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← The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

IX. CRANIA OF THE TUMULI…

Part 3 of 9 · Wilson, Daniel, Sir · Public domain text

About this edition

Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #47948, public domain in the United States · text not rewritten or summarized · How RedLectern is built

 

Contents (43)
  1. Opening about 1 min
  2. I. THE PRIMEVAL OR STONE PERIOD about 1 min
  3. II. THE ARCHAIC OR BRONZE PERIOD about 1 min
  4. III. THE TEUTONIC OR IRON PERIOD about 1 min
  5. IV. THE CHRISTIAN PERIOD about 2 min
  6. Preface about 22 min
  7. Introduction about 37 min
  8. I. THE PRIMEVAL OR STONE PERIOD under 1 min
  9. I. THE PRIMEVAL TRANSITION about 11 min
  10. II. ABORIGINAL TRACES about 23 min
  11. III. SEPULCHRAL MEMORIALS about 1 h
  12. IV. DWELLINGS about 30 min
  13. V. TEMPLES AND MEMORIAL STONES about 51 min
  14. VI. WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS about 44 min
  15. VII. STONE VESSELS about 11 min
  16. VIII. PERSONAL ORNAMENTS about 9 min
  17. IX. CRANIA OF THE TUMULI about 59 min
  18. II. THE ARCHAIC OR BRONZE PERIOD under 1 min
  19. I. INTRODUCTION OF METALS about 48 min
  20. II. THE METALLURGIC TRANSITION about 35 min
  21. III. PRIMITIVE BRONZE about 22 min
  22. IV. WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS about 35 min
  23. V. DOMESTIC AND SEPULCHRAL VESSELS about 33 min
  24. VI. PERSONAL ORNAMENTS about 1 h 8 min
  25. VII. SEPULCHRES about 7 min
  26. VIII. RELIGION, ARTS, AND DOMESTIC HABITS about 18 min
  27. I. THE INTRODUCTION OF IRON about 28 min
  28. II. THE ROMAN INVASION about 1 h 16 min
  29. III. STRONGHOLDS about 41 min
  30. IV. WEAPONS, IMPLEMENTS, AND POTTERY about 19 min
  31. V. PERSONAL ORNAMENTS about 17 min
  32. VI. SEPULCHRES OF THE IRON PERIOD about 21 min
  33. IV. THE CHRISTIAN PERIOD under 1 min
  34. I. HISTORICAL DATA about 49 min
  35. II. SCULPTURED STANDING STONES about 23 min
  36. III. THE NORRIE'S LAW RELICS about 18 min
  37. IV. SCOTO-SCANDINAVIAN RELICS about 1 h 6 min
  38. V. AMUSEMENTS about 32 min
  39. VI. PRIMITIVE ECCLESIOLOGY about 29 min
  40. VII. MEDIEVAL ECCLESIOLOGY about 1 h 22 min
  41. VIII. ECCLESIASTICAL ANTIQUITIES about 49 min
  42. IX. MISCELLANEOUS ANTIQUITIES about 27 min
  43. X. CONCLUSION about 37 min
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IX. CRANIA OF THE TUMULI

Notwithstanding the zeal with which English archæologists have pursued their investigations among the remains of primitive sepulchral deposits, scarcely anything has yet been done towards obtaining a collection of facts in relation to the size and form of the skulls, and the general characteristics of the skeletons of their constructors. In this, as in so many other respects, the archæologists of Sweden and Denmark have set us an example well deserving of imitation, and have shewn the essential dependence of Archæology on the kindred sciences, with which it has heretofore failed to effect a hearty alliance in Britain. Had Sir Richard Colt Hoare examined the osteology of the tumuli of Wiltshire with the same patient accuracy and precision which he devoted to their archæology, a most important basis would have been furnished for ethnological research. Now, however, that such investigations are recognised as coming within the legitimate scope of archæological inquiry, we may hope ere long to ascertain by such evidence somewhat of the characteristics of the aboriginal race of the Stone Period, and also to obtain an answer to the inquiry,--Was the Bronze Period superinduced on the Primeval one by internal improvement and progression, or was it the result of the intruded arts of a superior race? This, it is manifest, can only be determined by an extensive series of observations, since physiologists are generally agreed in admitting that the physical characteristics of races have been largely modified, and even entirely altered, by a change of circumstances. The nomadic Turkish tribes, for example, spread through central Asia, still exhibit the broad-faced, pyramidal skulls which Dr. Prichard has assigned to the nomadic races, while the long civilized European Turks have become closely assimilated to other European races, and possess the characteristic oval skull.[195] "The greater relative development of the jaws and zygomata, and of the bones of the face altogether, in comparison with the size of the brain, indicates, in the pyramidal and prognathous skulls, a more ample extension of the organs subservient to sensation and the animal faculties. Such a configuration is adapted, by its results, to the condition of human tribes in the nomadic state, and in that of savage hunters."[196] Two important points, therefore, which remain to be determined in relation to the British tumuli are, whether the forms and proportions of the skulls of their builders indicate the existence of one or of several races? and next, whether the changes in the forms of the crania are sudden and decided, or are gradual, and pass by an undefined transition from the one to the other? It will be found in the succeeding section that archæological evidence clearly points to a transitional state from the Stone to the Bronze Period, such as is at least altogether irreconcilable with the idea of the sudden extermination of the aboriginal race. It at the same time no less distinctly points to the existence of a native population in Britain long anterior to the earliest historic indications of the Arian nations passing into Europe.

To these early races, which we describe loosely as primitive, or as aboriginal or primeval, Dr. Prichard has suggested the application of the conveniently indefinite term "Allophylian," which suffices to characterize them as distinct from the well ascertained primitive races, without meanwhile assuming any hypothetical origin for them. It remains to be seen whether the archæologist may not be able to supply, in a great degree, the desired information in relation to the habits, arts, and social condition of these unknown races:--

"The Allophylian nations," Dr. Prichard remarks, "appear to have been spread, in the earliest times, through all the most remote regions of the old continent,--to the northward, eastward, and westward of the Indo-European tribes, whom they seem everywhere to have preceded; so that they appear, in comparison with these Indo-European colonies, in the light of aboriginal or native inhabitants, vanquished, and often banished into remote and inaccessible tracts, by more powerful invading tribes. The latter, namely, the Indo-European nations, seem to have been everywhere superior in mental endowments. Some tribes, indeed, had retained or acquired many characteristics of barbarism and ferocity; but with all these they joined undoubted marks of an earlier intellectual development, particularly a higher culture of language as an instrument of thought, as well as of human intercourse. If we inquire into the degree of improvement in the arts of life which the Indo-European nations had attained at the era of dispersion from their primitive abode, or from the common centre of the whole stock, an investigation of their languages will be our principal guide. It gives us strong grounds for a belief that their advancement in useful arts had been comparatively small. The primitive ancestors of the Indo-European nations were probably ignorant of the use of iron and other metals, since the terms by which these are denoted are different in different languages, and must, as it would appear, have been adopted subsequently to the era of separation. Nothing can be more unlike than gold, χρυσος, and aurum; than silver and argentum; than ferrum and σιδηρος. Other considerations may be advanced to confirm this opinion, that the use of metals was unknown to the earliest colonists of the west.... But though unskilled in many of the most useful arts of life, the Arian people appear to have brought with them a much higher mental culture than the Allophylian races possessed before the Arian tribes were spread among them. They had national poetry, and a culture of language and thought altogether surprising, when compared with their external condition and habits."[197]

The religion which consists in mere fetisses, charms, spells, and talismans is in like manner ascribed by Dr. Prichard to these Allophylian nations; in contradistinction to the Eastern doctrine of metempsychosis, with the coincident belief in a system of retributive justice, and the distinct recognition of a future state, which appear to have been common to all the Arian nations, and to have been further developed by their being confided to a distinct order, caste, or priesthood. Of the former races the modern Fins, Lappes, and Esquimaux still remain as characteristic examples. Of the latter, the historic Celtæ, Scandinavian and German-Teutonic races are sufficiently illustrative, while the modern Hindoos are a living evidence of the south-eastern migration of the same great branch of the human family. But of the degree of civilisation of the Arian nomades when they reached the western shores of Europe, or of the state in which they found the countries which they colonized, we as yet know almost nothing; and it still remains to be determined whether they entered into peaceful possession of unpeopled wastes, or won them from primitive Allophylian nations. On these points archæological observation may be expected to throw some light. The irregular or systematic arrangement of the cist, the provisions for the future occupation and welfare of the deceased, and all the peculiarities of primitive sepulchral rites, more or less clearly indicate the arts and habits of those by whom they were practised, and still more, the ideas entertained by them in relation to a future state.

Of the Allophylian colonists of Scandinavia, Professor Nillson assigns to the most ancient the short or brachy-kephalic form of cranium, with prominent parietal tubers, and broad and flattened occiput. To this aboriginal race he conceives succeeds another with a cranium of a more lengthened oval form and prominent and narrow occiput. The third race, which Scandinavian antiquaries incline to regard as that of the bronze or first metallic period, is characterized by a cranium longer than the first and broader than the second, and marked by greater prominence at the sides. The last Professor Nillson considers to have been of Celtic origin. To this succeeded the true Scandinavian race, and the first workers of the native iron ore.[198] Professor Eschricht assigns to the crania from the barrows of the oldest Danish series an ample and well-developed form, with the forehead vaulted and tolerably spacious, and the nasal bones prominent. In a skull described by him the zygomata appear large and angular, and the cranium has somewhat of a pyramidal form. The eyes have been deeply set, and the eyebrows are strongly prominent. One of the most remarkable features in these skulls is their round form, approaching to a spherical shape.[199]

The type of the old Celtic cranium is considered by Professor Nillson as intermediate to the lengthened and shortened oval, or the true dolicho-kephalic and brachy-kephalic forms, and in this conclusion Dr. Thurnam coincides. Dr. Morton describes the Celtic head as "rather elongated, and the forehead narrow and but slightly arched; the brow low, straight, and bushy; the eyes and hair light; the nose and mouth large; and the cheek-bones high."[200] Such characteristics differ decidedly from those of the early barrows. Dr. Prichard, however, hesitates to accept the conclusions adopted by Scandinavian ethnologists, attaching it may be too slight importance to the strictly archæological evidence on which they are to some extent based. He remarks in reference to the description of the skulls of the most ancient Scandinavian barrows:--"They are probably the crania of Celtic races; in Denmark of Cimbrians. The tombs containing ornaments of the precious metals are referred to a later age; but it is uncertain as yet whether they belonged to the same race as the former."[201] One marked difference has hitherto existed between the systems of several of the chief continental ethnologists and those of England, which has somewhat influenced the conclusions of each. While continental investigators into the phenomena of various races have set aside the idea of one primitive stock,--some of them even assuming the primal existence of numerous distinct and independent human races,--British ethnologists, with Dr. Prichard at their head, have held fast by the Adamic history, and in maintaining the origin of all the races of man from one pair, have also given its full force to the influence of external circumstances in modifying the physical peculiarities of each race. That the progress of a people in civilisation must be accompanied with a corresponding improvement in their intellectual faculties and also in their physical conformation is now generally admitted. Long time, however, is required even under the most favourable circumstances, for any very decisive modification affecting the form and features of a whole people, so that the sudden intrusion of a foreign race must be no less readily discernible from their crania than from novel arts or sepulchral rites. Nothing has yet been done by Scottish archæologists with a view to ascertain the physical conformation of the primitive native races; and the small contribution now offered as a beginning, is founded on too limited data to be of very great avail, except perhaps in opening up the subject and leading to more extended observation. Fortunately a few skulls from Scottish tumuli and cists are preserved in the Museums of the Scottish Antiquaries and of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. A comparison of these with the specimens of crania drawn by Dr. Thurnam from examples found in an ancient tumular cemetery at Lamel Hill, near York, believed to be of the Anglo-Saxon period, abundantly proves an essential difference of races.[202] The latter, though belonging to the superior or dolicho-kephalic type, are small, very poorly developed, low and narrow in the forehead, and pyramidal in form. A striking feature of one type of crania from the Scottish barrows is a square compact form. Though full in the middle-head, these are by no means deficient in the forehead; but it will be observed from the first class of examples in the following table of measurements, that they are generally of small relative size,--a fact which has been frequently noted, even by casual observers, when seeing them in situ, and contrasting their dimensions with the disproportionate size of the skeleton. The system of measurement employed in the following table is chiefly that adopted by Dr. Morton in his "Crania Americana," and the terms are used in the sense explained by him under the head "Anatomical Measurements," (p. 249.) From the fractured and very fragile state of many of the skulls, it was impossible to attempt the measurement of their internal capacity by the ingenious process employed by Dr. Morton. The last column in the table is accordingly found by adding the longitudinal and vertical diameters and the horizontal periphery. This is not assumed as affording any test of the actual capacity of each cranium, but only as a fair relative approximation and element of comparison. Owing to the undetermined form of the processes in several of the crania and the imperfection or total absence of the facial bones, from their greatly decayed state, the additional measurements marked * are given as less liable to error. Some of them, such as the inter-mastoid arch and inter-mastoid line, taken from the upper root of the zygomatic process instead of from the points of the mastoid processes, are also, perhaps, preferable as more uniform and precise.[203]

The full value of such investigations, and even their precise bearing and the conclusions legitimately deducible from them, may probably be matter of dispute, but there can be no question that a general distinctive cranial conformation is clearly discoverable in modern nations, and is even very markedly observable between the different races of the British Isles. Given a sufficient number of examples of each class, the experienced eye would at once discriminate between the modern European Fin, Germanic Teuton, and British Celt. The conclusion appears therefore inevitable, that if we find in the ancient tumuli like variations in physical form, systematically reducible to two or more classes, we are justified in assuming the existence of diverse primitive races, and of seeking in the accompanying relics for indications of their peculiar arts and customs, as well as of their relative positions as contemporary or successive occupants of the country.

|----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| | | | | | | | | No.|CRANIA. |Longit- |Parietal |Frontal |Vertical | | | |udinal |Diameter.|Diameter.|Diameter.| | | |Diameter.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| | i.|Mexican, |6.8 |5.5 |4.6 |6. | | ii.|" |6.4 |5.7 |4.5 |5.4 | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| |Primitive Dolicho-kephalic, | | | | | |or Kumbe-kephalic. | | | | | | {1.|Cist, Aberdeenshire, |7. |5.4½? |4.9? |4.10 | | {2.| " Fifeshire, |7. |4.8 |4.4 |5.3 | | {3.| " Cockenzie, |6.11 |5.3 |3.11 |5. | | | East-Lothian, | | | | | | {4.| " " |7. |4.11 |4.4 |5.3 | | {5.| " " |6.6 |4.1? |4.11 |4.2? | | {6.| " Stonelaws, |7.3 |5.4 |4.6 |5.2 | | | East-Lothian, | | | | | | {7.|Cairn, Fifeshire, |7.5 |5.2 |4.5 |5.2 | | {8.|Tumulus, Newbattle, |7.9 |5.6 |4.9 |... | | {9.| " Montrose, |7.3 |5.8 |4.3½ |4.9 | | | | | | | | |Brachy-kephalic. | | | | | |{10.|Cist, Montrose, |7. |6.1 |5.3 |5.8 | |{11.|Moss, Kilsyth, |... |5.7½? |4.4 |5.5 | |{12.| " Linton, |6.6 |5.1 |4.1 |4.9 | |{13.| " " |6.7 |5. |4.1 |4.11 | |{14.|Cist, Ratho, |6.10 |6. |5.1 |5.6 | |{15.| " Linlithgow, |7.2? |5.6 |4.9 |... | | | | | | | | | 16.|Roman Shaft, |7.3 |5.4 |4.6 |5.4 | | | Roxburghshire, | | | | | | | | | | | | |Celtic. | | | | | |{17.|Tarbert, Kintyre, |7.9 |5. |4.10 |5.6 | |{18.|Sea-Shore, Argyleshire,|7.6 |5.1 |4.6 |5.1 | |{19.|Harris, Hebrides, |7.3 |5.3 |4.5 |5.4½ | |{20.|Iona, " |7.5 |5.6½ |5.0½ |5.6 | |{21.| " " |7.3 |5.6½ |4.4 |5.6 | |{22.| " " |7.2 |5.7 |4.5 |5.6 | |{23.| " " |7.3½ |5.7 |4.6 |5.2 | |{24.| " " |7.2 |5.5 |4.6 |... | |{25.|Knockstanger, |7.8 |5.6 |4.3½ |5.3 | | | Caithness, | | | | | |{26.|Inch Columb Kill, |7.9 |5.7 |5.3 |5.6 | | | Ireland, | | | | | |{27.|Celtic Type (?) Edin. |7.11 |5.5 |4.9 |... | | | Phrenol. Museum, | | | | | | | | | | | | |Medieval. | | | | | |{28.|Tumular Cemetery, |7.6½ |5.9 |4.7 |5.6 | | | North Berwick, | | | | | |{29.| " " |7. |5.7 |4.0½ |4.8 | |{30.| " " |7.3½ |5.10 |4.11 |5.7 | |{31.|Castle Bank, Edinburgh,|7.6 |5.4 |4.11 |... | |{32.|Flodden Wall, |7.6 |5.4 |4.8 |5.2 | | | Edinburgh, | | | | | |{33.|Old St. Giles's, |7.3 |5.6 |4.4 |5.1 | | | Edinburgh, | | | | | |{34.| " " |7.6 |5.6 |4.7 |... | |{35.| " " |6.11½ |5.6 |4.4 |5. | |{36.| " " |6.6 |5.3 |4.2 |4.11 | |{37.| " " |6.11 |5.9 |4.9 |5.1 | |{38.| " " |7.3 |5.7 |4.6 |5.4 | |{39.|Constitution Street, |7. |5.9 |4.9 |5.3 | | | Leith, | | | | | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------|

|----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| | | | | * | | * | | No.|CRANIA. |Inter- |Inter- |Inter- |Do. | | | |Mastoid |Mastoid |Mastoid |from | | | |Arch. |Arch, |Line. |Upper | | | | |from | |Root of | | | | |Upper | |Zygomatic| | | | |Root of | |Process. | | | | |Zygomatic| | | | | | |Process. | | | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| | i.|Mexican, |15.6 |... |4.4 |... | | ii.|" |14.6 |... |4.5 |... | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| |Primitive Dolicho-kephalic, | | | | | |or Kumbe-kephalic. | | | | | | {1.|Cist, Aberdeenshire, |13.11 |11.5 |3.6½ |4.8½ | | {2.| " Fifeshire, |13.2 |11. |4.1 |4.10 | | {3.| " Cockenzie, |... |12. |... |4.8½ | | | East-Lothian, | | | | | | {4.| " " |13.8 |11.4½ |4.1 |4.10 | | {5.| " " |13.2 |11.3 |... |4.8? | | {6.| " Stonelaws, |14.3 |11.9 |4.4 |5.0½ | | | East-Lothian, | | | | | | {7.|Cairn, Fifeshire, |14.3 |12. |3.7 |4.10½ | | {8.|Tumulus, Newbattle, |... |12.3 |... |5.6 | | {9.| " Montrose, |14. |11.9 |3.8½ |5. | | | | | | | | |Brachy-kephalic. | | | | | |{10.|Cist, Montrose, |15.9 |13.1 |4.4 |5.9½ | |{11.|Moss, Kilsyth, |14.6? |12.2? |4.1 |... | |{12.| " Linton, |13.5 |11.3 |3.9 |4.6 | |{13.| " " |13.4 |11.3 |3.10 |4.6 | |{14.|Cist, Ratho, |15.7 |12.11 |4.2 |5.7 | |{15.| " Linlithgow, |14.10 |12.7 |4.6 |5.5 | | | | | | | | | 16.|Roman Shaft, |14.7½ |12. |5.3½ |5.6 | | | Roxburghshire, | | | | | | | | | | | | |Celtic. | | | | | |{17.|Tarbert, Kintyre, |14.9 |11.11 |4. |5.4 | |{18.|Sea-Shore, Argyleshire,|14.8 |11.3 |3.11 |5.3 | |{19.|Harris, Hebrides, |14.5 |12.4 |3.11½ |4.9 | |{20.|Iona, " |14.11½ |12.3 |4. |... | |{21.| " " |14.8 |12. |4.1 |5.3 | |{22.| " " |14.9 |11.10 |4.3 |5.6 | |{23.| " " |15.? |12.4? |... |... | |{24.| " " |... |... |... |... | |{25.|Knockstanger, |14.4 |11.8 |4.7 |5.6 | | | Caithness, | | | | | |{26.|Inch Columb Kill, |15.7 |13.3 |4.0½ |5.4 | | | Ireland, | | | | | |{27.|Celtic Type (?) Edin. |... |12. |... |5.1 | | | Phrenol. Museum, | | | | | | | | | | | | |Medieval. | | | | | |{28.|Tumular Cemetery, |15.2 |12.3 |3.11 |5.2 | | | North Berwick, | | | | | |{29.| " " |13.8 |11.4 |3.6 |4.9 | |{30.| " " |15.5 |12.3 |... |5.9 | |{31.|Castle Bank, Edinburgh,|14.3 |12. |4.3 |5.5 | |{32.|Flodden Wall, |14.6 |12.2 |4.2 |5.1 | | | Edinburgh, | | | | | |{33.|Old St. Giles's, |14. |11.9 |4.2½ |5.5 | | | Edinburgh, | | | | | |{34.| " " |14.7 |12. |4.1½ |5.1 | |{35.| " " |14.5 |12. |3.7½ |4.9 | |{36.| " " |13.3 |11.3 |3.10½ |4.10 | |{37.| " " |15.2 |12. |4. |5.7 | |{38.| " " |14.7 |12.1 |4. |5. | |{39.|Constitution Street, |14.6 |12.5 |3.10½ |5.0½ | | | Leith, | | | | | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------|

|----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| | | | | * | | * | | No.|CRANIA. |Occipito-|Do. from |Hori- |Relative | | | |frontal |Occipital|zontal |Capacity.| | | |Arch. |Protuber-|Periph- | | | | | |ance to |ery. | | | | | |Root of | | | | | | |Nose. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| | i.|Mexican, |14.6 |... |19.9 |32.5 | | ii.|" |13.5 |... |20.2 |31.10 | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------| |Primitive Dolicho-kephalic, | | | | | |or Kumbe-kephalic. | | | | | | {1.|Cist, Aberdeenshire, |13.9 |12. |20.4 |32.2 | | {2.| " Fifeshire, |14. |11.11 |19.6 |31.9 | | {3.| " Cockenzie, |14.4 |11.4 |19. |30.11 | | | East-Lothian, | | | | | | {4.| " " |13.10 |11.3 |16.7½ |28.10½ | | {5.| " " |13.11 |12. |19. |29.6 | | {6.| " Stonelaws, |14.8 |12.3 |20.8½ |33.1½ | | | East-Lothian, | | | | | | {7.|Cairn, Fifeshire, |14.3 |12.3 |20.7½ |33.2½ | | {8.|Tumulus, Newbattle, |15.6 |... |21.3 |... | | {9.| " Montrose, |14.2 |11.9 |20.7 |32.7 | | | | | | | | |Brachy-kephalic. | | | | | |{10.|Cist, Montrose, |15.2 |13.3 |21. |33.8 | |{11.|Moss, Kilsyth, |... |... |21.? |... | |{12.| " Linton, |13.6 |11.9 |18.7½ |29.10½ | |{13.| " " |13.8 |11.10 |19.7 |31.1 | |{14.|Cist, Ratho, |14.11 |13. |20. |32.4 | |{15.| " Linlithgow, |... |... |20.6 |... | | | | | | | | | 16.|Roman Shaft, |14.4 | 12.9 |20.6 |33.1 | | | Roxburghshire, | | | | | | | | | | | | |Celtic. | | | | | |{17.|Tarbert, Kintyre, |15.5 |13.6 |21.3 |34.6 | |{18.|Sea-Shore, Argyleshire,|14.6 |12.11 |20.4 |32.11½ | |{19.|Harris, Hebrides, |14.9 |12.9 |20.10 |33.5½ | |{20.|Iona, " |14.9 |12.6 |20.10 |33.9 | |{21.| " " |14.5 |12.10 |20.2 |32.11 | |{22.| " " |14.4 |12.6 |20. |32.8 | |{23.| " " |14.8 |12.6½ |19.10½ |32.4 | |{24.| " " |... |12.10 |20.7 |... | |{25.|Knockstanger, |14.6 |12.7 |20.11 |33.10 | | | Caithness, | | | | | |{26.|Inch Columb Kill, |16.4 |14.4 |21.11 |35.2 | | | Ireland, | | | | | |{27.|Celtic Type (?) Edin. |15.5 |13.9 |21.6 |... | | | Phrenol. Museum, | | | | | | | | | | | | |Medieval. | | | | | |{28.|Tumular Cemetery, |15. |12.3 |21.5 |34.5½ | | | North Berwick, | | | | | |{29.| " " |... |12.3 |19.9 |31.5 | |{30.| " " |15. |13. |21.7 |34.5½ | |{31.|Castle Bank, Edinburgh,|... |12.6 |20.1 |... | |{32.|Flodden Wall, |15.6 |... |20.11 |33.7 | | | Edinburgh, | | | | | |{33.|Old St. Giles's, |14.4 |12. |20.2½ |32.6½ | | | Edinburgh, | | | | | |{34.| " " |15. |12.10 |20.8 |... | |{35.| " " |14. |11.9 |19.10 |31.9½ | |{36.| " " |13.3 |11. |18.7 |30. | |{37.| " " |14. |12.2 |20.5 |32.5 | |{38.| " " |14.7 |12.7 |20.2 |32.9 | |{39.|Constitution Street, |14.3 |12.5 |20.3 |32.6 | | | Leith, | | | | | |----+-----------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------|

There is no primitive race known to us which seems so fit to be selected as a type and standard of comparison in relation to cranial development, as the Aztecs or ancient Mexicans. They were the last dominant race among numerous native tribes, who, progressing from the rudimentary Stone Period, were excluded from influences such as those which in Europe superseded the ages of stone and bronze by the more perfect arts of civilisation. These changes archæologists are now agreed in associating with the introduction of iron. But if in this latter point also the parallel be admissible, then we must less conceive of the more perfect arts of civilisation being superinduced on those of the Archaic Period, than of the Allophylian nations being themselves superseded. More extended observations on the physical characteristics of these races will probably, to a great extent, determine this. Two skulls selected from Morton's Crania Americana are placed at the head of the table, and will afford a very satisfactory comparative estimate of the cranial capacity of the races of the Scottish tumuli. No. i. is figured in Plate XVII. of Dr. Morton's valuable work, from which it will be seen that it decidedly belongs to the Brachy-kephalic class of Retzius, which again nearly corresponds with the pyramidal division of Dr. Prichard. It is thus described by Dr. Morton:--"With a better forehead than is usual, this skull presents all the prominent characters of the American race--the prominent face, elevated vertex, vertical occiput, and the great swell from the temporal bones upward." No. ii. is figured in Plate XVIII. of the same work, and closely corresponds to it in type. It is described as "a remarkably well characterized Toltecan head from an ancient tomb near the city of Mexico, whence it was exhumed, with a great variety of antiques, vessels, masks, ornaments," &c. These, therefore, afford a fair comparative criterion of the capacity of the tumuli builders of Britain for the practice of arts analogous to those in which the later American races so greatly excelled at the epoch of the Spanish Conquest; and it will be seen that the comparison is, upon the whole, in favour of the superior intelligence of the British Brachy-kephalic race, as indicated by the cerebral mass and frontal development. No. 1. is an exceedingly interesting example of a skull of the Stone Period, in the Antiquarian Museum. It was found in 1822 in a rude cist in the parish of Banchory-Devenich, Aberdeenshire. On the top of the head is a hole nearly circular, rather more than an inch in diameter, which there can scarcely be a doubt was caused by the death-blow. In each corner of the cist lay a small pile of flint flakes.--No. 2 was taken from one of thirty cists found near Fifeness, in 1826, and described in a previous chapter.--Nos. 3, 4, and 5 were obtained from a group of rude cists discovered in the neighbourhood of Cockenzie, East-Lothian, in 1840. Nos. 3 and 4, as well as the two previous examples, are in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. No. 5 has been obtained from J. M. Mitchell, Esq., who was present when the graves at Cockenzie were opened, and is here figured as a characteristic example of the class. No relics were found along with these remains, but the cists were of the primitive circumscribed dimensions, and presented the rudest characteristics of early sepulture.--No. 6 is a skull in the Edinburgh Phrenological Museum found on the farm of Stonelaws, East-Lothian, where a number of rude primitive cists have been exposed in the course of agricultural operations. Some of these lie east and west, with the heads at the west end, according to Christian practice, but others are irregularly laid; and the example here noted was found with the head at the east end of the grave.--No. 7 was obtained from a cist discovered under a large cairn at Nether Urquhart, Fifeshire, in 1835. An account of the opening of several cairns and tumuli in the same district is given by Lieutenant-Colonel Miller, in his "Inquiry respecting the Site of the Battle of Mons Grampius."[204] Some of them contained urns and burnt bones, ornaments of jet and shale, and the like early relics, while in others were found implements or weapons of iron. It is selected here as another example of the same class of crania.--No. 8 was found in a cist under a tumulus opened at Newbattle, East-Lothian, in 1782. This, there can be little doubt, was the large encircled tumulus in the immediate vicinity of the Abbey, which was found to cover a cist nearly seven feet long. The cranium is well proportioned and of unusually large dimensions, and probably pertained to a chief of gigantic stature.--No. 9 is from a tumulus at Montrose. The whole of these, more or less, nearly agree with the lengthened oval form described by Professor Nillson as the second race of the Scandinavian tumuli. They have mostly a singularly narrow and elongated occiput; and with their comparatively low and narrow forehead, might not inaptly be described by the familiar term boat-shaped. It is probable that further investigation will establish this as the type of a primitive, if not of the primeval native race. Though they approach in form to a superior type, falling under the first or Dolicho-kephalic class of Professor Retzius' arrangement, their capacity is generally small, and their development, for the most part, poor; so that there is nothing in their cranial characteristics inconsistent with such evidence as seems to assign to them the rude arts and extremely limited knowledge of the British Stone Period.

No. 10 is an exceedingly characteristic example of an entirely different type of cranium. It was obtained under very remarkable circumstances, more particularly detailed in a subsequent chapter. On the demolition, in 1833, of the old Town Steeple of Montrose, a building of great antiquity, it was found that at some depth beneath its ancient foundations there lay the sepulchres of a much more remote period. Mr. William Smith of Montrose, remarks in a communication sent to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1834, along with the donation of an urn:--"The accompanying urn or vase is one of four of the same description found about the beginning of April 1833 below the foundation of the Old Steeple in Montrose, beside the skeleton of a human body,--two of them being at each side of the head, and two near the feet.... Exactly below the foundations of the Old Steeple the skeleton was discovered, with the vases disposed about it as mentioned. It measured six feet in length. The thigh bones, which were very stout, and the teeth, were the only parts in good preservation. The skull was a little wasted, and was given to the Rev. Mr. Liddell, of Lady Glenorchy's Chapel, who intended to present it to Mr. Combe of the Phrenological Society."[205] The skull, of which the measurements are given in No. 10, is the same here referred to, presented to the Phrenological Museum by the Rev. Mr. Liddell. It is a very striking example of the British Brachy-kephalic type; square and compact in form, broad and short, but well balanced, and with a good frontal development. It no doubt pertained to some primitive chief, or arch-priest, sage, it may be, in council, and brave in war. The site of his place of sepulture has obviously been chosen for the same reasons which led to its selection at a later period for the erection of the belfry and beacon-tower of the old burgh. It is the most elevated spot in the neighbourhood, and here his cist had been laid, and the memorial mound piled over it, which doubtless remained untouched so long as his memory was cherished in the traditions of his people.--No. 11 was found in a moss near Kilsyth, Stirlingshire. It is nearly black, and quite firm and sound, from the action of the peat. Its general characteristics clearly belong to this second group, but it has been injured in parts, and apparently subjected to great pressure, so as to render some of the measurements doubtful.--Nos. 12 and 13 are skulls found at different times, at a considerable depth, in a moss at Linton, Peeblesshire.--No. 14 is a very characteristic example of the Brachy-kephalic type of cranium. It was found in a cist under a tumulus in the parish of Ratho, Mid-Lothian, and alongside of the skeleton stood a small rude clay urn, within which lay several bronze rings.--No. 15 is also a good example of the same type. It was obtained, in 1849, from a cist partly hollowed out of the natural trap rock on the farm of East Broadlaw, in the parish and county of Linlithgow. It was covered with two unhewn slabs of stone, and measured internally about six feet long. The skeleton was in good preservation, and lay at full length. Only a few inches of soil covered the slabs with which it was inclosed. No relics were found in the cist, but some time prior to its discovery a bronze celt and spear-head were turned up in its immediate vicinity.

Few as these examples are, they will probably be found, on further investigation, to belong to a race entirely distinct from those previously described. They correspond very nearly to the Brachy-kephalic crania of the supposed primeval race of Scandinavia, described by Professor Nillson as short, with prominent parietal tubers, and broad and flattened occiput. In frontal development, however, they are decidedly superior to the previous class of crania, and such evidence as we possess seems to point to a very different succession of races to that which Scandinavian ethnologists now recognise in the primitive history of the north of Europe. Our data are as yet too few to admit of our doing more than noticing these indications of the evidence that has been produced, in the hope that it may stimulate to the further prosecution of this interesting branch of primitive ethnology.

No. 16 is a cranium chiefly interesting from the circumstances under which it was found. During the construction of the Edinburgh and Hawick Railway, in 1846, extensive Roman remains were brought to light in the vicinity of the village of Newstead, Roxburghshire. These are described in a subsequent chapter. In the progress of the work the excavators exposed a group of circular shafts, or well-like pits, varying from three feet to about twenty feet in depth. They were filled with black fetid earth, intermixed with bones of animals, Roman pottery, mortaria, amphoræ, Samian ware, &c., whole and in fragments. In one of these shafts was found the entire skeleton of a man, standing upright, with a long iron spear at his side, and various specimens of Roman pottery in the debris with which the pit was filled.[206] Of the period, therefore, to which the cranium belongs, there can be no doubt, though no sufficient evidence exists to determine whether it pertained to a Roman legionary, or a contemporary native Briton. The latter is, perhaps, more probable. The skull is of moderate size, but exceedingly well proportioned, the teeth are in perfect preservation, with the crowns very little worn, and the markings of all the muscles are unusually strong and well defined.

The succeeding group of crania, Nos. 17-27, afford a fair average criterion of the Celtic type.--No. 17 is a skull dug up in a cave on the sea-coast, at the Mull of Kintyre, Argyleshire, near to where tradition affirms a battle to have been fought between the natives and an invading host of Northmen.--No. 18 is in like manner a memorial of Scandinavian aggression, and is marked in the catalogue of the Phrenological Museum as the skull of a Dane. It was dug out of the sand on the sea-beach, near Larnahinden, Argyleshire, where a party of Danes are believed to have landed and been defeated. It exhibits some remarkable measurements, especially in the small proportion of the vertical diameter; and a comparison of its various dimensions with those of the Roman skull, No. 16, brings out very distinctly the points of disagreement of two essentially different forms of crania. No. 18, however, is not to be accepted as a good Celtic type. The best medium form of the Celtic cranium is No. 20, which appears, in so far as the present amount of observation admits of such conclusions, to be a fair standard of this important class of crania. It forms one of a very interesting group of skulls in the Phrenological Museum. No. 19 was brought from Harray, near Lewis, and Nos. 20-24 from Iona. The whole of these were presented to the Society, in 1833, by Mr. Donald Gregory, Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and they are each marked by him as the "Skull of a Druid from the Hebrides." They were no doubt obtained during the operations carried on by the members of the Iona Club, thus described in the introduction to the Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis:--

"In order to celebrate the institution of the Club, a meeting was held in the island of Iona, upon the 7th day of September 1833, permission having been obtained from His Grace the Duke of Argyle, the President, to make such excavations in the island as the Club might deem necessary. A search was made in the ancient cemetery called Relig Oran, for such tombstones as might in the process of time have been concealed by the accumulation of rubbish. The result of these operations was, that a considerable number of finely carved tombstones was brought to view, which none of the inhabitants had ever seen before."

The sepulchres of the Scottish kings were also explored, which were used for the last time as a royal cemetery when Macbeth was interred there beside his Queen Gruoch, the daughter of Bodhe,--as a record in the St. Andrew's Chartulary informs us was the unromantic name of Lady Macbeth.[207] Mr. Donald Gregory was secretary of the Iona Club, and one of the ablest Celtic scholars of his day. The designation which he affixed to the crania brought from Iona may be accepted as undoubted evidence of their having been found under circumstances which afforded proof of their high antiquity; though it is not necessary to assume from this that they had pertained to Druids. Most probably nothing more was intended by the epithet which Mr. Gregory applied to them, than to indicate, in the briefest manner, that he believed them to have belonged to the native population prior to the introduction of Christianity in the sixth century, when Columba landed at Innis nan Druidheanach, or the Isle of the Druids, as Iona is still occasionally styled by the native Highlander. The crania thus brought from the venerable centre of Celtic civilisation may not unreasonably be looked upon as furnishing characteristic types of the oldest historical race of the north of Europe.--No. 25 is also a good Celtic cranium, though less true to the type than No. 20, from its excess in longitudinal diameter. It was dug up at Knockstanger, Caithness, at a spot where a number of the Clan Mackay were interred, after being defeated in a battle fought with the Sinclairs in 1437. To these have been added No. 26, a skull in the Phrenological Museum, brought from an ancient cemetery at Inchmore, or Columb Kill, county of Longford, Ireland; and No. 27, a cast of a skull in the Phrenological Museum, marked as the Celtic type, and described as one of a series of skulls "selected from a number of the same tribe or nation, so as to present, as nearly as possible, a type of the whole in the Society's collection."[208] It is characterized in the printed catalogue as a "Long Celtic Skull," but would not, I think, be accepted by ethnologists as at all typical of the true Celtic cranium. It falls decidedly under the class designated by Professor Retzius as Dolicho-kephalæ, and is introduced in the table of measurements chiefly as furnishing useful elements of comparison. Contrasted with No. 20, it will be seen that it is 7.11 to 7.5, exceeding the latter in longitudinal diameter by 6/12, or half an inch, while in parietal diameter it falls short of it by 3/24. The difference is equally in favour of the true Celtic cranium, No. 20, in other measurements of breadth, including the frontal diameter and the inter-mastoid arch. This mode of comparison is still more remarkable and characteristic when the same skull, No. 27, is placed alongside of No. 10, a good example of the Brachy-kephalic class, the excess in the one set of measurements being fully balanced by a corresponding diminution in the others. The proportions of these Scottish Celtic crania entirely agree with the assumed type already referred to, as recognised by the ablest ethnologists. Professors Nillson and Retzius, and Dr. Thurnam, all concur in describing the type of the old Celtic cranium as intermediate to the true Dolicho-kephalic and Brachy-kephalic forms. Dr. Norton Shaw also recognises the same characteristic proportions, and refers in evidence to a skull in the museum of Dr. Buckland, which was found in a tin mine in Cornwall at a depth of 500 feet.[209]

Returning to the table of measurements.--No. 28 is a skull in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. It was found in what appears to have been an ancient tumular cemetery, at North-Berwick, East-Lothian, from whence also a specimen of early medieval pottery, figured in a later chapter, was procured. Many ancient relics have been obtained at the same place, including a circular silver fibula, apparently of the Anglo-Saxon era. A large surrounding area appears to have been used as a burial ground, probably for many centuries, as the encroachments of the sea frequently expose human bones, and the skeletons may be occasionally discerned in the newly exposed strata, after an unusually high tide.--Nos. 29 and 30 are crania in the Phrenological Museum from the same locality. Of these No. 29 is a markedly inferior example of cranial development. While all the measurements are small, the frontal diameter is inferior to that of No. 12, the smallest of all the Brachy-kephalic examples, which it exceeds in longitudinal diameter by half an inch. So extremely poor is the frontal development of this skull, that its diameter at the zygomatic processes is barely 3.5½. It is only introduced here in order to afford a series of examples selected without any reference to theory.

The remaining skulls with which these are classed may be regarded as a fair series of examples of medieval Scottish crania.--No. 31 was found in 1828, in a deep cutting about midway up the south side of the rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands, during the construction of a new approach to the old town. Beside it were several large boars' tusks, and an iron weapon greatly corroded.--No. 32 was obtained in 1829, in digging the foundations of a school built in the Vennel of Edinburgh, on the site of part of the town wall, erected immediately after the disastrous battle of Flodden in 1513. The woodcut represents the ancient tower, which still remains, almost the last remnant of the civic fortifications reared at that memorable crisis in Scottish history, and the relic which is here associated with these venerable defences is not without features appropriate to the stern memorials of that epoch. The skull has a deep gash, apparently from the blow of a sword or axe, and pertained, we may presume, to some old civic warder of the Scottish capital, slain at his post on the city wall.--Nos. 33-38 were all discovered in the course of excavations made to the south of the old Parliament House at Edinburgh in 1844, for the purpose of building new court-houses, when several ancient oak coffins and other early relics were brought to light.[210] They lay alongside of the earliest city wall, built by James III. in 1450, and within the Nether Kirkyard of St. Giles', which appears to have fallen into disuse in the reign of Queen Mary. To these are added No. 39, a skull found in digging a drain in Constitution Street, Leith, probably within the ancient limits of St. Mary's Church-yard, which was bounded on that side by the ancient town wall, razed to the ground immediately after the siege of Leith in 1560. These crania, it should be added, are apparently all males, with the exception of No. 4, and perhaps also No. 36.

Such are the elements from which it has been attempted to deduce some conclusions of general import in regard to the successive primitive races that have occupied Scotland prior to the era of authentic historic records. The data are much too few to justify the dogmatic assertion of any general inferences, or to admit of positive answers to the questions naturally suggested by the conclusions arrived at by Nillson and Eschricht in relation to the races of Scandinavia. They include, however, all the examples that could be obtained, and are in so far valuable as trustworthy examples of the cranial characteristics of Scottish races, that they have been selected from various localities, by different individuals, with no single purpose in view. It is difficult, however, even after obtaining the proper crania, to determine the most trustworthy elements of relative proportion. Dr. Walter Adam, who had the advantage of studying under both Dr. Barclay and Mr. Abernethy, carried out an extensive series of measurements of crania, chiefly from examples found in the catacombs of Paris, and preserved in the University Museum there. These I now possess, through the kindness of Dr. Adam, and he remarks in writing to me on the subject:--"So far as appeared, precision could only be obtained by referring every dimension to the compression of the zygoma; the measurement being seven-eighths of what I consider the normal transverse of at least the Caucasian cranium; that is, of half the length of the head--the long-admitted statuary scale." Owing to the imperfect state of the zygomata in the great majority of skulls from the tumuli, this measurement is unfortunately rarely attainable. Next in importance, however, is one of the additional ones in the table, marked as the inter-mastoid line, from the upper root of the zygomatic process. The relative proportions of this and of the parietal diameter, when compared with the longitudinal diameter, afford the most characteristic elements of comparison between the different types. Another interesting element of comparison appears to consist in the relative proportions of the parietal and vertical diameters. So far as appears from the table of measurements, the following laws would seem to be indicated:--In the primitive or elongated dolicho-kephalic type--for which the distinctive title of kumbe-kephalic is here suggested--the parietal diameter is remarkably small, being frequently exceeded by the vertical diameter; in the second or brachy-kephalic class, the parietal diameter is the greater of the two; in the Celtic crania they are nearly equal; and in the medieval or true dolicho-kephalic heads, the parietal diameter is again found decidedly in excess; while the preponderance or deficiency of the longitudinal in its relative proportion to the other diameters, furnishes the most characteristic features referred to in the classification of the kumbe-kephalic, brachy-kephalic, Celtic, and dolicho-kephalic types. Not the least interesting indications which these results afford, both to the ethnologist and the archæologist, are the evidences of native primitive races in Scotland prior to the intrusion of the Celtæ; and also the probability of these races having succeeded each other in a different order from the primitive colonists of Scandinavia. Of the former fact, viz., the existence of primitive races prior to the Celtæ, I think no doubt can now be entertained. Of the order of their succession, and their exact share in the changes and progressive development of the native arts which the archæologist detects, we still stand in need of further proof; and the assumed primeval position of the kumbe-kephalic race of Scotland is advanced here only interrogatively, and with the view of inducing others to take up the same interesting inquiry. The subject demands much more extended observation before any such conclusion can be dogmatically affirmed concerning the primitive Scottish races. We have also still to obtain the proofs of that abrupt change from the one form to the other, only to be procured as the result of numerous independent observations, but which can alone satisfactorily establish the fact of the intrusion of new races. The same evidence may also be expected to show whether the primitive race was entirely superseded by later colonists. If the Allophylian aborigines were not exterminated, but were admitted to share in the superior arts of their conquerors, some proof may yet be recoverable of the gradual progression in physical conformation as they abandoned the nomadic and wild hunter state for a pastoral life, so that they were not finally extirpated, but interfused into the mixed race which now occupies the country, as we know was to some extent the case, at a later period, with its Celtic population.

Not only in the annual operations of the agriculturist, but also in the deliberate researches of the archæologist, hundreds of tumular crania have been disinterred. Of these, however, scarcely any note has been taken, nor can we hope to obtain sufficient data for the determination of the interesting questions involved in the investigation till its importance is more generally recognised. A few facts, however, have been noted from time to time, some of which, in the absence of more precise observations, may help to throw light on the physical characteristics of the primitive British races. With this view, therefore, the following additional notices are selected.

In 1825 one of the singular northern circular forts usually styled burghs, situated at Burghar, in the parish of Evie, Orkney, was explored by the son of the resident clergyman, when there was found within the area a human skeleton, a rude bone comb of most primitive fashion, and part of a deer's horn. The comb, which is now preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, is figured in another chapter; it measures four inches in length, and could not readily be surpassed in the rudeness of its construction or attempts at ornament. Along with this curious relic, the skull was forwarded to Edinburgh by Alexander Peterkin, Esq., but it is described in his communication as then in fragments, and has not been preserved. Mr. Peterkin remarks of it,--"Although the upper part of the skull be separated into two parts, you will observe on joining them together that it is of a very singular conformation. The extreme lowness of the forehead and length backward, present a peculiarity which may be interesting to phrenologists."[211] This, therefore, would appear to have belonged to the primitive Kumbekephalæ.

Other observations on the physical characteristics of the remains found in primitive Scottish sepulchres are much less definite. Alexander Thomson, Esq. of Banchory, remarks in a communication to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, describing two urns found in a cist on his estate in Aberdeenshire:--"The skeleton was far from entire, but there were fragments of every part of it found. The teeth are perfectly fresh, and from the appearance of the jaws, the skeleton must be that of a full-grown person, though of small size. I was told that the skeleton lay quite regular when first found."[212] It may be presumed that in this case, as in other examples of the physical conformation of the primitive race, the smallness of the head was not a precise criterion of the dimensions of the skeleton. Another correspondent describes a cist discovered by the plough on the farm of Farrochie, in the parish of Feteress, Kincardineshire, within which was found a small urn and upwards of one hundred beads of polished black shale:--

"The interior of the tomb measured three feet in length, two feet in breadth, and twenty inches in depth. The top, sides, and ends were each formed of one stone, and at each corner the end of a flat-stone, set on its edge, was introduced angularly between the stones of the sides and ends. The slab that formed the cover of the tomb measured three feet eight inches in length, by three feet two inches in breadth. The body had been laid upon its right side, with the face towards the south. The limbs had been bent upwards, and it was observed when the tomb was opened that one of the leg bones had been broken near the middle. The length of the leg bones was eighteen inches, and that of the thigh bones twenty inches, with very strong joints. The skull appeared to be small in proportion to the other parts of the body. In both jaws the teeth were complete and in beautiful preservation. The ribs and other small bones crumbled into dust soon after they were exposed to the air. The urn was lying in the tomb as if it had been folded in the arms of the corpse."[213]

Dr. Prichard remarks in reply to the question,--Was there anything peculiar in the conformation of the head in the British or Gaulish races? "There are probably in existence sufficient means for deciding this inquiry in the skulls found in old British cairns or places of sepulture. I have seen about half a dozen skulls found in different parts of England, in situations which rendered it highly probable that they belonged to ancient Britons. All these partook of one striking characteristic, viz., a remarkable narrowness of the forehead compared with the occiput, giving a very small space to the anterior lobes of the brain, and allowing room for a large development of the posterior lobes. There are some modern English and Welsh heads to be seen of a similar form, but they are not numerous."[214]

The crania already noticed from the Scottish tumuli, it is obvious, include two greatly differing types, one of which, at least, cannot with strict propriety be described as either remarkably narrow or very small in the forehead, when compared with the occiput. The description of Dr. Prichard will, however, be frequently found applicable to those of the brachy-kephalic type, examples of which, it may be presumed, have fallen under his notice. The peculiar characteristic of the primeval Scottish type appears rather to be a narrow prolongation of the occiput in the region of the cerebellum, suggesting the term already applied to them of boat-shaped, and for which the name of Kumbekephalæ may perhaps be conveniently employed to distinguish them from the higher type with which they are otherwise apt to be confounded. Dr. Thurnam remarks,--"The few crania which I have myself seen from early British tumuli, correspond very much with Dr. Prichard's description. They had, for the most part, a shortened oval form; ample behind, and somewhat narrow and receding in the forehead. The cranium from the undoubtedly British tumulus at Gristhorpe, near Scarborough, has this general form; it is, however, unusually large, and not deficient in frontal development; its form, too, is in some respects fine, particularly as regards the full supra-orbital region, and the high and fully developed middle head."[215] The Rev. Abner W. Brown, vicar of Pitchley, Northamptonshire, furnished to the Archæological Association in 1846 an interesting account of some British Kistvaens found there under very remarkable circumstances. The name of the locality is spelt in Doomsday-book Pihtes-lea and Picts-lei, terms sufficiently suggestive of the Celtic Picts or Ffichti of the north. "The skeleton which we have endeavoured to preserve," the writer remarks, "is that of a muscular well-proportioned young man, probably five feet nine inches high. The teeth are fine; the wisdom teeth scarcely developed. The facial line in some of the skulls appeared to be very fine. This skull exhibits the peculiar lengthy form, the prominent and high cheek-bones, and the remarkable narrowness of forehead which characterize the Celtic races, and distinguish theirs from the rounder, broader skulls, and more upright facial line, of the Teutonic tribes."[216] It is obvious, however, from the above description, that the ancient crania of Pihtes-lea differ greatly from the true Celtic type, and correspond rather to the Kumbekephalæ. The whole circumstances attendant on their discovery indicate their belonging to a very remote era. The venerable church of Pitchley, an edifice still retaining original work of the beginning of the twelfth century, having begun to exhibit alarming symptoms of decrepitude, was carefully repaired and restored, even to the foundations. In reconstructing one of the principal pillars, the startling fact was brought to light, that the Norman builders had laid the foundation of the pillar in ignorance of a rude hollow cist lying directly underneath, with only about a foot of soil between. Other portions of the edifice were discovered to have been, in like manner, unconsciously founded above the graves of an elder race, and it at length became apparent that the ancient churchyard was entirely superimposed on a still older cemetery. "Below the foundation, though above the level of the kistvaens, there were common graves; in one of them was the skeleton of a beheaded person lying at full length, the head placed upon the breast, one of the neck-bones having apparently been divided." Pitchley Church belonged, even before the Conquest, to the Abbey of Peterborough. It was probably one of the earliest English sites of a Christian church; yet the British or Saxon graves of the upper tier, made in ignorance of the older cists below, had become sufficiently consolidated at the date of the Norman foundation to admit of the building of a solid and durable fabric above them. The cists lay nearly east and west, the bodies at full length, lying on their right sides, with the faces looking to the south, and the arms crossed in a peculiar way--the right arm across the breast, with its hand touching the left shoulder, and the left arm straight across, so that its hand touched the right elbow.[217] Both Norman and Roman coins were found near the surface; deeper down lay fragments of coarse unglazed British and also of Roman pottery, and close to, or within one of the cists, a rude oblong amethyst, about an inch long, perforated lengthwise. In another were small pieces of charcoal, and a fragment of British pottery; and in a third an unusually large tusk of a wild boar. Mr. Brown, conceiving the position of the bodies to prove the introduction of Christian sepulchral rites, supposes these cists to have belonged to the Christians of Romanized Britain, before the Saxon invasion. It seems more probable that they pertain to that far older era which preceded the singular Pagan rites accompanying the circumscribed cist. The cranial characteristics appear to confirm this idea, and it is only on such a supposition that we can conceive of the establishment of the graveyard upon the site, in entire ignorance of the primeval cemetery buried beneath the accumulated debris of later generations. Another skeleton, found near Maidstone, in a circumscribed cist of peculiar construction, and undoubtedly of Pagan origin, is thus described by the Rev. Beal Post:--"The state of the skull, from the sutures being much obliterated, shewed the individual to have been about seventy years of age; the form of the skull also shewed that he did not belong to the present race which possess the island, but to the Celtic division of the European family. It was very narrow in the front part, and low in the forehead, exhibiting but little development of the intellectual faculties, while the organs of self-preservation, and other inferior organs in the hinder parts of the skull, were strongly developed. The bones seem to be those of a person about five feet seven inches high, the thigh-bone being seventeen inches long, and the other bones in proportion. The teeth, apparently, had been every one in a sound state. None of those found were in a state of decay, even incipiently so."[218] In both of these interesting examples it is obvious that the term Celtic is loosely applied in contradistinction to Saxon or Teutonic, and in accordance with the preconceived idea that the Celtæ are the primeval colonists of Britain. The forms of these crania appear clearly to lead to a different conclusion. Such are some of the observations heretofore made on the physical characteristics of the primitive Briton. Scanty as they are, they possess considerable value to us in the attempt to recover the lost chapters of his history. Imperfect as the development of the intellectual faculties appear to have been, there is sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion, that the races of the tumuli, whether regarded as Allophylian or Celtic, were abundantly capable of civilisation, and possessed a cerebral capacity fully equal to that of nations which have carried the practical and decorative arts far in advance of a mere archaic period.

One characteristic feature observed in the skulls of various tumuli is the state of the teeth. It is rare to find among them any symptoms of irregularity or decay. Sir R. C. Hoare remarks of those of Wiltshire,--"The singular beauty of the teeth has often attracted our attention; we have seldom found one unsound or one missing, except in the cases of apparent old age. This peculiarity may be easily accounted for. The Britons led a pastoral life, feeding upon the milk of their flocks and the venison of their forests; and the sweets of the West Indies were to them totally unknown." In the tumular cemetery at North Berwick, the teeth of the skulls, though sound, were worn, in most cases completely flat, like those of a ruminating animal. Dr. Thurnam remarks the same to have been the case with the teeth examined by him in those of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Lamel Hill; and it is also observable in an under jaw found along with other remains of a human skull, an iron hatchet, and several large boars' tusks, in a deep excavation on the south bank of the Castlehill of Edinburgh. The jaw, with the accompanying relics, are in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. The same peculiarity is referred to, as observed in a remarkable discovery of human remains in the Kent's Hole Cave, near Torquay, made by the late Rev. J. MacEnery during his geological researches in that locality. As the account of this discovery, which is accompanied with details of great value to the archæologist, has only been recovered through the zeal of Mr. Edward Vivian, since the death of the author, and printed in a local periodical,[219] it is extracted here at considerable length. It was to Mr. MacEnery's researches that Buckland and others of the earlier modern geologists owed their most valuable data; and some of the rarest palæontological specimens in the British Museum originally belonged to his private collection. Kent's Hole is referred to by Professor Owen, in his History of British Fossil Mammals, as "perhaps the richest cave depository of bears hitherto found in England." The roof is clustered with pendant cones of stalactite, and the floor thickly paved with concretions of stalagmite, the accumulations of many centuries, which have sealed down the floor hermetically, and preserved the relics both of the geologist and the archæologist safe from disturbance, and protected from decay.

"The floor we found, at our first visit, covered, through its whole extent, with a darkish mould, varying in depth from a few inches to a foot. It only dates since the cavern became a popular place of resort, and the further progress of the stalagmite in open situations was interrupted by the trampling of visitors. In the vestibule were found, deep imbedded in it, those curiously shaped pieces of oak to which the appellation of Druids' sandal was given,[220] together with a quantity of decomposed animal and vegetable matter, the remains of fires and feasts, mingled with rabbit bones....

"At the hazard of unnecessarily charging the thread of my narrative with seemingly frivolous particulars, I proceed to note down the characters presented by its general aspect, no less than its contents, before it was altered by those operations which have since left no part of it in its virgin state. It is only on a just appreciation of all their circumstances that a true estimate can be founded of those facts which should serve as the basis of all reasoning on its nature and history.

"The floor of the entrance, except that it had the appearance of being broken up, offered nothing remarkable to detain us; we shall have occasion to return to it presently. Not so the lateral branch by which it communicates with the body of the cavern on the left. Under a ledge on the left was found the usual sprinkling of modern bones, and, in the mould beneath, which had acquired the consistence of hard clay, were fragments of pottery, calcined bones, charcoal, and ashes; in the midst of all were dispersed arrow-heads of flint and chert. The ashes furnished a large proportion of the mould.

"In the same heap were discovered round slabs of roofing slate of a plate-like form, some crushed, others entire. The pottery is of the rudest description, made of coarse gritty earth, not turned on a lathe, and sunbaked; on its external margin it bears zigzag indentations, not unlike those represented on the urns found by Sir Richard Hoare in the barrows of Wiltshire. These fragments, there seems no reason for doubting, are the remains of cinerary urns which once contained the substances scattered around, and to which the slates served for covers.

"At a short distance, nearer the entrance, were found, in a continuation of the same mould, articles of bone of three sorts; some of an inch long, and pointed at one end, or arrow-heads; others about three inches long, rounded, slender, and likewise pointed. Conjecture was long busy as to their destination--they were thought by some to be bodkins, by others for confining the hair, like those ornaments used by the women in Italy; lastly, they were supposed, with more probability, to be a species of pin for fastening the skin in front which served savages for garments. The third article does not seem so easy to explain; it is of a different shape, quite flat, broad at one end, pointed at the other, the broad part retains the truncated form of a comb, the teeth of which were broken off near their root; whether it was used as a comb, or for making nets for fishing, is not clear. There was only this solitary one found, and two of the former, but several of the first, with a quantity of bone chips. All three bore marks of polish.

"Nearer the mouth are collected a good number of shells of the muscle, limpet, and oyster, with a palate of the scarus. This, as well as the nacker of oysters which was thickly disseminated through the mould, served, as they do at the present day among savages, most probably for ornament. The shell-fish may have furnished bait for fishing. The presence of these rude articles render it probable that they were collected here by the ancient aborigines, who divided their time between the chase and fishing in the adjacent sea.

"Close to the opposite wall, in the same passage, buried in black mould, I found a stone hatchet, or celt, of sienite, the only one found in the cavern. Another of the same material, but of a different shape, I found shortly after not far from the cavern near Anstis Cove, which labourers engaged in making the new cut had just thrown up with the mould.

"As we advanced towards the second mouth, on the same level, were found, though sparingly, pieces of pottery. The most remarkable product of this gallery were round pieces of blue slate, about an inch and a-half in diameter and a quarter thick. They may have served, like the Kimmeridge coal, for money. In the same quarter were likewise found several round pieces of sandstone grit, about the form and size of a dollar, but thicker and rounded at the edge, and in the centre pierced with a hole, by means of which they seem to have been strung together like beads. Clusters of small pipes or icicles of spar, such as depended from the roof at our first visit, we saw collected here in heaps, buried in the mud. Similar collections we had occasion to observe accompanied by charcoal, throughout the entire range of the cavern, sometimes in pits excavated in the stalagmite. Copper ore--with these various articles in the same stuff was picked up--a lump much oxydized, which the late Mr. Phillips analyzed, was found to be pure virgin ore.

"Having taken a general survey of the surface of the floor, we returned to the point from which we set out, viz., the common passage, for the purpose of piercing into the materials below the mould. Here in sinking a foot into the soil, (for of stalagmite there remained only the broken edges adhering to the sides of the passage, and which appeared to be repeated at intervals,) we came upon flints in all forms, confusedly disseminated through the earth, and intermixed with fossil and human bones, the whole slightly agglutinated together by calcareous matter derived from the roof. My collection possesses an example of this aggregation in a mass consisting of pebbles, clay, and bone, in the midst of which is imbedded a fine blade of flint, all united together by sparry cement.

"The flints were in all conditions; from the rounded pebble as it came out of the chalk, to the instruments fabricated from them, as arrow and spear-heads, and hatchets. Some of the flint blocks were chipped only on one side, such as had probably furnished the axes, others on several faces, presenting planes corresponding exactly to the long blades found by their side, and from which they had been evidently sliced off; other pebbles still more angular and chipped at all points, were no doubt those which yielded the small arrow-heads. These abounded in by far the greatest number. Small irregular splinters, not referrible to any of the above divisions, and which seem to have been struck off in the operation of detaching the latter, not unlike the small chips in a sculptor's shop, were thickly scattered through the stuff, indicating that this spot was the workshop where the savage prepared his weapons of the chase, taking advantage of its cover and the light.

"I have discovered in this passage precisely similar arrow-heads to those which I detected in an urn from a barrow presented to me by the Rev. Mr. Welland.

"With the exception of the Boar spear [of iron] and a blade of the same metal found not far from it, very much rusted, all the articles in the mould or in the disturbed soil consisted of flint, chert, sienite, and bone--such primitive substances as have been in all countries and down to the present, used by the savage for the fabrication of his weapons, whether for the chase or battle.

"At a still greater depth, near the common entrance in the passage, lay extended lengthwise in the ordinary position of burial, the remains of a human skeleton much decayed; two portions only of the jaw and some single teeth, with the mouldering vertebræ and ribs, were all that remained. As in the case of the flint knife mass, already described, there adhered to the jaw portions of the soil on which it lay, and of the stalagmite which partly covered it.

"The teeth were so worn down that the flat crowns of the incisors might be mistaken for molars,[221] indicating the advanced age of the individual. M. Cuvier, to whom I submitted the fragment in 1831, was struck with the form of the jaw. He pronounced it to belong to the Caucasian race. He promised to bestow particular notice on it, but death, unhappily for science, put a stop to his labours. All the specimens, together with a collection of fossil bones, the third I had presented to the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, I transmitted to him before I quitted the continent, and they may be found among his effects. The skeleton lay about a foot and a half below the surface; from the tumbled state of the earth, the admixture of flags of stalagmite, added to the presence of flint articles and pieces of slate, it was manifest that the floor had been dug up for the reception of the body, and that it was again covered over with the materials thrown up from the excavation. The earthy covering consisted of the red soil, containing fossil bones mixed up with recent mould, the mound of earth outside the mouth, at the right hand, was thrown up from the passage to render it more accessible. It was precisely that which covered the human skeleton, and contained the admixture of human and fossil relics.

"Previous to the disturbance of the floor for the admission of the body, it would appear, from the presence of flags of stalagmite in the rubble, that it was covered with a continuous crust, the edges indeed of which still adhere to the sides. It further appears from the repetition of similar crusts, as indicated by the broken edges at the sides, that there were periods of repose which allowed new floors to form, marking clearly their repeated destruction and renovation at intervals of time.

"With the exception of single teeth and an occasional rib or vertebra in charcoal, which may have possibly belonged to the same subject, there were no other traces of human remains."[222]

The peculiarity in the teeth of certain classes of ancient crania above referred to is of very general application, and has been observed as common even among British sailors. The cause is obvious, resulting from the similarity of food in both cases. The old Briton of the Anglo-Roman period, and the Saxon both of England and the Scottish Lothians, had lived to a great extent on barley bread, oaten cakes, parched peas, or the like fare, producing the same results on his teeth as the hard sea-biscuit does on those of the British sailor. Such, however, is not generally the case, and in no instance, indeed, to the same extent in the skulls found in the earlier British tumuli. In the Scottish examples described above the teeth are mostly very perfect, and their crowns not at all worn down. In that marked No. 5, one of those found at Cockenzie, the under jaw has been preserved, and in it the wisdom teeth are only partially developed, indicating the age of the individual. The perfectly formed teeth are not much more worn than those which had never pierced the gums.

The inferences to be drawn from such a comparison are of considerable value in the indications they afford of the domestic habits and social life of a race, the last survivor of which has mouldered underneath his green tumulus, perchance for centuries before the era of our earliest authentic chronicles. As a means of comparison this characteristic appearance of the teeth manifestly furnishes one means of discriminating between an early and a still earlier, if not primeval period, and though not in itself conclusive, it may be found of considerable value when taken in connexion with the other and still more obvious peculiarities of the crania of the earliest barrows. We perceive from it, at least, that a very decided change took place in the common food of the country, from the period when the native Briton of the primeval period pursued the chase with the flint lance and arrow, and the spear of deer's horn, to that comparatively recent period when the Saxon marauders began to effect settlements and build houses on the scenes where they had ravaged the villages of the older British natives. The first class, we may infer, attempted little cultivation of the soil. Improving on the precarious chances of a mere nomadic or hunter life, we have been led to suppose, from other evidence, that the early Briton introduced the rudiments of a pastoral life, while yet his dwelling was only the slight circular earth-pit, in-covered with overhanging boughs and skins. To the spoils of the chase he would then add the milk of his flock of goats or sheep, probably with no other addition than such wild esculents, mast, or fruits, as might be gathered without labour in the glades of the neighbouring forest. But the social state in the British Isles was a progressive one. Whether by the gradual improvement of the aboriginal race, or by the incursion of foreign tribes already familiar with the fruits of agricultural labour, the wild pastoral or hunter life of the first settlers was exchanged for one more suited to call forth the social virtues. The increase of the population, whether by the ingress of such new tribes, or by the numerical progression of the first settlers, would of itself put an end to the possibility of finding subsistence by means of the chase. Thus it might be from the inventive industry which privations force into activity that new wants were first discovered, new tastes were created, and satisfied by the annual harvests of golden grain. The ploughshare and the pruning-hook divided attention with the sword and the spear, which they could not supplant; and the ingenious agriculturist devised his oaken querne, his stone-rubber, or corn-crusher, and at length his simple yet effective hand-mill, which resisted, during many centuries of change and progress, all attempts to supersede it by more complicated machinery. Dr. Pettigrew, in communicating the results of a series of observations on the bones found in various English barrows, remarks,--"The state of the teeth in all of them indicated that the people had lived chiefly on grain and roots."[223] The dry, hard oaten cake of the Scottish peasant, which may have been in use almost from the first attempt at cultivation of the favourite national grain, would probably prove as effective as any of the presumed vegetable foods for producing such results. We need not, at any rate, evidence to satisfy us that the luxuries which have rendered the services of the dentist so indispensable to the modern Briton were altogether excluded from the regimen of his rude forefathers.

Sir Richard Colt Hoare commences the great work which has secured for him so distinguished a place among British archæologists, with the motto--"We speak from facts, not theory." While seeking to render the facts of Scottish Archæology fully available, it is my earnest desire to follow in the footsteps of a leader so proved. The inferences attempted to be deduced from such facts as have been accumulated here, with a view to discover some elementary principles for the guidance of Scottish archæologists, are such as appear naturally and logically to follow from them. Still they are stated apart from the premises, and those who have followed thus far ungrudgingly in exploring the primeval sepulchres of Scotland, will find no difficulty in pausing ere they commit themselves to the same guidance in seeking also some glimpses of the native hearth and pastoral inclosures, and of the evidences of that inventive skill which succeeded to such simple arts. We would fain reanimate the ashes in these long buried urns, and interrogate the rude British patriarch regarding a state of being which for centuries--perhaps for many ages--pertained on these very spots where now our churches, palaces, and our homeliest dwellings are reared, but which seems almost as inconceivable to us as that other state of being, to which we know the old Briton, with all the seed of Adam, has passed.

It may appear to some a service of little value, the unrolling of these "mute inglorious" records. Yet somewhat is surely gained when we reach the beginnings of things, and substitute for the old historic mist-land of myth and fable, a coherent and intelligible, though dry and somewhat meagre array of facts and legitimate deductions. It is no longer needful, however, to defend the object of our research. It is to some extent the same which the ethnologist is pursuing by a different route; though the palæontological investigations of the archæologist have yet to establish their true value in the estimation of men of science by the nature of their results. For this we wait in hope. I would only meanwhile repeat, that we cannot be justified in concluding any knowledge which once existed to be utterly lost beyond recall; and if the geologist has been able to recover so much from annals that seemed to have been folded up and laid aside ere this race was summoned into being to people a renovated world, surely we ought not to despair of being yet able to fill up our meagre outline with many details which shall satisfy the severest demands of inductive philosophy, and rest their claims to acceptance not on theory but on fact.

FOOTNOTES:

[195] Prichard's Natural Hist. of Man, 3d edit. p. 108.

[196] Ibid. p. 21.

[197] Natural History of Man, p. 186.

[198] On the Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, by Professor Nillson of Lund.

[199] Natural History of Man, pp. 192, 193.

[200] Morton's Crania Americana, p. 16.

[201] Natural History of Man, p. 193.

[202] Archæol. Journal, vol. vi. pp. 27-39, 123-136.

[203] In taking these measurements I have been efficiently assisted by Mr. John Zaglas, anatomical assistant to Professor Goodsir of Edinburgh University, and by Dr. John Alexander Smith. Nearly all of the measurements have been repeated several times, and may therefore be received as accurate.

[204] Archæol. Scot. vol. iv. pp. 43, 44.

[205] MSS. Library S.A. Scot. Nov. 28, 1834.

[206] Two mortaria, obtained from this shaft, along with the iron spear-head, are now in the possession of John Miller, Esq. of Millfield, C.E. The spear-head will be found figured in a later chapter. The skull is now in the possession of John Alexander Smith, M.D., but it is his intention to deposit it in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries.

[207] Regist. Prior. S. Andree, p. 114. Lulach the Foolish is mentioned by Scottish chroniclers as reigning after Macbeth for four months, when he also was slain, and interred at Iona.--Annals of the Scots, A.D. 1058.

[208] Phrenological Journal, vol. vi. p. 144.

[209] Report of British Association for Advancement of Science. Seventeenth Session, 1848. P. 32.

[210] Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, vol. ii. p. 110.

[211] Archæol. Scotica, vol. iii. p. 44.

[212] MSS. Letter, Libr. Soc. Antiq. Scot., December 8, 1817.

[213] MSS. Letter, Mr. William Duncan, 13th December 1838.

[214] History of Mankind, vol. ii. p. 92.

[215] Description of tumular cemetery at Lamel Hill, Archæological Journal, vol. vi. p. 129.

[216] Archæological Journal, vol. iii. p. 113.

[217] Minute details, such as are given in the text, of the disposition of the arms and hands, are always open to some doubt. Unless where the cist is filled with earth, the bones must necessarily fall from their original position on the decay of the enveloping tissues; and when so filled, the earth has generally percolated into it long subsequent to the interment. Those who have frequently opened barrows must be well aware how difficult it is to ascertain with any certainty much more than the general relative position of the bones and skull.

[218] Jour. of Archæol. Association, vol. iv. p. 65.

[219] Torquay and Tor Directory, Aug. 14, 1850.

[220] "Discovered in the black mould certain rudely shaped pieces of oak, one of which was immediately shewn me by the finder. It was about the length and form of the human foot, and hollowed in the centre, not unlike a sandal." The name, it should be added, was only meant as a convenient distinctive appellation.

[221] In the original notes from which the memoir appears to have been compiled, the condition of this skeleton is thus described:--"Its teeth, most of which I collected, are with one exception sound and un-discoloured, that they belonged to a robust adult, they and the fragments of the skull and vertebræ abundantly testify. The front or incisor teeth are what are called double teeth."

[222] Cavern Researches, or Discoveries of Organic Remains, and of British and Roman Reliques in the Caves of Kent's Hole, Anstis Cove, &c. By the Rev. J. MacEnery, F.G.S.

[223] Archæological Journal, vol. i. p. 272.

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II. THE ARCHAIC OR BRONZE PERIOD

"In those old days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, Holding the sword Excalibur."

MORTE D'ARTHUR.

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I. INTRODUCTION OF METALS

The evidence adduced in the previous section furnishes the basis of the argument from whence we arrive at the conclusion, that Scotland and the whole British Isles were occupied by a human population many ages prior to the earliest authentic historical notices. Of the character and habits of the barbarian Briton of the primeval period we have also been able to arrive at some knowledge. His dwellings, the remains of which have lain unheeded around the haunts of so many generations, shew his domestic accommodation to have been of the simplest and most humble description. His imperfect tools and weapons furnish no less satisfactory evidence of his scanty knowledge, his privations, and his skill. Searching amid the records of that debateable land to which the geologist and the antiquary lay equal claim, we learn that vast areas of our country were covered at that remote era with the primitive forest; that oaks of giant height abounded where now the barren heath and peat-bog cumber the land; and that even, at a comparatively recent period, the fierce Caledonian bull, the wolf, and the wild boar asserted their right to the old forest-glades. The primitive Caledonian was, in fact, an untutored savage. The race was thinly scattered along the skirts of the continuous range of forest, occupying the coasts and river valleys, and retreating only to the heights or the dark recesses of the forest when the fortunes of war compelled them to give way before some more numerous or warlike neighbouring tribe. The vast forests which then occupied so large a portion of the soil, while they confined the primitive inhabitants to the open country along the coasts and estuaries, supplied them with more valuable fruits than the unoccupied grounds could have afforded to their scanty numbers and untutored skill. Besides the fiercer natives of the forest, we are familiar with the remains of the elk and the rein-deer, as well as of smaller beasts and birds of chase. In the Anglo-Saxon Ode on Athelstan's Victory, in which--

Scotta leode, The Scottish lads And scip flotan And the men of the fleets Fæge feollon. In fight fell,

we have the following curious enumeration from the old MSS. in the British Museum, dated A.D. 937, in Gibson's Chronicle, and supposed to be written by a contemporary bard:[224]--

The war screamers Left they behind; The hoarse bittern, The sallow paddock, The swarth raven With horned bill, And the wood-housing heron Eating white fish of the brooks, The greedy gos-hawk, The grey deer, And wolf wild.

We are not without abundant evidence that the primitive Caledonian waged successful war with the wild natives of the forest. By arrow, sling, and lance, and also, no doubt, with help of gins and traps, the largest and fiercest of them fell a prey to the wild hunter. The horns especially of the deer supplied him with weapons, implements, ornaments, and sepulchral memorials. His wants were few, his tastes simple and barbarous, his religion probably as unspiritual as the most base of savage creeds. In the long wanderings of his nomade fathers across the continents of Asia and Europe, they had greatly deteriorated from the primal dignity of the race, they had forgotten all the heaven-taught knowledge of Eden, and had utterly lost the antediluvian metallurgic arts. It may perhaps be asked if the annals of so mean a race are worthy of the labour required in dragging them to light from their long-forgotten repositories? The answer is, they are our ancestry, even though we may question our lineal descent; our precursors, if not our progenitors. From them we derive our inheritance and birthright; nor, amid all the later mingling of races, can we assume that no drop of their blood mingles in our veins.

There can be no question that this aboriginal race continued to occupy their island home, with slow and very slight progression, for many centuries. The disclosures of the latest alluvial deposits have furnished evidence of the appearance which the face of the country presented within the historic era, and leave no room to doubt that vast forests covered so large a portion of the soil as to afford no great area for the occupation of its aboriginal colonists. Taking into account with this the abundance of those rude weapons and implements from whence we give that era the name of the Stone Period, and the general uniformity of the circumstances under which they are discovered, we are furnished with satisfactory evidence of a thinly peopled country, occupied by the same tribes with nearly unchanging habits for many ages.

The elements, however, of a great revolution were at length introduced among this simple race, and, as usual in the history of progressive civilisation, they appear to have come from without. The change by which we detect the close of the long era of barbarism, and the introduction of a new and more advanced period, is the discovery of the art of smelting ores, and the consequent substitution of metallic weapons and implements for those of stone. The former presents us with the helplessness of childhood without its promise; the latter is the healthful infancy of a vigorous and magnificent manhood.

The insular position of Britain has already furnished an indisputable and well-defined base on which to rear the argument of primitive colonization. The valuable mineral wealth of some portions of its soil happily supply no less satisfactory data for those of its early civilisation. Little doubt can now be entertained that Herodotus, in his allusions to the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, refers to the celebrated districts of Cornwall and the neighbouring isles, which still abound with the same mineral wealth that conferred on them such ancient and wide-spread fame. The era of the father of history dates from B.C. 484--the year assigned as that of his birth--probably to nearly the close of the century. At this early period, then, while the Republic of Rome was only assuming form, and Athens was just rising into importance, the commerce of the British Isles attracted the navies of Tyre and Carthage; nor does it seem improbable that the Phœnicians traded with the miners of Cornwall and the Scilly Islands at a much earlier period, if indeed we must not look to these ancient Cassiterides as one of the chief sources from whence even the Egyptians and Assyrians derived the tin with which they alloyed and hardened their earliest tools. More definite, and, as it is believed, authentic information regarding the British Isles is derived from the "Ora Maritima" of Festus Avienus, circa B.C. 400, from which we learn that Britain was visited at that early period by Carthaginian voyagers, and that the Albiones occupied the larger island, while the smaller island was possessed by the Gens Hibernorum. In so far as this early writer may be relied upon, his observations appear to sanction the conclusion that a pure Celtic population then possessed the whole British Isles, and that it is in the interval between this epoch and the invasion of Julius Cæsar that we must look for the intrusion of the newer continental races, indiscriminately termed by Cæsar, Britanni. In complete confirmation of this, and of the consequent retreat of the aboriginal Albiones towards the remoter districts, we find the name of Albion afterwards exclusively applied to the northern part of Britain, and all the earliest traditions and writings of both the Welsh and Scottish Celtæ assigning to them the name of Albanich. A Celtic race, however, continued to occupy the primeval districts of Cornwall, and preserved almost to our own day a distinct dialect of the Celtic tongue.

The familiarity of the ancient Britons with tin, though this metal does not occur in a native state, may be readily accounted for from the ore being frequently found near the surface, and requiring only the use of charcoal and a very moderate degree of heat to reduce it to the state of metal. We have no specific mention of any other source from whence the ancients derived the tin which they compounded with the copper found so abundantly in several parts of Asia; with the single and somewhat vague exception made by Strabo, where he calls a certain place in the country of the Drangi, in Asia, by the name of Cassiteron. That tin was known, however, from very early times is proved, not only by the discovery of numerous early Egyptian and Assyrian bronze relics, but also by its being noted by Moses among the spoils of the Midianites which were to be purified by fire;[225] and by Ezekiel among the metals of which Tarshish was the merchant of Tyre.[226] The allusions of Herodotus leave no room to doubt that his information was derived indirectly from others. The Phœnicians long concealed the situation of the Cassiterides from all other nations; and even Pliny treats as a fable the report of certain islands existing in the Atlantic from whence white-lead or tin was brought. It need not therefore surprise us to learn so little of these islands from ancient writers, even though we adopt the opinion that they continued for many centuries to be the chief source of one of the most useful metals. Antimony is found in the Kurdish mountains, and pure copper ore abounds there, as well as in those of the desert of Mount Sinai, but no tin is known throughout any part of Assyria. It is indeed a metal of rare occurrence, though found in apparently inexhaustible quantities in a very few localities. The only districts, according to Berzelius, where it is obtained in Asia, are the island of Banca, only discovered in 1710, and the peninsula of Malacca, where Wilkinson conceives it possible that tin may have been wrought by the Egyptians. The mines of Malacca are very productive, and may have been the source from whence Tyre derived "the multitude of riches," but we have no evidence in support of such conjectures. Cornwall still yields a larger quantity of the ore than any other locality of the Old or New World where it has yet been discovered, and many thousands of tons have been exported by modern traders to India and China, and to America. Taking all these circumstances into consideration, it seems in no degree improbable, that long before Solomon sent to Tyre for "a worker filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning, to work all works in brass," or employed the fleets of Hiram, King of Tyre, to bring him precious metals and costly stores for the Temple at Jerusalem, the Phœnician ships had passed beyond the pillars of Hercules, and were familiar with the inexhaustible stores of these remote islands of the sea which first dawn on history as the source of this most ancient alloy. Strabo's description of the natives of the Cassiterides is not to be greatly relied upon. According to him they were a nomade pastoral race, of peaceful and industrious habits; but he refers especially to their mines of tin and lead, the produce of which they exchanged with the foreign traders, along with furs and skins, for earthenware, salt, and copper vessels and implements.

It is scarcely possible to conceive of such an intercourse carried on for centuries, by nations far advanced in the arts, and familiar with the civilisation and learning of the oldest races of Asia and Africa, without the natives of the Cassiterides acquiring from them some knowledge of the fruits of ancient civilisation. From them, indeed, it has been supposed that the British miner first learned even to smelt the ores, though we are almost forced to the conclusion that the working of the mines must have originated with natives or new colonists, familiarized in some degree with the nature of the metals, and with metallurgic arts. It seems surprising, however, that relics formed of the most abundant native metal, tin, should not be found in the tumuli. The facility with which it could be wrought rendered it readily convertible into personal ornaments, equally beautiful as those so abundant in copper and bronze. Borlase describes a patera of tin found at Bossens, in the parish of St. Erth, Cornwall, in 1756, rudely inscribed in mixed characters,--λIVIVS . MOδESTVS δηIVλI . F . ΔEO . MARTI.[227] Along with this were two other vessels of the same metal, an uninscribed patera, and a vase or præfericulum. In 1793 a tin cup of singular form was found, along with a circular ornament of bronze, evidently of native British workmanship, in searching for the ore in a stream work called Hallivich, in the same county,[228] so that we are not without some evidence that this metal was employed at an early period in the manufacture of sacred and domestic vessels. Probably, indeed, we should infer, from the great rarity of such relics, that it was only so used before its native workers had learned to mix it with copper and produce the more useful alloy which superseded the pure metals; as bronze and copper appear to have been at first imported, and received in exchange for the pure tin. Barter, however, could not possibly be continued for centuries, exchanging the ore of a metal so readily fusible as tin for wrought materials of copper, whether pure or alloyed--a metal found in the same locality, in a state requiring little smelting to bring it into use-without the British miner and trader learning to turn their own native mineral wealth to account. The facilities of a metallic currency were also little likely to remain unappreciated by the British trader, familiar as these already were to the seamen of the Mediterranean, or the Phœnician colonists of Cadiz, the ancient Gadeira. Independently of the ring-money which was probably derived from these sources, evidence in confirmation of this idea is not wanting. So recently as the year 1833 a bi-frontal bust of the Egyptian Isis was dug up in South Street, Exeter.[229] According to Mr. W. T. P. Shortt's reading of the hieroglyphics upon it, it is inscribed with the prefix Isis, Lady, Mistress of the World. Beneath this has been a cartouche, the greater portion of which is unfortunately cut away. Mr. Shortt conceives it to have been the cartouche of Cleopatra Tryphæna, of the race of the thirteenth Ptolemy, B.C. 51; but as there is only the fragment of one of the phonetics, this reading is necessarily conjectural. In 1835 some Carthaginian medals were found at Abbeville, in Picardie; and at Noyelles sur Mer, another figure of Isis was discovered in bronze, along with a statuette of the Hawk-headed deity, or elder Horus.[230] Egyptian relics of the era of the later Ptolemies are not unknown as accompaniments of Roman sepulchral deposits, both in Britain and on the Continent; but they must be assumed to belong to an older era when found along with Greek and Carthaginian coins.

But more conclusive evidence exists in proof of early intercourse with the Mediterranean, if not, indeed, of the opinion advocated by a zealous local antiquary, that Exeter had been the seat of a Phœnician colony many centuries prior to the arrival of the Romans.[231] It was long maintained by the great majority of English numismatists, that the Britons had no native coinage prior to the Roman invasion and the mintage of Cunobeline,--the work, as is presumed, of a Roman artist. The evidence against the existence of an early native coinage was, at best, purely negative, and is now giving way before the investigations of our ablest numismatists. The coins peculiar to the Channel Islands are generally acknowledged to be of an earlier character, and it is maintained not only that a native mintage existed prior to the Roman invasion, but that the convex and concave form, which characterizes the earliest British types, affords evidence that they were formed in imitation of Greek coins.[232] The Rev. Beale Post has most ingeniously traced the Gaulish coinage to its primitive Greek type. The conclusions he arrives at are, that about B.C. 600, the Phœnicians colonized Marseilles, subsequent to which coins of that city make their appearance, their type being that of human heads, birds, beasts, &c. About B.C. 335 the Gauls adopted as their model the gold coinage struck by Philip II. of Macedon, and from that early Greek type, with its reverse of Diana driving her biga, we may trace the original of all the singular and rude representations of the horse on the primitive Gaulish and British native coinage, which have been supposed to involve so many mythological fancies. There is something greatly more characteristic of the imperfect ideas of a native currency likely to be formed by a primitive and partially civilized people, in this arbitrary imitation of a foreign type, than in any abstruse embodiment of the national creed. No precise date has yet been attempted to be assigned for the first native British coinage, but the numerous examples of Gaulish types discovered in Britain leave no room to doubt that the native Britons were familiar with such a circulating medium long prior to the Roman invasion. Nor is this the most primitive form of native currency. Several hoards have been discovered at different times in Scotland, of small gold pellets, marked with a cross or star in relief, and which, there can be little doubt, is the earliest Scottish minted money.[233] Examples of this primitive coinage are more particularly described in a subsequent chapter, among the contents of the later tumuli.

But entirely apart either from this or the coinage derived from the Gauls, very remarkable discoveries of ancient foreign coins, such as those referred to above, suffice to suggest the probability that the primitive Briton had other sources from whence to acquire a knowledge of the convenience and fashion of a coined circulating medium. In the same locality where the bust of the Egyptian Isis was dug up at Exeter, numerous Greek coins have been found of late years, chiefly belonging to the autonomous Greek colonial cities in Syria and Asia Minor. Many have been discovered pertaining to Alexandria in Egypt, including coins of the Ptolemies of a very early date, frequently met with at great depths, and apparently in older strata than that of the Anglo-Roman period.[234] In making a large drain in the Fore Street of Exeter, in 1810, at a depth of twenty feet below the present pavement, an immense quantity of ancient money was found, including many early coins of the autonomous Greek cities, and along with them two British coins, one bearing the wheel and the other the horse.[235] Coins of Agrigentum, in Sicily, of Hiero I. of Syracuse, B.C. 460; of Ptolemy I. B.C. 323, and many others described and engraved in Mr. Shortt's interesting works, have been found at various times in Exeter and its neighbourhood.

But though these singularly interesting tokens of intercourse with the Phœnician and Greek maritime colonies long prior to the era of the Roman occupation of Britain abound, as might be anticipated, only in the localities where mineral wealth tempted the sojourn of the ancient trader, yet some few remarkable traces of the same communication with the elder empires of the world have been found within our more northern limits. Occasionally Greek coins have been discovered in Scotland; as, for example, a gold didrachm of Philip of Macedon, three Greek silver coins, including one of his son, and a brass of the Brutii in Magna Græcia, found on the estate of Cairnbulg, Aberdeenshire, in 1824; and a very fine gold coin of Alexander the Great, at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire.[236] In the year 1845 a still more remarkable hoard was discovered on the farm of Braco, in the parish of Shotts, Lanarkshire, only a very small portion of which was rescued from the usual fate of such recovered treasures. I have examined a few of these, in the hands of John Henderson, Esq., Queen's Remembrancer for Scotland. They include of Greek coins: one of Athens, obverse Archaic head of Pallas; reverse: Α Θ, owl in deep indented square, an olive branch behind. One of Phocis, obverse: laureated head of Apollo; reverse: full-faced head of bull. One of Bœotia, obverse: Bœotian shield; reverse: vase. Also one Parthian coin. (Eckhel, vol. i. p. 254. Arsaces XV.) A correspondent from whom I first received information of this important discovery, saw several more of the Athenian type; some with the Greek scarabæus or tortoise, and others, which from the description appear to have been Parthian coins. But on inquiry being made after them, nearly the whole disappeared, and it is to be feared were immediately consigned to the melting pot. This remarkable hoard, unequalled in historic value, as far as I know, by any discovery of coins yet made in Scotland, may perchance after all have only been the treasure of some Roman auxiliary, as Braco is on the line of the iter which came from the south, towards the station of Castlecarry, on the wall of Antoninus Pius. Only the year after, a most valuable hoard of undoubted Roman treasure was found on the same farm. According to the account of their discoverer--a farm servant--"nearly a barrowful" were recovered, but they were squandered and lost before information of the discovery could reach those who were competent to appreciate their value as anything but old metal. An intelligent correspondent, to whom I am indebted for some particulars of this last discovery at Braco, succeeded in securing a few of the coins, comprehending Vespasian, Titus, both the Antonines, Lucius Verus, both the Faustinas, Trajan, Hadrian, and Commodus. These, however, lay entirely apart from the former hoard, and apparently much nearer the surface, so that we need not necessarily assume the deposition of the former coins, belonging to a period so long prior to the era of Roman invasion, as depending on the Roman iter, which like more recent thoroughfares, may have followed in the line of older pathways through the Caledonian forests.

Along with these examples, suggestive of direct or indirect intercourse between the early Britons and Greek or Phœnician traders, should also perhaps be mentioned two Greek altars in the British Museum, found at Corbridge in Northumberland; the one dedicated to the Syrian Astarte, thus--ΑΣΤΑΡΤΗΣ, ΒΩΜΟΝ Μ'ΕΣΟΡΑΣ ΠΟΥΛΧΕΡ Μ'ΑΝΕΘΗΚΕΝ. On its sides are sculptured the most common sacrificial vessels, the præfericulum and patera, and the top is crowned with the usual thuribulum of the Roman altar. The other, which was discovered in the churchyard of Corbridge, is dedicated to the Tyrian Hercules. It bears on the one side a bull's head, with the secespita beside it, and on the other a laurel crown. In front is the inscription,--ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙ ΤΥΡΙΩ ΔΙΟΔΩΡΑ ΑΡΧΙΕΡΕ, Α.

The curious reader will find by reference to the Archæologia,[237] how the learned reconcile with previous theories the discovery in this northern region of altars thus dedicated to Phœnician deities, to whom according to Josephus, Hiram king of Tyre, the contemporary of Solomon, erected separate temples. Camden records, on the authority of Solinus, called Polyhistor, that a votive altar was erected in North Britain, in honour of Ulysses, and inscribed in Greek characters.[238] Whatever credit be attached to this, we have no reason to doubt that Greek voyagers traded to the British Isles long before the Roman war galleys touched its shores; though the site of the former altars, near the Roman wall, and their correspondence in form and decorations to the Roman altars so frequently found in Britain, seem to justify the conclusion that they are the work of Greek auxiliaries of the Anglo-Roman era, and indicate a late rather than an early date within that period.

The interest which attaches to the determination of the extent and probable date of the first intercourse of the Britons with traders from the far east, has led to the anticipation of some points not strictly belonging to the present section of our inquiry. This question of the existence of a native coinage, or of the substitution of a foreign metallic currency for the rude process of barter, at a period prior to the introduction of Roman customs by the legionaries of the first and second centuries, well merits the careful study it is now receiving, since no other evidence could furnish equally satisfactory proof of early progress in social civilisation. It cannot admit of doubt, however, that long before even the Greek or Phœnician trader had taught the Cornish miner this ingenious substitute for a direct exchange of commodities, he had learned to fuse and work the rich veins of ore with which his native soil abounded, and to fashion them into a variety of personal ornaments as well as of weapons and implements. The Phœnician sought his tin in order to mix it with the copper which he already possessed, and thereby to produce bronze weapons combining the ductility of copper with that indispensable hardness which could alone fit them to supersede the older implements of stone. How early this interchange first took place, it appears now altogether vain to inquire. The evidence already adduced, however, is at least sufficient to justify us in assigning to it a very remote period, while the more abundant and far more useful metal, iron, was little known even to the oldest nations along the Mediterranean coasts. Worsaae remarks, "There are geological reasons for believing that the Bronze Period must have prevailed in Denmark five or six hundred years before the birth of Christ."[239] Denmark, however, had all its metal to import, while the earliest historic allusion to England represents her exporting her abundant metallic ores, and bartering them with the southern merchant for the productions of his superior skill. The metallic riches of England have not escaped the attention of the intelligent Danish archæologist:--"It is highly probable," he remarks, "that the ancient bronze, formed of copper and tin, was diffused from one spot over the whole of Europe; which spot may be supposed to be England, because, not to mention the quantity of copper which that country produces, its rich tin mines have been known from the earliest historic periods to the nations of the south, while in the other parts of Europe there occur only very few and doubtful remains of far less important tin mines which we are justified in believing to have been worked at that time."[240]

When we consider that copper is not only found in a state requiring little smelting to render it fit for manufacture, but that it is even discovered at times so pure that we may conceive of its occasional substitution for stone implements, before the art of smelting had become known, we can feel no hesitation in assuming, a priori, that it was the precursor of iron as a material for the construction of weapons and tools. Iron, on the contrary, bears, in its natural state, little resemblance to a metal, and is smelted by so difficult and tedious a process that, even after its superiority had become known, the older metal would probably be preferred by the natives of a thinly peopled country, where the benefits of mutual cooperation and the division of labour still remained among the unsolved problems of their political economy. The tools and weapons of the ancient Mexicans we know were of copper, and we are not without evidence that even the Egyptians were far advanced in their early developed civilisation before iron had superseded the older copper tools. The architectural monuments of Mexico and Yucatan show how much might be accomplished with such imperfect implements. Both in the magnificent work of the French savans, and in the more accurate delineations of M. Rosellini, various Egyptian paintings are shewn, in which the implements of the sculptors are evidently of bronze or copper, and workmen are seen cutting blocks of granite and hewing out colossal statues with yellow tools. Numerous bronze weapons, implements, and personal ornaments found in the catacombs, attest the use of this metal by the Egyptians at a comparatively late period. Implements of copper are also among the relics found in some of the ancient and long abandoned mines discovered in Asia. The celebrated tables in the copper mines of Wady Maghara, near Sinai, record the conquest of that part of Asia by Suphis, the builder of the great pyramid, and prove that these mines had been wrought prior to the early date of his reign. Dr. Layard also refers to copper mines still existing in the mountains within the confines of Assyria, worked at a very remote period, probably by the Assyrians, and used not only to supply the material for ornaments, but also for weapons and tools.[241] But there is not wanting abundant direct evidence to prove that Asia had her Bronze Period as well as Europe and Africa. Dr. Prichard remarks, "Silver and golden ornaments of rude workmanship, though in abundant quantity, are found in the Siberian tombs. The art of fabricating ornaments of the precious metals seems to have preceded by many ages the use of iron in the northern regions of Asia."[242] A very interesting account is given in the Archæologia of a tumulus opened in the neighbourhood of Asterabad, on the south-eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, in 1841. It contained several vessels and two small trumpets, all of pure gold; spears, pikes, forks, and other weapons, including a well-shaped hammer and hatchet of copper, but no traces of iron.[243] The descriptions of Homer point out the era of the Iliad and the Odyssey as a bronze period; and Hesiod, as well as later writers, intimate clearly the use of bronze by the Greeks before they had learned to smelt or work the iron ore. The golden age of Saturn, and the succeeding silver, brazen, and iron ages, by which the Greek Sagas figure the gradual decline of mankind from a state of primeval purity and happiness, are not to be regarded as mere poetical images. "In the brazen age," says Schlegel, in his Philosophy of History, "crime and disorder reached their height; violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were of copper, and their implements and utensils of brass or bronze. Even in their edifices copper was employed; for as the Greek poet says, 'black iron was not then known;' a circumstance which must be considered as strictly historical, and as characteristic of the primitive nations."[244]

We have seen, in so far as the imperfect data already referred to afford trustworthy indications of the physical characteristics of the primitive colonists of Britain, that the race of the later era differed greatly from their elder and probably aboriginal precursors of the primeval period. We must depend not only on the united observations of British archæologists for adding to these ethnological data, but also on Continental research for supplying the necessary elements of comparison by which we may hope to trace out the origin of the Brachy-kephalic race of Scotland, to whom it seems probable that the introduction of the primitive metallurgic arts must be ascribed; while it may be that we shall yet be able clearly to associate the full development of these, prior to the working of iron, with the intrusion of the Celtæ upon the elder Allophylian British races.

Whencesoever the first knowledge of the metallurgic arts was derived, it introduced into the British Isles the elements of a change scarcely less momentous than those which later ages trace to letters, the magnet, the printing-press, or these latest applications of the metals--the railway and the electric telegraph. The native Briton was no longer confined to his little clearing on the coast, nor compelled with ingenious toil to fashion the shapeless flint and stone into the weapons and implements that supplied his simple wants. The forests rang with the axe and the wedge; the low grounds were gradually cleared of their primeval forests; and the fruits of patient industry were substituted, in part at least, for the spoils of the chase. Still the change was wrought, as might be anticipated, only by very slow degrees. The weapons and implements would in many localities long precede the knowledge of the arts by which they were formed. The old generation would die out, and be buried with the stone war-hatchet and spear, while the younger race were learning to despise such imperfect arms. Necessity also, arising from their costliness and scarcity, would long confine the majority to the primitive and inefficient tools and weapons of their fathers. Even after the flint lance had been entirely superseded by the bronze sword and spear, the missile weapons would still be made of the old material, and the large stone hammer would be retained in use as too bulky an object to be constructed of the more costly metal. It is probable, indeed, that stone implements were never entirely abandoned throughout the whole Bronze Period. No large bronze hammers have ever been found in Britain, while those of stone frequently occur along with metallic remains; and the larger hammers and axes, chiefly of granite, are among the most abundant of Scottish primitive relics. So recently as the month of October 1849, an ancient working of great extent was broken into at the Llandudno Copper Mines, at Ormes Head, in North Wales. In this were found a great number of stone hammers or mauls of various sizes, weighing from two to forty pounds, supposed to have been used in crushing the ore or detaching it from the rock. There also lay beside them a number of bones, and the portion of a bronze tool; affording altogether one of the most interesting discoveries yet made illustrative of the arts of the British Bronze Period.[245] Traces of ancient mining operations have also been found in Scotland. Pennant describes trenches in the Island of Jura by which the veins both of lead and copper have been wrought in very early times, and by instruments unknown to the modern miner.[246]

Abundant evidence is found in accordance with these indications, proving the existence of a long transition-period, during which metallic tools and arms were only very partially introduced, and were manifestly esteemed as rare and precious possessions. To this transition-period we should probably assign the formation of the smaller and most carefully wrought varieties of the stone hammer, with which we may presume the ingenious worker in the newly mastered metals to have wrought, and fashioned into shape, many of the rude but massive gold ornaments found in the tumuli. From the number of these relics of the precious metals which have been discovered, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that gold must have been much more abundant at that remote era than it has been within the period of authentic history. Nor is it difficult to account for such a state of things. Though usually found in very small quantities, gold is well known as one of the most widely diffused of all the metals; and the clay slate which frequently forms the depository of gold, silver, and copper, exists in great abundance throughout the Highlands. In the Leadhills of Scotland considerable quantities of gold have been procured at no very distant period, while numerous allusions suffice to shew its greater abundance in former times.[247] In the twelfth century the Abbey of Dunfermline received a grant from David I. of the tithe of all the gold produced by the surrounding districts of Fife and Forthrev;[248] and even in the sixteenth century the Laird of Merchiston is said to have wrought gold in the Pentland Hills.[249] In the remoter era, however, to which we now refer, when the rude Caledonian was learning, for the first time, to fashion his weapons and tools of bronze, and to substitute the golden torc and armilla for the necklace of perforated shells or stone and amber beads, we are justified in assuming from analogy that in many of the channels of the Scottish mountain streams,--amid the strata of which the ore has been found,--not only the gold dust, but pure masses of native gold would be occasionally discovered, and wrought with no better tools than the stone hammer and anvil into the personal ornaments of distinguished leaders or priests. Strabo, in referring to the great mineral wealth of Spain, which made it to the ancients what America became to the Spaniards long after their native mineral treasures were exhausted, remarks,--"In no country are gold, silver, copper, and iron, so abundant or of such fine quality; even the rivers and mountain streams bring down gold in their beds, which is found in their sands." Yet such a description is now as little applicable to Spain as to Scotland. But more recent and conclusive evidence exists. Much sensation was excited in 1795 by the discovery of gold dust in the bed of the brook Ballinasloge, a feeder of the Avonmore river, about seven miles west from Arklow, county Wicklow. The stream is formed there at the junction of three ravines; and in this spot John Lloyd, Esq., F.R.S., a correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks,[250] describes upwards of three hundred women, besides men and children, all engaged at one time in searching for the precious metal:--a scene not difficult to parallel in our own day. The searchers, however, were abundantly rewarded for their labour. The gold was found in masses varying from a few grains to five ounces in weight, and one piece, weighing twenty-two ounces, was reserved as a present to His Majesty. A later correspondent,[251] in a communication to the Royal Society, calculates that 800 ounces of gold were collected in the short space of six weeks, at the end of which time the gatherers were dispersed by a body of militia, and the gold area held for behoof of Government. "The gold," says Mr. Mills, "is of a bright yellow colour, perfectly malleable; the specific gravity of an apparently clean piece 19,000. A specimen, assayed here in the moist way, produced from 24 grains 22-58/101 grains of pure gold, and 1-45/101 of silver. Some of the gold is intimately blended with, and adherent to quartz; some, it is said, was found united to the fine grained iron-stone, but the major part was entirely free from the matrix; every piece more or less rounded on the edges, of various weights, forms, and sizes."[252] Specimens were afterwards assayed by the Royal Mint Master at the Tower of London. One piece contained, in 24 carats, 21-6/8 of fine gold, 1⅞ of fine silver, and ⅝ of alloy, which seemed to be copper tinged with a little iron.[253]

Such an example may be reasonably received as supplying one satisfactory clue to the sources of the gold which we find to have been so abundant in early times; though we shall still, perhaps, consistently account for the introduction of some portion of it indirectly by foreign barter, and chiefly in the shape of the ring-money hereafter referred to. But when the fact is borne in remembrance that articles of silver are rarely, if ever, found in connexion with relics of the Bronze Period, it must be acknowledged as most consistent with the geological and mineralogical characteristics of auriferous and argentiferous deposits to look to native sources for the supply of gold. While silver is found only in large quantities by mining, gold has invariably been discovered in largest quantities in the superficial detritus, and accumulated in circumscribed areas. Whenever, therefore, we are enabled to trace the supply of gold to a foreign, as, for example, to a Phœnician source, we can hardly fail to find accompanying relics of silver; and accordingly, in the succeeding, or Iron Period, the gold becomes of rare occurrence, and the silver abundant. One other argument should not be altogether overlooked. The great purity of very many of the gold ornaments found in the tumuli is such as may perhaps add to the probability of its native origin. This well-known fact has frequently supplied an additional inducement to transfer to the crucible many of the rarest and most valuable relics of this period. Others found alloyed with silver are in no fixed or uniform proportions, but rather in accordance with the accidental mixtures likely to occur in the operations of the primitive miner and metallurgist. But this, though diminishing their bullion value, has not sufficed to save such national heirlooms from destruction. After reposing in the safe muniment chambers of their original owners, with but a foot of earth above them, while ancient races have become extinct and new colonists have risen to mighty nations above their forgotten graves, these treasures have only been restored to light to be immediately destroyed. The barbarity of such proceedings has hardly yet been fully exposed. It is the destruction of national records in the meanest spirit of cupidity, which no wealth could restore, and for which not even the poor excuse can be found that satisfied the fanatic Caliph Omar when he converted the treasures of the Alexandrian Library into fuel for the city baths.

Remote as is the period when the novel arts of the metallurgist broke in upon the simple and unsophisticated habits of the British aborigines, some traces of the memory of this mighty change still linger amid the popular traditions of England. The use which Sir Walter Scott has made of the Berkshire legend of Wayland Smith has sufficed to confer a fictitious interest on, perhaps without exception, the most remarkable of all the mythic traditions common to the nations of northern Europe, and which may be unhesitatingly received as the traditionary memorial of the advent of the Bronze Period among the Teutonic races. True, indeed, in the only definite form in which it is now recoverable from the early and medieval literature of Europe, it is associated with the later age of iron rather than with that of bronze; but little importance can be attached to this. The legend is manifestly of an older date even than the Edda, that venerable collection of the sacred writings of the north. We see in it the hero-worship of the fierce Norsemen deifying their Scandinavian Vulcan, and assigning to him a superhuman origin as an evidence of their estimate of the divine gift he is supposed to have bestowed. But the mythic legend finds its prototype in the Greek Dædalus, if not in the Mosaic Tubal-Cain. It is incorporated into nearly all the older European tongues with singular uniformity of idea. In the Icelandic the name of the renowned northern metallurgist is Vælund and Vaulundr; in old high German, Wiolant, Wielant; in Anglo-Saxon, Wêland; in old English, Weland and Velond; and in the modern popular dialect, Wayland. In the Latin of the middle ages it becomes Guielandus; and in old French, Galans and Galant. It is probable that Spain, Italy, and the East above all, had analogous traditions, some of which at least may yet be recovered.[254] According to a singular, and seemingly arbitrary caprice of the medieval Germanic traditions, the forge of Weland is supposed to be erected in the Caucasus; and Michel remarks, as a proof that there has been a common origin of these legends of the east and west relating to skilful workers in iron, that some of the traditions still preserved on the banks of the Euphrates present the same traits recorded by the poets of the middle ages on the banks of the Rhine.[255] But Humboldt has justly remarked that "the characteristic features of nations, like the internal construction of plants spread over the surface of the globe, were the impressions of a primitive type." The Aztecks,--to whom we have already referred as a remarkable example of considerable civilisation, and the extensive practice of many useful and ornamental arts, among a people destitute of iron and very partially furnished with metals,--had their mythic metallurgist as well as the older races of Europe and Asia. Quetzalcoath, whose reign was the golden age of the people of Anahuac, was the Weland of the Aztecks, worshipped among them with strange and bloody rites. Their traditions told that he had dwelt among them twenty years, and had taught them to cast metals, ordered fasts, and regulated the intercalations of the Tolteck year.[256] Prominent as the place is which the mythic legend of the smith-god occupied in the popular creed of the middle ages throughout the greater part of Europe, the tradition of a gifted worker in metals is doubtless of eastern origin, and far more fitly impersonates and deifies the restoration of the metallurgic arts in the primitive Bronze Period than the mere transition from bronze to iron, important as the latter change undoubtedly was.

The remarkable analogy of the mythic legends of the North with the ancient Greek fable of Dædalus, has not escaped the notice of modern critics, and MM. Depping and Michel remark:--"We do not hesitate to believe that it is the history of this Greek artist, altered and disfigured, adapted to the manners and creeds of the people of the north of Europe, which has given rise to the romance of Weland." The resemblance, however, is scarcely less manifest, in many respects, to the lame smith-god Ἡφαιστος, or Vulcan; and the widely-diffused mythic fable is far too complete and unique to have been transferred directly from the Greek to the Teutonic mythology, where scarce another trace of similar correspondence is discernible. Jupiter, Mars, Hercules, Venus, Orpheus, all find their counterparts indeed, but with scarce a shadow of resemblance to Greek prototypes, in the wild Scandinavian and old German pantheon, which may reasonably excite our wonder, if we assume a Greek origin for the Vœlundar Quida contained in the Edda. In the simplest form in which it is still recoverable, it is obviously overlaid with spurious additions of a later age; and when it gets into the monkish chronicles and romances of chivalry compiled in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the wild faith of the Norsemen is outdone by the wilder fictions of the Trouveres, and nearly all the symbolic spirit of the original disappears. Some of these even assign precise periods as the era of the northern smith. Several of the French romances mention Galand as the maker of Charlemagne's famous sword Durendal, while others describe armour forged by him and weapons inscribed with his name. But the most curious notice of this kind occurs in an English manuscript written about the time of Edward I. It contains a description of the sword of Gauvain, one of the most celebrated knights of Arthur's "Round Table," made by Galant, and having the following lines inscribed in canello gladii:--

"Jeo su forth trenchant e dure; Galaan me fyth par mult grant cure; Catorse anz [out] Jhesu Cristh, Quant Galaan me trempa e fyth;"

i.e., "I am very sharp and hard; Galaan made me with very great care; fourteen years old was Jesus Christ when Galaan tempered and made me." Other romances furnish with swords of Galant's workmanship both Julius Cæsar and Alexander the Great, and by inheritance from the latter, Ptolemy, Judas Maccabæus, and the Emperor Vespasian.[257] Such spurious inventions, however, lack all the value of the original symbolic legend. We read indeed in the romance of Fierabras d'Mixandre, of three famous swords made by Galans and his two brothers; of one of which it is related,--

"Césars li emperères l'ot maint jor en demagne, Engleterre en conquist, Angou et Alemagne, Et France et Normendie, Saisone et Aquitaigne, Et Puille et Hungerie, Provence et Moriaigne."[258]

If this idea stood alone, or was conceived in the simple spirit of the Scandinavian Vœlund-Chaunt, we might imagine it to be designed as a symbolic myth representing the advent of the Iron Period and its irresistible progress over the north; but the general spirit of the romance is characterized by the usual extravagance of medieval poetry.

The Greeks assigned to the history of Dædalus a very high antiquity, carrying him back to somewhere about the thirteenth century before the Christian era; but it may admit of doubt if Greece had then passed her own primitive stage. Among the relics of the European Stone Period preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries are some small flint-flakes and arrow-heads, gathered on the elevated mound of the tomb of the Plateans at Marathon, which it will not greatly outrage the ideas of the critical historian to assume as weapons used by the Greek patriots in repelling the Persian invader. At first the word Dædalus was, among the Greeks, like that of Weland among the Scandinavians, a generic name. Δαιδαλλω signified to work artistically, as Voelundr signified a smith in Islandic; and Dædalus was, like Weland, pre-eminently the artist and the workman. The word became a proper name only because of their attributing to this mythological being all the perfections of the art. For this reason also, it appears equally erroneous to regard the Islandic word voelund, a smith, as derived from Weland: it is the contrary that should be assumed. The word voelund existed before the history of the famous smith Weland had been invented, just as the word δαιδαλλω existed before the personification Dædalus had been adopted into the mythology of the Greeks.[259] This is no new idea. It was obviously from a recognition of it that King Alfred, when translating the De Consolatione Philosophiæ of Boethius into Anglo-Saxon, used the name of the northern Weland as synonymous with Fabricius. Mr. Singer has employed the Greek fable of Dædalus to restore the connexion of the arts of the north with the elder civilisation of Europe, and Dr. Sickler has applied the same classic legend with great ingenuity in his argument of the Phœnician origin of the Greek metallurgic arts.[260] Whencesoever that knowledge may have been immediately derived, we shall adopt the most consistent idea if we turn back to the Eastern cradle-land both of the Hellenic and Scandinavian races, and assume a common origin for the mythic fable which records with corresponding symbolic legends the restoration of the art of Tubal-Cain to the postdiluvian race.

It is a remarkable and interesting fact, that while modern learning and research have brought to light the most ancient literate forms of this northern myth, in the Edda and the Niebelungen Lied, it is in England only that it has survived to our own day as a living popular tradition; and it is due to the somewhat grotesque travesty of its rude Berkshire version inwrought into the tragic tale of Kenilworth, that it has been restored to the favour of modern Europe. Among the old Scandinavian nations, and in Iceland, where the language of their runic literature is still a living tongue, as well as in France, and throughout the whole Germanic races of the Continent, all memory of the restoration of this divine gift of the metals has utterly passed away. In England only--towards which we see the galleys of the elder inheritors of civilisation winging their way in quest of its metallic treasures with the first glimpse we catch of it as it emerges out of the night of time--the mythic legend has retained vitality till now. How the story of our northern Dædalus came to be associated with the monolithic group at the foot of White-Horse Hill, in the vale of Berkshire, it is now equally vain and useless to inquire. There, according to rustic folk-lore, dwelt the invisible smith. No one ever saw him; but he who had the courage to avail himself of his skill had only to deposit a piece of money on one of the stones, and leave his horse beside it. On his return the horse was found to be shod, and the money gone. Such was the last shadowy tradition of the venerable myth. On one of the rarer coins of Cunobeline an armourer or coiner is represented. Some numismatists have supposed it to be Vulcan forging a helmet.

May it not more probably be assumed as the northern Weland, whose metallurgic skill was so widely celebrated among the Teutonic nations? Before the great Alfred had won his way to the English throne the symbolic impersonation had assumed a perfect individuality; and in the translation of the De Consolatione Philosophiæ into Anglo-Saxon, he thus paraphrases the passage,--Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent? Quid Brutus, aut rigidus Cato?

"Where are now the bones Of the wise Weland, The goldsmith Formerly most famous? * * * * * Who knows now the bones Of the wise Weland, Under what mound (or barrow) They are concealed?"[261]

If little importance be due to the association of Weland's name with the working in iron, not very much more is to be ascribed to the no less frequent depiction of him as a cunning jeweller and goldsmith. Nevertheless, the circumstance is worthy of notice in passing, since it is not impossible that the working in gold may have preceded even the age of bronze, and in reality have belonged, as already hinted, to the Stone Period. If metal could be found capable of being wrought and fashioned without smelting or moulding, its use was perfectly compatible with the simple arts of the Stone Period. Of such use masses of native gold, such as have been often found both in the Old and the New World, are peculiarly susceptible; and some of the examples of Scottish gold personal ornaments fully correspond with the probable results of such an anticipatory use of the metals. One very remarkable example, more particularly referred to hereafter, occurs in a pair of armillæ of pure gold, found in an urn of the rudest and most artless construction in a cist in Banffshire. They are merely hammered into rounded bars and then bent to fit the arm, and they retain the rough marks of the tool, which it is more easy to imagine one of stone than any more delicate or artificial implement. It is not impossible that it may be owing to some faint traditional remembrance of this primitive origin of the working of metals, that the oldest notices of Weland represent him chiefly as the cunning goldsmith, as in the fifth stanza of the Vœlundar Quida of the Edda:--

"Vœlund alone remained in Ulfdale, He wrought red gold, with jewells rare, Securing on a withy rings many."

So it is in all the earliest existing forms of this ancient myth, the working in iron is only superadded to the skill of the famous goldsmith.

No Celtic legend preserves an equally distinct memorial of the introduction of the metallurgic arts among the ancient colonists of the British Isles. Nevertheless the Scottish Highlanders have their native Ἡφαιστος also, personified, like the Teutonic Weland, in many romantic legends. The fame of Luno, the son of Leven, who made the swords of Fingal and his heroes, is preserved in old traditional poems, which figure him as a wild savage clad in a mantle of black hide, and with an apron of similar materials. The additional features of the picture furnish no inapt personification of the classic Vulcan. He is described as lame; going on one leg, with a staff in his hand, yet remarkable for his swiftness.[262] Dr. Macculloch, in demonstrating the affinity between the Celtic and Teutonic superstitions and the Oriental and classic mythology, remarks,--"Fingal is not an absolute original himself. His sword is the sword of sharpness of the Edda, made by Velent or Weyland, the hyperborean Vulcan. It is the wonderful sword Skoffnung, and also Balmung, and it is the Mimmung in Ettin Langshanks. It is equally Tyrsing, the fairy blade of Suafurlami; and it is also the sword which Jack begged of the giant. It is the sword Durandal, with which Orlando cuts rocks in two; and it is Escalibor, the sword of Arthur."[263] Thus common as the metal from which it is forged is some form or other of the mythic legend which commemorates the restoration of old Tubal-Cain's weapon of war. Still the venerable Teutonic myth does not appear to have been preserved by the Scottish medieval chroniclers or romancers, unless in some extremely modified form, or it could hardly have escaped the notice of Dunbar, in his satire of "The Fenyeit Freir of Tungland." The incident which gave rise to this whimsical effusion of our great Scottish poet against the Italian charlatan occurred in 1507, (a year famous for the introduction of the printingpress into Scotland,) and is thus described by Bishop Lesley.[264] Referring to an embassy sent to France in that year, he remarks,--"This tyme thair wes ane Italiane with the king, quha wes maid Abbott of Tungland, and wes of curious ingyne. He causet the king believe that he, be multiplyinge and utheris his inventions, wold make fine golde of uther mettall, quhilk science he callit the quintassence; quhairupon the king maid greit cost, bot all in vaine. This Abbott tuik in hand to flie with wingis, and to be in Fraunce befoir the saidis ambassadouris; and to that effect he causet mak ane pair of wingis of fedderis, quhilkis beand fessinit apoun him, he flew of the Castell wall of Striveling, bot shortlie he fell to the ground and brak his thee bane. Bot the wyt thairof he ascryvit to that thair was sum hen fedderis in the wingis, quhilk yarnit and covet the mydding and not the skyis." The Scottish historian compares him to "ane king of Yngland callit Bladud." The poet's similes are still more pertinent; though since we learn from the Scottish Treasurers' Accounts, that the Abbot of Tungland was paid, in 1513, "to pass to the myne of Crawfurd-moor," which the king was then working for gold: and from the satire, that he sometimes practised the Blacksmith's craft: Dunbar could scarcely have avoided the addition of the Weland legend to his other similes, had it been known to him, since the points of resemblance are such, that, with less historic evidence for the truth of the Abbot's history, we might assume it as the rude Scottish version of the Vœlundar Quida:--

"Sum held he had bene Dedalus, Sum the Mynataur mervaluss, Sum Mertis blak smyth Vulcanus, And sum Saturnus cuk. And evir the cuchettis at him tuggit, The rukis him rent, the ravynis him druggit, The huddit crawis his hair furth ruggit, The hevin he micht nocht bruke."

FOOTNOTES:

[224] Ellis's Specimens. The abundance of wild beasts and game of all kinds in the Caledonian forests is frequently alluded to. Boece describes "gret plente of haris, hartis, hindis, dayis, rais, wolffis, wild hors, and toddis." (Bellenden's Boece. Cosmographe, chap. xi.) The following curious enumeration in Gordon's History of the House of Sutherland, (fol. p. 3,) written about 1630, furnishes a tolerably extensive list of wild natives of Sutherland even in the seventeenth century:--"All these forrests and schases are verie profitable for feiding of bestiall, and delectable for hunting. They are full of reid deir and roes, woulffs, foxes, wyld catts, brocks, skuyrrells, whittrets, weasels, otters, martrixes, hares, and fumarts. In these forrests, and in all this province, ther is great store of partriges, pluivers, capercalegs, blackwaks, murefowls, heth-hens, swanes, bewters, turtledoves, herons, dowes, steares or stirlings, lair-igigh or knag, (which is a foull lyk vnto a paroket or parret, which maks place for her nest with her beck in the oak trie,) duke, draig, widgeon, teale, wildgouse, ringouse, routs, whaips, shot-whaips, woodcok, larkes, sparrowes, snyps, blakburds or osills, meweis, thrushes, and all other kinds of wildfowle and birds, which ar to be had in any pairt of this kingdome. Ther is not one strype in all these forrests that wants trouts and other sorts of fishes.... Ther is vpon these rivers, and vpon all the cost of Southerland, a great quantitie of pealoks, sealghes or sealls, and sometymes whaills of great bignes, with all sorts of shell fish, and dyvers kynds of sea-foull." When we remember that this ample inventory is of a late date, and lacks not only the Caledonian bull, the elk, and "the wild-bore, killed by Gordoun, who for his valour and great manhood was verie intire with King Malcolme-Kean-Moir," but also, in all probability, many more of the older prizes of the chase, we can readily perceive the abundant stores that lay within reach of the thinly-peopled districts of the primitive era. One of the most interesting of the extinct animals of Scotland, on many accounts, is the beaver, (Castor Europæus,) already referred to among the mammals of the primeval transition. Its remains have been discovered under circumstances indicative of equal antiquity with the extinct mammoth, (Owen, p. 191.) But their most frequent situation is at the bottom of the peat-bog; as in the Newbury peat-valley, where they were found twenty feet below the present surface, associated with the remains of the wild-boar, roebuck, goat, deer, and wolf. Fine specimens of a skull, under-jaw, and haunch bone, found in Perthshire, and now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, have been made the subject of a valuable memoir by Dr. P. Neill, a Fellow of the Society, in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, (vol. i. p. 183, and Wern. Mem. vol. iii. p. 207.) Dr. Neill, Professor Fleming, and subsequent writers, including Professor Owen, in referring to the historical notices of the beaver, remark on the absence of any mention of such an animal in the Scottish public records. This, however, is an error. In an Act of David I. fixing the rate of custom-duties, beavers' skins are mentioned among the Scottish exports, along with those of the fox, the weasel, the martin, the wild cat, the ferret, &c.--"Of Peloure.--Of a tymmyr of skynnis of toddis, quhytredis, mertrikis, cattis, beueris, sable firettis, or swylk vthyr of ilk tymmyr at þe outpassing, iiij ᵭ. Of þe tymmer of skurel, ij ᵭ.," &c., (Act. Parl. Scot. vol. i. p. 303.) Dr. Neill has pointed out the interesting fact, that the Scottish Highlanders still retain a peculiar Gaelic name for the beaver, Dobran losleathan, the broad-tailed otter. By the Welsh it is called Llosdlydan, and Pennant refers to waters in the principality still bearing the name of the Beaver Lake.

[225] Numbers xxxi. 22.

[226] Ezekiel xxvii. 12.

[227] Borlase's Cornwall, vol. i. p. 317. Plate XXVIII.

[228] Archæologia, vol. xvi. p. 137. Plates IX. and X.

[229] Collectanea Curiosa Antiqua Dumnonia, by W. T. P. Shortt, Esq., p. 71.

[230] Mémoires de la Société d'Emulation d'Abbeville, 1844-1848, p. 135.

[231] W. T. P. Shortt, Esq. of Heavitree, near Exeter. Antiqua Dumnonia, Pref. p. iv. Vide also Sylva Antiqua Iscana, pp. 79, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93-105. Gent.'s Mag., Aug. and Sep. 1837, &c., for notices of the discovery of numerous early Greek and Egyptian, and some Phœnician coins.

[232] Numismatic Chronicle, vol. i. p. 3. Vide also the able series of Articles by the Rev. Beale Post, on the coins of Cunobeline, and of the Ancient Britons. Journ. of Archæol. Assoc. vols. i. ii. iii. iv. and v.

[233] Boece assigns the earliest native Scottish coinage to an apocryphal king Donald, circa A.D. 200. This account, however, includes some interesting notices of hoards discovered in his own day: "King Donald was the first king of Scottis that prentit ane penny of gold or silver. On the ta side of this money was prentit ane croce, and his face on the tothir. The Scottis usit na money, bot merchandice, quhen thay interchangeit with Britonis and Romanis, afore thir dayis, except it war money of the said Romanis or Britonis, as may be previt be sindry auld hurdis and treasouris, found in divers partis of Scotland, with uncouth cunye. For in the yeir of God M.DXIX. yeris, in Fiffe, nocht far fra Levin, war certane penneis found, in ane brasin veschell, with uncouth cunye; sum of thaim war prentit with doubill visage of Janus; otheris with the stam of ane schip; otheris had the figure of Mars, Venus, Mercurius, and siclike idolis; on otheris war prentit Romulus and Remus soukand ane wolf; and on the tothir side war prentit S. P. Q. R. Siclike, in Murray-land, beside the see, in the ground of ane auld castill, the yeir of God M.CCCCLX. yeris, was found ane veschell of merbill, full of uncouth money; on quhilkis was prentit the image of ane ganar fechtant with edderis,"--i.e., a goose fighting with adders.--Bellenden's Boece, book iv. chap. xvi.

[234] Sylva Antiqua Iscana, p. 79, Plate VI.

[235] Ibid. p. 90, where a minute account of the coins is given. Also pp. 76, 88, 91, 93, &c.

[236] New Statist. Acco. vol. iv. p. 292.

[237] Archæologia, vol. ii. p. 92; vol. iii. pp. 234, 332. A monumental tablet, dedicated to the memory of Antiochus Lysimachus, now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, is engraved and described by mistake in Stuart's "Caledonia Romana" as the only Greek inscription which has been met with north of the Tweed. It was found, along with a statue of Esculapius and other fine marbles, near the fountain of Cyrene, on the site of an ancient Greek colony in Africa.

[238] Gibson's Camden, p. 926.

[239] Primeval Antiquities, p. 135.

[240] Primeval Antiquities, p. 45.

[241] Layard's Nineveh, vol. ii p. 418.

[242] Natural History of Man, p. 191.

[243] Archæologia, vol. xxx. p. 248.

[244] Schlegel's Philosophy of History, Lecture II.

[245] Archæol. Journal, vol. vii. p. 68.

[246] Pennant, vol. ii. p. 250.

[247] "It seems our ancestors had more gold than silver, and indeed there are several places in Scotland where there has been much digging for gold. I have had the curiosity to consider the nature of them, and always found them just the same with those the Emperor has on the borders of Hungary, at two places, Nitria and Presburg. Those, like ours, consist of a vein or stratum of sand and gravel, which being brought up some fathoms from below ground, and washed, produce gold in very small particles."--Sir John Clerk to Mr. Gale, August 6, 1732; Biblo. Topog. Brit. vol. ii. p. 299.

In the Miscellanea Scotica, printed in 1710, various notices of the ancient working of gold in Scotland occur. Pieces of gold, mixed with spar and other substances, weighing thirty ounces, are described among the fruits of the Laughain and Phinland mines. See also Pennant's Tour, App. x. vol. iii. for a curious account "of the gold mines of Scotland."

The introduction of the metals into southern Europe in ancient times appears to have borne no analogy to that in the north. Gold was not used in the Roman coinage till B.C. 207, sixty-two years after the adoption of a silver coinage. So, too, in the records of sacred history, Abraham weighed unto Ephron 400 shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. The earliest notice of gold used otherwise than for jewels and ornaments only occurs in the reign of David, when he purchased the threshing-floor of Ornan for 600 shekels of gold by weight; 1 Chron. xxi. 25. Compare this with 2 Samuel xxiv. 24.

[248] Regist. de Dunferm. p. 16.

[249] Miscel. Scot., Napier of Merchiston, p. 228.

[250] "Account of the late discovery of native gold in Ireland." Philosoph. Transac. London, 1796, p. 34.

[251] Ibid. p. 38. "A Mineralogical Account of the native gold lately discovered in Ireland," by Abraham Mills, Esq.

[252] Philosoph. Transac. London, 1796, p. 43.

[253] Ibid. p. 45.

[254] Wayland Smith, by W. S. Singer, from the French of Depping and Michel, Preface.

[255] Ibid. p. lxxvi.

[256] Humboldt's Researches, vol. i. p. 94.

[257] Archæologia, vol. xxxii. p. 321.

[258] MS. de la Bib. Roy. Supplem. Française, No. 540, fol. 33. Singer's Wayland Smith, p. lvii.

[259] Singer's Wayland Smith, p. lxx.

[260] Die Hieroglyphen in dem Mythus des Æsculapius. Meiningen, 1819. Singer, p. lxx.

[261] Vide Thomas Wright on the Legend of Weland the Smith. Archæologia, vol. xxxii. p. 315. Also his article on Alfred, in the Biographia Literaria of the Royal Society of Literature regarding the authorship of this metrical version.

[262] Logan's Scottish Gael, vol. ii. p. 195.

[263] Macculloch's Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, vol. iv. p. 327.

[264] Bishop Lesley's Hist. Bannatyne Club. 4to. Edinburgh, 1830. P. 76.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

II. THE METALLURGIC TRANSITION

In the earliest glimpse we are able to catch of the British Isles with the dawning light of historic records, we learn of them as already celebrated for their mineral wealth. So long, however, as Britain retained its vast tracts of natural forests, and was only occupied by thinly scattered nomade tribes, the tin mines of Cornwall, and the foreign trade which they invited to the southern shores of the island, might reward the toil and sagacity of the ancient Cornubii or other primitive colonists of Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, without exercising any perceptible influence on neighbouring tribes, or being known to the remoter dwellers beyond the Solway and the Tyne. The spoils of war, more probably than any peaceful interchange of commodities, would first introduce the bronze weapons imported into Cornwall to the knowledge of the northern tribes. But the superiority of the sword and spear of metal over the old lance of flint or bone would speedily be appreciated, and we accordingly find abundant traces of one of the first elements of civilisation, viz., an interchange of commodities and the importation of foreign manufactures, having accompanied the advent of the Bronze Period. The rude aboriginal Briton no longer confined his aim in the chase to the supply of his own table and simple wardrobe. The Phœnicians traded to Britain for its furs as well as its metals, and for these the products of a wider district than the tin country would be required. The Caledonian hunter would learn to hoard up the skins won in the chase, to barter with them for the coveted sword and spear of bronze,--and thus the first elements of civilisation would precede the direct knowledge of the metallurgic arts.

The advent of the Bronze Period, however, cannot be held to have been fairly introduced until the native Caledonian had learned, at least to melt the metals, and to mould the weapons and implements which he used, if not to quarry and smelt the ores which abound in his native hills. The progress consequent on the indirect introduction of the metals would speedily create new wants and the desire for modifications and improvements on the implements of foreign manufacture. The demands on his sagacity and skill would increase with the gradual progress in intelligence and civilisation consequent on the new impulses brought into operation; and thus would the arts of the smith and the jeweller be superinduced on the originally barbarian devices of the Caledonian. Once introduced, by whatever means, he was not slow to improve on the lessons furnished in the novel art; and while, with a pertinacious adherence to ancient models singularly characteristic of primitive races, we find implements and personal ornaments of the modern Scottish Highlander not greatly differing from those of fully ten centuries ago, we also find the natives of isolated districts, beyond the reach of changing influences, practising the ingenious arts of this remote period when every man was his own armourer and goldsmith.

It needs not either the authority of revelation, or the demonstrations of ethnology, to prove that God has made of one blood all that dwell upon the earth. Man, placed under the same conditions, everywhere exhibits similar results. The ancient Stone Period of Assyria and Egypt resembles that of its European successor, and that again finds a nearly complete parallel in the primitive remains of the valley of the Mississippi, and in the modern arts of the barbarous Polynesians. So, too, with the higher state which succeeds this. The characteristics of the early Bronze Period are long since familiar to us. Milton, who accords equally stinted honours to Mulciber and to Mammon, by whose suggestion taught, men

"Ransack'd the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother earth For treasures better hid,"--

refers to the introduction of the metallurgic arts as first among those great sources of change which the Archangel Michael makes known to Adam when exhibiting to him the future destiny of his seed. The knowledge of working in metals is there also introduced in contrast to the simpler arts of the pastoral state, and as the chief source of social progress with all its accompanying development of luxury and crime. On one side Adam sees the shepherds' huts and grazing herds;

"In other part stood one who, at the forge Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass Had melted, (whether found where casual fire Had wasted woods on mountain or in vale, Down to the veins of earth; thence gliding hot To some cave's mouth; or whether washed by stream From under ground,) the liquid ore he drained Into fit moulds prepared, from which he formed First his own tools, then what might else be wrought Fusil, or graven in metal."

Amid the highly artificial results of modern civilisation we might find some difficulty in conceiving of such a social state, in which considerable taste and ingenuity were displayed in the forging of arms and tools, and in the manufacture of personal ornaments. But not only are we able to compare the results of the division of labour with the fruits of such isolated skill, in races only now beginning to develop these first elements of civilisation; we can also look upon the living representatives of the Caledonian at the dawn of his historic era. Dr. Layard, in describing a visit to an ancient copper mine in the Tiyari Mountains, remarks,--"In these mountains, particularly in the heights above Lizan, and in the valley of Berwari, mines of iron, lead, copper, and other minerals, abound. Both the Kurds and the Chaldæans make their own weapons and implements of agriculture, and cast bullets for their rifles--collecting the ores which are scattered on the declivities, or brought down by the torrents."[265] This affords a parallel modern picture of such a state of society as that we have to conceive of in the early dawn of the British Bronze Period. Martin, in his description of the Western Isles, written at the commencement of the eighteenth century, remarks of the islanders,--"When they travel on foot the plaid is tied on the breast with a bodkin of bone or wood, just as the spina worn by the Germans, according to the description of Tacitus." He then furnishes a detailed account of the ancient dress, even then becoming rare, and of the breast-buckle or brooch, of silver or brass, which appears to have formed, from the very earliest times, the most favourite personal ornament of both sexes. "I have seen some of the former," says he, "of an hundred marks value: it was broad as any ordinary pewter plate, the whole curiously engraven with various animals, &c. There was a lesser buckle, which was worn in the middle of the larger, and about two ounces weight. It had in the centre a large piece of crystal, or some finer stone, and this was set all round with several stones of a lesser size."[266] The Rev. John Lane Buchanan, visiting these islands nearly a century later, found the same customs unchanged, and the primitive metallurgic arts of the ingenious Hebrideans not greatly in advance of the modern Asiatic Kurds. This writer remarks of the females,--"All of them wear a small plaid, a yard broad, called guilechan, about their shoulders, fastened by a large brooch. The brooches are generally round, and of silver, if the wearer be in tolerable circumstances; if poor, the brooches, being either circular or triangular, are of baser metal and modern date. The first kind has been worn time immemorial even by the ladies. The married women bind up their hair with a large pin into a knot on the crown of their heads."[267] The same writer thus describes the practice of every necessary art and trade by the simple islanders:--"It is very common to find men who are tailors, shoemakers, stocking-weavers, coopers, carpenters, and sawyers of timber. Some of them employ the plane, the saw, the adze, the wimble, and they even groove the deals for chests. They make hooks for fishing, cast metal buckles, brooches, and rings for their favourite females."[268] They were, in fact, at that very recent period practising nearly the same arts as we may trace out at a time when the Phœnician traders were still seeking the harbours of Cornwall, and exchanging the manufactures of Carthage, and perhaps of Tyre, for the products of the English mines. A no less unquestionable proof of the unchanging character of the Celtic arts is to be found in the fact that the ornamentation, not only on many of the old Highland brooches and drinking horns, but invariably employed in decorating the handle of the Highland dirk and knife, down to the last fatal struggle of the clans on Culloden Moor which abruptly closed the tradition of many centuries, is exactly the same interlaced knotwork which we are familiar with on the most ancient class of sculptured standing stones in Scotland. The annexed figure of a Highland powder-horn of the seventeenth century is from one in the possession of Mr. James Drummond, bearing inscribed on it the initials and date, G. R. 1685. The triple knot, so common on early Scottish and Irish relics that it has been supposed to have been used as a symbol of the Trinity, is no less frequently introduced on the Highland targets and brooches of last century, and is shewn along with other interlaced ornaments, on an example of the latter introduced in a subsequent chapter.

On the theory of the introduction of metallurgic arts assumed here, not altogether without evidence, it is not requisite that we should conceive of the aboriginal Caledonians disturbed by the invasion of foreign tribes armed with weapons scarcely less strange to them than those with which the Spanish discoverers astonished the simple natives of the New World. The changes, however, already noted in the forms and modes of sepulture, the abandonment of the long barrow, the introduction of cremation, of the sitting or folded posture of the dead with the correspondingly abbreviated cist, and of a uniform and defined direction of laying the dead, are all suggestive of the probable intrusion of new races in earlier as well as in later times. The facilities afforded by the more pliable metal tools would speedily work no less remarkable changes on the mansions of the living than on the sepulchres of the dead. The subterranean weem would give place to the wooden structure, which the new arts rendered at once a more convenient and simpler style of architecture; while the inroads on the forests which such changes led to would necessitate the clearing of the neighbouring lands preparatory to the extended labours of the agriculturist. To the same cause also we may probably trace the origin of many of those extensive tracts of bog and peat-moss which still encumber the limited level areas of Scotland. The wasteful profusion of the natives of a thinly peopled country would lead to the destruction of the forests with little heed to aught but the supply of their own immediate wants. In the extensive mosses of Kincardine and Blair-Drummond, which have yielded such valuable archæological relics, when the surface of the underlying clay was exposed by the removal of the moss, it was in many places covered with trees, chiefly oak and birch, of a great size. These were found lying in all directions beside their roots, which continued firm in the ground in their natural position; and from impressions still visible it was evident that they had been cut with an axe or some similar instrument.[269] The like discoveries in other Scottish mosses prove their origin from the same wasteful inroads of early times.

The occupants of the country at this period were necessarily isolated tribes and clans, with no common interest, and little peaceful intercourse. The arts were therefore practised as in their primeval dawn described by Milton, when the artist formed

"First his own tools, then what might else be wrought."

Among all the varied primitive relics which have been from time to time discovered, both in Scotland and other countries of northern Europe, none exceed in interest the stone and bronze moulds in which the earliest tools and weapons of the native metallurgist were formed. They have been found in Scotland, England, Ireland, and in the Channel Islands, exhibiting much diversity of form, and various degrees of ingenuity and fitness for the purpose in view. Some of them are of bronze, and highly finished, examples of which from the British Museum are engraved in the Archæological Journal, (vol. iv. p. 336,) in Plate VII. vol. v. of the Archæologia, and elsewhere. If the account, however, furnished by Warburton to Stukely may be relied upon, such objects are by no means rare. According to him, a bushel of celts, each inclosed in a brass mould or case, was found in 1719, at Brough, in the Humber. Mr. Worsaae refers to another example of a number of bronzes found in Mecklenburg, accompanied by the moulds in which they were cast, together with pieces of unwrought metal; and similar bronze celt-moulds have been discovered at various times in different parts of France. In the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland there are casts of a pair of large and very perfect bronze celt-moulds, of unusual size and peculiar form, found at Theville, Arrondissement de Cherbourg.

But still more interesting are the ruder stone moulds, in some of which we may trace the first efforts of the aborigines of the Stone Period to adapt the materials with which they were familiar to the novel arts of the metallurgist. This is particularly observable in a mould-stone preserved in the Belfast Museum. It is polygonal in form, and exhibits upon four of its surfaces indented moulds for axe-heads of the simplest class. In this example there is no reason to believe that any corresponding half was used to complete the mould. The melted metal was simply poured into the indented surface, and left to take shape by its equilibrium on the exposed surface. Weapons formed in this way may frequently be detected, while others, full of air-holes, and roughly granulated on the surface, appear to have been made in the still simpler mould formed by an indentation in sand. Others of the stone moulds have consisted of pairs, like those of bronze. A very curious example of this description was found a few years since in the Isle of Anglesea, and is engraved in the Archæological Journal.[270] It is a cube of hone-stone, nine inches and a quarter in length, by four inches in breadth at its widest extremity. Each of the four sides is indented for casting different weapons: two varieties of spear, a lance or arrow-head, and a celt with two loops. Only the one stone was found, but another corresponding one is obviously requisite, by means of which four complete moulds would be obtained. At the Congress of the Archæological Institute, held at Salisbury in 1849, the temporary Museum contained a mould of serpentine, found in Dorsetshire, designed for casting spear-heads, and another of granite, found near Amesbury in Wiltshire, intended to cast ornamented celts of two sizes. Of the same class are two pairs of celt-moulds recently discovered in the parish of Rosskeen, Ross-shire. The site of this interesting discovery is about four miles inland, on the north side of the Cromarty Frith, on a moor which the proprietor is reclaiming from the wild waste, and restoring once more to the profitable service of man. In the progress of this good work abundant evidence demonstrated the fact, that the same area from which the accumulated vegetable moss of many centuries is now being removed, had formed the scene of a busy, intelligent, and industrious population ere the first growth of this barren produce indicated its abandonment to solitude and sterility. Near to the spot where the moulds were discovered there stood till recently a large sepulchral cairn; and in forming a road through the moss several cists were exposed containing human bones and cinerary urns. Amid these evidences of ancient population the two pairs of moulds were discovered, at a depth of only sixteen inches from the surface. They are very perfect, and are composed of a hard and very close-grained stone. One pair is notched and perforated through both moulds, so as to admit of their being exactly fitted and tied together for casting. Close to the spot where they were discovered there was also disclosed the remains of a rude inclosure or building of stone, containing a bed of ashes and scoriæ; so that here no doubt had been the forge of the primitive metallurgist, from whence, perhaps, the natives of an extensive district obtained their chief supplies of weapons and tools. These Scottish moulds give evidence both of taste and ingenuity. In one of them is also a matrix for forming a smaller implement, the use of which is not easy to determine, while both the celts are large and elegant in form. The woodcut represents one of the celts cast from the mould, which measures fully five inches long.

In most cases, however, it may be assumed that the earliest weapons of metal were furnished, as the modern sportsman casts his bullets, by each warrior or craftsman becoming his own smith and founder; and when we consider the slow and tedious process indispensable for the completion of the stone hammer or lance-head of flint, we may readily perceive that it would be from the scarcity of the metals and not from any preference for primitive and more familiar arts, that the Briton of the transition-period continued to use the weapons of his fathers, or intermingled them with the more efficient ones which the new art supplied. Still it was probably long before he overcame the difficulty of casting metal in metal, and learned to model and cast his mould instead of laboriously cutting it from stone.

In these, as in other stages of improvement, we detect, as it were, the old tide-marks in the progress of civilisation. The rude chip-axe improves into the highly polished wedge and celt; this in its turn gives way to the rude sand-cast axe, or to the similar weapon moulded in the indented stone. The celt and spear-head follow, gracefully formed and looped in the double mould of stone or bronze. The taste of the more experienced metallurgist also finds room for the exercise of the decorative arts, and transfers to the bronze implements the incised and chevron patterns which were first introduced on his vessels of unbaked clay. Still further evidences of progress will come under our notice, showing the extent to which civilisation had advanced before the late and more familiar metal superseded the works of bronze.

In the romantic outskirts of the old Scottish capital some of the most remarkable evidences of the abundant remains of this era have been discovered. Reference has been made in a former chapter to the finding of stone cists and cinerary urns as the modern city extended over the suburban fields which lay beyond the old North Loch. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, when the spirit of agricultural improvement, which has been productive of such important results to Scotland, was beginning to take effect, the use of marl as a valuable manure was advocated and practised with a zeal no less wide spread and enthusiastic than has resulted in our own day from the discovery of the Guano Islands of the Pacific. One of the most zealous of these Scottish agriculturists was Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, whose estate is bounded on the north by the romantic Duddingstone Loch, which there separates it from the ancient royal demesne of Holyrood Palace. In 1775 he constructed a canal, and prepared a couple of flat-bottomed boats, with the requisite dredging machinery attached to them. These were set afloat on the loch, and their projector thus describes some of the most interesting results of his labours in a letter communicated to the Earl of Buchan, the founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, shortly after its institution in 1780.

"In the third year of my progress in dragging successfully great quantities of marl, now and then in the middle of the lake I met with large fragments of deer's horns of an uncommon magnitude. As my operations were proceeding northward, about one hundred and fifty yards from the verge of the lake next the King's Park, the people employed in dredging in places deeper than usual, after having removed the first surfaces of fat blackish mould, got into a bed of shell marl from five to seven feet deep, from which they brought up in the collecting leather bag a very weighty substance, which when examined as it was thrown into the marl boat, was a heap of swords, spears, and other lumps of brass, mixed with the purest of the shell marl. Some of the lumps of brass seemed as if half melted; and my conjecture is that there had been upon the side of the hill, near the lake, some manufactory for brass arms of the several kinds for which there was a demand."[271]

Rarely has a more interesting discovery been made, or one on an equally extensive scale, illustrative of the Scottish Bronze Period. Some of the most perfect and beautiful of these ancient weapons were presented to His Majesty George III.; others, doubtless also among the best specimens, were retained as family heirlooms, some of which were afterwards given to Sir Walter Scott;[272] but the remainder, including upwards of fifty pieces of swords, spear-heads, and fragments of other weapons, most of them more or less affected by fire, were presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and formed the very first donation towards the founding of their valuable collection of national antiquities. The royal gifts and nearly all the family heirlooms have disappeared, but the whole of those presented to the Society still remain in their Museum. The swords are of the usual leaf-shaped form, with perforated handles, to which horn or wood has been attached. Some of the larger broken spear-heads have been pierced with a variety of ornamental perforations, and in addition to these there were bronze rings and staples, similar to those found on various occasions with other remains of the same period. The accompanying woodcut represents one of these, measuring three inches in diameter, along with a larger one in the Scottish Museum, which was found along with several bronze celts and swords, on the estate of Kilkerran, Ayrshire, in 1846, and more closely resembles the examples most frequently met with both in style and dimensions.

The discovery of gigantic deer's horns and fragments of others along with the weapons and masses of melted bronze, would seem to add to the probability that some considerable manufacture of such weapons had been carried on, at some remote period, on the margin of the loch, and that these were collected for supplying them with handles. But other relics besides those which speak to us of the ingenious arts of the metallurgist, were dredged, along with the shell marl, from the bottom of the loch. "There were likewise brought up," says Sir Alexander Dick, "out of the same place with these brass arms, several human skulls and bones, which had been undoubtedly long preserved in the shell marl, which Dr. Monro and I examined very accurately, and by their very black colour we concluded they had been immersed in the marl for an immense time." Unfortunately neither the skulls nor the horns have been preserved. In this, as in a thousand other instances, we seek in vain for the minuter details that would confer so much value on the vague glimpses of archæological truths scattered through old periodicals, Statistical Accounts, and other unsatisfactory sources of information. Here we might say, with tolerable confidence, lay the manufacturer beside his tools. It becomes an interesting question to know if the deer's horns exhibited marks of artificial cutting, as this would go far to prove their use in the completion of the weapons beside which they lay, and might further help us in forming an opinion as to how they were applied. But still more, we would seek to learn if these skulls corresponded with either of the old types of the tumuli, or if they exhibited the later Celtic type intermediate between the lengthened and shortened oval, and were characterized by superior cerebral development such as their progress in the arts might lead us to expect. It is possible that some record of these facts has been preserved, since the skulls were submitted to one of the most distinguished anatomists of his day; but I have failed to discover any clue to such, after inquiries submitted both to Dr. Alexander Monro, and to Professor Goodsir who now fills the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh.

Fully seventy years after the marl-dredgers had brought to light the remarkable primitive relics buried beneath the alluvium at the bottom of Duddingstone Loch, the Honourable Board of Commissioners of Her Majesty's Woods and Forests determined on constructing a carriage-way round the neighbouring Royal Park, which includes both Arthur Seat and Salisbury Crags. In the progress of the necessary operations for carrying this plan into execution, and while the workmen were excavating the soil immediately above the singular group of basaltic columns popularly styled "Samson's Ribs," they uncovered a sepulchral deposit containing a cinerary urn, which was unfortunately broken to fragments by a stroke of the workman's shovel. Further to the eastward two, at least, and probably more bronze celts of large size were found, along with a small drinking-cup, engraved on a subsequent page. Still further to the east, almost directly above Duddingstone Loch--where the magnificent "Queen's Drive" is carried along the steep side of the hill at an elevation of nearly 300 feet above the level of the neighbouring loch--two most beautiful and perfect leaf-shaped bronze swords were dug up, in a bed of vegetable charcoal, but with no remains which would indicate its having been a sepulchral deposit. The largest of the two swords measures 26¼ inches long; the other 24¾ inches by 1¾ inches in greatest breadth. In other respects they entirely agree, resembling in figure the usual form of this graceful weapon, as will be observed from the annexed engraving of one of them. The swords and the largest of the bronze celts, figured above, are now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. The other celt and the cup are in my own possession; and as they were obtained from an Irish labourer, who shewed no little reluctance to be questioned, it is extremely probable that these are but a portion of the valuable treasures disclosed in the course of the excavations. How many more may lie interred for the gratification and instruction of future generations covered only by a foot or two of soil!

It naturally becomes a question of considerable interest to us,--Are these weapons, of beautiful and varied forms, the product of native genius and skill? or were they brought hither by foreign conquerors, to remain only as the evidences of national inferiority in arts and arms? The question is one which no Briton can deem worthless; albeit we do not esteem ourselves the pure lineal descendants of the Allophylian aborigines, or of the primitive Celtæ, but, on the contrary, are content to derive our peculiar modern national characteristics as the product of mingled races of Picts, Scots, Romans, Tungrians and other barbarian legionary colonists, Norwegians, Danes, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans.[273] Such are indeed the strange and diverse elements which make up the genealogy of the modern Scot. Nevertheless, his nationality is not the less strong because he derives his inheritance from so many sources; nor is his interest lessened in the aboriginal root. A very simple theory has heretofore sufficed for the classification of all Scottish, and, until very recently, of all British antiquities. Whatever was rude and barbarous, such as unhewn standing stones and monolithic circles, stone hammers and axes, and flint arrows, were native and Druidical; whatever manifested skill, invention, or any progress in the arts, was either Phœnician, Roman, or Danish! Britain, it was tacitly assumed, was sunk in the lowest state of barbarism, until humanized by the bloody missionaries of Roman civilisation. Such ignorant assumption will no longer suffice.

Mr. Worsaae adopts an era extending over about eleven centuries for the continuation of the Danish bronze period. From geological evidence he arrives at the conclusion, which is not improbable, that bronze weapons and implements were in use fully five centuries before the Christian era. But that the Archaic Period continued so long after it, when the neighbouring countries to the south were long familiar with the common and more useful metal, and when the Norwegians, who, it is acknowledged, appear never to have known a bronze period, were already taking their position among the Scandinavian nations, preparatory to making their piratical descents on the British shores, seems altogether improbable and opposed to established truths.

No description furnished either by Julius Cæsar or any later classical writer, of the weapons used by the native Britons of the first or second century, in any degree corresponds with the familiar form of the bronze sword so frequently found in the earlier tumuli.[274] Tacitus describes the Caledonians as "a powerful warlike nation, using swords large and blunt at the point (sine mucrone) and targets wherewith they skilfully defend themselves against the Roman missiles." The bronze leaf-shaped sword in no respect corresponds with this. It is a short and small, though formidable weapon, and is not only designed for thrusting rather than striking with,--as a heavy, blunt-pointed sword could alone be used,--but was evidently adapted for a warfare in which the chief tactics of the swordsman consisted in the bold thrust; since no example of a bronze sword has ever been found with a guard, that simple and most natural contrivance for defending the hand from the downward stroke of the foe. With such unmistakable evidence before us, the conclusion seems inevitable that the era of the bronze sword had passed away ere the hardy Caledonian encountered the invading legions of Rome. Nevertheless, while there is abundant evidence of the native manufacture of the articles of the Bronze Period, there are no less manifest traces of considerable intercourse throughout Europe during this era, from the near resemblance discoverable in all the bronze articles. The British bronze sword bears a general likeness to those not only of Denmark, but of Gaul, Germany, and even of Italy and Greece; but it has also its peculiar characteristics. It is broader and shorter than the Danish bronze sword, swelling out more towards the middle, so as to suggest the term leaf-shaped, by which it is now distinguished. A very remarkable guide to the probable era of such weapons in the south of Europe is furnished by a comparison of some specimens of Hellenic fictile art with a beautiful vase discovered at Vulci by the Prince of Canino, and described in the Archæologia[275] by Mr. Samuel Birch. The same subject occurs on three vases, and has been supposed to represent the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles. On one, a Vulcian hydria of archaic style, a naked and bearded combatant bears a leaf-shaped sword without a guard. On a second, a cylix of later style from the Canino Collection, the combatants are armed with leaf-shaped swords, but with guards; while on the beautiful vase which Mr. Birch refers to as a specimen of Greek art contemporary with the Orestes of Æschylus, the same scene occurs, but the assailant has substituted for the primitive weapon a straight two-edged sword of modern form. Such comparisons cannot be deemed without their value; but independent of these, the variations in the bronze relics of the same type suffice to prove that neither the British antiquities of bronze were brought from Denmark, nor the Danish ones from Britain. The handles of the British weapon especially appear to have been always of wood or horn, while many are met with in Denmark with bronze handles, ornamented with a peculiar pattern, and even sometimes inlaid with gold, but all invariably without a guard.

Among an interesting collection of bronze weapons discovered near Bilton, Yorkshire, in 1848, parts of two broken swords were found, on which Mr. C. Moore Jessop makes the following observations:--"The portions of swords have each been broken off a few inches down the blade, thus leaving the metallic part of the handle entire; which has been covered on both sides with horn or some similar substance, affixed by rivets, which having become loose have allowed the horn to move slightly each way, thus wearing away the metal. They have left evident traces of the shape of the hilt, and likewise prove the weapons to have been long in use."[276] Gordon engraves a fine bronze sword, twenty-six inches long, which was found near Carinn, on the line of the wall of Antoninus Pius, and deposited in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. Its most remarkable feature is its handle, which is of brass, but after examining the original, I am satisfied that the latter is a modern addition.[277]

It is especially worthy of note in relation to the makers and owners of these swords, that the handles are invariably small. One of the most marked ethnological characteristics of the pure Celtic race, in contrast to the Teutonic, is the small hands and feet; a feature so very partially affected by the mingling of Teutonic with the old Celtic blood of Scotland, that many of the older basket-hilted Highland swords will scarcely admit the hand of a modern Scotsman of ordinary size. This has been observed in various primitive races, and is noted by Mr. Stephens as characteristic of the ancient temple builders of Yucatan. In describing the well-known symbol of the red hand, first observed at Uxmal, Mr. Stephens remarks,--"Over a cavity in the mortar were two conspicuous marks, which afterwards stared us in the face in all the ruined buildings of the country. They were the prints of a red hand, with the thumb and fingers extended, not drawn or painted, but stamped by the living hand, the pressure of the palm upon the stone. There was one striking feature about these hands--they were exceedingly small. Either of our own spread over and completely hid them."[278] This is another of the physical characteristics of the earlier races well worthy of further note. While the delicate small hand and foot are ordinarily looked upon as marks of high-breeding, and are justly regarded as pertaining to the perfect beauty of the female form, the opposite are found among the masculine distinctions of the pure Teutonic races,--characteristic of their essentially practical and aggressive spirit,--and are frequently seen most markedly developed in the skilful manipulator and ingenious mechanician.

The spear-heads of this period are also marked by national distinctive features; the exceedingly common British form, for example, with loops to secure it to the shaft, being unknown in Denmark, and a variety of pierced heads common in Scotland and Ireland being rarely or never found in England. So it is with other varieties of weapons, implements, and personal ornaments: some which are common in Denmark are unknown here, or assume different forms; others with which we are familiar are unknown to the Danish archæologist; while both are in like manner distinguished from those of Germany, France, and the south of Europe. The distinctive peculiarities may indeed be most aptly compared to those which mark the various national developments of medieval art, and give to each an individuality of character without impairing the essential characteristics of the style. The extent of international communication was only so much greater and more direct in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, than in those older centuries before the Christian era, as to produce a more rapid interchange of thought and experience.

This national individuality, accompanying such remarkable correspondence to a common type, may therefore be assumed as justifying the conclusion that some considerable intercourse must have prevailed among the different races of Europe during that remote period to which we refer; and hence we are led to assume an additional evidence of early civilisation, while at the same time no sufficient proof appears to point to such a sudden transition as necessarily to lead to the conclusion that the bronze relics belong entirely to a new people. On the contrary, the evidence of slow transition is abundantly manifest. The metallurgic arts, and the models by which their earliest application was guided, were in all probability introduced by a new race, who followed in the wake of the older wanderers from the same Eastern cradle-land of the human race. But the rude stone moulds, the sand-cast celts and palstaves, and the relics of the primitive forges in which they were wrought, all point to aboriginal learners slowly acquiring the new art, while perhaps its originators were introducing those works of beautiful form and great finish and delicacy of workmanship, which the antiquary of the eighteenth century could ascribe to none but the Roman masters of the world.

Mr. Worsaae remarks, after pointing out the correspondence, in many respects, between the bronze relics of Denmark and those of other countries of Europe, these "prove nothing more than that certain implements and weapons had the same form among different nations."[279] And again, "from these evidences it follows that the antiquities belonging to the Bronze Period, which are found in the different countries of Europe, can neither be attributed exclusively to the Celts, nor to the Greeks, Romans, Phœnicians, Sclavonians, nor to the Teutonic tribes. They do not belong to any one people, but have been used by the most different nations at the same stage of civilisation; and there is no historical evidence strong enough to prove that the Teutonic people were in that respect an exception. The forms and patterns of the various weapons, implements, and ornaments, are so much alike, because such forms and patterns are the most natural and the most simple. As we saw in the Stone Period how people at the lowest stage of civilisation, by a sort of instinct, made their stone implements in the same shape, so we see now, in the first traces of a higher civilisation, that they exhibit in the mode of working objects of bronze a similar general resemblance."[280] But are the forms and patterns thus natural and simple? This argument, which abundantly satisfies us as to the universal correspondence of the majority of tools and weapons of the Stone Period, entirely fails when thus applied to the works of the Bronze Period. The former are in most cases of the simplest and most rudimentary character: the perforated oblong stone for a hammer, the pointed flint for an arrow-head, and the longer edged and pointed flint for a knife or spear. Human intelligence, in its most barbarous state, suggests such simple devices with a universality akin to the narrower instincts of the lower animals. They are, in truth, mathematically demonstrable as the simplest shapes. But the beauty and variety of form and decoration in the productions of the Bronze Period bring them under a totally different classification. They are works of art, and though undoubtedly exhibiting an indefiniteness peculiarly characteristic of its partial development, are scarcely less marked by novel and totally distinct forms than the products of the many different classic, medieval, or modern schools of design. The form of the leaf-shaped sword, indeed, is unsurpassed in beauty by any later offensive weapon. We are justified, therefore, in assuming that the general correspondence traceable throughout the productions of the European Bronze Period, affords evidence of considerable international intercourse having prevailed; while the peculiarities discoverable on comparing the relics found in different countries of Europe compel us to conclude that they are the products of native art, and not manufactures diffused from some common source. We have already traced them as pertaining to the infantile era of Greece, and may yet hope to find them among the indications of primitive Asiatic population, thereby supplying a new line of evidence in illustration of the north-western migration of the human race, and probably also a means of approximation towards the date of the successive steps by which the later nomades advanced towards the coasts of the German Ocean.

In the former section numerous instances have been referred to of the discovery of canoes belonging, by indisputable evidence, to the Primeval Period. One example, at least, has been recorded of a ship apparently belonging to the succeeding era of bronze, and which, both in size and mode of construction, amply accords with the assumed characteristics of the more advanced period, and with the idea of direct intercourse with the continent of Europe. "In this town," (Stranraer,)says the old historian of Galloway, writing in 1683, "the last year, while they were digging a water-gate for a mill, they lighted upon a ship a considerable distance from the shore, unto which the sea at the highest spring tides never comes. It was transversely under a little bourn, and wholly covered with earth a considerable depth; for there was a good yard, with kail growing in it, upon the one end of it. By that part of it which was gotten out, my informers, who saw it, conjecture that the vessel had been pretty large; they also tell me that the boards were not joined together after the usual fashion of our present ships or barks, as also that it had nailes of copper."[281] Here we find remarkable evidence of progress. The rude arts of the aboriginal seaman, by which he laboriously hollowed the oaken trunk and adapted it for navigating his native seas, have been superseded by a systematic process of ship-building, in which the metallic tools sufficed to hew and shape the planks as well as to furnish the copper fastenings by which they were secured. Vessels thus constructed were doubtless designed for wider excursions than the navigation of native estuaries and inland seas; nor must we assume, because the records of ancient history have heretofore concentrated our interest on the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, that therefore the German Ocean and the British seas were a waste of unpeopled waters, save, perhaps, when some rude canoe, borne beyond its wonted shelter on the coasts, timorously struggled to regain the shore. Enough has already been advanced to disabuse us of the fallacy, that where no annals of a people have been preserved nothing worth chronicling can have existed.

Much will be gained if faith can be established in the fact, that deeds worth recording were enacted in Britain in these old times when no other chronicler existed but the bard who committed to tradition his unwritten history, and the more faithful mourner who entrusted to the grave the records of his reverence or his love. Faith is required for the honest and zealous study of the subject; but with this we doubt not that many links will be supplied which are still wanting to complete the picture of the past. This much, however, seems already established, that at a period long prior to the first century of the Christian era the art of working in metals was introduced into Britain, and gradually superseded the rude primitive implements of stone. The intelligent British savage, supplied with this important element of civilisation, wrought and smelted the ores, melted and mixed the metals, formed moulds, and improved on early and imperfect models, until he carried the art to such perfection that even now we look upon his later bronze works with admiration, and are hard to be persuaded that they are not the creations of Phœnician or Roman, rather than of native British civilisation prior to the introduction of letters.

How remote the origin of this transition-period of civilisation dates we cannot as yet presume to say; but with our preconceived notions, derived chiefly from an exclusively classical education, we are more apt to err on the side of too modern than of too remote a date. Mr. Worsaae, after discussing and rejecting the idea of a Roman origin for the bronze relics of Denmark, adds,--"Nor in all probability have these bronzes reached us from Greece, although, both with regard to their form and ornaments, particularly the spiral ornaments, a greater similarity appears to exist between those which occur in the north and those found in the most ancient tombs of Greece. For independently of the fact, that the latter have hitherto occurred but seldom, so that our knowledge of them is extremely imperfect, they belong to so very remote a period--1000 or 1400 years before the birth of Christ--that we can by no means be justified in supposing that any active intercourse then existed between countries so remote from each other."[282] But why not? Active it might be, though indirect; or, what is equally likely, both might derive their models from a common source--perhaps Phœnician, the apparent source of Greek metallurgic art; perhaps from the older regions of central Asia, whence both were sprung. We see, at least, from evidence which appears to me incontrovertible, that at a much more remote period a human population occupied the British Isles; and we shall allow our judgments to be misled by very fallacious reasoning if we conclude that they could not have attained to any degree of civilisation at the period referred to, merely because no notice of them occurs in the pages of classic writers. The Greeks and Romans looked with contempt on all other nations. Partly from this national pride, but still more perhaps from a want of that philological talent peculiar to modern times, they gave little heed to the languages of their most civilized contemporaries, and looked on their barbarian arts and manners with contempt. Yet among the barbarians of the Greeks we must include the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, and the Hebrews; even as we ourselves rank among the barbarians of the modern Chinese, whose annals at most will tell of us as a roving race who first appeared in history towards the end of the seventeenth century!

The civilisation of the British Bronze Period does not appear to have been of so active a nature as to have produced any very rapid social changes. It did not break up the isolated tribes of Britain, and unite them into kingdoms or associated states. Its material element was never so abundant as to admit of any such great contemporaneous development. It was rather such a change as might slowly operate over many centuries; and that it did so is rendered most probable by the many relics of it which still remain. The Toltecans and Yucatecs of the New World achieved much in their Bronze Period unknown to medieval Europe; nor is it altogether impossible that even now, beyond the vast forests so recently explored by Mr. Stephens, a native race may be found practising arts akin to those of Montezuma's reign. Certain it is that the British Bronze Period was passing away in the transition-state of a later era when the Roman galleys first crossed the English Channel, and from the last century B.C. we must reckon backward up to that remote and altogether undetermined era, when the elder Stone Period passed by slow transition into that of Bronze.

FOOTNOTES:

[265] Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i. p. 224.

[266] Martin's Western Isles. Lond. 1703, p. 208. The Glenlyon brooch and the brooch of Lorn--worn according to the tradition of the Macdougals, by Robert the Bruce, and still preserved in that family--beautiful examples of this favourite Celtic ornament, are engraved on Plates II. and III. The Lorn brooch corresponds in some degree to the description in the text; and a common brass one, probably of the seventeenth century, in the Collection of C. K. Sharpe, Esq., figured on a later page, furnishes a good example of native Celtic art.

[267] Travels in the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790. London, 1793, p. 87.

[268] Ibid. p. 83.

[269] Kincardine Moss. General Append. Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. xxi. p. 154.

[270] Archæol. Jour. vol. iii. p. 257.

[271] MS. Letter Book, vol. i. p. 43, 1780-1781, Libr. Soc. Antiq. Scot. In a subsequent letter, (Ibid. p. 70,) Sir Alexander Dick describes several very large deer's horns, in addition to the fragments previously found. The results of a careful analysis of some of these bronze relics are given in the succeeding chapter.

[272] They are figured in the Abbotsford Edition, vol. ii. p. 103.

[273] A curious illustration of the mixed stock of the Scottish Lowlanders is furnished in a charter of Malcolm IV., which is addressed to the bishops, abbots, priors, barons, and king's lieges in general, whether French, English, Scots, or Galwegians, and describes the inhabitants of the burgh of St. Andrews as Scots, French, Flemings, and Englishmen.--Lib. Cart. Prior. Sancti Andree, p. 193.

[274] Vide Biblio. Topog. Britan. vol. ii. Part 3, for a learned controversy "On brass arms and other antiquities of Scotland," in a series of letters between Sir John Clerk and Mr. Gale.--Reliquiæ Galeanæ, pp. 226-232.

[275] Vol. xxxii. Plates IX. X. XII.

[276] Journal of Archæological Association, vol. v., p. 350.

[277] Itinerar. Septent., p. 118. Sir Robert Sibbald also engraves one with a handle, perfect and more elegant than the former, but he gives no description of it further than naming it a sword of brass.

[278] Stephens' Travels in Yucatan, vol. i. p. 178.

[279] Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, p. 41.

[280] Primeval Antiquities, p. 138.

[281] "A large Description of Galloway, by Mr. Andrew Symson," p. 83. App. vol. ii. Hist. of Galloway from the earliest period to the present time. Kirkcudbright, 1841.

[282] Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, p. 41.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. PRIMITIVE BRONZE

Among the various means of arriving at definite truths in relation to primitive works in metal, that of chemical analysis has not been lost sight of, and a number of ascertained results are now on record. Before proceeding to examine in detail the relics of this second period, it will be useful to glance at the bearings of this branch of scientific evidence on the general question.

It may now be received as an established fact, that the manufactures of this period consist entirely of bronze and not of brass--that is, of an alloy of copper and tin, and not of copper and zinc; but also including other metals, and especially a proportion of lead, in some examples exceeding the quantity of tin present. Even among the Romans we have abundant evidence that the alloy of copper and zinc was rarely used, although it is now known to be both more economical, and easier to work into a variety of forms. Mr. Worsaae, after remarking on the resemblance observable among the weapons, implements, and ornaments of bronze found in various countries, both in the north and south of Europe, adds,--"They have all been cast in moulds, and the metal is of the same composition--nine-tenths copper, and one-tenth tin. From this there would be farther reason to suppose that they all originated with one people."[283] This country, as has been already shewn, he elsewhere supposes may be England. From a careful examination and comparison of the antiquities themselves, however, the Danish archæologist is led to the conclusion that the bronze objects were manufactured in the various countries of Europe, where they are now found, and that only the metal was imported from some common centre. The same idea appears at one period to have been adopted by the Rev. Dr. Robinson, an Irish archæologist still more distinguished for his devotion to astronomical science than for his intelligent elucidation of antiquarian investigations; but the results of more extended observation, communicated by him to the Royal Irish Academy in 1848, shew that he was ultimately led to a different conclusion. Minute examination of the bronzes themselves will be found to throw fully as much doubt on the probability of a common origin for the mixed metal, as for the weapons into which it has been fashioned. The difference even in colour and texture is very great, and in some cases still only imperfectly accounted for. Many of the bronze weapons found both in Scotland and Ireland, are of a bright yellow colour, like brass, or rather resembling gilded metal; it does not tarnish, and, on analysis, is found to contain no zinc. Others are more of a copper colour, also little liable to tarnish or corrode; while a third quality, if polished, rapidly resumes a dark and nearly black colour, and is frequently found covered with verd antique. To the first of these the term Celtic brass is often applied, though it is in common use for all the varieties of primitive bronze. Analysis of these relics by no means bears out the idea of any uniform system of combination of the pure metals, or of their being derived from a single source in the form of bronze. The variations in the proportionate admixture of the metals were indeed necessarily confined within a limited range, especially in the manufacture of weapons. It did not require any mutual intercourse between the old Scandinavian and British armourer to teach them the most useful combinations of the new alloy. If the sword or spear proved either too ductile or too brittle for use, it would be consigned anew to the furnace, with such additions to the mixed metals as experience must soon suggest. The same would hold good even if we suppose that, as Cæsar affirms, the Britons used imported bronze, (ære utuntur importato.) Whether the tin and copper were mixed by Phœnician, Roman, or British metallurgists, similar proportional combinations of the two would necessarily be the result of experience. It will be seen, however, that the "Celtic brass" of British archæologists is neither invariably composed of exactly the same proportions of tin and copper, nor even solely of these two metals.

One of the most elaborate and valuable reports published on this subject is contained in a communication read to the Royal Society of London, June 9, 1796, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions of that year. It is entitled, "Observations on some metallic arms and utensils, with experiments to determine their composition," by George Pearson, M.D., F.R.S. His experiments were both analytic and synthetic, and consequently enable us to trace the probable experience of the primitive metallurgist, before he had ascertained the most useful proportions of the metals for practical purposes. Copper, we know, is not unfrequently found native in its metallic state, and fit for immediate use. Tin, though never found in this state, occurs in England in the same locality with the copper, and often near the surface. It might, therefore, even accidentally be combined with the former metal. The fact of the two possessing, when in combination, the requisite hardness for domestic or warlike purposes which neither of them has when alone, appears to have been ascertained at a very remote period. In addition to this indispensable property, the combination possesses the valuable qualities of being more readily fusible and continuing longer in the fluid state. Hence the mixture of two of the metals most readily accessible to the native Briton greatly facilitated all his other operations.

The synthetic experiments of Dr. Pearson furnish the following results applicable to the present argument:--The bronze relics submitted to analysis and comparison consisted--1. of a lituus, or musical wind-instrument, found in the river Witham, Lincolnshire, in 1768; 2. A spear-head of the common unperforated form, "made of cast metal, as appears from its rough surface, figure, texture, and grain.... It is open grained almost as copper, and porous, as if made of bad metal, of a blackish-brown or dark-grey colour;" 3. A sauce-pan, (Anglo-Roman patella,) also made of cast metal, open grained, impressed on the handle with a stamp, C. ARAT.; 4. A bronze scabbard, with a sword of iron within it, thought to be Danish; and, 5. Three celts, (Nos. 1 and 3, what we now term axe-heads, No. 2 an axe-shaped palstave,) all found in the bed of the river Witham. In his comparative experiments Dr. Pearson fused fifty grains of tin with 1000 grains of copper; i.e., one part of tin to twenty parts of copper. The result, when polished, differed in shade of colour from that of the celt metals, being much darker--a point not unworthy of note in determining some of the characteristics of primitive bronze relics. Its fracture shewed a colour inclining to the peculiar red of copper. One hundred grains of tin united by fusion with 1500 grains of copper; i.e., one part of the former to fifteen parts of the latter, resembled the celt metals, Nos. 1 and 2 in colour, polished surface, grain and brown colour of the fracture, the red of the copper being no longer apparent. It was stronger than the celt metals, but not so hard, while it was harder than the spear-head and the patella. No very remarkable differences are observable in the experiments of the combinations of twelve, ten, nine, and eight parts of copper with one of tin. When, however, the copper is reduced to seven parts to one of tin, the increase in hardness and brittleness becomes very apparent, while the alloy is decidedly paler in colour. The same characteristics were still more marked on successively reducing the proportions of copper to seven, six, five, four, and three; and when an alloy was made of two parts of copper with one part of tin, it "was as brittle almost as glass." It is not difficult, from these results, to imagine the process pursued by the old worker in bronze, who, having ascertained that he could harden his copper by alloying it with tin, would not fail to diminish the added quantities of the latter till he had secured an efficient practical admixture for the purposes of his manufacture, in which it is apparent, from the above results, that no very great nicety of apportionment of the ingredients was required. The most fit proportions for the manufacture of weapons and tools Dr. Pearson considers to be one part of tin to nine parts of copper.

The result of a comparison of numerous analyses of primitive bronze relics will, I think, lead to the conclusion that their correspondence is not greater than might be anticipated to arise from the experience acquired by isolated workers, when dealing with the same metals, with similar objects in view, while the frequent presence of other metals besides tin and copper may, in the majority of cases, be accepted as additional proof of the unsystematic processes of the old metallurgist; though in some instances we may trace, in the adaptation to a special purpose, the evidence of design.

The results of Dr. Pearson's analytic experiments are as follows:--

The Lituus contained a little more than twelve per cent. of tin; i.e., about one part of tin to seven and a half parts of copper. Specific gravity, (before melting,) 8.3.

The Spear-head; fourteen per cent. of tin, or somewhat less than one part of tin to six parts of copper; in addition to which it contained the proportion of fifteen grains of silver in a troy pound of the mixed metal. Specific gravity, 7.795.

The Patella; a little more than fourteen per cent. of tin, or about one part of tin and six parts of copper. Specific gravity, 7.960.

Bronze Scabbard; a little more than ten per cent. of tin, or about one part of tin to nine parts of copper. Specific gravity, 8.5.

Celts, Nos. 1 and 2; a little more than nine per cent. of tin, or about one part of tin to ten parts of copper. Specific gravity, No. 1, 8.780; No. 2, 8.680; No. 3, a little more than twelve per cent. of tin, or about one part of tin to seven and a half parts of copper. Specific gravity, (after melting,) 8.854.

In the month of August 1816, some labourers employed in lowering the road on the top of a small eminence, called Huckeridge Hill, near Sawston, Cambridgeshire, discovered the remains of a human skeleton, at the feet of which stood two large bronze vessels. On the left side of the skeleton were also found an iron sword greatly corroded, and fragments of a very coarse urn, half an inch in thickness. The rim of the largest bronze vessel was ornamented with a row of bosses, indented from the under side. Dr. Clarke, Professor of Mineralogy in the University of Cambridge, subjected portions of the bronze to analysis, and communicated the result to the Society of Antiquaries of London. The conclusion he arrived at was, that they consisted of 88/100 of copper with 12/100 of tin, or about one part of tin to seven and a half parts of copper. Dr. Clarke also assigns exactly the same proportions of copper and tin as constituting the bronze coinage of Antoninus Pius, and of his successor Marcus Aurelius; which it will be seen correspond with those of the lituus and one of the celts analyzed by Dr. Pearson. The process adopted by the former, however, in the chemical analysis of those bronzes is much less satisfactory than that of Dr. Pearson, as he appears to have assumed the absence of all other metals, and sought only for copper and tin.[284] A bronze sword, found in France, proved on analysis to contain 87.47 parts of copper to 12.53 of tin in every 100 parts, with a portion of zinc so small as not to be worth noticing, or capable of affecting the bronze.[285] The analyses of various specimens of antique bronze, including a helmet with an inscription, found at Delphi, and now in the British Museum, some nails from the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ, an ancient Corinthian coin, and a portion of a breastplate or cuirass of exquisite workmanship, also in the British Museum, are stated to have afforded about eighty-seven or eighty-eight parts copper to about twelve or thirteen of tin per cent.[286]

In the communication of Dr. Robinson to the Royal Irish Academy, previously referred to, he laid before that body a report of a most valuable discovery made about eighteen years since in King's County. It consisted of a large bronze vessel, which contained, in addition to various relics acquired by the late Dean of St. Patrick's and other individuals, thirteen litui or trumpets of bronze, the largest having their seams rivetted; thirty-one bronze celts of different sizes; twenty-nine spear-heads; three gouges; and thirty-one bells, believed to be for sheep or cattle--all of bronze. The account of this remarkable discovery had been reserved for sixteen years, owing to the strange suspiciousness of the Irish peasants by whom it was found, who imposed on the purchaser the promise of keeping the details secret during their lives. The last of them died in the winter of 1848, and then he felt himself at liberty to communicate the particulars which Dr. Robinson laid before the Academy.

"The vessel, which is now in the collection of the Earl of Rosse, was found in the townland marked Dooros Heath, in sheet 30 of the Ordnance Map of King's County, near Whigsborough, in what appears from the description to have been a piece of cut-out bog, about eighteen inches below the surface. It is composed of two pieces neatly connected by rivets. The bronze of which the sheets are formed possesses considerable flexibility, but is harder than our ordinary brass, and it must have required high metallurgic skill to make them so thin and uniform. On the other hand, it is singular that neither in this or any other bronze implements with which I am acquainted, are there any traces of the art of soldering; if it might be supposed objectionable in vessels exposed to heat, yet in musical instruments this would not apply. Such vessels have often been found, but the contents of this are peculiar. When discovered (without any cover) it seemed full of marl, on removing which it was found to contain an assortment of the instruments which may be supposed most in request among the rude inhabitants of such a country as Ireland must have been at that early epoch.... It seems likely that the collection was the stock of a travelling merchant, who, like the pedlar of modern times, went from house to house provided with the commodities most in request, and it is easily imagined that if entangled in a bog with so heavy a load, a man must relinquish it.

"This is connected with another question, the source from which the ancient world was supplied with the prodigious quantity of bronze arms and utensils which we know to have existed. This caught my imagination many years since, and I then analyzed a great variety of bronzes, with such uniform results that I supposed this identity of composition was evidence of their all coming from the same manufactures. Afterwards I found that the peculiar properties of the atomic compound already referred to are sufficiently distinct to make any metallurgist who was engaged in such a manufacture select it. It also appears to me more permanent in the crucible."

Dr. Robinson states that this alloy, when used for weapons, is a constant chemical compound containing fourteen equivalents of copper and one of tin, or nearly eighty-eight parts of the former and twelve of the latter by weight. But no account is given by him of the process of analysis, and the results justify the supposition that in these experiments, as in those of Dr. Clarke of Cambridge, he had assumed the absence of all other metals, and sought only for copper and tin.[287] Notwithstanding the opinions quoted above, Dr. Robinson still inclines, on other grounds, to the conclusion that we are justified in tracing the bronze to some common source, and this he conceives to be the Phœnicians. In all the weapons and implements the points are entire and sharp, and the edges unbroken. The spear-heads are the most remarkable as specimens of workmanship. They are of various sizes, and of great diversity of pattern, and also have their points and edges perfect as if they had never been used. They prove, as Dr. Robinson remarks, not only that the workmen who made them were masters of the art of casting, but also that they possessed high mechanical perceptions; their productions shewing a skilful adaptation of the material to the end in view. These indications appear to him to confirm the idea of their derivation from some foreign source. "Yet," he also adds, "in many of them the colour of the bronze is such as, at first sight, to excite a suspicion that they were gilded." This has already been noted as a peculiarity observed hitherto almost exclusively in the primitive bronze relics of Scotland and Ireland, and even there occurring in greatest abundance in certain districts. Dr. Petrie observed, at the meeting of the Academy, that all the bronze relics found in King's County have the characteristic golden tinge referred to, and added that the number of beautiful moulds for hatchets and other implements of warfare found from time to time in Ireland, prove that the ancient Irish understood the art of manufacturing bronze instruments such as those discovered in the vessel found at Dooros Heath.

With the desire of testing as far as possible the exact bearing of the chemical evidence on this interesting inquiry in relation to relics of the Scottish Bronze Period, I obtained permission from the Council of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland to submit various specimens of bronze in the Society's collection to chemical analysis. The results will be found to differ very remarkably from that ideal uniformity which has been supposed to establish the conclusion of some single common origin for the metal, if not indeed for the manufactured weapons and implements. The experiments have been made in the laboratory and under the directions of my brother, Dr. George Wilson, whose acknowledged experience as an analyst is sufficient guarantee for the accuracy of the results. In these analyses it will be seen that the presence of lead has been detected in every instance in greatly varying quantities, but in two of the examples exceeding the tin.

Five of the examples were selected from specimens in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, the sixth (No. 4) is an axe in my own possession.[288] They are arranged according to the quantity of copper present in each. No. 1 is a piece of a large bronze cauldron found in the neighbourhood of Lauder, Berwickshire. The chief portions of it, which still remain in the Scottish Museum, appear to have been partially melted by excessive heat, so as to make a large hole in the side of the vessel, and above this a thin plate of metal has been rudely rivetted to repair the injury. No. 2 is a piece of a leaf-shaped sword dredged out of Duddingstone Loch near Edinburgh; No. 3, part of one of the large bronze vessels usually styled Roman camp-kettles, found at Huntly Wood, near West Gordon, Berwickshire; No. 4, an axe-head in my own possession, which was found in draining a field near the village of Pentland, Mid-Lothian. This was of the bright yellow metal so common in the earlier bronze relics of Scotland and Ireland, and of the very rudest workmanship, having apparently been cast in sand. It was full of air-holes, and only ground at the edge like the most primitive axe-heads of flint. Its specific gravity, however, it will be observed, is high, so that it must have been hammered in order to give firmness and consistency to the imperfect results of the crucible and mould. No. 5 is a piece of a bronze cauldron dredged up from Duddingstone Loch, which appears, like other large vessels of this period, to have had bronze rings attached to it for suspension, one of which has been figured on a previous page, from the original in the Scottish Museum. No. 6 is one of the implements to which the name of Palstave is now given. It was found in the parish of Denino, Fifeshire, and appears to have been very imperfectly cast--probably in loam. Like the axe-head No. 4, it was rough and full of air-holes, while from its peculiar form it could not be subjected to the after-process of hammering. Its specific gravity is accordingly unusually small. The examples, it will be seen, present every requisite of variety, including weapons, implements, and vessels, from Fife, Mid-Lothian, and Berwickshire, selected solely as furnishing a comprehensive diversity in the elements of comparison. The following are the results of the analyses and the description of the process by which they were obtained, nearly the whole of the experiments having been repeated several times:--

ANALYSES OF ANCIENT BRONZES.

+------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ | |No. 1. |No. 2. |No. 3. |No. 4. |No. 5. |No. 6. | +------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ |Copper, | 92.89 | 88.51 | 88.22 | 88.05 | 84.08 | 81.19 | |Tin, | 5.15 | 9.30 | 5.63 | 11.12 | 7.19 | 18.31 | |Lead, | 1.78 | 2.30 | 5.88 | 0.78 | 8.53 | 0.75 | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ | | 99.82 |100.11 | 99.73 | 99.95 | 99.80 |100.25 | |Loss, | 0.18 | ··· | 0.27 | 0.05 | 0.20 | ··· | |Gain, | ··· | 0.11 | ··· | ··· | ··· | 0.25 | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ | |100. |100. |100. |100. |100. |100. | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+ |Specific Gravity, | 6.37 | 6.23 | 6.77 | 8.27 | 7.75 | 6.16 | +------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+

"These bronzes were first carefully qualitatively analyzed, and found to consist of copper, tin, and lead. Zinc, bismuth, antimony, and silver were carefully sought for, but could not be found. It is probable, however, that a minute trace of the last metal, too small to admit of detection, was present, not, however, as an artificial addition to the alloy, but as a natural accompaniment of the lead.

"In the quantitative analysis, a weighed portion of the bronze was digested in nitric acid, which dissolved the copper and lead, and converted the tin into the insoluble white peroxide. This was collected on a filter, carefully washed, dried, and weighed, after the filter had been burned. The filtered solution containing the copper and the lead was then evaporated to dryness along with a portion of sulphuric acid, which converted the lead into the insoluble sulphate of that metal. This was collected on a filter, treated like the oxide of tin, and weighed. The solution of copper which passed through the filter was precipitated by solution of caustic potass added in excess, and kept at the boiling point till the oxide of copper became dark brown. It was then collected on a filter, washed with boiling water, and weighed after the combustion of the filter.

"The number obtained by adding together the quantities of copper, tin, and lead exceeds that of the quantity of bronze taken in the second and sixth analysis. The increase is marked as excess, and is subtracted from the added numbers, so as to reduce their sum to 100. It should probably be deducted from the copper, which in the state of oxide is not easily deprived of the whole of the potass employed to precipitate it, and is liable, moreover, to retain a little moisture even when it appears quite dry. The presence, accordingly, of potass or water, or both, increases the apparent weight of the copper. As the excess, however, amounts in the one case only to 11/10,000th of the weight of the bronze analyzed, and in the other to 25/10,000th of it, it does not materially influence the result, whether as deducted from the entire alloy, or only from the copper."

To this chemical evidence I am able, through the kindness of Mr. Bell of Dungannon, to add the following results of an analysis recently made for him by Professor Davy of portions of two leaf-shaped bronze swords found in Ireland:--

"No. 1.--Very brittle.

Copper, 88.63 Tin, 8.54 Lead and Iron, 2.83

The lead and iron in this alloy are most likely impurities in copper and tin.

No. 2.--Much more malleable.

Copper, 83.50 Lead, 8.35 Tin, 5.15 Iron, 3.00

The iron in this alloy is probably an impurity in the other metals."

These are not the only instances in which the presence of iron has been ascertained in Irish bronze swords. In 1774 Governor Pownall laid before the Society of Antiquaries of London an account of some Irish antiquities, including two bronze swords found in a bog at Cullen, county Tipperary. In the communication he remarks,--"That the Society might have a precise and philosophic description of the metal, I applied to the Master of the Mint; and by his direction Mr. Alchorn, His Majesty's Assay-master, made an accurate assay of the metal. 'It appears,' he says, 'to be chiefly copper, interspersed with particles of iron, and perhaps some zinc, but without containing either gold or silver. It seems probable that the metal was cast in its present state, and afterwards reduced to its proper figure by filing. The iron might either have been obtained with the copper from the ore, or added afterwards in the fusion, to give the necessary rigidity of a weapon. But I confess myself unable to determine anything with certainty.'"[289] The analysis here appears to have been merely qualitative; and from the indefinite reference to the possible presence of zinc, it cannot be assumed to have been made with great strictness. The presence of iron, however, may be assumed as undoubted, whether it was the result of accident or design.

One important result which these experiments furnish is, that the composition of the mixed metal of the Bronze Period indicates no such uniformity as might be anticipated in manufactures derived entirely from one source; but, on the contrary, that different examples of it belonging to the same period exhibit all the degrees of variation that might be expected in the work of isolated manufacturers, very partially acquainted with the chemical properties of the standard compound, and guided, for the most part, by the practical experience of the result of their labours. The variations in the proportions of the elements of the bronze are obviously such as to preclude all comparison with any ancient type. In regard to the favourite theory of Phœnician origin for these relics comparison is impossible, as we possess no authentic remains of Phœnician art. An analysis of Egyptian bronze relics, however, would furnish interesting results in regard to the ancient metallurgic arts practised in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Such arts, however, were by no means confined to the few ancient historic races, among whom the Tyrians and Phœnicians generally rank the foremost for skill in the working of metals. The Turditani, a tribe occupying the province of Andalusia, in Spain, are described by Polybius as related to the Celtæ, though Dr. Prichard conceives it more probable that they were of Iberian than of Celtic kindred.[290] They are stated to have been the most learned and polished people in Spain. They had books, poems, and laws composed in verse, and boasted of a knowledge of the use of letters for 6000 years. It is said of this people, that when the Carthaginians made an expedition into Spain they found the Turditani possessed of furniture and vessels of silver, and far advanced in wealth and luxury. It is not, therefore, indispensable that Irish antiquaries should trace their metallurgic arts to a Phœnician source, when a country so much nearer their own, and with which many of their historic traditions indicate an early intercourse, was in possession of similar arts at so remote a period.

The other point of greatest importance brought out in the above analyses is the uniform presence of lead, though in greatly varying quantities; amounting in the palstave to only 75/10,000; while in the cauldron dredged from Duddingstone Loch, along with leaf-shaped swords, perforated spear-heads, &c., it exceeds the whole tin present in the compound; amounting to 8.53 per cent. of the whole. Lead is known to have been used by the Romans in a similar manner, possibly from motives of economy, as in their brass coinage, in which the antiquary has long been familiar with the presence of this metal.[291] It is also worthy of special note how greatly all the ingredients of No. 2 and No. 5 vary in proportion, though both were found together, and undoubtedly belong to the same period. Possibly the very marked difference in the proportion of the alloys may prove to be the result of design, as the only other example at all resembling the Duddingstone cauldron, No. 5, is the so-called Roman camp-kettle, No. 3, from Berwickshire. The difference between them is considerable, but in both the quantity of lead present is greater than of tin. No such conclusion, however, can by any possibility be assumed in reference to the weapons analyzed by Professor Davy. These were both swords, similar in form, and designed for the same purpose; yet in one the proportion of lead present greatly exceeds that of tin, while in the other it is so small as to suggest the possibility of its presence being accidental. A greatly more limited scale of variations would afford evidence enough to establish the certainty of a local and independent manufacture carried on throughout the Bronze Period, by numerous native metallurgists possessed of just such an amount of crude practical skill as sufficed to render the new material available for their use.

FOOTNOTES:

[283] Primeval Antiquities, p. 137.

[284] Archæologia, vol. xviii. p. 343.

[285] Mongez, Mém. de l'Instit.

[286] Article Bronze, Penny Cyclopædia, vol. v. p. 468.

[287] The extracts from Dr. Robinson's interesting communication are copied from a report of the Second Meeting of the Royal Irish Academy, session 1848-9, in Freeman's Dublin Journal. From the length of the report, its minuteness, and explanatory footnotes, it appears to have been furnished by the author; but like all newspaper reports of scientific proceedings, it must be liable to errors for which the author is not responsible. From a personal opportunity courteously afforded me, during the meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh this year, of consulting Dr. Robinson on the subject, I learned that the uniformity of results in his analyses was only comparative, and that lead had not been tested for.

[288] It may be proper to add, that in selecting specimens of native bronze implements from the Scottish collection for the purpose of analysis, no difficulty was found in obtaining broken fragments suitable for the purpose, without destroying any perfect example of primitive art.

[289] Archæologia, vol. iii. p. 355.

[290] Prichard's Hist. of Mankind, vol. ii. p. 92.

[291] Biblio. Topog. Britan. vol. ii. p. 303.

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