was imposed, he by whom it was pledged passed his hand, while pronouncing it, through a massive silver ring sacred to this ceremony.[124]
The solemnity attached to a vow ratified by so awful a pledge as this appeal to the Father of the Slain, the severe and terrible Odin, continued to maintain its influence on the mind till a comparatively recent date. Dr. Henry, writing in 1784, refers to the custom as having fallen into disuse within twenty or thirty years of the time he wrote, and adds, "this ceremony was held so very sacred in those times, that the person who dared to break the engagement was counted infamous, and excluded all society." Principal Gordon, of the Scots College, Paris, who visited Orkney in 1781, thus refers to a curious example, showing probably the latest traces of this venerable traditionary relic of Scandinavian superstition:[125]
"At some distance from the semicircle stands a stone by itself, eight feet high, three broad, nine inches thick, with a round hole on the side next the lake. The original design of this hole was unknown, till about twenty years ago it was discovered by the following circumstance: A young man had seduced a girl under promise of marriage, and she proving with child, was deserted by him. The young man was called before the Session; the elders were particularly severe. Being asked by the minister the cause of so much rigour, they answered, You do not know what a bad man this is; he has broke the promise of Odin. Being further asked what they meant by the promise of Odin, they put him in mind of the stone at Stenhouse, with the round hole in it, and added, that it was customary when promises were made, for the contracting parties to join hands through this hole; and promises so made were called the promises of Odin."[126]
It is possible that the awe which the vow of Odin so recently inspired may have originated in the use of the stone for more dreadful purposes than the most solemn contract, sealed with imprecations derived from a barbarous Pagan creed; though little value can be attached to another tradition, described by Dr. Henry as still existing in his time,--that human victims destined for sacrifice were bound to the perforated column, preparatory to their slaughter as an acceptable offering to the terrible god. Another stone, on the north side of the island of Shapinshay, bears the name of the Black Stone of Odin; but no definite associations are now attached to it, and its sole value is as the march stone between the grounds of two conterminous heritors.[127] A more trustworthy tradition ascribed peculiar virtues to the Stennis Stone, manifestly corresponding with those referred to by Borlase in connexion with one at Maddern, and denounced in ancient Anglo-Saxon laws. According to this a child passed through the hole would never shake with palsy in old age. The practice exhibits a sagacious anticipation of future ills, the hole being too small to admit of the remedy being made available when most required.
A view of this remarkable memorial of ancient manners and superstitious rites, is given in Lady Stafford's "Views in Orkney, and on the North-eastern Coast of Scotland," drawn in 1805, and has been copied as one of the illustrations for the Abbotsford edition of the Pirate. But the stone itself no longer exists. After having survived the waste of centuries, until it had nearly outlived the last traditionary remembrance of the strange rites with which it had once been associated, it was barbarously destroyed by a neighbouring farmer, in the year 1814, along with two stones of the adjacent semicircle. Had it not been for the interference of Mr. Malcolm Laing, the historian, the whole group of Stennis would have been broken down as building materials for the ignorant Goth's cow-sheds. The act was the less culpable, perhaps, as the perpetrator was a stranger who had only recently taken up his abode in Orkney. It affords proof, however, that the native reverence for the venerable memorial had not entirely disappeared, that its unfortunate destroyer's life was rendered miserable by the petty persecutions with which the natives sought to revenge the destruction of their sacramental stone. So far, indeed, was this manifestation of popular indignation carried, that various conspiracies are said to have been formed to injure him, and two different attempts were made to set fire to his dwelling and property;[128] a sufficiently manifest token that the old spirit of veneration for the stone of Odin was not unknown to the modern Orcadian.
A still more remarkable class of monumental stones remain to be described, including the singular sculptured pillars, peculiar, it is believed, to Scotland. But we have already trespassed on the relics of later eras, and these necessarily belong to a period long posterior to that when the rude aboriginal Caledonian possessed no other tools than the stone hammer and the flint chisel or arrow-head, with which to grave the memorial of his fame and the annals of his race.
In the investigations of the archæologist, even though devoted, as this inquiry is, to the examination of ancient memorials within an extremely circumscribed area, he frequently finds that he is dealing with the evidences of certain phases of progressive civilisation in the history of the race, rather than with mere national peculiarities. The farther research is pursued this becomes the more apparent, and we learn, without much surprise, from the recent invaluable researches in the valley of the Mississippi,[129] that the ancient tumuli of the American continent are found to contain, amid many relics peculiar to the new world, stone celts and hammers, flint and bone arrow and lance heads, and other primitive weapons and implements so precisely resembling those disinterred from the early British barrows, that the most experienced eye could hardly tell the one from the other. To conclude from this that we have found evidence of an affinity of race, or of mutual intercourse between the rude aborigines of Britain and America in that mysterious period of the long forgotten past, however plausible it might seem at first sight, would be to adopt a theory which the investigation of the arts of modern races, such as the natives of Polynesia, must at once dispel. The same correspondence of primitive weapons is found in the north of Europe, in the steppes of Asia, in the ancient tumuli near the Black Sea, and even mingling with the evidences of earliest civilisation on the banks of the Tigris and the Nile. We must look, therefore, for the means of accounting for such remarkable correspondence of primitive tools, to some cause operating naturally at a certain stage of development in the human mind. It is the first manifestation of man's intelligent instincts as a tool-using animal, and furnishes a singular evidence of the instinctive faculties which belong to him as well as to the lower animals, though few and uncertain traces of these remain distinguishable where civilisation has fostered the nobler faculty of reason, and brought it into healthy and vigorous play.
It is not unworthy of note, in the exhibition of a more advanced stage of the same development of features pertaining to the human mind in its progressive civilisation, that there seems also to have been an epoch in the early history of man, when what may be styled the monolithic era of art has been developed under the utmost variety of circumstances. In Egypt it was carried out, with peculiar refinement, by a people whose knowledge of sculpture and the decorative arts proves that it had its origin in a far deeper source than the mere barbarous love of vast and imposing masses. In Assyria, India, Persia, and throughout the Asiatic continent, this monolithic taste appears to have manifested itself among many independent and widely severed races. In Mexico and the central portions of the American continent, a people parted apparently by impassable oceans from the old world, have left enduring evidences of this psychological phenomenon; and in the north of Europe, under circumstances no less widely different from all these nations, numerous monolithic columns and groups attest the same pervading idea. In our own island, more especially, where now we are content to build a monumental obelisk, just as we do a cotton-mill chimney, with successive tiers of stone, we possess some of the most remarkable remains of this peculiar class. The destructive encroachments of civilisation, and the ruthless assaults of the quarrier and the builder, have done much to obliterate these singularly interesting memorials of primitive antiquity. Already the vast temple of Avebury has all but disappeared, like an old ripple-mark of the tide of time. But there still remain, in the huge cromlechs, circles, and standing stones scattered throughout the land, abundant evidence of the influence of the same peculiar taste on the early races of the British Isles, originating, as I conceive, in an unconscious aim at the expression of abstract power.
The convenient terms of Druid altars and temples have long supplied a ready resource for the absence of all knowledge of their origin or use. The cromlech has at length been restored to its true character as a sepulchral monument by the very simple process of substituting investigation for theory. But after the devotion of many learned and ponderous volumes to the attempted elucidation of Druidism, the subject has lost little of its original obscurity; and we shall follow a safer, if it be a less definite guide, in tracing the peculiar character of the so-called Druidical monuments to feelings which appear to have exercised so general an influence on the human race. The idea of the origin of these monolithic structures from some common source seems to have suggested itself to many minds. Colonel Howard Vyse, when describing the great hypæthral court, surrounded with colossal figures, which stands before the rock temple of Gerf Hossein, the ancient Tutzis, remarks:--"The massive architraves placed upon the top of these figures reminded me, like those at Sabooa, of Stonehenge; and it is not improbable that, together with religious traditions, the art of building temples may have even reached that place from Egypt."[130]
To speak, as some recent writers have done, as if the mechanical and engineering knowledge by which the Egyptians were able to quarry and erect their gigantic monoliths had become even a greater mystery to us than the hieroglyphic legends which they inscribed on them, is manifestly a hasty and altogether unfounded assumption. It is their taste, and not their skill, which is wanting. The modern eye is satisfied with the perfect proportions of the monumental column, without seeking the barbaric evidence of difficulties overcome implied in the lifting of it in one mass upon its pedestal. A few years since the workmen in Craigleith quarry, near Edinburgh, disengaged a mass of the fine sandstone of the district, capable of rivalling the colossal obelisks of Egypt; but the proprietor in vain advertised the feat, in the hope that some committee of taste would avail itself of the opportunity of once more erecting a British monolith of primitive mass; and he had at last to break it down into cubes adapted to the ordinary wants of the modern builder. When, however, such a feat has to be accomplished as the spanning of the Menai Straits with a railway viaduct, no lack of engineering skill is felt in coping with difficulties which may stand comparison with the most gigantic of the self-imposed feats of the old Egyptian builder.[131] We may fairly presume, therefore, that we have left the monolithic era behind us, not by the oblivion of former knowledge, but by the progress of the human mind beyond that stage of development when it finds its highest gratification in such displays of rude magnificence and vast physical power.
The Stones of Stennis, already referred to as the Orcadian Stonehenge, are unquestionably the most remarkable monolithic group in Scotland, and, indeed, if we except the great temple of Salisbury Plain, in the British Isles. Without entering meanwhile into any investigation of the evidence which various writers have derived from northern mythology or popular traditions, with a view to throw some light on the probable date of their origin, or the character of their builders, it furnishes a rational basis for the classification of such ancient monuments among the remains of the Primeval Period, that they exhibit no indication of having been hewn or shapen with tools. Unless the perforation of the stone of Odin be an exception, the columns have been erected just as they were dislodged from the earth; and we have only to account for their separation from the parent strata and their erection on the site which they still occupy. In this respect they correspond with the more ancient English temple of Avebury rather than with that of Stonehenge, which belongs to an era when efficient metallic tools, whether of bronze or iron, must have supplied the means of hewing the gigantic columns into some degree of uniformity, and fitting the lintels to the upright columns by means of the mortice and tennon still discoverable amid the ruins of that wonderful monument of ancient skill. We are not altogether without some evidence to induce the belief that the early Caledonian did dislodge and cleave into amorphous columns the unquarried rocks with which his native soil abounded, when armed with no fitter tool than the stone wedge and hammer. The Rev. James Little, in furnishing Sir John Sinclair with an account of the antiquities of the parish of Southwick, in Kirkcudbright, mentions the discovery, on the estate of Southwick, "in the middle of a large granite stone, when blasted with gunpowder, in a socket exactly fitted to it, of a piece of the same kind of substance, smooth and polished, in form somewhat resembling a rude hatchet, about nine inches long. The virtuosi to whose inspection it was submitted did not hesitate immediately to pronounce it to be a hatchet which had been used by the Druids in performing sacrifices; which conjecture they imagined warranted by the vestiges of a Druidical temple very near where it was found."[132] The reverend Statist rather inclines to regard it as a lusus naturæ. A few years later another was found, under similar circumstances, in a cavity of an enormous mass of stone, on the farm of Mains, near Dumfries. It was also of polished granite; and from the outline of it in the Archæologia, no doubt can be entertained of its being a genuine stone wedge or celt.[133] Still it is not meant to assume from this that all such monuments were erected prior to the introduction of metals, but only that they indicate an origin coeval with the state of civilisation in which the use of metallic implements was, at best, but imperfectly known, and when the massive size of these rude unhewn monoliths abundantly satisfied the human mind in its desire for a visible shrine adequate to the awful mysteries shadowed forth in the heathen mythology.
The site of the celebrated Orkney group is perhaps little less remarkable than the venerable monuments to which it owes its name. A long and narrow neck of land separates the Loch of Stennis, a salt-water lake into which the tide rises and falls, from the fresh waters of the Loch of Harray, save at the narrow strait of Brogar, where at times the tidal wave mingles with the tideless waters of Harray; and on this, the great circle or Ring of Brogar, as it is most commonly styled, is reared. Judging from the regularity with which such of the stones as still remain are disposed, the number of columns originally forming the circle appears to have been sixty, on the assumption that they were placed at nearly equal distances apart. Of these sixteen remained in situ in 1792, and eight lay prostrate near their original sites; but now only twenty-three stones remain, ten of which are prostrate, and the broken stumps of a few more serve to indicate the places they once occupied. The whole is inclosed by a deep trench, except at two opposite points, where a level break occurs, affording the means of entrance and exit. The diameter of the great circle, from the inner edge of the trench, measures 366 feet. From the eastern entrance it is possible that an avenue of stones may have once led to the Bridge of Brogar, as the stepping-stones are styled by which the shallow channel between the Lochs of Harray and Stennis is crossed. On the eastern side of the channel one column still remains, bearing the name of the Watch Stone; derived apparently from its position on the brink of the ford commanding the passage between the great circle and the opposite shore, but which may possibly be the only relic of the avenue once connecting the circles on each side of the loch. The smaller group is now frequently designated, from its crescent form, the temple of the moon, and the larger circle that of the sun; but there can be no doubt that these are quite modern and spurious designations. Stennis Circle, as the smaller group is properly termed, is situated on a nearly level piece of ground, and its semicircular outline is further indicated by an inclosing mound of earth, presenting its opening to the south; whereas the larger circle is environed only by a fosse. This group was composed, at no very remote period, of seven or eight stones, but no doubt can be entertained that the figure was originally a circle, inclosing with its vallum, a large cromlech, the ruins of which still remain within the area. It is described by Wallace in 1700 as "a round set about with high smooth stones or flags;"[134] so that it would appear to have been complete at that comparatively recent period. It stood upon a raised circular platform, part of which still remains about three feet above the surrounding level. Beyond this is the embankment, forming a circle, the radius of which, measured from its outer edge, is 117 feet. The radius of the circle, on the circumference of which the stone columns were placed, is about fifty-two feet; and judging from the space between those still standing, twelve stones may be supposed to have completed the circle. But though so small a group when compared with the Ring of Brogar, its columns are fully double the average height of the great circle, and it must have presented, when perfect, a far more magnificent and imposing aspect. It is painful to think that within our own time these most interesting memorials of an era far beyond the date of written records have fallen a prey to ignorance, in that dangerous transition state when the trammels of superstition are broken through without being replaced by more elevated principles of veneration. An intelligent native of Orkney, who appears to have left his home about 1789, remarks in his MS. notes accompanying a valuable donation of books relating to the northern islands presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland:--"If Mr. Daniell's sketch of the Stones of Stennis (taken in 1818) be at all accurate, many of them have disappeared, and others fallen to the ground, since I can remember."[135] It was in the immediate neighbourhood of the smaller circle of Stennis that the Stone of Odin stood, completing, along with the adjacent earth-works alluded to in a former chapter, a group of primitive monuments, which, though inferior in magnitude to the vast temples of Wiltshire, or of Carnac in Brittany, are scarcely surpassed in interest even by these remarkable monuments.
I am indebted to Lieutenant Thomas, R.N., to whose liberal communications of the result of his observations in Orkney I have already referred, for careful observations and measurements made by him on the Stones of Stennis, of which the following are the most important results:--
The Great Circle of Stennis, or Ring of Brogar, is a deeply entrenched circular space, containing almost two acres and a half of superficies, of which the diameter is 366 feet. Around the circumference of the area, but about thirteen feet within the trench, are the erect stones, standing at an average distance of eighteen feet apart. They are totally unhewn, and vary considerably in form and size. The highest stone was found to be 13.9 feet above the surface, and, judging from some others which have fallen, it is sunk about eighteen inches in the ground. The smallest stone is less than six feet, but the average height is from eight to ten. The breadth varies from 2.6 to 7.9 feet, but the average may be stated at about five feet, and the thickness about one foot--all of the old red sandstone formation.
The trench around the area is in good preservation. The edge of the bank is still sharply defined, as well as the two foot-banks, or entrances, which are placed exactly opposite to each other. They have no relation to the true or magnetic meridian, but are parallel to the general direction of the neck of land on which the circle is placed. The trench is twenty-nine feet in breadth, and about six in depth, and the entrances are formed by narrow earth-banks across the fosse.
The surface of the inclosed area has an average inclination to the eastward. It is highest on the north-west quarter; and the extreme difference of level is estimated to be from six to seven feet. The trench has the same inclination, and therefore could never be designed to hold water.
DIMENSIONS OF THE RING OF BROGAR.
Radius to outer edge of fosse, 212.2 feet. Radius to inner edge of fosse, 183.2 " Radius of circle on which the stones are placed, 170.0 " Distance of pillars from edge of fosse, 13.2 " Breadth of fosse, 29.0 " Depth of fosse, average, 6.0 " Distance of columns apart, average equal to 17.8 " breadth of causeways, Highest column, 13.9 " Lowest column, 5.9 " Average height of columns, 9.0 " Broadest column, stump only remaining, 7.3 " Narrowest column, 1.6 " Average breadth, 5.0 " Average thickness, 1.0 "
The neighbourhood of Stennis seems to have been consecrated ground to the ancient Orcadians. Within no great distance there are two circles of standing stones, two others all the remaining stones of which are prostrate, and four single standing stones, besides about twenty tumuli of various forms and sizes.
It was long the fashion with antiquaries to receive as an established and altogether incontrovertible position the Druidical origin of all symmetrical groups of standing stones in the British Isles. The more careful researches of later writers into the early history of the Orkney and Shetland Isles, and of their intimate connexion with Scandinavia prior to the Christian era, have led to a revision of this opinion, and to an almost universal abandonment of a Druidical for a Scandinavian origin of the great Temple of Stennis, and the numerous other corresponding structures in the north of Scotland and the Western Isles. Barry, Hibbert, Scott, and Macculloch have each assailed the old Druidical fancies with considerable learning and ability. "Dr. Macculloch," says Dr. Hibbert, "has wielded the hammer of Thor with very signal success in aid of the demolition of the Druidic theory." But notwithstanding so powerful an array of authorities in support of this newer line of argument, I venture to think, that when the exclusive Scandinavian theory shall have been demolished with equally signal success, we shall be nearer the truth than has been yet attained. The common Gaelic phrase--Am bheil thu dol do'n chlachan,--Are you going to the stones? by which the Scottish Highlander still inquires at a neighbour if he is bound for church, seems in itself no doubtful tradition of ancient worship within the monolithic ring. Yet it has already been shewn that some of these were not temples but sepulchral monuments; nor is their uniformity sufficiently marked to prove a common origin for all. Sir Walter Scott remarks, in his Abstract of the Eyrbiggia Saga:[136]--"The Temple of Thor is described as a circular range of upright stones, within which one more eminent marked the Stone of Thor, where human victims were immolated to the Thunderer, by breaking or crushing the spine. And this description may confute those antiquaries who are disposed to refer such circles exclusively to the Celtic tribes, and their priests, the Druids." Dr. Hibbert has quoted this paragraph as a refutation of those who would contend that the Temples of Orkney had been used by Celtic tribes, before they were occupied and dedicated anew by later Scandinavian worshippers. But it unfortunately happens in this, as in too many other instances, that the "Abstract" furnishes a very partial rendering of the original saga; where the Temple of Thor is described as a vast inclosed edifice, with chambers constructed of wood, and a chancel or sacrarium specially dedicated to the Deity, of which the stone circle formed only one of its complicated features.[137] Doubtless in some at least of the monolithic groups still standing, we see but the skeleton of structures which have outlived many no less indispensable features of the original plan, formed of more perishable materials. Modern agricultural operations have occasionally brought to light very obvious evidences of this. An intelligent observer who resided on the spot, and closely watched the operations of the workmen employed in trenching and levelling the site of a "Druidical Circle" on Donside, in the parish of Tullynessle, Aberdeenshire, has furnished the following account of their disclosures:--"The upright stones were mostly gone; but it was evident that they had inclosed a circle of about fifty feet diameter. The ground on which the temple stood was sloping, and within the circle it had been levelled by removing the earth on the upper side, so as to present a bank, nearly perpendicular, of not less than five feet, gradually decreasing to the east or lower part, when it became level. The upright stones were on the top of the bank. From the circle, in a south-east direction, a paved road could be traced to the distance of at least six hundred yards through a bog, which at the farther end was about six yards wide, but nearly twenty yards wide when it approached within fifty yards of the circle, and here the paving was covered with ashes. The stones were not squared, but very neatly fitted into each other."[138] In the course of these operations two curious stone vessels were found, hereafter described, one of which is now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. But the differences are so striking among many of the Scottish monolithic groups, that we look in vain for evidences of uniformity of faith or object in their builders. Some are single circles, others several concentric circles. There are ovals, ellipses, and semicircles, and even cruciform groups, which a hasty generalizer might accept as an evidence of primitive Christian art. But one thing is common to the whole, and is found to characterize similar structures throughout Europe and Asia--and that is the huge unhewn monolithic columns, the evidence not of one creed, but of one remarkable phase of the human mind, the influence of which has long since disappeared. Diverse as were the Celtic and Scandinavian creeds, their temples were probably of similar character; and the rude Norsemen who possessed themselves of the Orkney Islands in the ninth century, found far less difficulty in adapting the Temple of Stennis to the shrine of Thor, than the Protestants of the sixteenth century had to contend with when they appropriated the old Cathedral of St. Magnus to the rites of Presbyterian worship. It is unquestionably opposed to all probability that the Great Circle of Stennis, with its grand but rude monoliths, was the work of the Norse rovers of the ninth century, seeing we have good reason to believe that the Christian missionaries of Iona, or the disciples of St. Servanus, had long before waged successful war with the Pagan creed of the native Orcadians. But the question of Scandinavian origin is fortunately put to rest, at least in the case of this the most remarkable of all the Scottish temple groups. Professor Munch of Christiania, who visited this country in 1849, with a view to investigate the traces of Norwegian intercourse with Scotland, was gratified by the discovery that the name of Havardsteigr, which was conferred on the scene of Earl Havard's slaughter by his nephew, about the year 970, is still applied among the peasantry to the promontory of Stennis; the Stones of which we may well believe were grey with the moss of centuries ere the first Norwegian prow touched the shores of Pomona.[139] No direct reference to Stennis occurs in the Orkneyinga Saga, but the remarkable passage referred to is to be found in that of Olaf Trygvesson, where it is said:--"Havard was then at Steinsnes, in Rossey. There was meeting and battle about Havard, and it was not long ere the Jarl fell. The place is now called Havardsteigr." So was it called in the tenth century, and so, Mr. George Petrie writes me, it is still occasionally named by the peasantry at the present day.
A few examples of the most remarkable monolithic structures of the Scottish mainland may be noted here. Careful and minute accounts have already been furnished of those of Inverness-shire by Mr. George Anderson in the Archæologia Scotica;[140] and of those of Aberdeenshire, Argyleshire, and various other Scottish districts, in a series of illustrated papers in the Archæologia.[141] The varieties apparent in their grouping and structure are such as may well justify the conclusion that instead of being the temples of a common faith, they are more probably the ruins of a variety of edifices designed for diverse purposes, and it may be even for the rites of rival creeds. This at least is certain, that the latest if not the only unquestionable evidence of their use which we possess is not as religious temples but as courts of law and battle-rings, wherein the duel or judicial combat was fought, though this doubtless had its origin in the invariable union of the priestly and judicial offices in a primitive state of society. The several concentric circles so frequently characterizing them, add to the probability of their adaptation to the purpose of judicial or deliberative assemblies. Such is one of the most common marks of the Law Tings of Orkney and Shetland, and of the Isle of Man. "Not unfrequently the fences of a ting were concentric; the intent of which was to preserve among the different personages of the ting a proper distinction of rank. The central area was always occupied by the laugman, and 'those who stood with him;' and the outer spaces by the laugrettmen, out of whom the duradom was selected, the contending parties, and the compurgators."[142] Mr. George Petrie has called my attention to several evidences of this in relation to the Orkney circles, and no less remarkable proofs appear in various chartularies and other authentic records, showing at how early a period all ideas of association with the rites of Pagan superstition had been lost. Thus in the Aberdeen Chartulary a notice occurs of a court held "apud stantes lapides de Rane en le Garuiach," on the 2d May 1349, when William de St. Michael was summoned to answer for his forcible retention of certain ecclesiastical property;[143] and again in the Chartulary of Moray the Bishop of Moray is summoned, in the year 1380, to attend the court of Alexander, Lord of Regality of Badenoch, and son of Robert II., to be holden "apud le standand stanys de la Rathe de Kyngucy estir." Part of the business of the court was to inquire into the titles by which the Bishop held certain of his lands, and as he is summoned as a vassal, and had to protest against the proceedings, he is described as standing "extra circum."[144]
The temple group at Leuchar, in the parish of Skene, Aberdeenshire, consists of a circle measuring internally thirty-four feet in diameter, composed of eight large stones disposed at regular intervals. In the centre of this another circle is formed of smaller stones, measuring about thirteen feet in diameter, and around it six smaller stone circles are disposed, two of them touching one another, and the remainder separated by regular intervals. At a short distance from this group, nine other circles occur, similar to the smaller ones, and two large cairns occupy commanding sites in the neighbourhood. Other examples of combinations of circles somewhat resembling this have been noted; and many of the larger ones have a stone laid flat-ways in the circumference of the circle, which is usually designated the altar stone. Concentric circles are still more common. The great temple or Clachan of Inches, situated about two miles south of Inverness, is the largest and most entire in that part of the country. It consists of two circles, the inner one of which is composed of twenty-eight stones, and measures about forty feet in diameter. The outer circle is now only partially traceable. Fifteen stones remain, including one nine feet in height above ground, and the diameter measures above seventy feet. Another remarkable group occurs about half-a-mile eastward from a stone avenue near the farm of Milltown of Culloden, which may possibly have been once connected with it. Three concentric circles are nearly united to an adjoining one which incloses a group of five cairns, or what might be more accurately described as one gigantic cruciform cairn. The contents of this singular structure would probably amply repay the archæologist for the labour and cost of exploration. In 1824 Henry Jardine, Esq., King's Remembrancer, exhibited at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, a sceptre or rod of office, dug up in the circle of Leys, Inverness-shire. It consisted of a rod of pure gold, bent at top like an Episcopal crozier or Roman lituus, which it is not unreasonable to imagine may have been borne by some ancient arch-priest or king in the great assemblies of his people. A golden funicular rod made of three pieces twisted together, and with a solid hook at each end, was dug up in County Antrim in 1808.[145]
Monolithic groups abound in many parts of the mainland as well as in the Western Isles, but nearly all characterized by some peculiarity. Some are inclosed by a trench, others by a fosse; and frequently the space between the great stones is filled up by an earthen wall. In several districts in the south of Scotland single and double ovals are found, and fragments of ancient groups, more or less imperfect, are common throughout the country. The woodcut represents an imposing monolithic group in the neighbourhood of Pitlochrie, Perthshire. One of the great level Highland moors stretches away beneath the eye, like a dark waveless lake, contrasting with the distant heights, among which Benlawers rears its pyramidal summit to an elevation of upwards of 4000 feet above the level of the sea. Amid this wild Highland landscape the huge standing stones, grey with the moss of ages, produce a singularly grand and imposing effect; and from the idea of lofty height which the distant mountains suggest, they convey a stronger impression of gigantic proportions than is produced even by the first sight of the giant monoliths of Salisbury Plain.
The most remarkable of the Hebridean groups is that of Classernish, near Loch Roag, in the island of Lewis. It consists of a circle sixty-three feet in diameter, with a column in the centre measuring thirteen feet in height, and an avenue of similar stones stretching to the north, while single rows placed towards the other cardinal points complete the cruciform arrangement of the whole. Its greatest length is stated by Logan as 558 feet, and by Macculloch as about 680 feet; but many of the stones are nearly buried in the moss, so that its extreme limits are very imperfectly defined. It appears to have consisted originally of about seventy columns, and smaller circles in the same neighbourhood attest the ancient presence of a numerous population on the long desolate waste, where the grey columns of Classernish are still imposing in their ruins. The magnitude and singularity of this monolithic group have excited the enthusiasm of Celtic antiquaries, some of whom have discovered in it the very hyperborean temple of the ancients, in which, according to Eratosthenes, Apollo hid his golden arrow![146] But perhaps the most interesting of all the temple groups of the Hebrides, is one which furnishes the same indisputable evidence of remote antiquity to which repeated reference has been made. It may perhaps be thought a more potent weapon even than the hammer of Thor, in demolishing the exclusively Scandinavian theory of their origin. In the same island of Lewis a large stone circle may be seen, which within memory of the present generation was so nearly buried in the moss that the surrounding heather and rushes sufficed to conceal the stones. It has now been cleared out to a depth of fifteen feet, by the annual operations of the islanders, in cutting peats for their winter fuel, and as yet without exposing the bases of any of the columns. My authority for this interesting fact is Dr. Macdonald, a gentleman who resided for some years as a medical practitioner on the island, during which time he was accustomed to watch the progressive exhumation of the long-buried Celtic temple with mingled feelings of interest and curiosity. But this is not a solitary example. On various parts of the mainland monolithic groups still remain partially entombed in the slowly accumulating mosses, the growth of unnumbered centuries. On one of the wildest moors in the parish of Tongland, Kirkcudbrightshire, a similar example may be seen, consisting of a circle of eleven stones, with a twelfth of larger dimensions in the centre, the summits of the whole just appearing above the moss. Adjoining the group there stands a large cairn with its base doubtless resting on the older soil beneath. With such evidence at command, it is manifest that however vague many of the speculations may be which have aimed at the elucidation of rites and opinions of the Celtic Druids, and have too often substituted mere theory for true archæological induction, we shall run to an opposite error in ascribing to a Scandinavian origin structures manifestly in existence long prior to the earliest Norwegian or Danish, or even perhaps Celtic, descent on our coasts.
The Scottish cromlech, which belongs to the same period as the standing stones and circular temples, has already been referred to under its true head of Sepulchral Memorials; it need only be added, that some at least of the smaller stone circles appear to belong to the same class, and to have been only the encircling monument that marked out the spot consecrated by the dust of some mighty chief, or formed subsidiary features of a group in which the ruined cromlech still forms the most prominent object. But the idea of a temple has become so indelibly associated even in the minds of intelligent antiquaries with the circle of standing stones, that even when such circles are found in groups, the convenient name is still retained. "Nearly in a line between East and West Law, Fifeshire," says Lieutenant-Colonel Miller, in his inquiry respecting the site of Mons Grampius, "there are no less than eight Druidical temples." To account for such a state of things we shall next be compelled to assume that old Scottish Druidism was split into even more rival sects than modern Scottish Presbytery, and perhaps be taught to decipher from the symbolism of the rude monoliths, their number, or their orientation, the degree of heresy that characterized each Druidical conventicle! Such speculations cannot, after all, surpass the extravagant and baseless theories of Sabaism, fire-worship, Druidism, astrology, &c., which have been already deduced from the number of stones, the direction of the entrance, or other equally slight and constantly varying elements of argument.
One other and still more remarkable, class of works remains to be noted: These are the Rocking Stones, which are found among the ancient monuments of England and Ireland, as well as on various parts of the Continent, and are no less frequent in Scotland. No evidences of ancient skill or of primitive superstitious rites are more calculated to awaken our astonishment and admiration of their singular constructors. There is so strange a mixture of extreme rudeness and great mechanical skill in these memorials of the remote past, that they excite greater wonder and awe in the thoughtful mind than even the imposing masses inclosing the sacred area of Stonehenge or the circle of Stennis. It would, I imagine, prove a much more complicated problem for the modern engineer to poise the irregular and amorphous mass on its point of equilibrium, than to rear the largest monolithic group that now stands to attest the mechanical power which the old builders could command.
It has indeed been supposed by some that the origin of Rocking Stones is traceable entirely to natural causes, and this opinion is now adopted by Worsaae and other Danish and Norwegian antiquaries.[147] Such a theory, however, seems to stand fully as much in need of proof as that which regards them as stones of ordeal, by which the Druid or Scandinavian priests were wont to test the guilt or innocence of the accused. Apollonius Rhodius speaks of rocking stones placed on the apex of tumuli, and Mr. Akerman refers, in his Archæological Index, to the famous Agglestone Barrow, in the island of Purbeck, as having been similarly surmounted.[148] One such undoubted example would abundantly suffice to overthrow this geological theory of natural formation. It is a less conclusive, though not altogether valueless argument, that some of the most remarkable logan stones of Scotland are found in the immediate vicinity of other undoubted primitive stone-works. The great rocking stone in the parish of Kirkmichael, Perthshire, for example, has already been referred to as one of a large group of stone circles, cairns, and other monuments of the same class. Its form is that of a rhombus, of which the greater diagonal is seven feet, and the less five feet, and its weight is calculated at about three tons and half a hundredweight. On pressing down either of the extreme corners, a rocking motion is produced, which increases until the arc through which its longest radius moves exceeds a foot. When the pressure has been continued so as to produce this effect, the stone makes from twenty-six to twenty-eight vibrations from side to side after it is withdrawn. A much larger rocking stone is situated on the Hill of Mealyea, in the parish of Kells, Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. Its weight is estimated at from eight to ten tons, and it is so nicely poised that it can be set in motion with the pressure of the finger. To this the name of the Logan Stone is popularly applied in the Stewartry, therein corresponding with the term used in Cornwall and other districts of England. A second rocking stone formerly existed on the same range of hills, but it was thrown down about thirty years since. Others remain in the parish of Dron, Perthshire, on a hill in the neighbourhood of the manse; in the parish of Abernethy, celebrated for its venerable ecclesiastical relics; and on the north side of the Cuff Hill, in the parish of Beith, Ayrshire; but none of them present any very special peculiarity worthy of note. It is not designed to offer a new theory here concerning the purpose of these singular "Stones of Ordeal;" nor even to pronounce on the certainty of their artificial origin; but I cannot help thinking it opposed to every doctrine of probabilities, that nature in the course of her ceaseless operations of denudation and attrition should in so many instances have chanced to wear away an amorphous rock so as to leave it poised in its centre of gravity on a single point. So numerous are the examples of rocking stones, that those who assign to them a natural origin would seem justified in anticipating the discovery of some unknown law of nature tending to such a result. But even if this extravagant doctrine of their origin is adopted, the rocking stones will still justly come within the range of archæological studies, as it can hardly admit of a doubt that they were objects of reverent estimation by the old monolithic builders. It is rare to find them far removed from a stone circle or other primitive structure, which may indeed have owed its erection to the prior existence of the rocking stone, but would more naturally suggest the old conclusion that also originated in the same laborious contrivance and skill which reared the ponderous dolmens, cromlechs, and monolithic groups already described.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. iv. p. 546.
[108] Archæologia, vol. xxv. p. 24. References to such landmarks are not uncommon in ancient charters. Notice of certain bound stones, at Stansfield, Staffordshire, occurs in a deed dated 6 Henry VII., ibid. vol. ii. p. 359, and similar allusions are common in the Scottish chartularies.
[109] Joshua xv. 6; xviii. 17; Deut. xix. 14; Prov. xxii. 28, &c.
[110] Wyntoun's Cronyklis, book v. chap. vii. fol. 88.
[111] Gael. cam; Gr. καμψος; Lat. curvus; Gael. camus, a bay. The prefix cam, or crooked, enters into many Gaelic compounds and proper names.
[112] Bellenden's Boece, b. xi. chap. viii.
[113] Roy's Military Antiquities, p. 103.
[114] Caledonia, vol. iii. p. 233.
[115] Gael. Tanaiste, a thane or lord, the next heir to an estate.
[116] Wyntownis Cronykil, book iii. chap. ix.
[117] Transac. Royal Irish Academy, vol. xviii. p. 159. Dr. Petrie challenges the pedigree of the Scottish Lia Fail, and even goes some length to establish the reputation of a stone at Tara as the genuine one, but the Scottish stone has too faithfully fulfilled its character as the Stone of Destiny to admit of any such unaccredited rival!
[118] Vide Hailes' Annals, note, vol. ii. p. 242.
[119] Judges ix. 6.
[120] 2 Kings xi. 14.
[121] Archæol. Hibern. p. 19.
[122] Borlase, p. 177, Plate XIV.
[123] Archæol. Scot. vol iii. p. 122.
[124] Eyrbiggia Saga. Abstract Illust. of Northern Antiquities, p. 479.
[125] Sir Walter Scott speaks of this ceremony as confined to the lower classes, at the time of his writing the "Pirate;" but this is contradicted by the statement of Dr. Henry, and there is every reason to believe that it had fallen at a much earlier period into disuse.
[126] Archæol. Scot. vol. i. p. 263.
[127] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xvii. p. 235.
[128] Peterkin's Notes on Orkney, p. 21.
[129] Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. i.
[130] Pyramids of Gizeh, vol. i. p. 54.
[131] The Menai tubes, composed of wrought-iron plates, measure each 1524 feet in length, and the weight of the whole is estimated at 10,540 tons. This enormous structure had to be raised a height of 100 feet, and thrown over an arm of the sea 1100 feet in width, and navigable by the largest ships.
[132] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. xvii. p. 110.
[133] Archæologia, vol. vii. p. 414.
[134] Wallace's Orkney, p. 53.
[135] A. Z., a native of Orkney, resident in London, who under this title presented to the Society from time to time a curious and valuable collection of books relating to the Orkney and Shetland Islands, accompanied with copious MS. notes, some of which contain touching allusions to the fond recollections cherished by him of his native place.
[136] Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 480.
[137] The following is the passage to which Sir Walter Scott refers:--"Visitur ibi hodiedum circulus concessus judicialis intra quem homines, Diis victima fieri jubebantur. Eminensque in isto circulo Saxum Thoris, in quo hominibus sacrificio destinatis terga confracta sunt, quodque sanguinem adhuc colorem conspiciendum præbet," &c. (Eyrbiggia Saga. G. J. Thorkelin, 1787. P. 27.) But a much more minute account is given in an earlier portion of the Saga, where Thorolf ascertains the destined site of the new temple by casting its wooden pillars into the sea, and accepting as the sacred spot a promontory to which they were borne by the tides. This is the description of the erection, which it will be seen is something different from a mere circle of stones:--"At Hofsvog he caused a temple to be erected, a house of vast magnitude, with doors in the side wall, somewhat near to either extremity. Within the doors were the pillars of the chief seat, secured with nails, and called sacred or divine. In the interior another chamber was constructed in the shape which the chancels of churches now have, in the middle of the pavement of which stood the pulvinar, as well as the altar," &c. Vide Ibid. p. 11.
[138] MS. Letter, John Stuart, Esq., Advocate, Aberdeen, 1888. Libr. Soc. Antiq. Scot.
[139] The name Stennis, of Norwegian origin, was obviously the apposite description suggested to the first Scandinavian voyagers by the appearance of the singular tongue of land, crowned by its monolithic circle; but the death of Earl Havard, as mentioned in the Northern Sagas, conferred on it new associations and a corresponding name. Professor Munch, whose natural bias as a Norwegian might have inclined him to claim for his countrymen the erection of the Great Scottish Circle, remarks, in a recent letter to me:--"Stennis is the old Norn Steinsnes, that is, 'the promontory of the stones;' and that name it bore already when Havard fell, in the beginning of the island, being Scandinavian. This shows that the Scandinavian settlers found the stones already standing;--in other words, that the standing stones belonged to the population previous to the Scandinavian settlement."
[140] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 211.
[141] Archæologia, vol. xxii. p. 55; vol. xxv. p. 614, &c.
[142] Hibbert on the Tings of Orkney and Shetland. Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 141.
[143] Regist. Episcop. Aberdon. vol. i. p. 79.
[144] Regist. Episcop. Morav. p. 184.
[145] Archæologia, vol. xvi. p. 353.
[146] Logan's Scottish Gael, vol. ii. p. 322; Macculloch's Highlands and Isles, vol. iii. p. 232.
[147] Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, p. 110.
[148] Archæol. Index, p. 34.
VI. WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS
The singular correspondence between many of the weapons and implements of the Stone Period, in almost every quarter of the globe, has already been referred to; but there are not wanting many others presenting such national and local peculiarities as are worthy of careful noting and comparison. In this respect much still remains to be done for Scottish Archæology. A far more abundant store of materials, and a much larger class of intelligent and educated observers are required, before the subject can be placed in its true light as an elementary basis from whence to deduce the legitimate inferences involved in this branch of science. It will meanwhile help towards the establishment of a fixed nomenclature and the basis of more extended classification, as observers increase, to exhibit at one view the chief known varieties of the weapons and implements of the Scottish Stone Period.
The rude and unshapely fragments of flint known by the name of Flint Flakes, and now recognised as specimens of the first stages of weapon manufacture of the period to which they belong, have only very recently fully attracted the attention of archæologists. The merit in this, as in so many other important elementary principles of the science, is due to the intelligence and sagacity of the antiquaries of Copenhagen, and the admirable facilities afforded by the liberality of the Danish Government. The flakes of flint, which are met with in considerable abundance, appear to have been struck off from a solid mass. They are ordinarily found from about one to six inches long, and frequently present a curved form, it being apparently a property of flint to flake off in this manner. Sometimes they occur in the simplest state; in other cases they are partially reduced to their intended form. But rude as they are, they are of the utmost value to us, from the insight which is thereby obtained into the process of manufactory of the primitive lance and arrow-head. It is obvious, from the frequent discovery of such among sepulchral deposits, that considerable value was attached to them; nor must we overlook the fact, that while flint is found in the greatest abundance both in Denmark and the south of England, there are many parts of Scotland where it is scarcely to be met with. Here, therefore, we discover the first traces of primitive trading and barter. The flint flakes were, in fact, the raw material, which had to be imported from other districts before the hunter of the Stone Period could supply himself with the indispensable requisites for the chase. A few examples will suffice to shew the abundance of such materials, and the circumstances under which they are found, though it will readily be believed that it is only rarely that their occurrence is noted, or falls under the observation of those who consider them of the slightest value.
In one of the cases in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland there is a skull found in an ancient cist, on the farm of Clashfarquhar, parish of Banchory-Devenich, Aberdeenshire, in 1822. It is chiefly curious from having on the crown of the head a hole nearly circular, and rather more than an inch in diameter, which there can be little doubt was occasioned by the death-blow. The size and cerebral development of the head nearly resembles the usual character of skulls found in the earliest cists; and it is not difficult to conceive of the wound having been inflicted with the narrow end of a stone celt. In each corner of the cist a few flint flakes were carefully piled up into a little heap. Alexander Thomson, Esq. of Banchory, remarks of them, in a letter which accompanied the donation of the skull:--"They are very proper for being made into arrow-heads, but none of them appear to have been wrought."[149] Similar relics of early art have been noted at various times in the same district of the country:--"On the alluvial soil near the sea," remarks the author of the New Statistical Account of Belhelvie, "there is a bed of yellow flints, in which a number of very well formed arrow-heads are frequently found;" and in no part of Scotland are these primitive relics more abundant than in the landward districts of Aberdeenshire. In the large cairn of Menzie, on Cairn Moor, Buchan, there was found, in a stone cist, "along with earth and bones, a dart-head of yellow flint, most perfectly shaped, and a little block, also of yellow flint, as if intended to furnish the deceased with more darts, should he have occasion for them on the passage."[150] In 1821 several flint flakes, and imperfectly formed flint implements, were found, along with two perfect arrow-heads of the same material, in an urn containing incinerated bones, on the estate of Closeburn, Dumfriesshire. The urn, and several of the half-formed flints, are now in the Scottish Museum. A similar deposit was discovered only last year (1849) by workmen engaged in digging for stones to build a march dyke between the farm of Swinie and an adjoining one on the neighbouring estate of Wells, Roxburghshire. There were four cairns, two of which, on being demolished, disclosed cists containing urns, and beside them a quantity of flint flakes of various sizes, several of which are now in my possession. Similar examples are of frequent occurrence, but one other may be noted from the unusual amount of flint flakes found with it. North of the Mull of Islay, Argyleshire, there is a road which leads from Port Ellen, in a north-easterly direction, towards the shooting lodge of Islay. At a point in this road, where it is cut into the side of the hill, distant about four miles from Port Ellen, some workmen engaged in widening the road exposed a cist in cutting into the sloping ground, within which lay a skeleton with a large quantity of flint flakes and chips beside it. A distinguished artist, who happened fortunately to be in the neighbourhood at the time of this interesting discovery, has furnished me with sketches of the locality. He describes the flint flakes as so numerous, that they formed a heap of from eighteen inches to two feet in height when removed from the cist.[151]
Other and scarcely less interesting evidences of ancient population are still observable in remote nooks of the Western Highlands, where the Dalriadic Scots first effected a settlement in the land which has borne their name for so many centuries. The road from Port Ellen to the site of the ancient cist, above described, passes for a considerable way through a narrow winding valley, studded with huge boulders and detached masses of rock, preserving evidences of remarkable geological changes many ages anterior to the earliest occurrence within the range of archæological science. Similar evidences are of frequent occurrence along these western shores, where now the restless Atlantic is slowly but unceasingly gnawing the rocky coast into wilder and more picturesque forms, while it strews the stolen debris on its ocean bed, to form new strata and continents for younger worlds than ours. With these evidences of change we have not now to deal. But in various districts of the same neighbourhood, and particularly amid the scenes on which a new interest has been conferred as those in which the poet Campbell passed some of his early years, the curious traveller may descry, amid "the desolate heath" of the poet,[152] indications on the hill-sides of a degree of cultivation having existed at some former period far beyond what is exhibited in that locality at the present day. The soil on the sloping sides of the hills appears to have been retained by dwarf walls, and these singular terraces occur frequently at such altitudes as must convey a remarkably vivid idea of the extent and industry of an ancient population, where now the grazing of a few black cattle alone tempts to the claim of property in the soil. In other districts the half-obliterated furrows are still traceable on heights which have been abandoned for ages to the wild fox or the eagle. Such evidences of ancient population and industry are by no means confined to the remote districts of ancient Dalriada. They occur in many parts of Scotland, startling the believer in the unmitigated barbarism of Scotland prior to the medieval era with evidence of a state of prosperity and civilisation at some remote epoch, the date of which has yet to be ascertained; though there are not wanting periods within the era of authentic Scottish history to which some of these may with considerable probability be assigned. The very simple explanation of such ancient plough-marks which has satisfied the popular mind is apparent in the appellation of elf furrows, by which they are commonly known. The prevalence of these infallible tokens of former industry was noted by the Rev. George Maxwell when drawing up an account of the parish of Buittle, in Galloway, towards the close of last century. The rustic tradition by which the reverend Statist seeks to account for the greater agricultural skill of former ages, though amusing enough, is not without its value to us from the proof it affords of the extent to which such traces must have existed when they made so great an impression on the popular mind:--
"It is here to be observed," he remarks, "that there are few hills in this part of Galloway, where cultivation is at all practicable, that do not bear distinct marks of the plough. The depths of the furrows, too, plainly declare that this tillage has not been casual, or merely experimental, but frequent and successive. This should set both the ancient population and industry of this part of Scotland in a more favourable light than that in which they are usually held. It also affords probability to a tradition repeated by the country people to this day: that at a time when Scotland was under a Papal interdict, or sentence of cursing from the Pope, it was found that his Holiness had forgot to curse the hills, though he had commanded the land, usually arable, to yield no increase; and that while this sentence remained, the people were necessitated to seek tillage ground in places unusual and improbable!"[153]
Returning, however, from this digression, to the consideration of the rude primitive implements of stone and flint, and the flint flakes out of which the latter were formed,--the flint arrow and lance heads constructed from these furnish evidence of much patient ingenuity, and exhibit considerable variety of form. It is difficult, indeed, to conceive of the process by which workmen, provided with such imperfect tools as we must presume them to have possessed, were able to split the flint into flakes, and reduce these to such regular forms. The remoteness of the period when this primitive art was superseded by the workers in metal, is proved by the incorporation of the ancient flint implements into some of the most prevalent popular superstitions of the north. The terms Elf-bolt, Elf-shot, or Elfin-arrow, are invariably applied to the flint arrow-head throughout the Scottish Lowlands. The Gaelic name, Sciat-hee, is completely synonymous; while in Shetland and Orkney the idea of their supernatural origin is more frequently conveyed by the term thunderbolt, invariably applied to the stone celt. This variation in the popular mode of giving expression to the idea of the supernatural origin of these primitive weapons, among the inhabitants of the mainland and the northern isles of Scotland, is worthy of passing note, from the evidence it affords of one well-defined early date to which we may refer as a known period when the stone weapons were fully as much relics of a remote past, and objects of popular wonder, as now. The name still applied to the Elf-bolt, by the Norwegian peasantry, is Tordenkiler, or thunderstone,[154] so that we can feel little hesitation in assigning to the old Norse colonists of Orkney, the difference still discernible in these expressions of the same popular idea, and inferring from thence, what all other evidence confirms, that the Scottish Stone Period belongs to an era many centuries prior to the oldest date of her written history. The Elf-bolt is associated with many rustic fancies not yet altogether eradicated from the popular mind. It occupied no unimportant part among the paraphernalia of Scottish witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the occurrence of any sudden disease amongst cattle was ascribed until a comparatively recent period, to their having been shot by the fairies with Elfin arrows. This ancient superstition is not peculiar to Scotland. In Norway similar diseases, not only of cattle but of men, were called by the same name of Alfskot, and in Denmark, of Elveskud, that is, Elf-shot; though the flint arrow-head is not recognised as the bolt which furnishes for such purposes the quivers of the malignant elves. But other, and probably more ancient Scandinavian legends, prove the existence of similar northern associations with the primitive arrow-head of flint. In the "Fornaldar Sögur Nordlanda," or Legends from the primitive period of the North, derived from ancient manuscripts, Orvar Odd's Saga furnishes a curious evidence of this,--
Orvar Odd, who is already furnished with three iron arrows, the gift of Guse, a Fin king possessed of magic power, in the course of his wanderings is hospitably entertained by an old man of singular appearance. On the side where the old man sat he laid three stone arrows on the table near the dish. They were so large and handsome that Orvar thought he had never seen anything like them. He took them up and looked at them, saying, "These arrows are well made." "If you really think them to be so," replied his host, "I shall make you a present of them." "I do not think," replied Orvar, smiling, "that I need cumber myself with stone arrows." The old man answered, "Be not sure that you will not some time stand in need of them. I know that you possess three arrows, called the Guse's gifts, but, though you deem it unlikely, it may happen that the Guse's weapons prove useless, then these stone arrows will avail you." Orvar Odd accordingly receives the gift, and chancing soon after to encounter a foe who by like magic was impenetrable to all ordinary weapons, he transfixes him with the stone arrows, which immediately vanish.[155]
From references to the geographical divisions of Russia, as well as other internal evidence, this version of the legend is believed to have been written not later than the twelfth century. The tradition, however, is doubtless based on a much older belief, so that we cannot err in assuming that at the earliest period of intercourse between Scotland and Norway, sufficiently frequent to assimilate the popular superstition of the two countries, the Stone Period was only known as a state of society so essentially different from every historic tradition with which the people were familiar, that they referred its weapons and implements to the same invisible sprites by whose agency they were wont to account for all incomprehensible or superhuman occurrences.
The Elf-arrow was almost universally esteemed throughout Scotland as an amulet or charm, equally effectual against the malice of Elfin sprites, and the spells of witchcraft. Dipt in the water which cattle were to drink, it was supposed to be the most effectual cure for their diseases, while sewed in the dress, it was no less available for the protection of the human race; and it is still occasionally to be met with perforated or set in gold or silver, for wearing as an amulet. Like other weapons of Elfin artillery, it was supposed to retain its influence at the will of the possessor, and thus became the most effective talisman against elvish malice, witchcraft, or the evil-eye, when in the hands of man. Such traditional myths of vulgar superstition are not without their value, however humble their direct origin may be. They are frequently only distorted images of important truths, and we shall find more than one occasion to recur to them for aid in reuniting the broken skein of primitive history. To follow out the simile, it may sometimes be said of them with truth, that where all other lines of connexion with the past are broken, these are only ravelled and confused.
Arrow-heads of the Stone Period are found in Scotland in great numbers, and of a considerable variety of forms. They are for the most part made of silex, though also met with of agate, cornelian, and other native pebbles, and are frequently finished with much neatness and care. The woodcut exhibits a very fine one, the full size of the original, which was found in the Isle of Skye, and is now in the collection of Mr. John Bell of Dungannon. Pennant has engraved a large cinerary urn, discovered along with three others, on opening a cairn on the hill of Down, near Banff. They contained, in addition to the incinerated remains, bone implements and flint arrow-heads, the largest of them having in it thirteen of the latter, all of the shape to which the term barbed is most commonly applied. This, indeed, while it appears to be one of the most artificial forms, involving the greatest amount of labour and skill in fashioning the material, is also one of most frequent occurrence in Scotland. Those already referred to as found, along with an ancient wooden wheel, in the Blair-Drummond Moss, were of the same shape. So also were some obtained on opening a tumulus in the parish of Killearn, Stirlingshire, during the past year; and indeed they have been met with in nearly every district of the mainland, and of the northern and western isles. Lance- and spear-heads of silex are also not uncommon, both in the tumuli and among the objects turned up where the scenes of primitive population are subjected for the first time to the plough. A very fine spear-head of silex, fifteen inches long, and beautifully finished, was discovered a few years since on the demolition of a cairn on the estate of Craigengelt, near Stirling. Another of somewhat smaller dimensions, also found in a cairn, on the estate of John Guthrie, Esq., Forfarshire, about 1796, is figured and described in the Gentleman's Magazine of the following year.[156]
Flint knives, though apparently less abundant than in the different Scandinavian countries, and especially in Denmark, are frequently turned up in the course of agricultural operations. In no instance that has come under my notice have implements been found in Scotland exactly resembling the curious lunar flint knives and saws of such common occurrence in Denmark and Sweden; yet examples of similar form are familiar to American archæologists among the singular contents of the great mounds explored of late years in the valley of the Mississippi, and in other districts of the North American continent. These are generally made of slate, and stone knives analogous to them appear also to have been used in the Scottish primitive periods, to supply similar necessities. In the Shetland and Orkney islands especially stone knives are common, and in other districts knives of flint, though not of the northern lunar shape, are often met with. It is perhaps of fully as much importance, in the present stage of archæological inquiries, to note the dissimilarity, as the correspondence of relics of the same period in different countries. We have already observed a resemblance so remarkable, in the implements of the Stone Period pertaining to countries alike separated by time and space, as to preclude the possibility of ascribing it to any mutual intercourse or common source of knowledge, that nothing but a correspondence in many minute details will justify the inference of international intercourse or similarity of races. Dissimilarity, however, in these primitive implements, if the means of comparison be sufficiently extensive, may suffice to establish the opposite conclusion, that little or no intercourse had existed between Scotland and those countries, such as Norway and Sweden, at least during the earliest historic periods. Little proof, indeed, is required to establish this--if we set aside the opinion, assumed without any investigation of the evidence, that the natives of ancient Caledonia lagged far behind the other races of Northern Europe in the arts of civilisation--for their primitive arts precluded the construction of fleets fitted for the navigation of the intermediate seas, and shut them up to their own native ingenuity. Still it may be that the discovery of a more complete correspondence with the stone implements of other parts of Europe will yet add to our knowledge of the first colonisation of the British Isles, and help us to follow back the track of these nomadic tribes in their wanderings from the eastern cradle land of the human race.
One of the most curious stone implements of frequent occurrence in the northern islands is what the Shetlanders style a Pech's knife. They have already been referred to as partially resembling the lunar flint knives of Norway and Denmark. But in the Scottish examples the semicircular edge is sharp, while the straight side is thickened like the back of a common knife. Others are oval, or irregular in form, and brought to an edge round the whole circumference. One of the latter, in the Scottish Antiquarian Museum, formed of thin laminæ of madreporite, was found at one of the burghs or round towers of Shetland. It measures 4½ by 4 inches, and does not exceed, in greatest thickness, the tenth of an inch. Similar implements, in the collection of the London Antiquaries at Somerset House, are mentioned by Mr. Albert Way,[157] as probably the ancient stone instruments transmitted to Sir Joseph Banks by Mr. Scott of Lerwick, in Shetland, and communicated to the Society, March 9, 1820. Sixteen were found by a man digging peats in the parish of Walls, Shetland, placed regularly on an horizontal line, and overlapping each other like slates upon the roof of a house, each stone standing at an angle of 45°. They lay at a depth of about six feet in the peat moss, and the line of stones ran east and west, with the upper edge towards the east. A considerable number of implements, mostly of the same class, were found on the clay under the ancient mosses of Blair-Drummond and Meiklewood. Some of them are composed of slate, and others of a compact green stone. They are from four to six inches long, flat, and well polished. There were also along with them a number of stone celts and axe heads, mostly made of the same hard green stone. In the Scottish collection is a knife of an entirely different form, made of light grey flint, which was found, along with a stone celt of unusual shape, within the area of a "Druidical circle," in Strachur parish, Argyleshire. Two others, recently discovered in ploughing a field in the neighbourhood of Largo, Fifeshire, totally differ from any of the numerous examples found in Denmark or Sweden. They are bent back at the point, finished with great care, have a fine edge, and appear to have been attached to bone or wooden handles. Another example, somewhat resembling these, was found in cutting a drain on the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, and though simpler, is also peculiar, and apparently unique in form. On showing it recently to an East-Lothian farmer, he remarked that he had frequently seen such things turned up by the plough, but had never thought them worth the trouble of lifting.
Celts[158] and hatchets, or wedges, are among the most abundant of all the relics of the Stone Period. They have been discovered in considerable quantities in almost every part of Scotland, from the remote Orkney and Shetland Isles,[159] to the shores of the Solway and the banks of the Tweed. They are frequently found rudely executed, with little appearance of labour except at the edge; while other examples are characterized by the highest finish and the utmost degree of polish that the modern lapidary could confer on them. The manner of attaching the stone celt to a handle has been made the subject of some discussion, though sufficiently illustrated by the practice of the modern Polynesians and other savage tribes still using weapons of stone. M. Boucher de Perthes has succeeded in throwing some new light on the subject by researches in the neighbourhood of Abbeville, which point to the conclusion that the French celt has been inserted into the hollow portion of a stag's horn having a perforation in it to receive the handle.[160] Various other methods, however, have been shewn by which this primitive weapon could be hafted, so as to become available for the war axe of the northern warrior. The example found in the earliest ancient canoe of the Clyde, leaves no room to doubt that it was bound to the handle by thongs or portions of the haft passing round the middle. Both ends are highly polished, while the middle remains rough, having evidently been designed to be covered and concealed.[161] One stone celt has been found in Ireland, near Cookstone, in the county of Tyrone, still attached to its wooden handle, the artless rudeness of which could hardly be surpassed.[162] Much more efficient means, however, are frequently seen employed in corresponding weapons brought from the South Sea Islands than any of the ancient examples display; and these may suffice to illustrate the improved methods which experience would suggest to the rude Caledonian aborigines.
The stone celt must unquestionably be regarded as a weapon of war. With its thick round edge, when wielded at the end of a long handle, similar to those to which we see the stone axes of the Polynesian savages attached, it would prove an effective lethal weapon, but very few examples of it could be applied to any useful purpose as tools. The flint or stone hatchet was more probably the implement which, with the ever-ready aid of fire, sufficed to hew down the oak, to split and reduce it into requisite forms for domestic uses, or to shape and hollow it out into such rude canoes as have been described in a former chapter. Still it is difficult to draw any very definite line of distinction between the artificer's and the warrior's axe, the same implement having doubtless been often employed in waging war on the leafy giants of the old Caledonian forests, and on rival tribes who found a home within their fastnesses. The most perfect, indeed, of the stone hatchets seem ill adapted for the laborious task of felling the knotty oak, and hollowing it for the primitive canoe. But in all such considerations of savage arts it must be borne in remembrance that time, which forms so important an element in modern estimate, hardly comes into account with the savage. Armed with no better tools, the Red Indian, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, is known to cut an incision in the bark round the root of the tree destined for his canoe; into this he places glowing embers until it is charred to a considerable depth, and by the alternate use of the hatchet and the fire the largest tree is brought to the ground, and by the same ingenious process adapted to bear its owner on the open seas.
A very interesting discovery of an example of the use of the stone battle-axe, or celt, is thus described in a letter from Captain Denniston to Mr. Train. About the year 1809, Mr. M'Lean of Mark found it necessary, in the course of some improvements on his farm, to remove a large cairn on the Moor of Glenquicken, Kirkcudbrightshire, which popular tradition assigned as the tomb of some unknown Galwegian king, styled Aldus M'Galdus:--"When the cairn had been removed, the workmen came to a stone coffin of very rude workmanship, and on removing the lid, they found the skeleton of a man of uncommon size. The bones were in such a state of decomposition, that the ribs and vertebræ crumbled into dust on attempting to lift them. The remaining bones being more compact, were taken out, when it was discovered that one of the arms had been almost separated from the shoulder by the stroke of a stone axe, and that a fragment of the axe still remained in the bone. The axe had been of green stone, a species of stone never found in this part of Scotland. There were also found with this skeleton a ball of flint, about three inches in diameter, which was perfectly round and highly polished, and the head of an arrow, also of flint, but not a particle of any metallic substance."[163] Many of the most highly-finished celts and hatchets found in Scotland are made of the same green stone, which is susceptible of a beautiful polish. Other implements of this period are chisels of flint, nearly resembling those of Norway and Denmark. Several examples are in the Scottish Museum; and a curious instance of a perforated chisel, similar to those frequently found in Denmark, was turned up in 1841, in trenching a piece of ground near the Church of Lismore, Argyleshire. It is of the usual square form, measuring four inches long, and is described in the New Statistical Account as a stone needle.[164] Another and larger class of Scottish implements are cylindrical or oval perforated stones, of which no examples, I believe, have yet been found in Denmark or Sweden. The woodcut represents one of these implements, measuring 8¼ inches in length, found in a cist near North Berwick Abbey, East-Lothian, where many primitive remains have been discovered. It is flattened at the end where it is perforated, and is made of a very hard polished stone. Another was found in 1832, in the parish of Lumphanan, Aberdeenshire; and similar implements are occasionally mentioned among the contents of Scottish tumuli. In a cist, discovered under a barrow, in Kirkurd parish, Peeblesshire, there were various weapons of flint and stone, including one described as resembling the head of a halbert, another of a circular form, and the third of a cylindrical shape; in all probability a celt, a spherical flint or stone, and one of the implements now referred to, which may be conveniently designated as flail-stones.[165] On levelling a large tumulus a few years since, at Dalpatrick, Lanarkshire, a cist was discovered inclosing an urn. Two other specimens of fictile ware, one of them supposed to be a lamp, were found imbedded in the surrounding earth, and also a flail-stone made of trap rock. It is described as "a curious whinstone, of a roundish form, about four inches in diameter, perforated with a circular hole, through which the radicle of an oak growing near the spot had found its way."[166] Similar stone implements have been frequently met with in Scotland, and were perhaps designed for use as offensive weapons, attached to a leather thong or secured by such means to the end of a shaft, like a modern flail. The Shoshonee Indians, and other North American tribes, used such a weapon under the name of a Pogamoggon; the stone not being perforated, but inclosed in leather, by which it was fastened to the handle. Other tribes of the Mississippi valley had a simpler form of the same weapon, possibly corresponding to the spherical relics of flint or stone occasionally found with these, consisting of a grooved ball attached to a long leather thong, which they wielded, like a slung-shot, with deadly effect.[167] A medieval offensive weapon, constructed on the same principle, bore the quaint name of "The Morning Star," an epithet no doubt suggested by its form; as it consisted of a ball of iron armed with radiating spikes, attached by a chain to its handle. Like the ruder flail-stone, the morning star, when efficiently wielded, must have proved a deadly weapon in the desultory warfare of undisciplined assailants; but whenever the value of combined operations was discovered and acted upon it would have to be thrown aside, as probably more fatal to friends than to enemies. In the Scottish flail-stones the perforation is bevelled off so as to admit of their free use without cutting or fraying the thong by which they were held. We shall not probably greatly err in assuming these to be the first "morning stars" of that old twilight, in the uncertain light of which we are groping for some stray truths of the infancy of history.
A stone implement in my own possession, somewhat similar in general form to these flail-stones, was found beside a group of cists near North Berwick, East-Lothian, but its original destination is obvious. It is made of hard sandstone, of a flattened oval form in section, and is worn on the two alternate sides where it has been used as a whetstone--a use for which the hardness and high polish of the others render them totally unfit.
Not the least curious among the primitive relics in the celebrated museum of northern antiquities at Copenhagen, are the various whetstones, some of which have been found in barrows and elsewhere under ground, with half-finished stone-wedges lying upon them, as if the workman had been suddenly interrupted by death in the midst of his laborious industry, and his unaccomplished task had been deemed the fittest memorial to lay beside him. It formed no part of the old Pagan creed that "there is no work nor device in the grave." Possibly enough the buried celt-maker was expected to resume his occupation and finish his axe-grinding in the spirits' land. No similar example has yet been noted in Scotland, though smaller hand whetstones, like the one found at North Berwick, are not uncommon. One which is described as very smooth and neat, was obtained among the contents discovered on excavating within the area of the vitrified fort of Craig Phaidrick, near Inverness;[168] several such were found in cists at Cockenzie, East-Lothian; and Barry mentions among the miscellaneous contents of the tumuli or cists in the island of Westray, "a flat piece of marble, of a circular form, about two inches and a-half in diameter, and several stones, in shape and appearance like whetstones that had never been used."[169]
Great as are the numbers and varieties of the stone weapons and implements of Denmark, compared with those found in Britain, they appear to be surpassed in both respects by the corresponding relics of the Mexican Stone Period. Such facts suggest the inference, which history in some degree confirms, that the metallurgic arts were earlier known in Britain than in Denmark, thereby superseding the arts of the stone-workers before they had been elaborated as elsewhere; while in Mexico, Yucatan, and throughout the districts of the North American continent, where a native civilisation is known to have prevailed, iron was totally unknown, and copper had not completely superseded the stone hatchet and arrow-point when Columbus opened a way to that new world. But who shall say how many more curious and noteworthy reminiscences of the past may have been ignorantly destroyed in Scotland, among the thousands of burial-mounds annually invaded by the unlettered peasant in his agricultural labours.
Among the larger implements of this period the most remarkable and varied are the Stone Hammers and Axes. They are of common occurrence, and present a variety of forms, evidently designed to adapt them to a considerable diversity of purposes. They are therefore available as evidence in estimating the degree of inventive talent manifested in the primitive state of society in which they were produced, showing as they do the intelligent savage coping with the untractable materials with which he had to deal, and supplying many deficiencies by his own ingenuity and skill. With these, as with the elf-bolts of the same period, we find in the reminiscences of early superstition the evidence of their frequent occurrence long after all traces of their origin and uses had been obliterated by the universal substitution of metallic implements. As we find the little flint arrow-head associated with Scottish folk-lore as the Elfin's bolt, so the stone hammer of the same period was adapted to the creed of the middle ages. The name by which it was popularly known in Scotland almost till the close of last century was that of the Purgatory Hammer. Found as it frequently was within the cist and beside the mouldering bones of its old Pagan possessor, the simple discoverer could devise no likelier use for it than that it was laid there for its owner to bear with him "up the trinal steps," and with it thunder at the gates of purgatory till the heavenly janitor appeared, that he might
"ask, With humble heart, that he unbar the bolt."[170]
The stone hammer is frequently found in the older cists. In 1832 a farm-servant while ploughing a field on the farm of Downby, in Orkney, struck his ploughshare on a stone which proved to be the cover of a cist of the usual contracted dimensions, in which lay a skeleton that seemed to have been interred in a sitting posture. At the right hand lay a highly polished mallet-head of gneiss, beautifully marked with dark and light streaks.[171]
The examples figured here furnish a few of the most characteristic varieties of Scottish hammers that have been preserved. They by no means equal in number those found in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. But only a very partial and extremely superficial investigation of such relics has yet been made, and we possess no national collection in Scotland, similar to that of the Christiansborg Palace of Copenhagen, to which the whole available financial and legal machinery of the kingdom is employed in gathering the primitive national antiquities so soon as they are discovered. The Old and New Statistical Accounts abound with notices of opened tumuli and cairns, and of their valuable archæological contents; but unfortunately in nearly every case these are either conveniently ascribed to Romans and Danes, or mentioned so vaguely that no use can be made of them as illustrations of the period to which they belong.
The name of Axe is, with sufficient appropriateness, applied to the double-edged stone implements, and to those of a wedge-shape which have the aperture for inserting the handle near the broad end, whereas other examples perforated sufficiently near the centre to admit of the free use of both ends are with equal propriety styled hammers. They are frequently finished with great neatness and art; not made, like the hatchet, of flint, but of a variety of kinds of stone, from the gray granite, of which the largest are generally made, to trap and even sandstone. Several examples have been discovered in an unfinished state, furnishing curious illustration of the laborious process of manufacture. One large one in particular in the Scottish Museum was found in digging the Caledonian Canal. It is made of gray granite, very symmetrically and beautifully formed, and with the hole partially bored on both sides. This was probably effected with water and sand by the tedious process of turning round a smaller stone until the perforation was at length completed. Tried therefore by the standard of value of the Stone Period, the hammer was perhaps a more costly deposit in the tomb of some favourite chief than the golden armillæ of later times. The Danish antiquaries are familiar with examples of unfinished stone implements, and also with a still more curious class, consisting of broken hammers and otherwise mutilated instruments, which have been perforated with another hole or ground to a new edge, affording striking evidence of the value of such implements to their primitive owners. The example figured here, partaking of the characteristics both of the hammer and axe, was dug up on the farm of Dell, in the parish of Abernethy, and is engraved from a sketch by the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart. It measures eight inches in length, and was found at a depth of about five feet from the surface, in a soil consisting of two feet of mould lying above peat moss.
The following class of objects includes a variety of stone implements the uses of which are extremely doubtful or altogether unknown, though they are often found along with other relics of the Stone Period. The woodcut represents various examples of perforated stone balls, such as are frequently met with, and to which it may be convenient to apply the name of Bead-stones. Some of them are decorated with a variety of incised lines, and may have been worn as marks of distinction or as personal ornaments held in great esteem, as they are not uncommon among the relics deposited in the cist or cinerary urn. One plausible theory of their use which has been suggested is that they are the stone weights used with the distaff, and they have accordingly received in Germany the name of Spindelstein. The Scottish whorle, or fly of the spinning-rock, however, is still familiar to us, and bears only a very partial resemblance to these perforated balls; consisting generally of a flattened disc, much better adapted for the motion required in the distaff. But independently of this, these rude ornaments have been found alongside of male skeletons, and in such numbers as might rather induce the belief that they had formed the collar of honour of some old barbarian chief, esteemed as no less honourable than the golden links of rue and thistle worn by the knights of St. Andrew at the court of the Scottish Jameses. As such, therefore, they should be classed with the personal ornaments of the same period, but their use is still open to question, and they may therefore meanwhile not unfitly rank with the other objects treated of in this chapter.
On demolishing a cairn at Dalpatrick, in Lanarkshire, a few years ago, it was found to cover a cist inclosing an urn, and in the surrounding heap were discovered another urn about six inches high, a smaller vessel of baked clay, and a curious whinstone of roundish form, about four inches in diameter, and perforated with a circular hole.[172] "In one of the Orkney graves," says Barry, "was found a metal spoon, and a glass cup that contained two gills Scotch measure; and in another a number of stones formed into the shape and size of whorles, like those that were formerly used for spinning in Scotland."[173] Two of these bead-stones in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries were discovered in Dumbartonshire, along with various smaller ones, some of them of glass and undoubtedly designed as ornaments. Other examples are more in the form of a truncated cone, and are referred to in a later chapter as perhaps the tablemen for a game somewhat similar to that of draughts, and still called by the Germans Brettsteine. Larger perforated stones have also been found. Mr. Joseph Train describes several obtained in Galloway, five or six inches in diameter, one of which, in his own possession, as black and glossy as polished ebony, had been picked up in the ruins of an old byre, where it had doubtless been used, according to the ideas of that country-side, to counteract the spells of witchcraft.[174] Others formed of slate are of frequent occurrence in the Portpatrick parish, Wigtonshire, and are not unknown in other districts.[175]
Unperforated spherical stones, generally about the size of an orange, have been referred to along with other contents of the Scottish tumulus. It is not always possible to distinguish these from the stone cannon ball which continued in use even in James VI.'s reign. The circumstances under which they occur, however, leave no room to doubt that they ranked among the articles held in esteem by the primitive races of Britain, ages before the chemical properties of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal had been employed to supersede older projectile forces. The distinction is further confirmed by their being occasionally decorated with incised circles and other ornaments, as in the example shewn here, found near the line of the old Roman way which runs through Dumfriesshire on its northern course from Carlisle. Another of highly polished flint has already been described among the remarkable disclosures of a large cairn on the Moor of Glenquicken, Kirkcudbrightshire, and two of similar form were shewn me recently as a part of the contents of a cist opened in the course of farming operations on the estate of Cochno, Dumbartonshire, one of which was made of highly-polished red granite, a species of rock unknown in that district. Similar balls occur among the relics found in the barrows of Denmark. In the "Report addressed by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries to its British and American Members," printed at Copenhagen in 1836, a class of primitive objects are described under the name of Corn Crushers. The engraving of one of these represents a rude block of stone flattened on the upper side. In the centre of this is a circular cavity, into which a smooth ball of stone has been made to fit, thereby supplying by a less efficient means the same purpose aimed at in the querne, discovered so frequently under a variety of shapes among the relics of various periods of early Scottish history. The shallow circular stone troughs or mortars so often found in Scottish burghs and weems belong to the same class. A still ruder device consists of a pair of stones which have evidently been employed in rubbing against each other, and it may be presumed with the same object in view, that of bruising the grain for domestic use. They have been occasionally noticed among the chance disclosures of the spade or plough in Scotland, and are of common occurrence in the Irish bogs. The author of the Account of Halkirk Parish, Caithness, thus describes the mortars above referred to, and also the pestles or crushers--manifestly a similar device to the Danish corn crushers--which are found together in the burghs:--"I have seen in them numbers of small round hard stones, in the form of a very flat or oblate sphere, of 2½ inches thick in the centre, and about four inches in diameter; also other round stones, perfectly circular, very plain and level on one side, with a small rise at the circumference, and about a foot in diameter. The intention of both these kinds of stones manifestly was to break and grind their grain."[176] It may reasonably be assumed, however, that neither the old British nor Scandinavian warrior deposited under the barrow of his chief, and alongside of his well-proved celt and spear, the homely corn crusher with which his wives or his slaves were wont to prepare the grain for domestic use. The decoration traceable on some of the stone balls confirms this idea; and it is more probable they were employed as weapons of war, like the pogamoggon of the Chippeway and Shoshonee Indians of America, some of which consisted of a spherical stone, weighing from half a pound to two pounds. This they inclosed in leather, and attached to a thong a yard and a half in length, which was wound round the wrist, the more effectually to secure its hold. Along with these objects may also be noted the roughly-shaped spherical discs of flint occasionally found with other stone relics in Scotland, and much more common in Ireland, where they bear the name of "Sling Stones."
Like other of the more remarkable primitive relics, the spherical stones have been associated with popular superstitions of a later period, and have been esteemed, along with crystal-beads, adder-stones, or waterworn perforated pebbles, and the like efficient armory of vulgar credulity, as invaluable amulets or charms.
"The stone arrow-heads," says Pennant, "of the old inhabitants of this island, are supposed to be weapons shot by fairies at cattle, to which are attributed any disorders they have. In order to effect a cure, the cow is to be touched by an elf-shot, or made to drink the water in which one has been dipped. The same virtue is said to be found in the crystal gems and in the adder-stone; and it is also believed that good fortune must attend the owner; so, for that reason, the first is called Clach Bhuai, or the powerful stone. Captain Archibald Campbell showed me one, a spheroid set in silver, for the use of which people came above a hundred miles, and brought the water it was to be dipt in with them; for without that in human cases it was believed to have no effect."[177] That such was no modern superstition he conceives is proved by a variety of evidence, as where Montfaucon remarks that it was customary in early times to deposit crystal balls in urns or sepulchres: thus twenty were found at Rome in an alabastrine urn, and one was discovered in 1653 at Tournai, in the tomb of Childeric, King of France, who died A.D. 480.
It appears to be only natural to the uninstructed mind to associate objects which it cannot explain with some mysterious and superhuman end; and hence the superseded implements of a long extinct race become the charms and talismans of their superstitious successors.
One other class of primitive relics remains to be noted, belonging to the same early period. These are the ornaments, weapons, and tools of horn or bone; such as the lances or harpoons already described as found alongside of the stranded whales in the alluvial valley of the Forth. Such relics are by no means rare, notwithstanding the perishable nature of the material of which they are constructed. Barry describes among the contents of the Orkney tumuli, "swords made of the bone of a large fish, and also daggers."[178] The woodcut represents what should perhaps be regarded as a bone dagger. It was found in a stone cist near Kirkwall, lying beside a rude urn, and is now in the possession of Dr. Traill. It measures 7½ inches long, and appears to be made of the outer half of the lower portion of the right metatarsal bone of an ox. The notches cut on it are perhaps designed to give a firmer hold, while they also serve the purpose of rude attempts at ornament. Their effect, however, is greatly to weaken the weapon and render it liable to break. The cross may perhaps suggest to some the associations of a later period, but little importance can be attached to so simple and obvious a means of decoration. Possibly indeed so far from its affording any indication of the influence of "the faith of the cross," it should be regarded like the incised patterns hereafter alluded to, wrought on later bronze implements, as suggestive of the use of the poisoned blade by the rude aborigines of the Stone Period. Pennant has engraved an implement of horn, carved and perforated at the thick end, found in a large urn under a cairn in Banffshire, and another, closely corresponding to it, was discovered in 1829, in a large urn dug up in the progress of the works requisite for erecting the Dean Bridge at Edinburgh.[179] A curious relic of the same class was brought to light on removing part of a remarkable cairn which still stands, though in ruins, on the summit of one of the Ochil Hills, on the northern boundary of Orwell parish, Kinross-shire. It bears the name of Cairn-a-vain, and an ancient traditional rhyme thus refers to a treasure believed to be contained in it:--
In the Dryburn well, beneath a stane, You'll find the key o' Cairn-a-vain, That will mak' a' Scotland rich ane by ane.
Many hundreds of cart-loads of stones have been carried off by the proprietor from this gigantic pile, for the purpose of building fences, but no treasure has yet been found, though eagerly expected by the workmen. A rude stone cist occupied the centre of the pile, within which lay an urn full of bones and charcoal, and amongst these a small implement of bone, about four inches long, very much resembling in figure a cricket-bat notched on the edges.[180]
Various weapons of horn and bone are preserved in the Scottish collection, some of them so slender as to be rather pins or bodkins than lances. One of the latter, measuring four inches in length, and perforated at the broad end, was found in the year 1786, in the ruins of one of those ancient buildings in Caithness, popularly but perhaps not erroneously styled "Picts' houses." Alongside of it lay one of the rings of jet or shale, which are also among the more common relics found in Scottish barrows. To these instances may be added the frequent occurrence of deer's horns among the contents of tumuli, not seldom bearing similar marks of artificial cutting. Some years since a quantity of deer's horns which had been sawn asunder were discovered in a bed of charcoal, a few feet below the surface, outside the "Seamhill moat," in the parish of West Kilbride, Ayrshire.[181] A deer's horn of unusually large size, and from which the brow-antler has been cut off, is now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. It was obtained with others, on levelling a large sepulchral barrow in the neighbourhood of Elphinstone Tower, East-Lothian. Another of smaller dimensions, in the same collection, was discovered in a cist at Cockenzie, in the same county. Pennant mentions the similar discovery of a deer's horn, "the symbol of the favourite amusement of the deceased," lying beside the skeleton, in a stone cist, on the demolition of a cairn at Craigmills, Banffshire; and on opening the most conspicuous of a group of tumuli, in the parish of Alvie, Inverness-shire, a human skeleton was observed entire, with a pair of large hart's horns laid across it.[182] To these instances may be added the recent discovery of ancient oaken coffins on the Castlehill of Edinburgh, at a depth of twenty-five feet from the surface,--more particularly described in a later chapter,--alongside which lay a deer's skull and horns of unusually large proportions.
Examples of this use of the antlers of the deer are by no means rare. It appears to offer some additional corroboration of the date assigned to those simpler rites of sepulture, which it has been suggested may probably indicate an era prior to the introduction of the small stone cist and the practice of interment in a sitting or folded posture; that in several examples which have been carefully noted, the body has been found laid at full length, and in one or two instances with the spreading antlers at the feet, like the sculptured lion or stag which reposes on the altar-tomb of our medieval chantries at the feet of the recumbent Christian knight.
It cannot admit of doubt that bone and horn continued to supply the absence of metallic weapons to the very close of the Stone Period. Nevertheless it suggests the probable antiquity of the examples referred to, that notwithstanding the great susceptibility of the material for receiving ornament, they present so few of those incised decorations common not only on the sepulchral pottery, but on the pateræ, bead-stones, and other relics formed of the hardest materials.
One of the most interesting recent discoveries of this primitive class of implements was made by Mr. G. Petrie, during his exploration of a subterranean dwelling or weem at Skara, in the Bay of Scales, Sandwich. A large accumulation of ashes, bones of domestic animals, the tusks of a very large wild boar, scales of fish, &c., indicated the refuse of many repasts of its aboriginal occupants; and alongside of it, apparently in coeval rubbish, was found a stone cist, containing, among other remains, about two dozen oyster shells, each perforated with a hole large enough to admit the finger. Perchance they supplied to their simple owner a collar not less esteemed than the most coveted orders of a modern peer. A curious variety of bone implements were discovered at the same time. The larger of the two objects in the annexed woodcut represents a pin or bodkin, formed from the left metatarsal bone of an ox of small size, in which the natural form of the joint has been turned to account for forming its head. It measures 5-3/10 inches long. The smaller object is also of bone. One side of the head is broken away, but the perforation has not been in the centre; it measures 3½ inches in length. Others of the tools are still more simple--mere flat pieces of bone, roughly rubbed to an edge, and indicating the merest rudiments of art and contrivance. Two other examples from the same hoard are represented here, the smallest another pin, 2⅘ inches long, formed from the lower end of the metatarsal bone of a sheep, and the larger, perhaps intended as the handle of some implement of delicate structure. It appears to be fashioned from the metatarsal or metacarpal bone of a lamb, and is notched with a rude attempt at ornament, which, however, as in the dagger formerly described, must have greatly impaired its strength.[183] Along with these were also found a number of circular discs of slate, about half an inch thick, roughly chipped into shape, and about the size of a common dessert plate. The most ready idea that can be formed of them is, that they were actually designed for a similar purpose.
These simple relics of the primitive period may not inaptly recall to us the evidences of another class of occupants of the old Caledonian forests. At the very era when the Briton had to arm himself with such imperfect weapons, the wolf was one of his most common foes. Long after the era of the Roman invasion the wild boar was a favourite object of the chase, though the huge Bos Primigenius, whose fossil remains are so frequently found in our mosses and marl pits, had then made way for the Bos Longifrons, (rarely accompanying relics of a later era than the Anglo-Roman period,) and the Urus Scoticus, or Caledonian bull, which still forms so singularly interesting an occupant of the ancient forest of Cadzow, Lanarkshire. The large tusks frequently found among later alluvial deposits attest the enormous size attained by the Caledonian boar; and its repeated occurrence on the sculptured legionary tablets of Antoninus' wall may show that it was pre-eminent among the wild occupants of the forests which then skirted the Roman vallum in the carse of Falkirk, and along the slopes of the Campsie hills; if, indeed, this was not the reason of its adoption as the symbol of the Twentieth Legion. On constructing a new road a few years since, along the southern side of the rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands, deer's horns and boars' tusks of the largest dimensions were found; and in an ancient service-book of the monastery of Holyrood, the ground which some of the oldest buildings of the Scottish capital have occupied for many centuries, is described as "ane gret forest, full of hartis, hyndis, toddis, and sic like manner of beistis." Thus is it with all that is venerable--an older still precedes it; and the docile student, when, by searching, he has found out all attainable knowledge, still sees behind him as before him an unknown, undiminished by all he has recovered. Meanwhile, it seems to become manifest, that the more minutely we investigate the primitive Scottish era, the further it recedes into the past, and approaches to the period of the first dispersion of the human family amid the strange confusion of tongues; if not indeed to that still earlier time when the sons of Javan were born after the flood, and by these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands--thus leading our thoughts, as Sir Thomas Browne quaintly, but devoutly expresses it, "unto old things and considerations of times before us, when even living men were antiquities, when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world could not be properly said, abiit ad plures, to go unto the greater number; and to run up our thoughts upon the Ancient of Days, the antiquary's truest object, unto whom the eldest parcels are young, and earth itself an infant."
FOOTNOTES:
[149] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 46.
[150] Scots Mag., Feb. 7, 1790.
[151] MS. letters, Mr. J. C. Brown, A.R.S.A. An interesting account of the discovery of numerous flint flakes, and weapons in all stages of progress, in the celebrated ossiferous cave of Kent's Hole, near Torquay, is introduced in a subsequent chapter.
[152] Lines written on visiting a scene in Argyleshire.
[153] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. xvii. p. 115.
[154] They are described by this name of thunderstones in Sir Robert Sibbald's Portes Coloniæ et Castellæ, Plate II. Nos. 1-6.
[155] Fornaldar Sögur Nordlanda. Copenhagen, 1829.
[156] Gentleman's Mag. 1797, Part II. p. 200.
[157] Catalogue of Antiquities, Soc. Antiq. Lond. p. 14.
[158] I have retained the name of stone celt, notwithstanding its rejection by Mr. Worsaae and his intelligent English editor, in the "Primeval Antiquities of Denmark applied to the illustration of similar remains in England." The advantage of a fixed terminology cannot be overestimated; but in this case the term is of great value in order to distinguish a peculiar class of stone implements more frequently found in Scotland and Ireland than the stone or flint hatchet, and to which the British antiquary has special grounds for applying it. Both Owen and Spurrel give, as the meaning of the ancient Cambro-British celt, a flint stone. I propose, therefore, to retain it in what is obviously its primary acceptation, applying the name of bronze celt to the metal weapon afterwards substituted for it.
[159] Vide Hibbert's Shetland, pp. 247-250.
[160] Antiquités Celtiques et Antidiluviennes.
[161] Vide ante, p. 35.
[162] Archæological Journal, vol. iv. p. 3.
[163] New Statist. Acc., Kirkcudbrightshire, vol. iv. p. 332.
[164] New Statist. Acc, Argyleshire, vol. vii. p. 243.
[165] Sinclair's Statistical Account, vol. x. p. 186.
[166] New Statist. Acc. vol. vi. p. 734.
[167] Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi, p. 219.
[168] Archæol. Scotica, vol. iv. p. 188.
[169] Barry's Hist. Orkney Islands, p. 206.
[170] Carey's Dante, Canto ix. l. 97.
[171] MS. Soc. Ant. Scot. Rev. Charles Clouston.
[172] New Stat. Acc., Lanarkshire, vol. vi. p 734.
[173] Barry's Orkney, p. 206.
[174] New Stat. Acc., Kirkcudbrightshire, vol. iv. p. 196.
[175] New Stat. Acc., Wigtonshire, p. 143.
[176] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. xix. p. 59.
[177] Pennant's Tour, vol i. p. 116.
[178] Barry's History of the Orkney Islands, p. 206.
[179] Minutes of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 27th April 1829.
[180] New Statist. Acc. vol. ix. p. 60.
[181] New Statist. Acc. vol. v. p. 256.
[182] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xiii. p. 383. Vide also vol iii. p. 57. Archæological Journal, vol. ii. p. 80.
[183] The inferior articular surface of the bone has separated, which supplies evidence of its having been a lamb, union not having taken place owing to the youth of the animal.
VII. STONE VESSELS
A great variety of stone vessels, of different forms and sizes, have been found in Scotland under different circumstances, but in nearly all of them the rudeness of the attempts at ornament, and the whole form and character, suggest the probability of their belonging to the earliest period, coeval with the stone celt and hammer, and the bone and flint spears of the Scottish aborigines. Even sepulchral urns of this durable material are not uncommon, especially in the northern and western isles. Wallace thus describes one found in the island of Stronsa:--"It was a whole round stone like a barrel, hollow within, sharp edged at the top, having the bottom joined like the bottom of a barrel. On the mouth was a round stone."[184] From the engraving which accompanies this description it may be more correctly compared in form to a common flower-pot, decorated with a series of parallel lines running at intervals round it. In the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of London there are two rude stone urns, believed to be the same exhibited to the Society by Captain James Veitch in 1822, which were discovered on the demolition of a cairn in the island of Uyea, Shetland, along with many similar urns, mostly broken, and all containing bones and ashes. They are formed of Lapis ollaris, and are described by Mr. Albert Way, in his valuable Catalogue of the Society's Collection, as two rudely-fashioned vessels of stone, or small cists, of irregular quadrangular form, one of them having a large aperture at the bottom, closed by a piece of stone, fitted in with a groove, but easily displaced. The other has a triangular aperture on one side, and is perforated with several smaller holes regularly arranged. The dimensions of the larger are about 9½ inches by 4, and the other 7 inches by 3½. Dr. Hibbert refers to another of the same class, but probably of superior workmanship, which he saw on his visit to the Island of Uyea. It was found along with various other urns, which he simply mentions as of an interesting description, and is noted as "a well-shaped vessel, that had been apparently constructed of a soft magnesian stone of the nature of the Lapis ollaris. The bottom of the urn had been wrought in a separate piece, and was fitted to it by means of a circular groove. When found it was filled with bones partly consumed by fire."[185] A fragment of another such urn in the Scottish Museum is described by the donor as part of a vase of a steatitic kind of rock, found in 1829 within a kistvaen on the island of Uyea, one of the most northern of the Zetland group. At an earlier period the opening of a barrow in the island of Eigg exposed to view a large sepulchral urn containing human bones. It is described as consisting of a large round stone, which had been hollowed, with the top covered with a thin flag-stone, and was found in a tumulus which tradition assigned as the burial-place of St. Donnan, the patron saint of the isle.[186] The singular stone urn figured here, from the original in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, is believed to have been brought from the Hill of Nowth, in the county of Meath, one of the most remarkable chambered cairns yet discovered. The urn is decorated with chevron ornaments, and figures supposed to represent the sun and moon. It is not to be imagined that, unless in some very rare and remarkable examples, cinerary urns thus laboriously hewn out of stone can belong to a period anterior to the use of those formed of the plastic clay. In so far, however, as we may judge from the few examples yet noted, they seem to be the work of a very remote era, when such were the rare and distinguished honours reserved perchance alone for the Arch-Druid, or high-priest of the unknown faith, whose strange rites were once celebrated within the Taoursanan, or mournful circles.[187]
Another, and much more common Scottish stone vessel, consists of a small round cup or bowl, with a perforated handle on one side, and generally measuring from five to six inches in diameter. Most of them are more or less ornamented, though generally in an extremely rude style; and they have been found made of all varieties of stone, from the soft camstone to the hardest porphyry and granite. The name by which these singular vessels have been generally designated among Scottish antiquaries, is that of Druidical pateræ; though if we are to assume the idea that they were used in the sacred rites of Pagan worship, they more nearly resemble the form of the Roman patella, than of the sacrificial patera, with which libations were poured out to the gods.
In several instances these singular vessels have been found in the immediate vicinity of the so-called Druidical circles. In 1828 two of them were discovered under an ancient causeway leading from a circle of standing stones on Donside, in the parish of Tullynessle, Aberdeenshire. One of these, the handle of which is imperfect, is now deposited in the Scottish Museum, along with various other similar examples found in different parts of Scotland. The other had a handle about nine inches long carved out of the same stone, and terminating with a knob at the end. A similar relic was found some time before, when clearing out the area of another stone circle on the farm of Whiteside, in the same county. The frequency of their occurrence, indeed, would suggest their construction for more common use than the worship of the gods, were we not led to assume their designation for some special object, from the very great labour employed in making them.
Some of the rarer forms of the stone vessels found in Scotland are much more suggestive of domestic purposes. One in my own possession, found in Glen Tilt, is neatly formed in native green marble, with two handles, not unlike the more modern Scottish quech. Another, in the Scottish Collection, found in Atholl, looks like a stone soup-ladle; and a third, of oblong form, as shewn here, measuring 12 by 8½ inches, was found at Brough, in Shetland, in excavating the area of one of the large circular buildings of un-cemented stone, styled Pech's Burghs. It can hardly be more fitly described than as a stone tureen with handles carved at either end. Others met with under similar circumstances are wide and shallow, and nearly resemble the large stone basins figured here, found in the chambers of the celebrated cairn of Newgrange, in the neighbourhood of Drogheda.
It is a remarkable fact, that these vessels, thus laboriously hewn or wrought out of stone, should be most frequently found either in the neighbourhood of the rude monolithic structures, or of other apparently contemporary works of the earliest period. The very imperfect nature of many of their decorations, however, suffice to prove that they are the work of men destitute of efficient metallic tools, and who were little likely to attempt the hopeless task of hewing the giant columns of their temples into artificial forms. Many of these vessels, indeed, notwithstanding the attempts at decoration visible upon them, exhibit much less symmetry or finished workmanship even than the stone hammers and axes of the same period. So far as I am aware, the Druidical patera, so frequently found in Scotland, is peculiar to it, no similar vessel having been discovered among the primitive remains either of England or Ireland. In the remoter districts of Scotland these ancient vessels were regarded till recently with the same superstitious awe and dread which we have already seen attached to other unfamiliar relics of the same remote era. Mr. Colin M'Kenzie, in describing the antiquities of the island of Lewis, from personal observations made towards the close of last century, remarks in reference to the group of standing stones at Classernish, on the west side of that island, with its remarkable large central stone, surrounded by a deep hollow which retains the rain water:--"Were a ditch cut across the circle to a tolerable depth, some utensils, ashes, &c. might be found to throw more light on the subject. I have been told that a stone bowl was found, and afterwards thrown, through a superstitious dread, into the hollow round of the central stone."[188]
With this class may also be reckoned the Scottish querne, unquestionably an invention of the remotest antiquity, though it has continued in use down almost to our own day in some of the western isles and other rarely visited Highland districts. A curious allusion to it occurs in the Life of St. Columba, illustrative of its daily use for the preparation of grain for bread. When the Saint studied under St. Finnian, every night on which it fell to his share to grind the corn with the querne he did it so expeditiously that his companions alleged he had always the assistance of an angel in turning the stone, and envied him accordingly.[189] At that period, that is in the early part of the sixth century, there can be little doubt that it was the only mill in use. Even so early as the thirteenth century legal means were employed to compel the people to abandon it for the large water-mills then introduced. In 1284, in the reign of Alexander III., it was provided that "na man sall presume to grind quheit, maishlock, or rye with hands mylne, except he be compelled be storm, or be lack of mills, quhilk sould grind the samen. And in this case, gif a man grinds at hand mylnes, he sall gif the threttein measure as multer; and gif anie man contraveins this our prohibition, he sall tine his hand mylnes perpetuallie." The prevalence of these simple domestic utensils in the remoter districts of Scotland till the close of the last century proves how ineffectual this law had been in superseding the querne by the public mill.
The commonest form consists simply of two thin circular flat stones, the upper one of which is pierced in the centre, and revolves on a wooden or metal pin inserted in the under one. The upper stone is also occasionally decorated with various ornaments, incised or in relief. In using the querne the grinder dropped the grain into the central hole with one hand, while with the other he made the upper stone revolve by means of a stick inserted in a small hole near the edge. The extreme simplicity of this indispensable piece of household furniture justifies its reference to remote antiquity. It has been already observed that it frequently occurs among the contents of the Scottish weems, or cyclopean underground dwellings of a very primitive state of society. It has also been dug up under a variety of circumstances, all furnishing probable evidence of great antiquity. One upper stone of a querne, now preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, was discovered in 1825, along with the remains of an iron sword, in digging on the summit of a hill called the Camp, near Pitlour House, Fifeshire. Another in the same collection, of still ruder form, was found built into the masonry of an ancient wall of Edinburgh Castle, demolished in 1828.
One type, in which the upper stone is funnel-shaped, with radiating grooves from the centre perforation, is believed to be the portable hand mill of the Roman soldier. It is engraved as such in Stuart's Caledonia Romana, Plate XIII.; and the only one of the same kind in the Scottish Museum seems to corroborate this, in so far as it was found to the south-west of Camelon, on the line of the great wall of Antoninus Pius. It exhibits, as might be expected, more regularity and method in its construction, and is surrounded with an iron band, now greatly corroded, with a loop or ear, to which the handle was attached for turning it.
We shall not, probably, greatly err in assuming as one of the earliest types of the Scottish hand-mill, the rudely fashioned oaken querne already referred to, which was dug up from a depth of nearly five feet in the Blair-Drummond Moss. It is simply the section of an oak tree, measuring nineteen inches in height by fourteen inches in diameter. The centre has been hollowed out to a depth of about a foot, so as to form a rude oaken mortar; and in this, with the help of a stone or wooden pestle, its primitive possessor was doubtless wont to bruise and pound the grain preparatory to its conversion into food. The circumstances under which the Blair-Drummond querne was found, when compared with the other discoveries in the same locality, scarcely permit us to escape the inference that in it we possess a domestic utensil contemporary with the ancient canoes of the Forth and Clyde, if not with the stranded whales, and the rude harpoons of the carse land from which it was disinterred.
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.
[187] This is a name given to circles of standing stones in the Gaelic, from Taoursach or Tuirseach, mournful, and has been supposed to originate in the traditions of human sacrifices believed to have been offered within these inclosures. Vide Archæol. Scot. vol. i. p. 283. In the Journal of the Archæological Association (vol. ii. p. 340) a notice occurs of "a singular bowl-shaped cist and triangular cover of Bethesden limestone, found in Charing Church, Kent."
[188] Archæol. Scot. vol. i. p. 284.
[189] Smith's Life of Columba, p. 60.
[190] Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, 2d edit. p. 342.
VIII. PERSONAL ORNAMENTS
There only remain to be noted the earliest traces of luxury and personal adornment contemporary with the rude weapons and implements, and the simple habitations of earth or unhewn stone, described in the previous chapters. These are scarcely less abundant than the implements of war and the chase; and some of them possess a peculiar value for us, as presenting the sole surviving memorials of female influence, and of the position woman held in the primitive social state which we desire to trace out as the true and rudimentary chronological beginning of our island history. There must necessarily be some uncertainty in any attempt to assign to the two sexes their just share of the personal ornaments found in the early tumuli, or discovered in the course of disturbing the uncultivated soil. Man, in such a primitive state as we have abundant grounds for believing the Caledonian aborigines of the Stone Period to have been, delights in assuming to himself the personal ornaments with which, in a more advanced stage of social life, he finds a higher gratification in adorning woman. It should not, therefore, excite surprise when we find ornaments which modern civilisation resigns entirely to the fair sex, such as bracelets, hair-pins, neck ornaments, and the like, mingling with the sword and the spear of the rude barbarian chief. Still, there are some ornaments, and especially bead necklaces, bracelets, and some of the smaller and more delicate armillæ, which we can hardly err in classing among female decorations. The subject, however, is well deserving of further attention, and the more so, as the evidence which is available in the case of sepulchral remains is of so satisfactory and decisive a character when reported on by competent witnesses. There can be no doubt, from the disclosures of numerous tumuli and cists, that the dead were frequently buried "in their habits as they lived," and with all their most prized personal adornments upon them, though time has made sad havoc of their funeral pomp, and scarcely allows a glimpse even of the naked skeleton that crumbles into dust under our gaze.
The rudest class of personal ornaments which are found in the sepulchral mounds, or in the safer chance depository of the bogs, are those formed of bone or horn; but they are necessarily of rare occurrence, not only from the remoteness of the period to which we conceive them to belong, but from the frail nature of the material in which they have been wrought, which, when deposited among the memorials of the dead, yields to decay not greatly less rapid than the remains it should adorn, and crumbles to dust when restored to light and air. Still some few of these fragile relics have been preserved, consisting of perforated beads of bone, horn pins, perforated animals' teeth, and other equally rude fragments of necklaces or pendants; but very few of them present much attempt at artificial decoration by means of incised ornaments or carving, such as is found to have been so extensively practised in a later age. One curious set of bone ornaments in the Scottish Museum includes a piece of ivory pierced with a square perforation, and another with a nut or button fitting into it, the clasp or fibula it may be of some robe of honour worn by a chief of the ancient race.
Ornaments of jet or shale and cannel coal, and large beads of glass and pebble, are of much more frequent occurrence in the Scottish grave-mounds, and furnish extremely interesting and varied evidence of the decorative arts of these remote ages. Many of them, however, are found under circumstances which leave no room to doubt that they belong to a period coeval with the introduction of metals, and the skill acquired in the practice of the metallurgic arts.
There is another class of relics, however, which we can feel no hesitation in ranking among the earliest remains of the Stone Period, though it may sometimes be difficult to determine whether we should regard them as mere personal ornaments or as charms employed in the mysterious rites of Pagan superstition, as it is not uncommon to find them used, at a very recent date, by their illiterate inheritors in some of the remoter districts of the Highlands and Isles. One relic, for example, in the Scottish Museum, consists of a flat reddish stone, roughly polished. It measures 4 inches in length, and about 2¾ inches in its greatest breadth, and is notched in a regular form, with two holes perforated through it. It was presented to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries in 1784, as a charm in use among the population of the island of Islay for the cure of diseases. From its correspondence with others of the earliest class of relics, it can hardly admit of a doubt that it belongs to the personal ornaments of the Stone Period, and may have owed the reverence of its more recent possessor to the fact of its discovery within some primitive cist, or in the charmed circle of Taoursanan, the origin of which is commonly ascribed to superhuman powers. It is worthy of note, indeed, that the word Druidheachd is no longer associated with the priesthood of the British groves, but is now only used by the Scottish Highlanders as applicable to sorcery or magic. Another, but much less perfect ornament of perforated reddish stone, in the same collection with the above, was found, along with several flint arrow-heads, in the island of Harris; and a third, still ruder, was discovered, with a similar arrow-head, on the Lomond Hills of Fifeshire. But perhaps the most singular relics of the Stone Period ever discovered in Scotland are two stone collars, found near the celebrated Parallel Roads of Glenroy, and now preserved at the mansion of Tonley, Aberdeenshire. They are each of the full size of a collar adapted to a small Highland horse; the one formed of trap or whinstone, and the other of a fine-grained red granite. They are not, however, to be regarded as the primitive substitutes for the more convenient materials of later introduction. On the contrary, a close imitation of the details of a horse collar of common materials is attempted, including the folds of the leather, nails, buckles, and holes for tying particular parts together. They are finished with much care and a high degree of polish, and are described as obviously the workmanship of a skilful artist. Mr. Skene, who first drew attention to these remarkable relics, suggests the probability of the peculiar natural features of Glenroy having led to the selection of this amphitheatre for the scene of ancient public games; and that these stone collars might commemorate the victor in the chariot race, as the tripods still existing record the victor in the Choragic games of Athens. But no circumstances attending their discovery are known which could aid conjecture either as to the period or purpose of their construction.[191]
In the year 1832, a large tumulus, on the shore of Broadford Bay, Isle of Skye, was levelled in the progress of some improvements on the estate of Corry, and it was found to cover a rudely vaulted chamber, within which lay a cist inclosing a human skeleton, along with various bones of animals, the species of which were not ascertained. Alongside of the skeleton an ornament of polished pale green stone was discovered, measuring about 2½ inches in length, by 2 inches in breadth. Its form will be best understood by the annexed woodcut. It is convex on the upper side, and concave on the under side, with a small hole drilled at each of the four corners, and an ornamental border of slightly indented ovals along one end. It differs only in dimensions from another previously referred to, in the collection of Adam Arbuthnot, Esq., of Peterhead, which was obtained from a tumulus at Cruden, Aberdeenshire. It measures 4¼ inches in length. Another ornament of polished green stone was afterwards discovered in the neighbourhood of the tumulus at Broadford Bay. It measures about 3½ inches in length, and nearly an inch in breadth at the centre, but tapers to about half an inch in breadth at either end, where a small hole is drilled through. It is only a fifth of an inch in thickness. Simple as are the forms of both of these relics, they represent a class which appear to have been common among the personal decorations of the Stone Period, whether regarded merely as ornaments, or valued for some hidden virtue which may have been supposed to pertain to them. A sepulchral deposit, closely corresponding to that found in the Isle of Skye, was discovered by some labourers employed in sinking a ditch at Tring, in Hertfordshire, about the year 1763. The relics were entirely of the same rude primitive class, and it furnished an example in confirmation of previous remarks regarding the earliest sepulchral rites, as the skeleton was found laid at full length, with legs and arms extended. Between the legs lay some flint arrow-heads, and at the feet ornaments resembling, both in form and material, those found in the tumulus at Broadford Bay.[192] Sir R. C. Hoare describes objects of similar character, found in the barrows of Wiltshire, some of which were made of blue slate;[193] and small perforated plates of stone or flint, of slightly varying forms, are not uncommon among the contents of the earlier British tumuli. They are not, however, confined to Britain. Simple as are the forms of the two relics figured above, there is a sufficiently marked character about them to excite our surprise when we meet with them in the grave of the ancient native of Skye, and in the cists of Herts or Wiltshire; but ornaments of almost exactly the same forms have been discovered in the mounds of the great valley of the Mississippi,[194] accompanied with celts, stone hatchets, and other primitive implements closely resembling those of the British Stone Period; though also with many more so essentially differing, as to forbid us deducing from such chance coincidences any fanciful community of origin between the Allophylian colonists of Europe and the aborigines of America.
Still ruder are the primitive necklaces, formed of the common small shells of our coasts, such as the Nerita litoralis, and even the Patella vulgata, or common limpet, perforated, apparently, by the simple process of rubbing the point on a stone, and then strung together with a fibre or sinew. It may perhaps be thought by some that sufficient space has already been devoted to this infantile period of the race, yet childish as such decorations seem, they are found among the valued relics of men whose giant monuments have outlived many massive structures destined by later ages to perpetuate the memory of historic deeds, or consecrated to the services of the all-powerful Church of medieval Christendom. Underneath the cromlech discovered on levelling a tumulus in the Phœnix Park at Dublin, in 1838, two male skeletons were disclosed, and beside the skull of each lay the perforated shells of a necklace which had doubtless been placed around their necks when they were deposited in the simple but grand mausoleum that still attests the veneration of the ancient natives for their chiefs. A portion of the vegetable fibre with which they had been strung together remained through some of the shells, and the only other relics found in the grave were a small fibula of bone, and a knife or lance-head of flint. The common British bivalves are also found used for similar decorations. In a cist discovered on the coast of the Frith of Forth, during the construction of the Edinburgh and Granton Railway, the only relics deposited beside the skeleton which it enclosed were a quantity of the cardium commune, or cockle, of different sizes, rubbed down until they were reduced nearly to rings; while in another cist, opened at Orkney, and more particularly referred to in a previous chapter, about two dozen oyster shells were discovered, each perforated with a hole nearly an inch in diameter.
FOOTNOTES:
[191] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 299.
[192] Archæologia, vol. viii. p. 429. Plate XXX. fig. 6.
[193] Ancient Wiltshire, Plates II. and XII.
[194] Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. i. p. 237.