IV. WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS
The works of the Bronze Period possess an entirely new and distinct source of interest from those which preceded them, in so far as they exhibit not only the skill and ingenuity which is prompted by necessity, but also the graceful varieties of form and decoration which give evidence of the pleasurable exercise of thought and fancy. Were we indeed to select the most perfect and highly finished productions resulting from the knowledge of working in metals, and to place these alongside of the best works of the Stone Period, we could hardly avoid the conclusions, already adopted by northern archæologists, that the works in metal belong to an entirely new and distinct race.[292] A more careful investigation, however, tends greatly to modify such conclusions in regard to the British bronze remains. Independently of the probable presence of Allophylian races in Britain prior to the earliest arrival of the Celtæ--which the evidence already adduced of the very remote period to which the existence of a human population must be assigned seems alone sufficient to determine in the affirmative--there can be no doubt that stone implements were in use even within the Celtic era, and that it was not by an abrupt substitution but by a gradual transition that they were entirely displaced by those of metal. Reference has already been made to some striking indications of this in the various moulds which have been discovered from time to time in the British Isles. It is still more obvious in the numerous examples of weapons and tools. When classified on the same simple and natural principle which induces us to recognise the Stone Period as prior to that of bronze, we detect the evidences of a slow and very gradual change, and discover the link which unites the two periods as in regular and orderly succession. In the earliest bronze axes the form of their prototype in stone is repeated with little or no variation. Both are equally deficient in any stop-ridge, loop, or perforation to facilitate the securing of them to a handle; and we cannot avoid recognising in the latter the new materials in the hands of the old worker in stone. Another and no less suggestive class of illustrative examples of this transition-period may be detected in the stone implements occasionally discovered, obviously made in imitation of bronze weapons. Mr. G. V. Dunoyer remarks in a valuable article on bronze celts,[293] in referring to a stone axe in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, very closely resembling the simplest form of bronze axe,--"So remarkable is this similarity, that it is possible to suppose this class of weapon to be the last link between the rude wedge-shaped stone celt and that of bronze; or in it we may perceive an attempt to revert to the old material, improving the form after that of the earliest metal implement." It is perhaps still more legitimate to infer from it the scarcity of the metals at this early period compelling the axe-maker, while adopting the newer models, to retain the only material at his command.
Much learned and very profitless controversy has been carried on respecting the weapons of the Bronze Period. The archæological works of last century and of the early years of the present century, abound with elaborate demonstrations of the correspondence of celts and spear-heads to the Roman securis, hasta, and pilum. It may be doubted if some of the more recent attempts to determine the exact purpose for which each variety of bronze implement was designed tend to much more satisfactory results. When it is considered that the most expert and sagacious archæologist would probably be puzzled to determine the purpose of one-half the tools of a modern carpenter or lock-smith, it is surely assuming too much, when he stumbles on the hoarded weapons and implements of the old Briton, who has reposed underneath his monumental tumulus, with all the secrets of his craft buried with him, for full two thousand years, to pretend to more than a very general determination of their uses. Much mischief indeed is done in the present stage of the science by such attempts at "being wise above that which is written." These relics are our written records of the old ages, and it is well that we should avoid bringing their chroniclings into discredit by forcing on them an interpretation they will not legitimately bear.
The capabilities of the new material introduced to the old workers in stone, were pregnant with all the elements of progress, and one of the most interesting features belonging to the Archaic Period is the gradual development of skill, inventive ingenuity, and artistic decorative fancy, in the series of bronze weapons and implements. The following examples found in Scotland, while they serve to illustrate this feature of progressive improvement, may also in some degree help towards the establishment of a fixed nomenclature; the want of which renders so many "Statistical" and other accounts of important discoveries utterly useless for all practical purposes.
The following is an attempt to define such a system of classification as the Scottish examples naturally admit of, assuming every additional improvement, complexity, or ornamentation as evidence of progress, and therefore of work of a later date.[294]
CLASS I. consists of bronze implements made apparently in imitation of the older ones of stone, and to which the name of Celt-axes may therefore be very consistently applied. Of these a very primitive specimen in the Scottish Museum is little more than an imperfectly squared oblong piece of yellow bronze, or "Celtic brass," full of air-holes, and evidently cast in sand. It was found in the Moss of Cree, near Wigtown, in Galloway. The analysis of another nearly similar to this, and found a few miles from Edinburgh, has been given in the previous chapter. To this class also have belonged the implements cast in the polygonal stone mould now in Belfast.[295] The simplicity of the mould completely corresponds with the primitive character of the manufactures in which it was employed; the axe-heads having been fashioned merely by pouring the melted metal into the exposed indentation in the stone, as the previous examples were moulded in an impression in sand.
CLASS II.--In this group may with considerable propriety be placed a peculiar class of bronze axes, of comparatively rare occurrence in Scotland, and apparently unknown in English collections, though frequently met with in Ireland. To these I would propose to apply the name of Spiked Axe. The accompanying woodcut, which represents one found along with other bronze relics at Strachur, Argyleshire, will convey a better idea of the peculiar characteristics of the second class of axes than any description. It might be taken for the normal type of the medieval battle-axe, which the mail-clad knights of the thirteenth century bore at their saddle-bow. The few examples met with almost invariably exhibit the same uniformity of thickness throughout, accompanied with an imperfect adaptation for hafting, so as to leave us in little doubt as to the true place of the spiked axe, first in order after its simpler prototype.
CLASS III. consists of axe-heads, not greatly dissimilar in general form to those of the first class, but larger, and exhibiting manifest evidence of the improvements of experienced workmen. For these the term Axe-blades, plain or incised, appears most suitable. They are sometimes finished with a broad flange along the sides, thereby securing at once economy of material with lightness and strength; and are, oftener than any other bronze relics, decorated with incised ornamental patterns corresponding to those which occur on the pottery of the same period. This kind of ornamentation, though frequently executed with considerable taste, presents a striking contrast to the graceful mouldings and perforations of the more advanced period. It appears to have been produced in the most simple manner, by striking the surface with a punch, sometimes (as in an example in the Scottish Museum, which measures 5¾ inches long) with no very marked attempt at a definite pattern. Other, however, are characterized by much more taste and evidences of design. The very fine specimen figured here, from a drawing by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bart., is like the former, of bright yellow metal. It was discovered in the year 1818, a few inches below the surface on the Moor of Sluie, and not far from the river Findhorn, Morayshire. Various interesting relics have been found in this locality. In the month of March, of the same year, a cist was uncovered on the moor, within which lay a bronze spear-head of the primitive type, 11¼ inches in length, and perforated with four holes for attaching it to a handle. The point is considerably corroded and imperfect, and was apparently above an inch longer when complete: beside it lay two unusually large bronze celt-axes, about half an inch thick, and six inches long. Drawings and a description of these were communicated to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland at the time of their discovery, by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, and are now preserved among the Society's MSS. Various examples of similarly ornamented axe-blades, in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, are engraved in the fourth volume of the Archæological Journal. A very beautiful and unique specimen, found in the county of Tipperary in 1843, and now in the collection of the British Museum, is figured in the sixth volume of the same Journal.[296] An English engraved axe-blade, of analogous type, found near Clare, in Suffolk, along with eighteen others of various sizes, and with several similarly ornamented, is figured in the Archæologia;[297] and a few other examples of this rare class of primitive decorated weapons, from various localities, are preserved in the British Museum. These incised lines are supposed by many to have been designed for use as well as ornament, and several allusions, by ancient Irish writers, to the employment of poisoned weapons by the Celtic natives, are referred to in confirmation of the probability that the indented patterns were wrought on the axe-blade to adapt it for retaining the poison with which it was anointed preparatory to the conflict. The rarity of the occurrence of such incised lines militates in some degree against this theory; but it will be seen hereafter that other devices of more frequent adoption may have answered the same barbarous and deadly purpose.
CLASS IV. includes a variety of the implements to which archæologists are now generally agreed in applying the old Scandinavian term Paalstab, or its recently adopted English synonyme, Palstave, originally designating a weapon employed in battering the shields of the foe. Their general characteristics partake more of carpentering tools than of weapons of war, but in this, as in many other instances, it is difficult to draw the distinction with any certainty, where the objects might be of equal avail for both purposes. The palstave consists of a wedge, more or less axe-shaped, having a groove on each side, generally terminating in a stop-ridge, by means of which it was united to a cleft haft, and with projecting lateral ridges, designed still farther to secure its hold on the handle. Various improvements on the primitive form have obviously been suggested by experience. The woodcut represents a fine example in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, found on the farm of Kilnotrie, parish of Crossmichael, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The original measures 6¾ inches in length. Notwithstanding the axe-like shape of a few of the largest of these implements, I cannot but think that the idea of the mode of hafting them by means of a bent stick, as recently assumed,[298] appears forced and improbable. In all the additions, apparently suggested by experience, for the purpose of more effectually securing it to the handle, no single example has been found with a bent groove, a hollow socket or perforation, or any other of the most simple and obvious adaptations of the metal to such a purpose. It cannot for a moment be supposed that such an improvement was beyond the skill or ingenuity of the metallurgist. In the example figured here, the hole through the end appears to have been produced in the casting. The labour of hewing the mould, or hammering the palstave into the desired shape, with which the old worker in stone was already familiar, would scarcely exceed that involved in the adaptation of each wooden haft. Mr. James Yates has suggested, in an ingenious communication to the Archæological Institute, that one of the most important uses to which bronze celts were applied was in destroying fortifications, entrenchments, and similar military works.[299] In illustration of this the author engraves two examples from the Nimroud Marbles, in which Assyrian soldiers are seen breaking through a wall of brick or small stones, by means of chisels not greatly dissimilar to our bronze celts, but fitted to a straight wooden handle. For such operations many of the larger palstaves would be no less suitable. The one here figured, from the original, measuring 7½ inches in length, in the valuable collection formed by Sir John Clerk at Penicuick House, seems peculiarly adapted for the purpose. Mr. Yates accordingly arrives at the conclusion, that "wherever we should now use the spade, the crow-bar, or the pick-axe, the ancients used the palstave or the hollow celt, fastened to a straight wooden shaft; and this was the practice, not only of the Romans, but of the Greeks and Macedonians, the Hebrews, Assyrians, and Carthaginians, and of all nations to which they extended the knowledge of their arts, or which were sufficiently advanced in civilisation to dwell in fortified places."[300] This farther conclusion inevitably follows, if we adopt the ingenious theory of Mr. Yates,--that the Britons of the Bronze Period had advanced to a similar state of civilisation; nor is it inconsistent with the ideas we are led to form of their skill and progress in the arts, that they had already reared the ingenious earth-works which still crown the summit of many a height both in England and Scotland. Against such works, however, even the largest of the bronze palstaves would prove but an inefficient implement, whether used as a crow-bar or hatchet, and if employed as a spade, the most of them would be of somewhat less avail than an ordinary tablespoon! It is not always easy to discriminate unhesitatingly between the true axe-head and the palstave. In many examples, where the general shape is completely that of the axe-blade, both the stop-ridge and side flanges are formed, while the narrow palstave no less frequently wants the stop-ridge. In Sir Robert Sibbald's History of Fife and Kinross, one of the latter class of palstaves is engraved, with a broad double flange, evidently adapted for insertion in a cleft handle, and which he has entitled a "brass axe found in a cairn of stones." Numerous other examples have been discovered under similar circumstances, leaving no room to doubt of their native origin, or of the estimation in which they were held by their primitive owners.
CLASS V. includes an improved variety of palstaves having a loop or ear attached to them, and in many instances the sides overlapping to a considerable extent, occasionally so much so as to meet, and form a perforation or socket for receiving the handle. In this class the overlapping flange is often only on one side, especially where it is turned over so as to form a socket; but in no example which I have examined is there any adaptation of it properly suggestive of the assumed theory of a bent handle, designed to admit of its use as an axe. If such was its mode of hafting, it exhibits a degree of clumsiness and inefficiency very inconsistent with the numerous traces of inventive skill and ingenuity observable in other relics of the same period. The example figured here is from one found in draining a field to the west of Blackford Hill, near Edinburgh. It is of the most common form, and measures 5¾ inches in length.
CLASS VI. consists of the un-looped Bronze Celt, which is of comparatively rare occurrence in Scotland, though frequently met with in Denmark. It differs only from the more common celt in the absence of the loop; but it is generally of a small size, and is never found of the proportions of the largest British celts.
CLASS VII.--The Bronze Celt is the most common of all the relics of this period, found of various sizes and degrees of ornament, from the plain small celt of scarcely an inch and half, to those of five and six inches long, fluted, and encircled with mouldings or cable-pattern borders, and ornamented with incised lines and embossed figures on the blade. In Sir Robert Sibbald's Portes, Coloniæ, &c., a Scottish example of the engraved celt is figured, with its blade decorated with the herring-bone pattern, in the same style, and perhaps with the same object as has been assumed for the origin of the incised axe-blades of the period. Examples of engraved celts are of much rarer occurrence than axe-blades, if indeed this one is not unique.[301] The use of the loop so generally attached to the bronze celt, as well as to one class of the palstaves, has been a subject of scarcely less industrious speculation than the probable purpose of the implement itself. The idea which has been repeatedly suggested of its design as a means of securing the celt, as an axe-head, to a bent shaft, is scarcely less unsatisfactory than in the previous class of looped palstaves. If it was used with a thong or cord, the fastening would be so readily exposed to injury, while at the same time it so imperfectly accomplished the object in view, that it appears altogether inconsistent with the general manifestation of ingenuity and skill in the workers in metal to conceive of them adhering to this clumsy device. The unique specimen found at Tadcaster, with an oval bronze ring attached to the loop, and a small ring or bead of jet upon it, so far from confirming such a theory, seems much more consistent with its use as a means of suspension or of securing a number together for convenient deportation.[302]
Such is an attempt to assign a consistent classification and nomenclature to a variety of bronze implements, hitherto most frequently described by British archæologists under the general name of Celts,--a matter perhaps of no very great moment, yet at least calculated to give facility and precision to future descriptions of the discovery of similar objects, and thereby to render such observations of greater avail to the archæologist. They are all more or less applicable to a variety of uses, both as mechanical tools and warlike weapons; and it is not improbable that in entering upon any very nice attempts at discriminating between the various purposes for which they were designed, we shall only ingraft on the products of primitive art a subdivision peculiar to modern civilisation. At a period much nearer our own time the same implement sufficed the Scottish border trooper for table-knife, couteau de chasse, and dagger; and it seems most probable that the older Briton carried the same bronze axe with him to battle with which he waged war against the giant oaks of his native forests. It is a matter worthy of note, however, and calculated to excite in us some surprise, that no bronze axe has yet been discovered, if I mistake not, either in Britain or Ireland, with a perforation through it,--the simplest of all means of securing it to a handle, and one which was already familiar to the workers in stone. The following description might indeed lead to a different conclusion, if we could depend on the strict use of the terms employed:--"On the banks of the Cree, in Galloway, there were several tumuli. In some of these, when they were opened in 1754, there were found the remains of weapons of brass, which were very much corroded. One of these was formed like a halbert; another was shaped like a hatchet, having in the back part an instrument resembling a paviour's hammer. A third was formed like a spade, but of a much smaller size, and each of these weapons had a proper aperture for a handle."[303] Unfortunately the researches of the Scottish archæologist are continually arrested by such tantalizing descriptions, conveyed in vaguest terms, and with no accompanying illustrations to help him to the true character of the objects; leaving him to mourn the apathy of Government, which refuses all aid to those who are striving to arrest such fleeting records of the past, and deposit them, where alone they ought to be, in national museums.
Numerous other weapons and implements, of the same metal and character of workmanship, have been found in the Scottish tumuli, or in the chance hoards of bogs or alluvial deposits. Bronze gouges and chisels are among the most common of these, though hitherto apparently less frequently noted in Scotland than in England and Ireland. Of rarer implements of the same era, the bronze crow-bar, or lever, represented in the annexed woodcut, half the length of the original, is, I think, unique. It was found in 1810, in a barrow near Pettycur, Fifeshire, and is now in the collection of the Hon. James Talbot. It is figured in the Archæological Journal, in illustration of Mr. Yates's communication on the use of bronze celts in military operations, and is described as very strong.[304] Its longer end, bent perhaps accidentally, seems intended to be fixed in a stout handle of wood, to which it could be firmly secured by the perforated wings. Mr. Yates adds in describing it:--"The circumstance of its discovery in a barrow is an evidence that it was used for some military purpose, for barrows were not the tombs of agriculturists, gardeners, masons, or carpenters, but of chiefs and warriors." But in making use of such an argument it may be doubted if we are not applying the results of modern civilisation as the standard of primitive ideas. Most probably the greatest chief of the early Bronze Period was in many cases also the best mason, carpenter, and military engineer, and the most skilful worker in metals,--the literal chief, in fact, and true Teutonic king, or most knowing man of his tribe. Perhaps a better argument is to be found in the frequent decoration of the bronze celt. There is a sense of fitness in all minds, and most surely developed in the primitive stages of civilisation, where it acts intuitively, which teaches man to reserve the decorative arts for objects of luxury and pleasurable enjoyment,--then including war and the chase,--but not to expend them on tools of handicraft and implements of toil.[305]
The variety of lance and spear-heads is no less characteristic of the gradual progress of the primitive worker in bronze, from the imitation of the rude types of his obsolete stone weapons, to the production of the large and beautiful myrtle-leaf spear-heads, finished with the most graceful symmetry, and fully equal in character to the finest medieval workmanship. The earliest examples are mere pieces of hammered metal, reduced to the shape of a rude spear-head, but without any socket for attaching them to a shaft. They manifestly belong to the primitive transition-period, in all probability before the northern Briton had learned to smelt or mould the newly introduced metal. Lance and arrow-heads of the same form, or slightly improved by being made somewhat in the shape of the barbed flint arrow-head, are also preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries; and a curious example of the spear-head of the latter type, measuring 10½ inches in length, is engraved in the Archæological Journal.[306] It was found in 1844 by some workmen while dredging in the bed of the Severn, about a mile and a half below Worcester, and is made, like so many others of the simpler forms, of metal of very bright colour and hard quality, in appearance more nearly resembling brass than bronze. Others of the earlier forms of bronze spear-heads are perforated with holes at the broad end, and not unfrequently retain the rivets by which they have been attached to the shaft. A spear-head of this class, in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, measuring 14¾ inches in length, has been secured by three large rivets, two of which still remain. A drawing by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, in the collections of the Society, preserves the figure of another of the same type, but with four rivets, found in a cist on the moor of Sluie, Morayshire, in 1818. A third example, closely resembling the last, and found on the Eildon Hills, Roxburghshire, is in the Abbotsford collection.[307] They have been cast, but obviously by workmen chiefly familiar with the older forms of flint and stone. This class of weapons, or Spear-blades, as they may be termed, is by no means rare.
The earlier implements, chiefly constructed in imitation of the primitive stone models, were intended, for the most part, to be secured to the shaft by means of cords or leather thongs. But the worker in the new material soon learned its capabilities. The hollow socket was speedily superadded, generally accompanied with a projecting middle ridge to strengthen the weapon, and admit of its receiving more readily an acute edge and point. To these again were added the double loops, designed apparently for still further securing it to the shaft; and with this addition the merely useful and essential features may be supposed to terminate, though there is considerable variety in the forms which spear-heads of this class display. The most common and graceful shape might seem to be borrowed from the myrtle leaf. Several are engraved in Gordon's Itinerarium Septentrionale, (Plates L. and LI.,) from the collection of Sir John Clerk of Penicuick, including some interesting varieties. One, of very rude form, and which the author of course styles Roman, was found under a cairn in Galloway. Another, curiously incised with alternate chequers of diamond shape, is described as a hasta pura. A spear-head, decorated in the same style, though with a different pattern, was found near Bilton, Yorkshire, along with a quantity of other bronze weapons, in 1848.[308] But the most singular of all the "several sorts of hastæ or Roman spears," as Gordon delights to call them, is one figured on Plate LI., No. 6, of the Itinerarium, and which may be most fitly described as fiddle-shaped.[309] Neither of these remarkable examples is now to be found in the Penicuick collection. The woodcut represents a spear-head with two loops, which is one of the very commonest forms of the smaller class of Scottish bronze spears, most generally of the bright yellow metal, apparently peculiar to Scotland and Ireland. The other is a singular form of socketed spear, differing from any example I have met with elsewhere. It was found, along with various other bronze weapons and implements, in a moss near Campbeltown, Argyleshire, and is now the property of J. W. Mackenzie, Esq. It measures nearly seven inches in length, by one and a half inch in greatest breadth, and is covered with verd antique.
A very great variety is now discernible in the weapons of the period. The metallurgist had at length mastered the new art, and was rapidly advancing in taste as well as skill. His inventive powers supplied constant novelty in the multiplication of new forms and ornamental devices. The woodcut represents a very fine double-looped spear-head, five and two-fifth inches long, found near the river Dean, Angusshire, and now in the collection of Mr. Bell of Dungannon. Javelin and spear-heads, decorated with similar indented ornaments, have been met with both in Scotland and Ireland. The larger spear-heads also now occur "eyed," as it is termed, or perforated with a variety of ornamental openings, frequently surrounded with a raised border, and otherwise decorated according to the fancy of the designer. Among the broken and half-melted arms dredged out of Duddingstone Loch are numerous fragments of such Eyed Spear-heads, and several very beautiful perfect specimens are preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, as well as at Abbotsford, and in other private collections. They are extremely various in form, exhibiting such a diversity of design even in the simple patterns, as well as of ornamental details in the more elaborate ones, as amply to confirm the idea suggested by so many remains of the bronze period, that these relics were the products of no central manufactory, much less the importation of foreign traders, but were designed and moulded according to the taste and skill of the local artificer, most frequently for his own use. One remarkable feature in the largest and most elaborate of those in the Scottish Museum, represented in the annexed engraving, abundantly confirms the system of classification which gives it place among the later products of the Bronze Period. It measures fully nineteen inches in length, and was found on the lands of Denhead, in the parish of Cupar-Angus, Perthshire, about the year 1831. The bronze, like that of many other works of the same period, is extremely brittle, and the spear-head is broken and imperfect. One of the fractures near the point of the blade shews that a thin rod of iron has been inserted in the centre of the mould to give additional strength to this unusually large weapon, and suffices to connect it with the second transition-period, when the bronze was giving way to the more useful and abundant metal which now nearly supersedes all others in the useful arts. Of the simpler forms of the eyed or perforated spear, one of the most common is pierced with two segmental openings placed opposite to each other, or more rarely disposed irregularly so as to convey somewhat the appearance of an S or ogee perforation. I am indebted to Mr. Albert Way for a sketch of a very fine example of the former type, found at Ardersier Point, Inverness-shire, about 1750. It measures in length fourteen inches by two and three quarters in greatest breadth. This remarkably fine specimen was discovered in a tumulus lying by the side of a human skeleton. A similar spear was found in Northumberland in 1847, along with a bronze sword and other relics, the whole of which are now in the possession of the Hon. H. Liddell. But the eyed spear-head, which is common both in Scotland and Ireland, appears to be of rare occurrence in England, and is, I believe, unknown among the native antiquities of Denmark, though it has been so long the fashion with Scottish and Irish antiquaries to assign to these relics a Scandinavian origin. The Scottish bronze dagger of the same period is almost invariably found to consist of a two-edged blade, tapering to a point, and perforated with two or more holes for attaching a handle to it by means of rivets, but without the simpler, and, as it would seem, more obvious and secure fastening of a prolongation of the broad end of the blade for inserting into a haft. These weapons are also occasionally found elaborately ornamented, according to the prevailing style of the era. They generally retain the bronze rivets, thereby shewing that the handles had been of wood or horn, and not of metal, as is most frequently the case with the swords and daggers of the same era found in Denmark. The annexed figure represents a fine example of the Scottish bronze dagger, found at Pitcaithly, Perthshire, and now in the valuable collection of Mr. Bell of Dungannon. It measures fully six inches in length, by two inches in greatest breadth.
But the most characteristic and beautiful of all the relics of the Bronze Period is the leaf-shaped sword, which has been frequently found with both point and edge as sharp as when it first was used. The examples already referred to, which were found, in 1846, on the south side of Arthur's Seat, near Edinburgh, during the construction of the "Queen's Drive," are equal to any that could be produced. The largest of the two is one of the finest ever found in Scotland, measuring twenty-six and a quarter inches in extreme length, and one and three quarter inches at the broadest part of the blade. The form is exceedingly simple, though graceful and well proportioned; but a small engraving conveys a very imperfect idea of the weapon when held in the hand.[310] The section of the sword shews the art with which it is modelled, so as to secure the indispensable requisite of strength along with a fine edge, the blade swelling in the middle, and tapering off towards the line which runs round the entire blade within the edge. The metal is indeed too soft, apparently, to retain a sharp edge, or to resist the contact with any hard body; but it has been found that when this alloy has been cast into such forms, if the edge be hammered till it begins to crack, and then ground, it acquires a hardness, and takes an edge not greatly inferior to the ordinary kinds of steel. Several of the bronze swords in the Scottish Museum are broken in two, and some of them imperfect, most of such having been found with sepulchral deposits. One of these was discovered, alongside of a cinerary urn, in a tumulus at Memsie, Aberdeenshire. Another was found, lying beside a human skeleton, in a cist under Carlochan Cairn, one of the largest sepulchral cairns in Galloway, which formerly stood on the top of a high hill on the lands of Chappelerne, parish of Crossmichael. It was demolished in the year 1776 for the purpose of furnishing materials to inclose a plantation. From such discoveries we are led to infer that one of the last honours paid to the buried warrior was to break his well-proved weapon and lay it at his side, ere the cist was closed, or the inurned ashes deposited in the grave, and his old companions in arms piled over it the tumulus or memorial cairn. No more touching or eloquent tribute of honour breaks upon us amid the curious records of ages long past. The elf-bolt and the stone axe of the older barrow, speak only of the barbarian anticipation of eternal warfare beyond the grave: of skull-beakers and draughts of bloody wine, such as the untutored savage looks forward to in his dreams of heaven. But the broken sword of the buried chief seems to tell of a warfare accomplished, and of expected rest. Doubtless the future which he anticipated bore faint enough resemblance to the "life and immortality" since revealed to men; but the broken sword speaks in unmistakable language of elevation and progress, and of nobler ideas acquired by the old Briton, when he no longer deemed it indispensable to bear his arms with him to the elysium of his wild creed.
This graceful custom would appear to have been peculiar to Britain, or it has escaped the attention of northern antiquaries. Mr. Worsaae makes no mention of it in describing corresponding Scandinavian weapons, but rather seems to imply the opposite when thus referring to a later period,--"Skilful armourers were then in great request, and although in other cases the Danish warrior would have thought it unbecoming and dangerous to disturb the peace of the dead, he did not scruple to break open a barrow or a grave, if by such means he could obtain the renowned weapon which had been deposited beside the hero who had wielded it."[311] Thus we learn that from the remotest times even to our own day, the northern warrior has esteemed his sword the most sacred emblem of military honour. In later ages the leaders of medieval chivalry gave names to their favoured weapons, the Trobadours celebrated their virtues with all the extravagance of Romaunt fable, and still the soldier's favourite sword is laid on his bier when his comrades bear him to his rest.
Associations with these ancient weapons of an altogether different nature have been suggested, chiefly in consequence of some resemblance of the indented mouldings on the bronze swords to the ribs and grooves frequently found on the modern Malay Creess. The design of the latter, it is well known, is to retain poison, and it has been supposed, not without some appearance of evidence, that such practices were not unknown to the ancient Caledonian. This has been already referred to as the purpose which perhaps first suggested those rude incised lines on the earlier axe-blades, afterwards turned to account as a means of tasteful decoration. In the ancient Irish poem on the death of Oscar, printed in the first volume of the Royal Irish Academy's Transactions, the spear of Cærbre is said to be poisoned, seemingly in no figurative sense. The era of the bronze sword is of an earlier date; but notwithstanding the graceful symbolism apparent in some of the sepulchral rites, we have little reason for assuming that there was anything in the degree of civilisation attained by the Briton of that period incompatible with such savage practices.
Fewer primitive relics of armour or of personal covering have been found than of weapons of war, as might naturally be expected among a people whose partial civilisation could not so far have overcome the natural habits acquired in the chase and the sudden foray, as to induce them to cumber themselves with any great amount of defensive accoutrements. Skins and furs no doubt formed their chief articles of clothing and protection, and moreover, abundantly admitted of the degree of ornament which the taste indicated in the decoration of their weapons would lead them to aim at.
Helmets or head pieces of any kind belonging to the native Pagan era are of extremely rare occurrence. In a tumulus at Drimnamucklach, Argyleshire, pieces of a rudely adorned bronze helmet were found, and are now in the possession of Mr. Campbell, the proprietor of the estate. Gordon describes another example found in a cairn, near the water of Cree, Galloway, but it was so cracked and brittle, and probably also so rudely handled, that it fell to pieces on being removed.[312] There is every reason to believe that this piece of defensive armour was not generally used among the native Britons, nor indeed among the Scandinavian warriors of the Bronze Period. Only one imperfect fragment of a bronze helmet exists in the ample collections of the Christiansborg Palace at Copenhagen. Diodorus refers to the brazen helmet of the Gauls, but both Herodian and Xiphiline speak of the Britons as destitute of this defensive head-piece. Their matted locks, which they decorated with the large and massive hair-pins of gold, silver, or bronze, so frequently found with other relics, sufficed them alike for protection and ornament. This custom was probably common to all the northern races. But the indispensable defensive armour of the old British warrior was his shield, frequently made entirely of bronze or of wood covered with metal, and sometimes adorned with plates of silver and even gold.
The ancient bronze shield is of common occurrence both in Britain and Ireland, and forms one of the most ingenious specimens of primitive metallurgic art. In 1780 a singular group of five or six bronze bucklers was discovered in a peat moss, six or seven feet below the surface, on the farm of Luggtonrigge, near Giffin Castle, Ayrshire. The shields were regularly disposed in a circle, and one of them, which passed into the possession of Dr. Ferris, was subsequently presented by him to the Society of Antiquaries of London. It has a semi-globular umbo, surrounded by twenty-nine concentric rows of small studs, with intervening ribs, and measures 26¾ inches in diameter.[313] Like all the primitive British bucklers, it will be seen that it was designed to be held in the hand, the raised umbo in the centre being hollow to receive and protect the hand where it grasped the cross bar, seen on the under side in the annexed engraving. The central umbo is surrounded with a series of rings of bronze set with small studs, and the two pins seen on the inner side have perhaps secured a strap for suspending it to the neck of the wearer when not in use. In 1837 two remarkably fine bronze shields of this description were exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland by Mr. George Wauchope of Niddry, which were found near Yetholm, about eight miles from Kelso, at a depth of four feet, by a labourer engaged in digging a drain. Sir Robert Sibbald describes among Scottish antiquities obtained on the sites of ancient camps, "pieces of harness of brass: some for the arms and some for the legs. Shields also are found; some oblong and oval, and some orbicular. Some of these are of brass and some of wood full of brass nails."[314] It is probable that many of the shields of the same period were made chiefly of wood and leather, with the central umbo of bronze; the latter being occasionally discovered alone in barrows. In the circular Highland target, which is still to be met with among collected relics of the clans, we find a curious example of the imitation of the earlier model of the Bronze Period. Though the Roman example of wearing the shield on the arm has been followed by the Scottish mountaineer, rendering the hollow umbo no longer of use, yet it appears to the last in the boss of his target, furnishing another striking proof of the unreasoning tenacity with which the Celtic races are found to cling to ancient customs.
Among the specimens of defensive armour preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, are two pieces of thin copper, decorated with indented ornaments, which were presented to the Society by Sir George Mackenzie of Coull, Bart., in 1828. They are described by the donor as pieces of copper, supposed to be plate armour, or the covering of a shield, found in a cairn, under an oak tree at Craigdarroch, Ross-shire. Various other portions were found along with these, and their appearance seems fully to justify the supposition of the donor. In the autumn of 1849 a remarkable discovery of bronze arms and other antiquities was made in the Isle of Skye. They included swords, spear-heads, celts, and a bronze pin with a hollow cup-shaped head similar to one figured in the Archæological Journal, a relic of one of the Irish Crannoges, or island strengths.[315] A gold armilla and other ornaments of the same precious metal are also said to have been obtained along with these ancient remains, and beside them lay the fragments of an oaken chest in which the whole appeared to have been deposited. The most of these valuable relics were secured by Lord Macdonald, but one curious and probably unique implement fell into private hands, and has since been deposited in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. In general appearance it resembles a bent spear-head; but it has a raised central ridge on the inside, while it is nearly plain and smooth on the outer side. It has a hollow socket, and is perforated with holes for securing it to a handle by means of a pin. The most probable use for which it has been designed would seem to be for scraping out the interior of canoes and other large vessels made from the trunk of the oak. But we necessarily reason from very imperfect data when we ascribe a specific purpose to the implements of a period the arts and habits of which must have differed so essentially from our own.
Another class of bronze implements not uncommon in Ireland, and occasionally mentioned among those discovered in Scotland, includes what are generally described as reaping or pruning-hooks. One of these, which was found at a depth of six feet in a bog in the neighbourhood of Ballygawley, county of Tyrone, now preserved in the British Museum, is figured in the Archæological Journal.[316] Another engraved in General Vallancey's Collectanea,[317] is described as "a small securis, called by the Irish a searr, to cut herbs, acorns, mistletoe, &c." About the year 1790, a similar instrument was discovered at Ledberg, in the county of Sutherland, by some labourers cutting peats, and was pronounced by the Earl of Bristol, then Bishop of Derry, to whom it was presented, to be a Druidical pruning-hook, similar to several found in England.[318] Perhaps among the same relics of primitive agricultural skill ought also to be reckoned a curious weapon or implement of bronze, occasionally found in Scotland, two examples of which are figured here. One of them is from the original in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. It was found among the remains of many large oak trees, on the farm of Rottenmoss or Moss-side, in the vicinity of Crossraguel Abbey, Argyleshire, and is not inaptly described by its donor as nearly resembling one of the common forms of the Malay Creess. It measures fourteen inches in length. The other and more finished implement of the same kind is in the collection formed by the distinguished Scottish antiquary, Sir John Clerk, at Penicuick House. It is furnished with a hollow shaft or socket for the handle. The same interesting and valuable collection includes other specimens of this primitive implement, constructed like that in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, with only a metal spike for insertion into the haft. Some examples of this relic of old agricultural skill are of extremely small dimensions, measuring only from six to eight inches in the length of the blade, and should perhaps more correctly be described as pruning-hooks or knives. But in this, as in so many other attempts to assign a use to obsolete implements, the most probable suggestions of their original purpose are at best but guesses after the truth.
FOOTNOTES:
[292] Mr. Worsaae remarks, (Primeval Antiquities, p. 24,) "We must not by any means believe that the Bronze Period developed itself among the aborigines gradually or step by step out of the Stone Period. On the contrary, instead of the simple and uniform implements and ornaments of stone, bone, and amber, we meet suddenly with a number and variety of splendid weapons, implements, and jewels of bronze, and sometimes indeed with jewels of gold. The transition is so abrupt that from the antiquities we are enabled to conclude that the Bronze Period must have commenced with the irruption of a new race of people, possessing a higher degree of cultivation than the early inhabitants."
[293] Archæological Journal, vol. iv. p. 327, Plate I. fig. 1.
[294] I have to acknowledge obligations in this attempt at classification to Mr. Dunoyer's valuable papers in the Archæological Journal, though adopting a different arrangement and terminology. In the present very imperfect state of the science, it is hardly to be looked for that any single system will satisfy all requirements, and prove of general acceptance. But an important point will have been gained when a fixed nomenclature has been established.
[295] Archæol. Jour. vol. iv. Plate VI. p. 335.
[296] Archæological Journal, vol. iv. p. 328; vol. vi. p. 410.
[297] Archæologia, vol. xxxi. p. 497.
[298] Archæol. Journal, vol. iv. p. 4.
[299] Archæol. Journal, vol. vi. p. 363.
[300] Archæological Journal, vol. vi. p. 392.
[301] Portes, Coloniæ, &c. 1711. Tabula III. fig. 5 et 6.
[302] Vide Note, Archæological Journal, vol. vi p. 376.
[303] Caledonia, vol. i p. 81.
[304] I am indebted for the use of this woodcut to the Council of the Archæological Institute, with the courteous permission of Mr. Yates, by whom it was originally contributed to the Archæological Journal.
[305] Vide Bibliotheca Topog. Brit. vol. ii. Part 3, for an interesting correspondence on the questio vexata of the origin and use of bronze celts, on which so much ink has been spilled to very small profit. The correspondence includes an account of the singular discovery at Alnwick, in 1726, of twenty bronze swords, sixteen spear-heads, and forty-two bronze celts, and anticipates, to very good purpose, much which has been written at greater length since.
[306] Vol. ii. p. 187.
[307] It is figured in the Antiquary, Abbotsford Edition, vol. ii. p. 17.
[308] Journal of the Archæol. Association, vol. v. p. 349.
[309] Itinerar. Septent. p. 117.
[310] Ante, p. 228.
[311] Primeval Antiquities, p. 49.
[312] Itiner. Septent. Appendix, p. 172. Two helmets are said to be preserved by Lord Rollo at Duncruib House, Perthshire, which were dug up in the neighbourhood along with various bronze relics. Vide New Statistical Account, vol. x. p. 717.
[313] Catalogue of Antiquities, &c., Soc. Antiquar. Lond. 1847, by Albert Way, Esq. p. 16. Mr. Way adds in a note, "The description of the shield found in Ayrshire, as given in the minutes, corresponds with the buckler now in the Society's possession in every particular, with the exception of the diameter, which is stated to have been about 15¼ inches, possibly an error of transcript."
[314] Portes, Coloniæ, &c., App. pp. 17, 18.
[315] Vol. iii. p. 48.
[316] Vol. ii. p. 186.
[317] No. 13, Plate X. fig. 4.
[318] Sinclair's Statist. Acco. vol. xvi. p. 206.
V. DOMESTIC AND SEPULCHRAL VESSELS
Along with the weapons and implements of this period there have also been found at various times drinking cups, culinary vessels, horns, and other similar relics calculated to throw some additional light on the manners and domestic habits of the people by whom they were wrought and used. There have not indeed been discovered, or at least preserved, among the sepulchral deposits or the chance disclosures of the Scottish bogs and alluvial strata, anything to be compared with the celebrated Danish golden horns, or the beautiful silver cups of a later era, such as that taken from the grave of Queen Thyre Danebod, at Jellinge in Denmark. There are not wanting, however, undefined but not the less certain traces of the like costly memorials of primitive native art, discovered only to be destroyed. On the lands of Garthland, Wigtownshire, two vessels made of gold, and described as lachrymatories, were discovered in 1783.[319] At the village of Lower Largo, Fifeshire, a treasure was found in a sepulchral deposit, sufficient it is believed to enrich the original finder. The only relics which escaped destruction are two armillæ of pure gold, and remarkable for their elegance and skilful workmanship.[320] In 1839 a tenant engaged in levelling and improving a field on the estate of Craigengelt, near Stirling, opened a large circular cairn, which bore the popular name of "The Ghost's Knowe." It measured exactly 300 feet in circumference, and nearly fifty feet in height, and around its base twelve large stones were disposed at regular intervals. Underneath this cairn a large cromlech or stone chamber was found, the upright stones of which were about five feet high, and within it lay a skeleton, imbedded in matter which emitted a strong resinous odour, but the bones rapidly crumbled to dust on exposure to the air. The gentleman on whose estate this remarkable cairn stood,[321] and to whom I am chiefly indebted for its description, had given strict orders to send for him if a cist or coffin was discovered; but while operations were delayed in expectation of his arrival, one of the labourers plundered the hoard and fled. Many valuable articles are reported to have been found; among which was a golden horn or cup, weighing fourteen ounces, and ornamented with chased or embossed figures. This interesting relic was purchased from one of the labourers by a gentleman in Stirling, and is believed to be still in existence, though I have failed, after repeated applications, in obtaining access to it. The exact nature or value of the whole contents of this cairn is not likely ever to be ascertained. The only articles secured by the proprietor, and now in his possession, are a highly polished stone axe or hammer, eight inches long, rounded at one end, and tapering at the other; a knife or dagger of the same material, eighteen inches long, which was broken by one of the stones falling on it when opening the cist; and a small gold finger ring, chased and apparently originally jewelled, though the settings have fallen out. Several other large cairns still remain unexplored at Craigengelt, some of them of much larger dimensions than the one which yielded such interesting results. English tumuli and primitive deposits have occasionally furnished still more valuable gold relics; such as the native gold corslet found in Wales, now in the British Museum.[322] Golden vessels have also been found under similar circumstances, as in a cairn near the Cheese Wring, in Linkenhorne parish, Cornwall, which was accidentally broken into in 1818, and a gold cup found lying beside the sepulchral remains. It was opened by some miners, who had selected the mound as an appropriate site on which to erect an engine-house. Within the cairn was a large cromlech, and underneath this lay a flat stone measuring nine feet long by about four broad, which covered the sepulchral deposit. In this chamber a thin slab, placed in a shelving direction against one of the sides, protected its valuable contents from injury. The remains of a skeleton lay extended on the floor of the cist, and about the position of the breast stood an earthen vessel, within which was placed the gold cup. It is bell-shaped and rounded below, like the Danish gold cups found under similar circumstances and engraved in the "Guide to Northern Archæology." The earthen vessel was unfortunately broken by the fall of the stone that covered it, but its fragments exhibited the usual incised ornamentation of the early British pottery. A bronze spear was likewise found with these remarkable relics. The gold cup was claimed for the Crown as Lord of the Duchy of Cornwall, and it is believed to be still at Windsor Castle.[323] It would find a more appropriate place in the long desiderated British department of the British Museum.
As we cannot doubt but that these buried records of primitive native history have as yet been only very partially disclosed, so also we may hope that the rarer and more curious relics of the precious metals are also unexhausted, and that golden horns and silver beakers, adorned with the well-defined decorations of the Archaic era of native art, may still lie safely garnered in the same store-house and registry from whence so many historic records have been drawn forth, reserved for better times, when their discovery shall no longer involve their destruction. It will be seen from the number and variety of personal ornaments of the same precious metals described in future chapters, that such ideas are not mere chimerical dreams. Whencesoever the metal was derived, gold appears to have been used in Scotland to a very great extent, from the earliest period of the introduction of the metals, and to have been frequently deposited in the sepulchres of the most honoured dead, with no fear that sacrilegious hands would disturb the sacred deposit.
Vessels of bronze are by no means so rare as those of the precious metals. They are not indeed often found in the tumuli, and have obviously been held in less esteem than the weapons and personal ornaments of the same metal. But among the interesting disclosures brought to light by the draining of bogs and lakes, and the ordinary processes of agriculture, no class of relics have been more frequently discovered than the various culinary and domestic utensils of bronze, generally known by the names of Roman tripods and camp-kettles. Some of these do undoubtedly belong to the Anglo-Roman era; but the whole have been much too indiscriminately assigned to the legionary invaders and colonists, whose occupation of Scotland was equally brief and partial, and whose relics must therefore form a very small proportion even of those of the later period to which they belong.
In the "Account of the Dominion of Farney," by Evelyn Philip Shirley, Esq., an engraving is given of a singular cauldron, made with considerable taste and skill, of plates of hammered bronze, rivetted together with pins of the same metal, the heads of which are conical in form, and being regularly disposed, serve to decorate as well as to secure the vessel. Two bronze rings are fastened to the inside of the rim by ornamental staples, and with these it was obviously designed to be suspended over the fire. This remarkable relic, which measures sixty inches in widest circumference, was discovered in the year 1834, at a depth of twelve feet below the surface of a bog, in the barony of Farney, Ulster. Bronze rings and staples, similar to those attached to this ancient cauldron, have been frequently found in Scotland. One of them has been already referred to, which was dredged out of Duddingstone Loch, near Edinburgh, along with a large quantity of bronze arms. Several others are preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, two of which (measuring each 4¾ inches in diameter) were found along with the bronze cauldron here represented. Its dimensions are twenty-five inches in greatest diameter, and sixteen inches in height. No question can exist of its native workmanship. The rings and staples are neatly designed, but rudely and imperfectly cast and finished, and are decorated exactly as those of the Farney cauldron. The circles embossed on the side of the vessel are in like manner such as have been frequently noted on objects of the Bronze Period, both in Britain and on the Continent. Nevertheless, in accordance with the classical system of designation which is even yet only partially exploded, this remarkable native relic figures in the printed list of donations in the Archæologia Scotica as a Roman camp-kettle. It was dug up in the year 1786, from the bottom of the peat-moss of Kincardine, some miles west from Stirling, where it was discovered lying upon a stratum of clay beneath the moss, which generally ranges from seven to twelve feet deep. Evidence has already been referred to which leads to the conclusion that the moss of Kincardine was in the same state at the period of Agricola's invasion as it continued to be till nearly the close of the eighteenth century. A curious allusion to this locality, in Blind Harry's Life of Sir William Wallace, which refers to the moss as incapable of passage on horseback, leaves us in no doubt as to its condition in the fourteenth century. After Wallace and his adherents had surprised an English garrison in the Peel of Gargunnoch,
"Yai bownyt yaim our Forth for to ryde; The moss was strang, to ryde yaim was na but, Wallace was wycht, and lychtyd on hys fute; Stewyn of Irland he was yair gyd that nycht Towart Kincardyn, syne restyt thar atright, In a forest, that was bathe lang and wyde, Rycht fra the moss grew to the wattir-syde."[324]
Another large shallow vessel of hammered copper, made entirely of one piece, is in the same collection with the above. It bears considerable resemblance to one discovered at Huckeridge Hill, near Sawston, Cambridgeshire, in 1816, and figured with other "Celtic remains" in the Archæologia, (vol. xviii. Pl. XXIV.,) but wants the embossed ornaments which encircle the rim of the latter. It measures fully eighteen inches in diameter by six inches deep, and was found at a depth of eighteen feet below the present level of the Cowgate, Edinburgh. Notwithstanding the difficulty of accounting for so great an accumulation of soil, there is perhaps greater probability in assigning this as part of the curta supellex of some wealthy citizen of the Scottish capital, at a period belonging to the latest epoch of the archæologist.[325] But no doubt can be entertained as to the remote era of another such relic already referred to,--the large bronze cauldron dug up about eighteen years since in a bog in King's County, and now in the collection of the Earl of Rosse. Among the smaller examples of Scottish bronze vessels, one is specially deserving of notice, which was found by a labourer while cutting turf in Lochar Moss, Dumfriesshire, about two miles north from Cumlongan Castle, accompanied by relics of pure native character. It is a small bowl of graceful form, measuring six and a half inches in diameter and three in depth, formed of thin bronze plate of the bright colour common to many of our primitive relics, and very skilfully wrought. Within it lay one of the curious ornamental collars more particularly described in a later page,[326] to which the name of Beaded Torc is now assigned. Lochar Moss, where these interesting antiquities were discovered, has proved a fertile field for archæological treasures of many different eras,--primitive canoes, native stone and bronze relics, products of Roman civilisation and medieval art; while within it lie embedded the trunks of gigantic oaks and other natives of the forest, which once occupied the area of this ancient and extensive morass.
Of the more usual forms of tripods, kettles, and cauldrons of bronze, which are commonly assigned to the Romans, I must speak with more hesitation, though both the circumstances under which these have been found, and the style of some of their decorations, are sufficient to shew that they have been much too summarily classed among foreign productions. So long as bronze continued to be the rare and precious metal which we find good evidence for concluding it to have been during a transition-period of considerable duration, we may be well assured that neither domestic utensils, nor such implements of common use as the older material could supply, would be manufactured of it. We have abundant proof, however, that the supply of the metals kept pace with the increasing demands of progressive civilisation; and as this gradually displaced the old barbarian habits of the Caledonian savage by more refined tastes, the gratification of the palate would be aimed at along with the simpler desire for the mere supply of animal wants. Hence we may trace in the bronze cauldron and the tripod evidences of native civilisation, though doubtless of a late period, and not improbably, in many cases, coeval with the era of Roman invasion. Bronze vessels, of the description to which we refer, have been frequently found not only in the north of Scotland and in Ireland, but in Denmark and Sweden, where no Roman legions ever established a footing; though we must, of course, bear in remembrance that Roman culinary implements, like Roman coins, might reach many regions which their makers never visited. But classical writers make special reference to the abundance of such vessels among the Gauls, and even ascribe to the Bituriges the invention of the art of tinning them.[327] In the Samlingar för Nordens Fornälskare, (Plate XXII. vol. ii.,) an ancient Swedish bronze vessel is represented, in no way differing from the common form of what is here invariably designated a Roman camp-kettle, but surrounded with an ornamental belt, decorated with what appear in the engraving somewhat like Runic characters. A still more remarkable medieval example of the bronze kettle is engraved in the Archæologia[328] under the name of an ancient hunting pot. It is of the same common form, but is ornamented in relief with the symbols of the Evangelists, and with various devices, chiefly relating to the chase, and is encircled with the following inscriptions:--~Vilelmus Angetel me fecit fieri~. And underneath, in smaller characters, this couplet,--
~Je sui pot de graunt honhur Viaunde a fere de bon savhur.~
Many bronze vessels discovered in Scotland have been found on the draining or cutting of mosses, into which they may be supposed to have been thrown on the sudden flight either of the native Briton or the Roman invader, according as we incline to assign them to the one or the other. I am not aware, however, of such having yet been met with, either at any of the great Scoto-Roman coloniæ, such as Inveresk or Cramond, or on the sites of the legionary stations on the wall of Antoninus, though the remarkable discovery of Roman relics at Auchindavy, in 1771, including five altars and a statue, all huddled together in one pit, furnishes no doubtful evidence of the precipitancy with which the legionary cohorts were compelled to abandon the Caledonian wall.[329] An interesting discovery of such bronze vessels was made a few years since in the grounds immediately adjoining the cloisters of Melrose Abbey, and distant only a few miles from the Roman station, near Eildon. Similar objects have in like manner been frequently discovered in Galloway, Nithsdale, and in the district surrounding Birrenswork Hill, the celebrated Blatum Bulgium, where, among other curious relics of the Roman invaders, was found the winged figure of the goddess Brigantia, a supposed native deity adopted by the complaisant conquerors into the orthodox Pantheon of the Roman world. All these districts, however, abound still more with traces of native occupation, such as the most classical of modern Oldbucks would hesitate to ascribe to a Roman origin. While, however, I feel satisfied that many of these bronze vessels are the products of native art, others are unquestionably Roman, and many more have probably been made after Roman models, so that the attempt to discriminate between them is attended with difficulty. The mere rudeness of workmanship of many of them is not in itself a conclusive argument against their Roman manufacture, since we are hardly justified in looking for all the refinements of classic art in the furniture of the camp kitchen. It may fairly, however, suggest doubts, which receive stronger confirmation when we find it associated with forms peculiar to the northern designer: as in the snake-head with which the spout is frequently terminated. Such is the case with one of the so-called Roman tripods in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, which was found in its present imperfect state at a depth of five feet below the surface, in a moss near Closeburn Hall, Dumfriesshire. It is of a form of very frequent occurrence, and the decoration of the spout, though also not uncommon, is such as an unprejudiced critic would be much more inclined to ascribe to British or Scandinavian than Roman art. It is figured here along with another of rarer form dug up in the neighbourhood of Dundee, and now preserved at Dalmahoy House.[330] The superstitious veneration which ignorance attaches more or less readily to whatever is derived from a remote or unknown origin, has not failed to include these ancient utensils among the objects of its devotion or fear. In Ireland, more especially, this feeling is still powerful in its influence on the peasantry, and not unfrequently throws additional obstacles in the way of antiquarian research. But in Scotland it was also equally powerful at no very remote date, nor was its influence limited to the unlettered peasant. In the great hall of Tullyallan Castle, near Kincardine, there formerly hung suspended from one of the bosses of its richly sculptured roof an ancient bronze kettle of the most usual form, which bore the name of The Lady's Purse. It was traditionally reputed to be filled with gold; and the old family legend bore, that so long as it hung there the Castle would stand and the Tullyallan family would flourish. Whether the Blackadders of Tullyallan ever had recourse to the treasures of the lady's purse in their hour of need can no longer be known, for the castle roof has fallen, and the old race who owned it is extinct. The ancient cauldron, however, on the safety of which the fate of the owners was believed to hang, is preserved. It was dug out of the ruins by a neighbouring tenant, and is still regarded with the veneration due to the fatal memorial of an extinct race. It measures 8¼ inches in diameter by 5⅛ inches in height as it stands, and is simply what would be called by antiquaries a Roman camp-kettle, and by old Scottish dames a brass kail-pot! This medieval tradition suffices at least to show that the object of its superstitious veneration pertained to an older era than that of the Baron's Hall.
A remarkable discovery of a number of bronze vessels of the class alluded to here, was made in the autumn of 1848, by some labourers engaged in trenching a piece of mossy ground, situated under a peculiar ridge of trap rock about a mile and a half due south of North-Berwick Law, on the Balgone estate, the property of Sir George Grant Suttie, Bart. The whole ground, extending to above twenty acres, was formerly a morass. It has been partially drained of late years, in consequence of which the mean level has sunk three to four feet. In the centre of this morass the relics were found, consisting of a large bronze pot or cauldron, several tripods, goblets, and various fragments of thin plates of bronze, all much corroded. One of the bronze goblets lay within the large cauldron, and the whole were found close together, at a depth of about three feet from the surface, apparently just as they had been thrown into the morass, probably not less than seventeen centuries ago.
Another class of works of ancient art and constructive skill, which come under the notice of the archæologist, admit of much more decided and unhesitating assignment to the native manufacturer. These are the specimens of pottery of such frequent occurrence in the tumuli and cists, and which present, in every respect, so striking a contrast to the fictile manufactures of the Roman colonists. It is not from any doubt of the use of the sepulchral urn, and of the rites of cremation, during the primitive period, that all notice of native fictile ware has been reserved till now, though both furnish undoubted evidence of some progress attained by the primitive Briton. It is altogether impossible, however, with the very limited amount of accurately observed facts with which the Scottish archæologist has to deal, to pretend to classify into distinct periods the pottery found in the ancient tumuli and cairns. Many of these fictilia are so devoid of art as to furnish no other sign of advancement in their constructors from the most primitive state of barbarism, than such as is indicated by the piety which provided a funeral pyre for their dead, and even so rude a vase wherein their ashes might be inurned.
One obvious distinction is at once apparent between the unsymmetrical hand-made urn and that which has been turned and fashioned into regular shape. Yet even this very marked subdivision will not suffice for chronological arrangement; for the very rudest and most unsymmetrical of all the hand-made urns in the Scottish Museum, devoid of grace, and destitute of the very slightest attempt at ornament, was found to cover a pair of gold armillæ somewhat roughly finished with the hammer, and three smaller rings of the same metal, two of which are neatly ornamented with parallel grooves.[331] It seems, indeed, as if some pious hand may have hastily fashioned the clay into shape while the flames of the funeral pile were preparing the ashes it was to hold.
It is obvious even from this single instance, that any assignment of special examples or classes of native fictilia to the primeval period can only be done on the distinct ground of their being found accompanied solely with the relics of flint and stone. Still, setting aside the idea of a precise chronological arrangement, somewhat may be done as an approximation towards a system of classification. The early British pottery, though at best sufficiently rude, exhibits considerable variety both in form and workmanship, from the coarsest specimens of unshapely sun-dried clay to the graceful and elaborately decorated vases evidently made by workmen who had acquired a knowledge of the potter's wheel. Though the whole of these are found with sepulchral deposits, it is rarely difficult to discriminate between domestic vessels and cinerary urns, independently of the contents of the latter. The presence of the cup and bowl alongside the weapons and implements deposited with the ashes of the deceased warrior, is readily accounted for. The difficulty which the uncultivated mind experiences in realizing any adequate conception of death, or of a future state, apart from the daily necessities and cravings of the body, has led in many different stages of social progress to the custom of depositing food and drink, unguents, perfumes, and similar necessaries or luxuries of life beside the body of the loved dead, or even along with the cinerary urn. The archæologist has accordingly been long familiar with the fact, that some at least of the fictile vessels found in the tumuli are not sepulchral, and the names of "drinking cups" or "incense cups" have been given to one class of small vases frequently deposited in cists and barrows.
The first and most obvious subdivision which the early British fictile ware admits of, is into hand-made and wheel-made pottery. Notwithstanding the remarkable example above referred to of the discovery of the former along with gold relics, it is most probable that the hand-made pottery will be generally found to belong to the earliest period. The inverse argument is at any rate indisputable, which assigns the wheel-made pottery to the period of partially developed art and tutored skill. Even in the case of the rude example found in Banffshire, the gold armillæ are roughly wrought with the hammer, and may have been fashioned from the native gold by a workman who knew of its ductility, but had yet to learn the use of the furnace, the crucible, and the mould. We know from the most ancient records both of sacred and profane history, that the potter's wheel is among the earliest inventions of primitive art. It is referred to by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah as the most familiar illustration of creative power; and the hieroglyphics and symbolic paintings still visible on the temples of Egypt, prove that the simile is older by many generations than that day when the Hebrew prophet "went down to the potter's house, and behold he wrought a work on the wheels." On the wall of a chamber in the ruined temple of Philæ, which, however, belongs to the era of the Ptolemies, one of the most striking adaptations of the prophetic symbol has been noted. Kneph, the ram-headed god, is represented seated at a potter's wheel, which he turns with his foot, while he fashions the mass of clay on it with his hands. The hieroglyphic inscription which accompanies it is thus rendered:--"Knum, the Creator, moulds on his wheel the Divine members of Osiris, (the father of men,) in the house of life." It is an old Egyptian version of the simple but sublime language of Isaiah: "O Lord! thou art our Father, we are the clay, and thou our potter." The contents of the earliest Egyptian tombs furnish abundant evidence of the perfection to which the potter's art had been carried; and the recent discoveries at Nimroud and along the banks of the Tigris disclose no less satisfactory proofs of equal skill among the ancient dwellers in the great central plains of Asia, from whence the nomade colonists of Britain have been traced. The ignorance, therefore, of the simple contrivance of the potter's wheel furnishes more conclusive proof of a rude and barbarous state of society even than the stone weapons and implements of the same period. In the one instance we see the intelligent barbarian ingeniously turning to the best account his very limited materials, and effectively supplying the want of metals apparently from the most inadequate resources. In the other we find him fashioning the plastic clay with far less skill or symmetry than the thrush or the common barn-swallow displays in the construction of its nest. It may therefore be assumed as a general rule, that the unsymmetrical hand-made urn belongs to a very early period, and must in most cases be considered the work of an era prior to the introduction of the wheel, or the practice of the decorative arts so abundantly employed in the adornment of later specimens of the same ware.
The rudimentary form of the cinerary urn is the common flower-pot shape, which the potter still finds the easiest and simplest into which the plastic clay can be fashioned. The later fictile ware, however, which is found deposited in the sepulchres, apparently for the purpose of holding food or preserving other tributes of affection or reverence, is characterized by considerable variety both in shape and decoration. Vases of a peculiar form, and apparently not sepulchral but domestic--in so far as they lay beside unburnt bones, and contained no incinerated remains--were discovered in several stone cists dug up in the years 1833 and 1834, in the parish of Whitsome, Berwickshire. The cists measured internally four and a half feet in length, and lay north and south. "Each chest had also its urn of unglazed earthenware, and of a triangular shape, the original contents of which had been converted into a quantity of black dust."[332] I have in vain attempted to ascertain if any of these singular examples of primitive fictile ware are still in existence. The two urns here represented were found under circumstances which seem in like manner to indicate their original use as domestic rather than sepulchral vessels, though they differ little from shapes of frequent occurrence in cinerary urns. They were found in the year 1817 by a party of men employed in levelling a piece of ground on a farm at Banchory, Aberdeenshire.[333] In the progress of their work their tools struck on a stone, which proved to be the cover of a cist of unusually large dimensions, lying nearly due NE. and SW. It was composed of six stones, so arranged that the skeleton which lay within at full length was bent at the pelvis to fit the angular construction of the cist. It measured internally, in a straight line, six feet, by two and a quarter feet at the north end, where the head lay, and only one foot ten inches at the lower end. The whole was composed of rough undressed mica-slate of from three to five inches thick. Within this the skeleton was disposed in the singular position above described, with the vases on its right side, one opposite the knee and the other at the thigh-joint. Nothing was found in them but some sand which had fallen in on opening the cist. The largest measured six and a half inches, and the other five inches in height. They are described as "composed of the common stones of the country pounded,--granite, mica-slate, apparently some moss-earth, and a little clay on the outside. They are wonderfully accurately made, and the patterns meet so well that one would think they had been done in a lathe or stamped. They are perfectly circular, and seem to have been only baked in the sun." Several cists have been discovered in the same neighbourhood, but no other example is known to have corresponded to this either in disposition or contents. The whole skeleton crumbled into dust after being exposed for a short time to the air; but it would appear to have exhibited the wonted characteristic of a remarkably small head in proportion to the body. The discoverer remarks: "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 stature."
A still more remarkable example of pottery somewhat similarly disposed, was discovered more recently on the demolition of the old town steeple of Montrose. This venerable belfry tower, which was ascribed to the twelfth century, occupied the highest ground in the centre of the ancient burgh. After serving for centuries as clock-tower, belfry, and prison, the fabric at length became so ruinous that it was taken down in 1833. In digging the foundations for the new steeple, which occupies its site, the workmen excavated the ground about nine feet below the surface, and fully three feet below the base of the old tower. Remains of several bodies were found in the new ground: one of which lay with the head towards the west, and had a small pile driven through the skull. In another part, directly underneath the foundations of the old tower, was a skeleton disposed at full length in a rude stone cist, and with four urns beside it: two at the head and two at the feet. The skeleton measured six feet in length, and the skull, which has been already referred to, is now in the Edinburgh Phrenological Museum.[334] Only two of the urns were preserved; one of which is now in the Montrose Museum, and the other in the collection of the Scottish Antiquaries. The latter is a neat vessel of common form, and decorated with the usual style of incised chevron ornaments. There is something peculiarly interesting in the recovery of these memorials of long forgotten generations, over which later builders had reared the massive tower unconscious of their presence. The strong old Gothic masonry, after withstanding the storms of some seven centuries, has decayed and been swept away, and from beneath its foundations we recover the fragile yet more enduring memorials of primitive skill pertaining to a far older era, when the infant nation was just struggling into intelligent youth.
Among the most remarkable classes of domestic pottery found in the tumuli, are those evidently designed for suspension, and occasionally provided with a cover or lid made of the same material. Some of them are made round on the bottom, so as to be unfitted for setting on the ground, and it seems no improbable inference that in these we possess examples of the earliest artificial cooking vessels manufactured by native skill. They are familiar to continental as well as to British archæologists, and are figured in several works on Scandinavian antiquities. The example engraved here, from the original in the Scottish Museum, measures 4½ inches in height, and about 6½ inches in extreme diameter. It was found in one of a group of cists, under a large cairn, situated at a place called Sheal Loch, in the parish of Borthwick, near Edinburgh, and is minutely described by Dr. Jamieson in the Archæologia Scotica.[335] Five perforated projections are disposed at nearly equal distances around it, and the interior of the vessel bears evident marks of fire. Nothing but clay was found either in it or the inclosing cist, and no urns were discovered in any of the adjoining graves. It appears to be made of fine baked clay, and is of a much harder and more durable consistency than the majority of specimens of Celtic pottery. Urns perforated for suspension, though by no means common, are occasionally found in the British tumuli. The fragments of another, found in Fifeshire, with perforated ears, are preserved in the same collection with the above; and a third example, found in a cairn at Crakraig, Sutherlandshire, in 1818, and engraved in the Archæologia,[336] appears to have been of the same class. Reference has already been made to a small cup discovered during the construction of the "Queen's Drive" round Arthur Seat in 1846, and, as is believed, alongside of the cinerary urn, alluded to in a former chapter, which was broken in pieces by the workmen. The little cup is formed with great regularity, and ornamented with a uniform pattern, the lines of which seem as if they had been impressed on the soft clay with a fine twisted cord. It measures 1¾ inches in height, 3¼ inches in extreme diameter, and fully half an inch in thickness.[337] Another cup, in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, of still more regular proportions, and a higher style of ornamentation, was dug out of the foundation of an ancient ruin in the island of Ronaldshay, Orkney, and presented to the Society in 1831. Like the larger urns referred to above, it is perforated for suspension. Similar cups are of comparatively frequent occurrence; sometimes devoid of ornament, but generally symmetrical, and finished with a degree of art and skill indicative of their construction, and of the adoption of the ideas which led to their being deposited with the funeral urn, at a considerably later period than that of the rude hand-made pottery of the early tumuli.
In striking contrast to these minute sepulchral relics, many of the Scottish cinerary urns are of an unusually large size. So far as my opportunities of observation extend, it is much more common in Scotland than either in England or on the Continent to meet with urns measuring thirteen, fourteen, and even sixteen inches high. In the cairns, more especially where several urns are grouped together, one is very frequently much larger than the others, though not more ornamented; for the pottery of the largest size is generally comparatively plain. The woodcut represents one, now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, measuring 11½ inches in height. It was found within the area of the modern Scottish capital, in digging for the foundation of the north pier of the Dean Bridge that spans a deep ravine through which the Water of Leith finds its way to the neighbouring port. Numerous cists and urns have been discovered in the extension of the New Town of Edinburgh towards the sea, attesting the presence of a busy and ingenious native race in ages long prior to the dawn of authentic history, on the same spot which has formed the centre of nearly all the most memorable events in the national annals in more recent centuries. Another urn in the Scottish Museum, measuring 12½ inches in height, was found near Abden House, in the parish of Kinghorn, Fifeshire, in 1848, by workmen engaged in cutting through the rocks on the sea-shore, preparatory to the formation of the Northern Railway. When discovered it lay in an inverted position on the flat surface of the rock, at a depth of five feet from the surface, and was full of ashes and burnt bones. In examples discovered under similar circumstances, it is not unfrequently observed that the inside of the urn exhibits considerable marks of exposure to heat and smoke. The incinerated remains would appear to have been carefully gathered together in a little heap while yet the glowing embers had only partially consumed the bones, and over this the inverted urn was laid, quenching the last fires that glowed within the ashes once ardent with impetuous life.
None of those examples of primitive Scottish pottery have been accompanied by relics which would enable us to assign them with absolute certainty to the period when the introduction of the metallurgic arts had stimulated native skill and ingenuity into action; unless perhaps in the case of the small cup found on Arthur Seat, alongside of which I have reason to believe the bronze celt now in my possession was found. But most of them, in all probability, do belong to that period; nor is it at all improbable that the practice of cremation may itself be traced to the same source from whence the ingenious workers in stone learned to fuse the metallic ores, and fashion them into every variety of form. There are not wanting, however, numerous examples both of native domestic pottery and of cinerary urns, found along with relics which leave no room to question their belonging to the Bronze Period. The larger of the two vases represented in the annexed woodcut was discovered under a tumulus at Memsie, Aberdeenshire, and beside it lay a bronze leaf-shaped sword, broken in two. It is scarcely a quarter of an inch in thickness, and otherwise exhibits in symmetrical proportions and durable material the evidences of experienced workmanship. In style of ornament it differs little from the ruder specimens of Celtic pottery. But from the well-baked material and the unusual thinness of the ware, it furnishes a good example of the highest perfection attained in the potter's art prior to the introduction of the vitrified glazing which is found for the first time in connexion with the relics of the latest Pagan era. Some similarity of form may be traced between this vessel and the larger of the two discovered in the cist at Banchory. It is a peculiar shape, and no doubt designed for some special purpose, possibly a pitcher for liquids--the Pictish heather ale, perchance, of vulgar tradition,--while the shallower vase which accompanied the former example would more fitly receive the solid food provided to appease the anticipated cravings of the dead. Alongside of the urn from Memsie another is figured belonging to the same period, which was dug up in the parish of Ratho, a few miles from Edinburgh. It was found filled with ashes and fragments of human bones, mingled with which were the fragments of bronze rings, and the handle of a small vessel of the same metal. Both of these specimens of primitive fictile ware are now in the Scottish Museum. A third, in the same collection, somewhat similar to the last, was discovered in trenching a field near the old castle of Kineff, Kincardineshire. A bronze spear lay beside it, and within it were found, mingled with the ashes of the dead, two large bronze rings, possibly designed to be worn as bracelets, and the broken and corroded fragments of several others of smaller proportions.
The numerous discoveries of cinerary urns and sepulchral pottery of various kinds, which have been made in Scotland, abundantly prove the very extensive and long continued practice of the rite of cremation by the early Britons. It is a just subject of regret that so very limited a number of examples of these curious specimens of native art have been preserved. The statistical accounts of nearly every parish in Scotland report such discoveries, frequently in considerable numbers. Many pass into private hands, to be forgotten and abandoned to neglect and decay, when the transient influence of novelty has passed away; many more are destroyed so soon as discovered. To the casual observer they appear mere rude clay urns characterized by little variety or art. A closer examination of them, however, shews that they are divisible by periods, classes, and the adaptation to various purposes; and it is hardly to be doubted that, with an ample and systematically arranged collection, a much more minute classification might become apparent. A more general diffusion of knowledge on this subject will, it is to be hoped, aid in the accomplishment of so desirable an end. With the hearty cooperation of landed proprietors, clergy, and the educated classes who have influence in rural districts, it might be effected at little cost or trouble; and it is impossible fully to anticipate the important inferences that might become obvious, in relation to the primeval history of our country, by such an accumulation of the productions of native archaic art. Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and medieval manufactures, have all been patiently and enthusiastically traced back to their first rude efforts. It is to the study of the infancy of medieval art especially that the sculptors and painters of Germany, France, and England, have now turned in their enthusiastic anticipations of a new revival. Why should the infantile efforts of our own national ancestry be alone deemed unworthy of regard, rude though they be, and little akin to the favourite models of modern schools? They form an important first-link in the history of native design, and manifestly were among the earliest products of skilled labour and inventive ingenuity. It is obvious, moreover, that the art must have been in use for many generations. Amid the evidences of a thinly scattered population, examples of it are still of very frequent occurrence, after all the ravages of the spade and the plough. In these we trace its gradual improvement, and from thence very effectually discover proofs of the progress of their constructors. First in order is the shapeless hand-made urn, merely dried in the sun. To this succeed the imperfect efforts at decoration and symmetrical design, and also the subjection of the moist clay to the process of the kiln. Then comes the important discovery of the potter's wheel, in the train of which many other improvements follow. Taste is displayed in a variety of forms and ornamental patterns. In the source to which it is conceived some of the more complicated of these designs are referrible, we have another evidence of civilizing arts. Among the rarer contents of the British sepulchral mounds, fragments of manufactured clothing have been repeatedly found. These appear to have been invariably wrought with the knitting-needle, and in their texture may be traced the various patterns of herring-bone, chevron, and saltire work, as well as nearly all the more complicated designs employed in ornamenting the contemporary pottery. After a careful examination of the examples within my reach, I have little doubt of this being the source of the earliest imitative ornamentation, in advance of the first simple attempts at combinations of incised lines. The subject will come again under review in a future chapter; but, meanwhile, it may be noted here as suggestive of the possible first source of decoration of the rude cinerary urn, that its fragile texture may have been strengthened by being surrounded with a platting of cords or rushes, which, in tasteful hands, would assume the same forms as in the work of the knitting needles, and thus lead to the reproduction of such patterns by a more durable process on the clay. Humboldt describes a similar practice which came under his notice at the village of Maniquarez in South America, where the Indian women fashioned their rude vessels out of a decomposed mica-slate, which they bound together with twigs, and baked in the sun. It is certain that very many of the indented patterns on British pottery have been produced by the impress of twisted cords on the wet clay,--the intentional imitation, it may be, of undesigned indentations originally made by the platted net-work on ruder urns,--so simple and yet so natural may be the source to which we must look for the first glimmering dawn of British art. Painters have delighted to picture the Grecian maiden tracing her lover's shadow on the wall. Perchance some British artist may not think it beneath his pencil to restore to us the aboriginal potter marvelling at the unsought beauty which his own hands have wrought.
Along with such evidences of taste and inventive ingenuity as the works of the primitive potter display, the increasing demands of progressive civilisation also become apparent in the adaptation of vessels to the various requirements of domestic convenience or luxury; the clay-made pottery improves from the clumsy, friable, ill-baked urn, into a vessel of light and durable consistency, fitted for all the common purposes of fictile ware. To this extent it was carried during the archaic era of native art to which we give the name of the Bronze Period. It will be seen in a future section that it received further improvements from native skill before it was superseded by more ingenious arts indirectly derived from Roman civilisation.
FOOTNOTES:
[319] Sinclair's Statist. Acco. vol. ii. p. 56.
[320] Archæological Journal, vol. vi. p. 53.
[321] John Dick, Esq. of Craigengelt.
[322] Archæologia, vol. xxvi. p. 422. Vide also Walker's Hist. Essay on the Dress of the Ancient Irish, (Dublin, 1788,) for a notice of a gold corslet, found near Lismore, and sold to a goldsmith at Cork for £600.
[323] MS. Letters, W. T. P. Shortt, Esq. of Heavitree, Exeter.
[324] Blind Harry's Wallace, b. iv. l. 272.
[325] Memorials of Edinburgh, vols. ii, iii.
[326] The Bowl and Torc are both engraved on Plate III.
[327] Pliny, xxxvi. 22.
[328] Vol. xiv. p. 278, Plates LI., LII., LIII.
[329] Roy's Military Antiquities, p. 201. Plate XXXVIII.
[330] A group of similar bronze vessels of commoner forms, including an example of the Roman sacrificial patera, preserved in the Abbotsford collection, is engraved among the illustrations to the "Antiquary."--Abbotsford Edit. vol. ii. p. 12.
[331] Archæologia Scotica, vol. iv. p. 298, and Plate XII.
[332] New Statist. Acc. vol. ii. Berwickshire, p. 171.
[333] MS. Letters and Drawings, Alexander Thomson of Banchory, Esq., 1st Nov. 1817. Libr. Soc. Antiq. Scot. The small cup figured along with them is the one found on Arthur's Seat, near Edinburgh. Ante, p. 228.
[334] Ante p. 170, No. 10 of cranial measurements.
[335] Vol. ii. p. 76.
[336] Vol. xix. Plate XLIII.
[337] It is engraved along with the Banchory urns, ante p. 283.
VI. PERSONAL ORNAMENTS
In nothing is the singular inequality so characteristic of archaic art more strikingly apparent than in the contrast frequently observable between the rude clay urn of the Scottish tumulus or cairn and the valuable and beautiful relics which it contains. Many of the latter, indeed, are scarcely admissible under any classification of archaic art. They differ more in characteristic peculiarities of style than in inferiority of design when compared with the relics of the Anglo-Roman period. Reference has already been made to the probable sources from whence the abundant supplies of gold were derived by the primitive Caledonian metallurgist. But whencesoever they are assumed to have been procured, the fact is unquestionable, that while silver was exceedingly rare, if not, indeed, entirely unknown, until almost the close of the Bronze Period, gold appears to have been one of the very first metals wrought, and to have been obtained in such abundance as to supply material for numerous personal ornaments of large size and great weight.
But the skill and ingenuity of the primitive artist was not solely confined to ornaments wrought in gold or bronze. The humblest materials assumed new value by the aid of his ingenuity and taste; and not a few of the personal ornaments of a comparatively late stage of progression in the Bronze Period are still formed of stone, or of the more easily wrought jet and bituminous shale. Beads and necklaces of the latter materials are of very frequent occurrence, and while some are characterized by little evidence of taste or ingenuity, many more are the manifest products of experienced mechanical skill. In these especially we detect the evidence of the use of the turning-lathe, and its ingenious adaptation to the production of a great variety of articles. This we may fairly regard as another important step in advance of the improvements already detected in the native fictile wares by the introduction of the potter's wheel. Some antiquaries, indeed, have been inclined to class those, as well as so many other evidences of native skill, either among the direct products of Roman art, or as the fruits of the civilizing influence resulting from intercourse with the Roman colonists; but if previous evidences of the priority of the early native eras are of the slightest value, the circumstances under which many jet and shale ornaments and relics have been found leave no room to doubt that they are the products of unaided native ingenuity and mechanical skill. These materials, however, continued to be used during the Anglo-Roman period, and to partake of the influences of Italian art in the forms which they assumed. It therefore becomes necessary to exercise the same care in discriminating between the products of native and foreign taste in the relics of jet or shale, as in those of the metals, or of glass and ivory. According to Solinus jet was one of the articles of export from Britain; and Bede speaks of British jet as abundant and highly valued.[338] But from these evidences of its later foreign use we may infer its early adoption for construction of personal ornaments by the native Britons, among whom its fitness for such purposes was very probably first recognised. The style of many of the relics of this class found in the primitive cists and cairns, and especially of those which are presumed to be female ornaments, totally differs from Anglo-Roman or classic remains, and abundantly confirms their native origin, already rendered so exceedingly probable from their discovery in early sepulchral mounds. An interesting discovery of such relics, made in the parish of Houstoun, Renfrewshire, during the latter part of last century, is thus described in the Old Statistical Account:
"When the country people were digging for stones to inclose their farms, they met with several chests or coffins of flag-stones, set on their edges, sides, and ends, and covered with the same sort of stones above, in which were many human bones of a large size, and several skulls in some of them. In one was found many trinkets of a jet black substance, some round, others round and oblong, and others of a diamond shape, &c., all perforated. Probably they were a necklace. There was a thin piece, about two inches broad at one end, and perforated with many holes, but narrow at the other; the broad end, full of holes, seemed to be designed for suspending many trinkets as an ornament on the breast."[339]
In 1841 a stone cist was discovered on the estate of Burgie, in the parish of Rafford, Elginshire, which measured internally three feet in length by two feet in breadth. It contained a skeleton, believed to be that of a female from the small size of the bones, in a sitting posture, and with the head in contact with the knees. Beside the skeleton stood an urn ten inches high, rudely decorated with incised lines; and alongside of it were found a ring of polished shale or cannel coal, two and a half inches in diameter; four rhomboidal pieces of the same material, the largest pair two inches long; two triangular pieces, and about an hundred large beads, all perforated for the purpose of being strung together for a necklace. Various other cists have been discovered on the same estate, generally containing urns; but this is believed to have been the only example of the ring and necklace of polished shale.
A necklace formed in part of similar ornaments is now in the interesting collection of Adam Arbuthnot, Esq., of Peterhead. It was found a few years since in a tumulus in the parish of Cruden, Aberdeenshire, and consists of alternate beads of jet and perforated but irregular pieces of amber. The largest beads measure about four inches in length, from which they diminish to about an inch. The only other object beside them was a flint hatchet about seven inches long; so that this curious example of primitive personal ornaments may be assumed to belong to the earliest period, or perhaps to that of the transition from stone to metallic weapons and implements.
On opening a cairn on the hill of Auchmacher, Aberdeenshire, about 1790, an urn was exposed, in the mouth of which lay a number of circular perforated beads of black shale.[340] About the same period another urn was dug up in the parish of Ceres, Fifeshire, within which a smaller one was inclosed, and in it, in addition to the incinerated remains, lay a small brass implement, probably a hair-pin, (described as resembling a shoemaker's awl,) and a small black bead cut in diamond form.[341]
Various interesting personal ornaments obtained under similar circumstances, are preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, and one set in particular, found inclosed in an urn within a rude stone cist, on the demolition of a tumulus near the Old House of Assynt, Ross-shire, in 1824, very closely correspond in appearance to the description of the Renfrewshire relics. They include a necklace of irregular oval jet beads, which appear to have been strung together like a common modern string of beads, and are sufficiently rude to correspond with the works of a very primitive era. The other ornaments which are represented here, about one-fourth the size of the original, are curiously studded with gold spots, arranged in patterns similar to those with which the rude pottery of the British tumuli are most frequently decorated, and the whole are perforated with holes, passing obliquely from the back through the edge, evidently designed for attaching them to each other by means of threads.[342] Several other urns were discovered in a large cairn, a few miles distant from the tumulus which contained these interesting and tasteful relics of female adornment, as they are with great probability assumed to be; though it is well known that the modes of personal decoration which modern taste and refinement reserve for the fair sex are very differently apportioned in ruder states of society. The comparative anatomist can alone absolutely determine this question by future observations on the bones discovered along with similar remains. Meanwhile these examples are of peculiar value from the conclusion previously assumed by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, after examination of various sepulchral deposits containing similar relics, that the female barrow very rarely contains urns. Another sepulchral deposit of similar personal ornaments, including two fibulæ or discs of bituminous shale measuring one and a half inches in diameter, found in a grave at Letham, was presented to the Scottish Museum in 1820 by Sir David Brewster. It probably formed a portion of the contents of a group of cists discovered in a round gravel knoll or tumulus, near the Den of Letham, and described in the New Statistical Account of Dunnichen Parish, Forfarshire. They contained urns of red clay with rude ornaments upon them, and human bones irregularly disposed. "The neck-bones of some were adorned with strings of beads of a beautiful glossy black colour, neatly perforated longitudinally, and strung together by the fibres of animals. They were of an oval figure; large and small ones were arranged alternately, the large ones flat on the two opposite surfaces, the small ones round. They seemed to consist of ebony, or of some fine-grained wood which had been charred and then finely polished. On keeping them some time they split into plates, and the woody fibres separated. In some of these graves rusty daggers were found, which fell in pieces by handling."[343] One is almost tempted to challenge the completeness of this account, and to suspect the position of the necklaces, and perhaps the fibre-strings also, to be creations of the statist's imagination, more especially as the graves contained no perfect skeleton, but only loose bones. The woodcut represents a fibula of the same material, in the possession of James Drummond, Esq. It is drawn one-half the size of the original, which was recently found in a moss at Crawford Moor, near Carstairs, Lanarkshire. Simple as its form is it is not unfamiliar to the British antiquary. Sir R. C. Hoare describes and figures one exactly similar, found on opening a bell-shaped barrow at Blandford, and examples are referred to in the Ancient Wiltshire and other works.[344] Whether we regard this uniformity of type as evidence of the extent of intercourse anciently carried on among the most widely severed tribes, or of some system by which such relics were diffused by the wandering trader throughout the whole British islands, such comparisons cannot fail to interest the student of primitive history, trifling though they may appear, and to stimulate him to further investigation of such analogies.
English antiquaries have long been familiar with relics of this class, under the local name of ornaments of Kimmeridge Coal, and also with a more mysterious variety formed of the same material, on which the name of "Kimmeridge Coal Money" was conferred, from the idea that these symmetrical pieces of shale were used as a circulating medium before the introduction of the metals. The material of which the whole of this class of relics are composed has obviously been applied to the manufacture of personal ornaments from a very remote era, though the so-called coal money probably belongs to a comparatively late period. Some interesting examples of necklaces and other ornaments, precisely similar in style and character to those found in the Renfrew, Ross, and Fifeshire tumuli, were discovered on opening some Derbyshire barrows in 1846. These "female decorations of Kimmeridge coal," as they are styled in the account of the discovery in the Journal of the Archæological Association,[345] were deposited beside a female skeleton, in a cist formed of large stones. "The other instruments found on this occasion were all of flint, not the least fragment of metallic substance being visible. The ornament appears to have been a kind of necklace, with a central decoration, enriched by bone or ivory plates, ornamented with the chevron pattern so prevalent on articles of presumed Celtic manufacture, terminating with two laterally perforated studs of the coal; the remainder of the ornament consists of two rows of bugle-shaped beads of the same material." A few days later, two more necklaces, of similar design and material, were found in a cist under a barrow in the same county, in like manner accompanied only with implements of flint and bone. Engravings of some of these relics accompany the narrative of their discovery; and their remarkable similarity to those of the early Scottish tumuli, leaves no doubt that both belong to the same period. It is remarked of the Derbyshire relics by their discoverer,--"On the most superficial examination, it is quite evident that these articles have never received their form from the lathe, as the armlets of Kimmeridge coal are clearly proved to have done. This, coupled with the fact that the perforation through the length of the bead is in no instance carried through from one end, but is bored each way towards the centre, (as would be the case if a rude drill of flint were used for the purpose,) bespeaks a far more remote period than the one in which the use of the lathe was prevalent."[346] Both the unsymmetrical form, and the perforation of the beads found in the Ross-shire tumulus, fully correspond with these in the indications of the imperfect skill and rude instruments of their manufacturers. But the slow progress of native art was first aided, as we have seen, by the introduction of the potter's wheel; and from this, in all probability, originated the more ingenious contrivance of the turning-lathe. Whencesoever derived, its influence is abundantly apparent on the later relics of native art.
The "coal money" of the elder school of English antiquaries is found almost exclusively in two little secluded valleys at Purbeck, on the southern coast of Dorsetshire, known as Kimmeridge and Worthbarrow Bays. Similar relics, however, it will be seen, are not unknown in Scotland, though designated by other names than the local term derived from Kimmeridge Bay. They consist of flat circular pieces of shale, with bevelled and moulded edges, varying in size from 1¼ to nearly 3 inches in diameter, and frequently perforated or indented with one or more holes. The actual purpose for which this coinage of the Kimmeridge Mint was destined, long formed an antiquarian riddle, which baffled the acutest English archæologists; for the popular name was rather adopted as a convenient term, than seriously regarded as properly applicable to articles so fragile and valueless. One ingenious but somewhat fanciful theorist did, indeed, attempt to prove these relics to be the work of Phœnician artists, designed, not as an actual circulating medium, "but as representatives of coin, and of some mystical use in sacrificial or sepulchral rites!" All such ideas, however, are now entirely exploded, and it is no longer doubted that these are the waste pieces produced in the formation of rings from the shale on the turning-lathe. The fragments of pottery, and other relics discovered along with these curious exuviæ of early art, leave little room to doubt that during the Anglo-Roman period a manufacture of amulets, beads, and other personal ornaments of Kimmeridge shale, must have been carried on to a considerable extent in the Isle of Purbeck.[347]
The popular idea of the use of such circular pieces of shale as money is found attached to them in Scotland as well as in England. In the account of the parish of Portpatrick, it is remarked,--"Circular pieces, from two to three inches diameter, cut out of a black slate not found in the parish, are frequently dug up in the churchyard, along with rings out of which these pieces seem to have been cut. Both of these are supposed by the people here to have been used as money."[348]
Similar relics have been found in Kirkcudbright and other southern shires; and Mr. Joseph Train describes others, not greatly differing in character, found near the large moat or tumulus on the farm of Hallferne, parish of Crossmichael, where also a beautiful Druidical bead was discovered, nearly an inch in diameter, composed of pale-coloured glass, with a waving stripe of yellow round the circumference. In Kirkcudbrightshire, these ornaments of shale have retained nearly to our own day the same rank in popular estimation for their medicinal virtues, or supernatural powers, as we find ascribed to the ornaments and amulets of jet among the Romans.[349] Mr. Train remarks,--
"There have been found, at different times, near the same moat, several round flat stones, each five or six inches diameter, perforated artificially in the centre. Even within the memory of some persons yet alive, these perforated stones were used in Galloway to counteract the supposed effects of witchcraft, particularly in horses and black cattle. 'The cannie wife o' Glengappoch put a boirt stane into ane tub filled with water, and causit syne the haill cattell to pass by, and, when passing, springled ilk ane o' them with a besome dipped in it.' One of these perforated stones, as black and glossy as polished ebony, is also in my possession. It was recently found in the ruins of an old byre, where it had evidently been placed for the protection of the cattle."[350]
Ure remarks in his History of Kilbride, "a ring of a hard black schistous, found in a cairn in the parish of Inchinan, has performed, if we believe report, many astonishing cures. It is to this day preserved in the parish as an inestimable specific."[351] Similar proofs of the superstitious reverence attached to these ancient relics are by no means rare.
From evidence already referred to, it is abundantly obvious that ornaments both of shale and jet were in use at the period of the Roman colonization of Britain, and this is further confirmed by their discovery along with Anglo-Roman sepulchral remains. Most of those, however, exhibit a degree of finish and ornamentation which distinguishes them from works in the same materials of an older date. Still it is the more needful to examine with care the circumstances under which the latter have been found, and to ascertain, if possible, whether they are contemporary works of ruder execution, or really pertain to an earlier era. Relics of this class, it is obvious, are by no means uncommon; and it is with a view to the discrimination of those of native origin from the later products of foreign art, that so many examples are here referred to.
Sir Robert Sibbald thus notices the occurrence of rings or armlets of shale in Scottish sepulchral mounds:--"Some full circles, of a black colour, very smooth, two or three inches in diameter, are found in the cairns or burroughs. They are very light, and when fire is put to them they burn and give a good smell, and seem to be made of odoriferous gums."[352] Mr. Ure appears to have tried the same costly experiment, and remarks as its result, that they burn with a clear flame. There formerly existed in the district of Logie, Forfarshire, a remarkable group of tumuli, called the Three Laws of Logie; which agricultural operations have since nearly obliterated. On opening one of these, it proved to contain four human skeletons, near to which was one of the above relics, described "as a beautiful ring, supposed to be of ebony, as black as jet, of a fine polish, and in perfect preservation. It is of a circular form, flat in the inside, and rounded without. Its circumference is about twelve inches, and its diameter four inches."[353] A large cairn, in the parish of East Kilbride, bore the name of Queen Mary's Mount, from the tradition that the unhappy Queen witnessed from its summit the Battle of Langside, and beheld the sceptre of a kingdom pass for ever from her grasp. But such touching historical associations could not suffice to rescue the venerable memorial from the hands of the destroyer. For years it supplied the whole neighbouring districts with materials for building stone fences, until some workmen employed in removing the remaining stones, in 1792, discovered a chamber containing about twenty-five urns full of earth and human bones. These urns, some of which have been engraved in Ure's History, were of the most primitive shape and character, "rudely formed, seemingly with no other instrument than the hand, and so soft as easily to be scratched with the nail. They were of different sizes, mostly about twelve inches deep, and six wide at the mouth. None of them were destitute of ornaments; but these were extremely rude, and seem to have been done in a hurry, with a sharp-pointed instrument. They were all placed with their mouths undermost upon flat stones; and a piece of white quartz was found in the centre of the mouth of each, larger and smaller, in proportion to the dimensions of the several urns."[354] A cist of about four feet square was placed exactly in the centre of the cairn, near to which was a bronze fibula of extremely rude form; another, still simpler in design, was found in one of the urns, and a bronze comb, equally characteristic of primitive arts, in a second; while alongside of them lay one of the rings of bituminous shale. The bronze relics are all engraved by Ure, so that a tolerably perfect idea can be formed of their design and workmanship. He pronounces them, according to the fashion of his time, to be Roman, but they bear no resemblance to the rudest specimens of Anglo-Roman art. Similar ornaments of shale have been discovered both in the Northern and Western Isles, furthest removed from Roman arts and influence. One example, which is here engraved one half the natural size, was found in the Isle of Skye, and presented to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries in 1782. It is supposed to be designed for the clasp of a belt. Two rings of the same material, each measuring 3½ inches in diameter, were discovered about two years later on the same island, and added to the Scottish Museum. Another, four inches in diameter, flat on the inside, and rounded without, as is most frequently the case, was obtained from a tumulus in the parish of Logie, Forfarshire, along with an urn full of ashes, and the remains of four skeletons.[355] In 1832, some labourers levelling a sandy field at Dubbs, in the parish of Stevenston, Ayrshire, came upon a paved area five feet under the surface, measuring six yards long and two broad. Across the one end lay a stone of about a ton weight, and at the other there was found a stone cist, measuring three feet in length by two in breadth. Within it were two urns, one of gray and the other of black pottery, both apparently filled only with earth, and beside them lay five studs or buttons of different sizes, formed of highly polished jet. The urns were broken, but the studs were preserved by the late Colonel Hamilton. They are convex on the one side, and concave on the other, with knobs left in the latter, seemingly for attaching them to the dress. The largest is more than an inch in diameter.[356] Two other rings of polished shale, similar to those already described, were discovered in 1786, lying beside a skeleton, on removing a large flat stone within the area of one of those circular towers in Caithness, commonly termed burghs, or Pictish Forts. Beside them lay a bone pin, and two fine oval brooches, (the Skaalformet Spande of Danish antiquaries,) such as have been frequently discovered in the Northern and Western Isles, and are now generally ascribed to the era of the Vikings.
Such examples, it is obvious, might be greatly multiplied, but enough have been cited to enable us to trace the use of those ornaments from probably the earliest years of the Bronze Period to the close of the latest Pagan era. The rings, which form the most common articles manufactured of shale, have been usually considered as armlets, but it is very doubtful if such was their real use. Many of them, indeed, are too small to admit of the hand passing through them, and rings of similar size and form are discovered of various other materials. One in the Scottish Museum, apparently of glazed earthenware, and measuring nearly three inches in diameter, was found under a large cairn at Bogheads, Kintore parish, Aberdeenshire, in 1789, and beside it lay four oblong squared pieces of polished shale, the two largest two inches in length, the other two an inch and a half, and an inch broad. Between each pair were three oval beads of the same substance, nearly an inch long. They were described, when presented to the Society, as having been suspended from the ring; but it is more probable that they formed, as in other cases, a separate necklace. A number of cairns, some of them of very large dimensions, still remain on the extensive moor which occupies a considerable area in both the parishes of Kinellar and Kintore. Another ring in the same collection, formed of a white translucent stone, was found on the Flanders Moss, Perthshire; and a third made of hard dark wood, 3½ inches in diameter, and 1¾ inches broad, was discovered near a cairn on the north side of Hatlock, in Tweeddale, on first subjecting the neighbouring heath to the plough in 1784. It has been suggested that these rings formed part of the female head gear, through which the hair was drawn; and a sculptured female head, found at Bath, is referred to, on which an ornament somewhat resembling them is represented so applied.[357] The discovery of such rings alongside of female ornaments, such as the necklaces and pendants already described, seems to justify the classification of them among objects of mere personal adornment; and where found singly, their supposed use in the arrangement of the long locks of their owners furnishes a very feasible explanation of the purpose for which they were designed. Nevertheless, the frequency of their occurrence, under a great variety of circumstances, suggests the idea that these rings may possess a higher value as the records of long obsolete rites and customs, than pertains to the mere objects of personal adornment. They have been found accompanying female ornaments, and apparently with female remains; but they have also been discovered no less certainly in the sepulchres of warriors and chiefs, and under cairns which seem to mark the last resting-place of those who fell in the grim strife of war. We shall not perhaps greatly err, if we trace in these relics of such frequent occurrence something analogous to the sacramental ring of the Scandinavians, described in the Eyrbiggia-Saga, and referred to in a former chapter in illustration of the perforated stone at Stennis, in Orkney, and the vow of Odin of which it was the seal. Dr. Hibbert has already observed on this subject,--
"In Iceland a less bulky ring for the ratification of engagements was introduced. Within the hof was a division, like a choir in a church, where stood an elevation in the middle of the floor, and an altar. Upon the altar was placed a ring, without any joint, of the value of two oras. These rings (idly named Druidical amulets) are variously formed of bone, of jet, of stone, and even of the precious metals. Some are so wide as to allow the palm of the hand to be passed through them, which rings were used when parties entered into mutual compacts. In a woodcut given in an old edition of Olaus Magnus, the solemnization of a betrothing contract is represented by the bridegroom passing his four fingers and palm through a large ring, and in this manner receiving the hand of the bride. This is similar to the mode practised in Orkney, where contracting parties join hands through the perforation, or more properly speaking the ring, of a stone pillar. In the oath administered to an individual as a test of veracity, it was sufficient that he held in his hand a ring of small size, dipped in the blood of sacrificial victims."[358]
An illustration of the mode of administering such an oath occurs in Viga Glum's Saga. In the midst of a wedding party Glum calls upon Thorarin, his accuser, to hear his oath, and taking in his hand a silver ring, which had been dipped in sacrificial blood, he cites two witnesses to testify to his oath on the ring, and his having appealed to the gods in his denial of the charge. These customs belong to a more recent era than that to which we refer the Scottish Bronze Period. But it is impossible to say to how remote an era we must look for their origin, or how long before the time of the Vikings, the Scandinavian and Celtic races, as well as their Allophylian precursors, had been familiar in their common cradle-land in the far east, with rites and usages from which the sacredness of this sacramental ring may have sprung.
Viewed in this light the frequent occurrence of such relics in the cist, or under the memorial cairn, may be pregnant with a far higher meaning than the mere ornamental fibula or amulet. When found with the spear and sword, the ring may indicate the grave of the warrior-priest or lawgiver,--a union of offices so consistent with society in a primitive state; while, in the female barrow, amid the bracelets and necklaces which once adorned the primitive British matron, the curious relic may, with no undue indulgence of fancy, be looked upon as the spousal pledge, and the literal wedding-ring. It seems, indeed, most probable, that the little golden ring with which, in these modern centuries, we wed, is none other than the symbolic memorial of the old sacramental ring which witnessed the vows of our rude island fathers, and was made the pledge of their plighted troth. This, however, is perhaps trespassing beyond the pale of legitimate induction into the seductive regions of fancy, where antiquaries have too frequently chosen to wander at their own sweet will.
In some degree akin to the personal ornaments of jet and shale are the large beads of glass or vitreous paste, and amber, so well known among the contents of British tumuli, and associated even in our own day, with the same superstitious virtues ascribed to them in the writings of the philosophic but credulous Pliny. The very same story, in fact, is told of the Adder-stane in the popular legends of the Scottish Lowlands as Pliny records of the origin of the Ovum Anguinum. The various names by which these relics are designated all point to their estimation as amulets or superstitious charms, and the fact of their occurrence, most frequently singly, in the sepulchral cist or urn, seems to prove that it was as such, and not merely as personal ornaments, that they were deposited along with the ashes of the dead. They are variously known as Adder Beads, Serpent Stones, Druidical Beads, and among the Welsh and Irish by the synonymous terms of Gleini na Droedh, and Glaine nan Druidhe, signifying the Magician's or Druid's glass. Many of them are exceedingly beautiful, and are characterized by considerable ingenuity in the variations of style. Among those in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries there is one of red glass, spotted with white; another of dark brown glass, streaked with yellow; others of pale green and blue glass, plain and ribbed; and two of curiously figured patterns, wrought with various colours interwoven on their surface. The specimens engraved here are selected from these. Among a curious collection of antiquities discovered in a barrow on Barnham Downs, and exhibited by Lord Landesborough at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, March 7, 1850, there was a large glass bead, which had been broken and ingeniously repaired with a hoop of bronze,--a significant indication of the great value attached to it.
Beads of amber, stone, clay, and porcelain, as well as of horn and bone, are all more or less common among the early sepulchral deposits, and may be regarded with little hesitation as of native workmanship. Amber, though not indigenous to this country, is of sufficiently frequent occurrence to abundantly account for its use in the manufacture of personal ornaments, without assuming its importation from the Baltic, where it most largely abounds. Both Boece[359] and Camden notice the finding of pieces of extraordinary size at Buchanness, on the coast of Aberdeenshire. The clergyman of the parish of Peterhead, in the same county, in drawing up an account of his parish for Sir John Sinclair, mentions having in his possession "a pretty large piece of amber," recently found on the sea-beach near the manse; and in 1783, Mr. George Paton presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland two pieces found on the sea-shore in the Frith of Forth, near Queensferry. The fact, indeed, of amber being obtained in the greatest quantities on the southern coasts of the Baltic Sea, is abundantly sufficient to account for its also frequently occurring in smaller quantities on the east coast of Scotland. It appears accordingly to have formed one of the most favourite articles for adorning and setting brooches, hair-pins, and other personal ornaments, from the earliest practice of the jeweller's art, until our native tastes and customs were merged, by increasing intercourse with other nations, into the common characteristics of later medieval art.
The source from whence the "Adder Beads" were derived is more difficult of solution. The most probable means of accounting for their introduction to Britain is by the Phœnicians, or by traders in direct communication with that people, whose early skill in the manufacture of glass is familiar to us, and to whom we in all probability owe the initiative suggestions and examples which originated the most important improvements characteristic of the period now under consideration. Still it must be borne in remembrance, that after all we know extremely little, and almost nothing precise or definite, concerning Phœnician intercourse with Britain. Druids, Picts, and Danes have all been very convenient names which have too often saved Scottish antiquaries, and indeed English antiquaries also, the trouble of reasoning, and helped to conceal the fact, from themselves as well as others, that they really knew nothing about the questions they undertook to discuss. If we merely substitute for these the name of the Phœnicians little indeed will be gained by the exchange.
Sir William Hamilton has undertaken to prove the Italian workmanship of the glass beads found in Britain, on the very slender evidence of the discovery of one at Naples similar to British examples. They have undoubtedly been found both in England and Scotland accompanied with Roman relics, though much more frequently in native sepulchres apparently long prior to the Anglo-Roman era. Ure describes and engraves one of ribbed blue glass--bearing considerable resemblance to another in the Scottish Museum from the Isle of Skye--which was discovered in a large inclosed tumulus in Rutherglen parish, Lanarkshire, along with what appear to have been two Roman patellæ.[360] But the same relics have been found along the coasts of the Baltic and the Mediterranean; they abound equally in Ireland and the north of Scotland, where the Romans rarely or never were, and in England and Gaul, which they so long occupied and colonized. They have been obtained also not unfrequently in Egyptian catacombs accompanying relics long prior to the Roman era. Raspe, in his introduction to Tassie's Gems, refers to the so-called Druid's beads as belonging to the same class as the "rich coloured glass and enamels found amongst the Egyptian antiquities;" and Colonel Howard Vyse mentions them among the numerous relics found in exploring "Campbell's Tomb" at Gizeh, which appears to have been constructed during the reign of Psammetichus II., about B.C. 600. But indeed the most conclusive and altogether incontrovertible evidence of the remote antiquity to which these singular and widely-diffused relics belong, is to be found in the fact, that their origin and virtues were the subjects of the same superstitious fables in the age of Pliny, as in the British folk-lore of the eighteenth century. We shall not, I think, overstep the limits of fair induction in viewing these beads as affording another proof of the extensive, though probably indirect intercourse, by means of which the races of the north of Europe participated in the reflex of southern civilisation many centuries before we can trace any allusion to them in the world's elder literature; unless where the fond Briton seeks to include his sea-girt home amid "the isles of the Gentiles" of the Hebrew Scriptures, or dimly discerns them in the Cassiterides of Herodotus. It should be noted, in connexion with this subject, that other glass relics have occasionally been found among the contents of British tumuli, though much too rarely to afford any countenance to the idea of a primitive native manufacture of glass. One imperfect example in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, found in a cist in the island of Westray, Orkney, apparently deposited on the breast of the deceased, is described by its donor as "the only specimen hitherto discovered of glass contained in these cemeteries." It appears to have been a cup, not improbably of Roman manufacture, the bottom of which is marked with concentric circles in relief. The extreme rarity of such articles probably characterizes this as another example of the ungrudging generosity of affectionate reverence for the deceased, no less marked than the more valued sepulchral deposits of the precious metals.
Of the beautiful gold and silver relics exposed from time to time on the opening of Scottish sepulchral tumuli, or brought to light in the course of agricultural operations, only the most trifling moiety has escaped the clutches of ignorant cupidity. But even the few existing specimens are sufficient to excite the deepest sorrow that such works of early native art, frequently characterized by a style altogether unique, and exceedingly beautiful in design and ornament, should be discovered only to be destroyed. Some idea of the great variety of Scottish gold relics may be formed even from the few examples preserved or minutely described; but a much greater number might be noted which are known to have been destroyed, without any opportunity having been afforded even of accurately observing their form, or learning of the circumstances under which they were discovered. The plain gold armillæ from Banffshire, already referred to, and engraved along with the urn in which they lay, in the Archæologia Scotica,[361] furnish sufficiently rude specimens of primitive personal ornaments. Though it can hardly admit of a doubt that they have been designed as armillæ or bracelets, yet the difference in weight, and even more in apparent bulk, sufficiently illustrates the inexperience of their maker. Their respective weights are--1 oz. 5 dwts. 14 grs., and 1 oz. 14 grs. But along with them were examples of one of the simplest yet most interesting class of gold relics discovered in the British Isles. These are described in the Archæologia Scotica as nose and ear-rings, but they are simply formed of bars of gold bent in a circular form, and the extremities left disunited. Two of them are ornamented with parallel grooves along the outer side, but they are of unequal sizes, and in no degree differ from the numerous class of penannular relics now designated by most antiquaries as "ring-money"; though the idea of their use as nose-rings had been formerly advanced by Colonel Vallancey,[362] and has been more than once revived.[363] In a valuable article by Mr. Albert Way, on the ornaments of gold discovered in the British Islands, examples of British ring-money are engraved, including the simple penannular ornament, the crescent, and beaded and torquated rings.[364] It is not necessary to enter at large on the disputed question of the use of these relics as currency. Many ingenious, and as I think satisfactory arguments, have been adduced in favour of their original purpose as a circulating medium; though this was in no degree incompatible with their use as personal ornaments. That such rings passed for money among the Egyptians is proved by representations of the weighing of gold and silver ring-money on their paintings; as, for example, in one of the grottos in the hill of Shek Abd el Qoorneh, which bears the cartouche of Amunoph II. inscribed on its walls. The same metallic currency is obviously alluded to in the incident of the Hebrew patriarchs on their first visit to Egypt: "Every man's money was in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight." It was perhaps even better suited than a regular coinage for furnishing an acceptable substitute for barter among a comparatively rude people, and may therefore be assumed with considerable probability as one of the improvements resulting from intercourse with the Phœnician traders. Such a system of exchange will also suffice to account for one foreign source of the abundant supply of gold during this primitive era; thus introduced in a form well suited to the imperfect ideas of a people whose trade probably long retained more of the original character of barter than that of sale and purchase, and who would receive the gold rings only as so much metal. There is reason to believe, however, that both in Scotland and Ireland the ring-money continued in use long after Cunobeline and other British princes had sought to rival the Roman mintage. In the Irish annals there is frequent mention of gold rings of different sizes offered at the shrines of Icolmkill, St. Patrick, &c. The inferior metals appear also to have been current in this simple form. Rings of bronze, exactly corresponding to the gold "ring-money" have been found both in the ruins of Persepolis and of Carthage, as well as in Egypt. They are well known to Irish antiquaries, and are probably more common in Scotland than is generally supposed. The imperfect bronze rings already referred to among the contents of a cinerary urn dug up in the parish of Ratho, Mid-Lothian, are of this description; and similar relics are occasionally described among the contents of the weems or subterranean dwellings. In 1835 a large tumulus, near the summit of Carmylie Hill, Forfarshire, popularly known as the "Fairy Hillock," was invaded, and among a deposit of half-burnt bones and charcoal several penannular bronze rings were discovered, varying in size from about two inches to two-thirds of an inch in diameter. They are quite plain, as if they had been formed by simply cutting and bending into shape a rod of bronze wire. This ancient and primitive form of currency which we detect along with the first elements of British civilisation, has perhaps never ceased to be used in some parts of the African continent since that remote era when it sufficed for payment of the exactions of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Mr. Way remarks,--"I am indebted to the Duke of Northumberland for the opportunity of examining specimens of African gold money, especially interesting as having been made under his own inspection at Sennaar. His Grace favoured me with the following particulars:--He chanced to notice a blacksmith occupied in forming these rings; and inquiring as to their use, the man replied, that having no work in hand for his forge he was making money. The gold wire being very flexible was bent into rings without precise conformity in regard to weight, and was thus converted into money. It passed current by weight. The gold is so flexible that the rings are readily opened, to be linked into a chain for the convenience of keeping them together, and as readily detached when a payment was to be made."[365] Manillas, as they are now generally termed, are regularly manufactured at Birmingham for the African traders. They are made of copper, or of an alloy of copper and iron, and are sold at the rate of £105 per ton for copper, and £22 for iron rings. The copper ring weighs two and a half ounces, and passes current in Africa at a value equivalent to fourpence sterling. The Banffshire gold relics furnish examples both of plain and grooved ring-money. Of the former class one of about £2 value is described in the Old Statistical Account, found at Tiree, Argyleshire, in 1792.[366] Mr. Paton of Dunfermline possesses a gold torquated ring, obtained in that neighbourhood. Another, found in one of the weems or subterranean dwellings on the island of Shapinshay, Orkney, "composed, as it were, of three cords twisted or plaited together," is minutely described in the Statistical Account of the parish;[367] and in the London Numismatic Society's Museum, African gold relics, exactly corresponding to these, are preserved among the primitive types of coinage. Plated rings of similar form have also been occasionally discovered both in Scotland and Ireland, which it is more difficult to conceive of as a substitute for current coin, unless we assume the perverse ingenuity of the forger, usually ranked among the vices of modern civilisation, to be even as ancient as the era of British ring-money. One of these composite penannular relics, in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, was found in the Isle of Skye. It is of copper, covered with a thick plating of pure gold, and when perfect must have bid defiance to detection of its internal inferiority. It is thicker than the usual ring-money, so that the gold has been forced into folds or wrinkles on the inner side in bending it into shape.[368]
The most simple gold ornaments of larger size found in the British Islands are the massive rings with dilated ends, disunited, but generally brought nearly in contact, which are of frequent occurrence in connexion with the rarer objects of the Bronze Period. They are generally assumed to have been worn as armillæ, and to have their ends disunited for the convenience of the wearer. One strong objection to this supposition is to be found in the frequent extension of the dilated edges of the two ends to the inner side of the ring, in a way that must have rendered them exceedingly uncomfortable if worn as armlets.[369] This is the case with one of two fine examples preserved in the Scottish Museum, both found in the same cist at Alloa in 1828; and such also appears from drawings in my possession to be the form of several of a remarkable group discovered in January of the present year (1850) at Bowes, near Barnard Castle, Yorkshire. Relics of the same character, though differing in detail, are found under similar circumstances in Denmark. The dilation of the ends in the examples preserved in the palace of Christiansborg, at Copenhagen, is much more conspicuous than in the British type, being in the form of cones attached by the narrow end to the annular bar of gold, and therefore still less adapted for being worn on the arm. Some specimens are found without this peculiarity, the dilation being only outward, as in one found near Patcham, Sussex, engraved in the Archæological Journal,[370] and another almost exactly corresponding in form, but considerably thicker, found in Galloway in 1784, and of which a drawing is possessed by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. These rings are generally much too massive and rigid, notwithstanding the purity and consequent softness of the gold, to admit of their being unbent for the purpose of clasping on the arm, without injuring their form and leaving marks of such a process; in addition to which, another though less conclusive argument against their use as armillæ is, that they are rarely if ever found in pairs. A gold relic, seemingly of this class, was discovered in 1794, on opening a large sepulchral mound at Upper Dalachie, Banffshire, popularly styled the Green Cairn. "About two feet from the surface," says Chalmers,[371] "was found an urn of rude workmanship, which, when the ashes of the dead were shaken out, disclosed a piece of polished gold like the handle of a vase, three inches in diameter, and more than one-eighth of an inch thick." The finder sold this relic for bullion, at the price of thirteen guineas. Where two or more occur together, they generally differ both in size and form, as well as in weight. The two found in the same cist at Alloa,--the largest of which is here represented, half the size of the original,--differ in all these respects; and the same is the case with those recently discovered at Bowes,--no two of the whole six correspond, though they all lay close together, with what was thought to be the remains of a bag in which they had been inclosed. This will be apparent from the following table of their weights:--
Found at Bowes, near Barnard Castle, Yorkshire, 1850,--
1. Weight 6 oz. 10 dwts. 17 grs. 2. " 5 " 12 " 0 " 3. " 2 " 17 " 12 " 4. " 1 " 10 " 10 " 5. " 1 " 10 " 5 " 6. " 0 " 19 " 15 "
Found at Alloa, Clackmannanshire, 1828,--
1. Weight 3 oz. 4 dwts. 14 grs. 2. " 2 " 7 " 20 "
Found in Galloway, 1784,--
Weight 3 oz. 5 dwts. 5 grs.
Found near Aspatria, in Cumberland,--
Weight 5 oz. 10 dwts. 6 grs.
Found near Patcham, Sussex,--
1. Weight 5 oz. 5 dwts. 12 grs. 2. " 2 " 5 " 6 "
The quality in the metal of the two last, though found in the same locality, greatly differs, the first being largely alloyed with silver. The weights of several other English examples are given by Mr. Way, in his interesting contribution to the Archæological Journal.[372] The record of the precise weights of these curious relics may help to test the theory which has been occasionally advanced, that they also belong to the class of primitive currency; since a uniform rule of subdivision by weight has been thought discoverable in relation to Irish ring-money. The idea, however, seems altogether untenable with reference to these larger rings. The simplicity and gracefulness of the form adhered to, with very slight variations, in a relic of such frequent occurrence, while armillæ, torcs, and even the small penannular rings supposed to have formed the currency of these primitive metallurgists, exhibit so many varieties and modes of decoration, seem rather to point out the former as appropriated to some peculiar and perhaps sacred purpose. What that was we shall probably never know. One example, indeed, found near Aspatria, in Cumberland, in 1828, not only differs in being slightly ornamented with circular lines and small notches, but certain antiquaries discerned and undertook to read a supposed Runic inscription upon it. It has accordingly been engraved, both in the Archæologia (vol. xxii. p. 439) and in the Archæologia Æliana (vol. ii. p. 268.) But it seems probable that it must rank with the more celebrated Runamo inscription, which, after being proved to be in "the old northern or Icelandic tongue, in regular alliterative verse, of the sort called Fornyrdalag or Starkadarlag;" its precise date assigned, and its historic value as an authentic document admitted by Danish scholars, is once more acknowledged to be neither more nor less than the accidental cracks and fissures in the rock! A golden relic was, however, discovered during the latter part of last century, of the inscription on which no doubt can be entertained. But it differs essentially in form from the curious rings now referred to, and, indeed, appears to be unique. It is engraved in the Archæologia, (vol. ii. Plate III. fig. 4,) and consists of a round bar of pure and very soft and pliable gold, gradually thickening at both ends, which are bent. On the one end is engraved HELENVS F., and on the other, in dotted characters, the letters M. B. It was found about eighteen inches under ground in a moss, on the estate of Mr. Irvine of Cove, near Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. The author of the communication in which this is noted, adds, that "several of the same sort have been occasionally found in Scotland, but whether with the same impresses is not mentioned." An observation, however, of this indefinite character, can, at most, be received only in further proof of the well-known fact, that numerous gold relics have been discovered in Scotland from time to time, though most frequently described in terms sufficiently vague and obscure. The Dilated Penannular Rings (as I would propose, for the sake of convenience, to call this class of relics) found at Alloa, were discovered, along with two cinerary urns, on the top of a stone cist of the usual circumscribed proportions,[373] in which lay an entire skeleton, of great size, and therefore, it may be presumed, a male. They were accordingly designated by their discoverers Coffin-handles! Other cists, and, in all, twenty-two cinerary urns, some of them of very large size and highly decorated, were found in the same neighbourhood, chiefly on the line of the old road from Stirling to Queensferry, where it skirts along the base of Mar's Hill. Another such group of cists has been discovered near the point of Largiebeg, on the south-east coast of the Island of Arran; and in one of them, says the parish minister, writing in 1840, in a cist which a labourer discovered a few years ago, in making a fence round his garden, "there was found a piece of gold in the form of a handle of a drawer, with some iron or steel, much corroded, at each end. The man concealed his prize till he got it disposed of to a jeweller in Glasgow, who melted it down into rings and brooches."[374] It would not be difficult to multiply examples, derived from similar sources, of the ignorant and wilful destruction of such relics of primitive native art and skill; but it could answer little other purpose than to excite in every intelligent reader lively but unavailing regrets.
Somewhat analogous to the dilated penannular rings are another class of gold ornaments, which, so far as I am aware, have never yet been discovered except in the British Isles. They consist of a solid cylindrical gold bar, bent into a semicircle or segmental arc, most frequently tapering from the centre, and terminated at both ends with hollow cups, resembling the mouth of a trumpet, or the expanded calix of a flower. One remarkable example of these curious native relics, which is engraved in the Archæological Journal, presents the characteristics of an intermediate type between the simpler forms of the relics last described, and these Calicinated Rings.[375] The cups are formed merely by hollows in the slightly dilated ends; but it is further interesting from being decorated with the style of incised ornaments of most frequent occurrence on the primitive British pottery. It was dug up at Brahalish, near Bantry, county Cork, and weighs 3 oz. 5 dwts. 6 grs. In contrast to this, another is engraved in the same Journal, found near the entrance lodge at Swinton Park, Yorkshire, scarcely two feet below the surface. In this beautiful specimen the terminal cups are so unusually large, that the solid bar of gold dwindles into a mere connecting link between them. The annexed figure of a very fine example found by a labourer while cutting peats in the parish of Cromdale, Inverness-shire, somewhat resembles that of Swinton Park in the size of its cups. It is from a drawing by the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, and represents it about two-thirds the size of the original. Similar relics of more ordinary proportions have been brought to light, at different times, in various Scottish districts. One found in an urn in the north of Scotland, in the year 1731, is described in a letter from Sir John Clerk to Mr. Gale, written shortly after its discovery; and is further illustrated in the Reliquiæ Galeanæ, by an engraved figure the size of the original.[376] Shortly afterwards, Sir John Clerk writes to his correspondent announcing the discovery of several valuable gold relics, including two other calicinated rings, brought to light in consequence of the partial draining of a loch on an estate belonging to the Earl of Stair. "I begin to think," exclaims the astonished antiquary, "that there are treasures of all kinds in Britain; for lately in a loch in Galloway there have been found three very curious pieces of gold: one a bracelet, consisting of two circles, very artificially folding or twisting into one another; now in the hands of the Countess of Stair." The other relics are described as corresponding to an example of the calicinated ring found in Galway, and engraved in the Archæologia. (Vol. ii. Plate III. fig. 1.) One of these must have been an unusually massive and valuable example, as its weight is stated to have been 15 oz. Another smaller one found along with it, and weighing only 1 oz. 4 dwts., more nearly approaches to the type of the dilated penannular ring, the cup or bulb being covered with a flat oval plate of gold. A bronze relic, of the latter shape, formerly in the collection of Dr. Samuel Hibbert, is now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. Bronze calicinated rings have occasionally, though very rarely, been found in Ireland. The only example I know of is in the collection of Councillor Waller of Dublin.
The most recent discovery in Scotland of gold relics of this singular type, was made in the year 1838, on the estate of the late Walter Campbell, Esq. of Sunderland, on the Island of Islay, Argyleshire. At the period referred to, a large standing stone, which had long been overthrown, and lay prostrate at a little distance from Sunderland House, was blasted with gunpowder, and removed, in the process of levelling and draining the ground for agricultural purposes. The soil immediately underneath the stone consisted of a rich black mould, in which were found a broad fluted gold armilla, and a fine specimen of the calicinated ring, both lying alongside of a stone cist, within which were several rude cinerary urns. The armilla was of a peculiar type, being a broad band of gold beaten out so as to form a convex centre, on each side of which was a fluted ornamental border, and a raised rim returned at the edge. Unfortunately, this interesting relic was carried off by a dishonest servant, but through the kindness of Mrs. Campbell, I am able to give the annexed representation (about one-fourth the size of the original) of the calicinated ring, which is now in that lady's possession. Mrs. Campbell remarks, in a letter with which I have been favoured,--"The bracelet was large enough to encircle a woman's arm above the elbow. Of many specimens which I examined at the British Museum, chiefly Irish, there was none like mine, which makes me the more regret its loss." Various tumuli exist in the neighbourhood of Sunderland House, several of which have been opened, and found to cover cists of the usual limited size, none of them exceeding three feet in greatest internal dimensions. In some of them were found cinerary urns, while others contained the entire skeleton.
Some antiquaries have sought to assign a sacred significance to these singular relics, and to associate them with the mysterious rites of Druidical worship. Vallancey, in particular, supposes them to have been sacrificial pateræ. There is fully as much probability, however, in the simple conjecture that they served as clasps or fastenings for the mantle. The cups, which appear to possess such a mystic significance, were not probably left void in their original state. In the example first referred to, in the Reliquiæ Galeanæ, Sir John Clerk remarks,--"The parts at the extremities are hollow, like little cups or sockets, and the sides are very thin. There is a small circle within the verge, which has had a red substance adhering to it like cement, as if it had served to fix some kind of body within the sockets." A similar appearance is still more markedly observable in an example in the possession of Thomas Brown, Esq. of Lanfine, Ayrshire. Upon showing it to an experienced jeweller, he assured me it cannot admit of a doubt that the sockets have originally contained pebbles or jewels. If it be indeed the case that in this curious gold relic we have the clasp of the ancient British chlamys, worn by the native chief or by the arch-priest when robed in his most stately pontificals, then we see in it a British personal ornament which may stand comparison with the most costly and elegant Roman fibulæ, while its essential dissimilarity from every known classic type adds to the probability of its belonging to an earlier era than the Anglo-Roman period.
Of the commoner British gold ornaments, the torc and armilla, numerous examples have been discovered, though of these the few which have escaped destruction are mostly in private hands, and not very readily accessible. Three beautiful gold torcs, found at Cairnmure, Peeblesshire, in 1806, are figured in the Archæologia Scotica.[377] They were found, along with various other relics, by a herd-boy, who going early in the morning to his sheep, observed something glitter in the sun, and on scraping with his feet, brought the whole valuable treasure to light. It consisted of three gold torcs or collars for the neck; the beautiful gold ornament, supposed to have been the head of a staff or sceptre, engraved here about one-half the size of the original; and a number of flattened circular gold pellets, each marked with a cross in relief. The value of the articles discovered in mere bullion exceeded £100, and it is doubtful if the treasure-finder did not privately dispose of more before his good fortune was known. The staff-head and two of the gold beads or pellets are now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. The latter are elsewhere referred to, along with other examples, as the primitive type of native minted currency. The defined character, however, of the ornamentation on the sceptre-head adds, along with the presence of these indications of increasing civilisation, to the probability that this valuable hoard belongs to the later transition-period, in which the age of bronze drew to a close. Simple indeed as is the usual style of ornament and workmanship of the funicular torc, it appears to have been retained in use for a very long period, and is reproduced in silver and bronze along with the latest relics of the succeeding iron age. The annexed woodcut represents a remarkably fine example, greatly reduced, of what may be designated the knotted funicular torc. It was found about sixty years ago by a labourer trenching within the area of a circular camp on the summit of a hill in the parish of Penicuick, Mid-Lothian, known by the name of Braidwood Castle. It was of gold, and met with the usual fate of relics of the precious metals, having been sold by the discoverer to a jeweller in Edinburgh for the sum of twenty-eight guineas, as a Roman girdle of brass. It was doubtless worth a much larger sum as mere bullion. A drawing of it, however, had been taken, it is not now apparent by whom, and is preserved in the Library of the Scottish Antiquaries.[378] The history indeed of Scottish gold relics is only a sad commentary on the miserable fruits resulting chiefly from the operation of the law of treasure-trove. A short way to the east of Chesterlees Station, in the parish of Dolphinton, Lanarkshire, an ornament of pure gold was found, which is said to have resembled the snaffle-bit of a horse's bridle.[379] As this is usually a twisted iron rod, there can be little doubt that the Chesterlees relic was a funicular torc. A "gold chain" ploughed up on the glebe lands of Mortlach parish, Banffshire, and described in the Old Statistical Account of the parish, as "like an ornament for the neck of one of the chiefs;" and another "golden chain" found at Thrumster, in the parish of Wick, Caithness, "which in a year of famine the discoverer sold to a bailie in Wick for a boll of oatmeal," may both be assumed, with little hesitation, to have been golden torcs. The term, indeed, has been used by experienced antiquaries. Gale describes a torc found near Old Verulam in 1748, as "a wreathed or vermicular ornament, being a solid chain of gold." One example, however, is on record of a gold linked chain found in an early Scottish sepulchral deposit. Nearly a mile to the east of Newton of Tillicairn, Aberdeenshire, on the top of a ridge on which are several cairns, there is one of unusually large size, appropriately designated Cairnmore. In 1818 this was partially opened to obtain a supply of stones for building materials, when a quantity of bones were found, among which lay "a small gold chain of four links, attached to a pin of such size as might have been used in a brooch for fastening the Celtic plaid."[380] A relic found towards the close of last century on the farm of Balmae, Kirkcudbrightshire, and sold by the discoverer for about £20, may also be classed among the lost examples of Scottish gold torcs. It is described as "a straight plate of gold, which was somewhat thick at each end and at the middle. It bent easily at the centre, so as to admit the two extremities to meet."[381] It must either have been a solid torc, or an unusually large dilated penannular ring. Amongst the native personal ornaments in the Scottish Museum, is a massive but plain penannular ring of the class to which the name of solid torc is now applied. It appears to be composed of nearly pure copper, and weighs twenty-five and a quarter ounces. It is rudely finished, retaining the rough marks of the hammer.
No less beautiful than the finest examples of gold torcs are the numerous armillæ which have been found in Scotland. Two funicular bracelets, discovered apparently on draining the same lake in Galloway previously referred to, are described and engraved in the Reliquiæ Galeanæ. Sir John Clerk, writing from Edinburgh in 1732, remarks,--"Since my last to you I have seen two other bracelets and a large ring, found on the draining of a lake or part of it. There are no letters or inscription, and the make is very clumsy. Each bracelet is in weight six or seven guineas, and their shape thus,[382] of two pieces of gold twisted. The ring is large, and about a guinea in weight."[383]
Another example found about forty years ago in Argyleshire was sold for a trifle to a Glasgow goldsmith, and consigned to the crucible.[384] In 1834, some workmen quarrying stones near the bridge over Douglas Water, Carmichael, Lanarkshire, discovered a pair of armillæ weighing twenty-nine sovereigns, which were destined to the same fate; but fortunately the Marquess of Douglas learned of the discovery in time to repurchase them ere they had been converted into modern trinkets, and they are now safe in that nobleman's possession. Mr. Albert Way illustrates his communication to the Archæological Journal, "On Ancient Armillæ of Gold," &c, with an engraving of one of a very beautiful pair, found in 1848 on the estate of Mr. Dundas of Arniston, at Largo, in Fifeshire, of the same type as those previously discovered in the Loch of Galloway. Mr. Way remarks of them,--"These beautiful ornaments are formed of a thin plate or riband of gold, skilfully twisted, the spiral line being preserved with singular precision. It would be easy to multiply examples of torc ornaments more or less similar in type found in this country, and especially in Ireland; but none that I have seen possess an equal degree of elegance and perfection of workmanship."[385] Mr. Dundas furnishes the following interesting note in relation to the discovery:--"The gold bracelets were found last winter on the top of a steep bank which slopes down to the sea, among some loose earth which was being dug to be carted away. The soil is sandy, and the men had dug about three feet, where the bracelets lay. It was at a place close to the sea-shore, called the Temple, which is part of the village of Lower Largo. An old woman who has lived close to the spot all her days, says that in her youth some coffins were found there, and one man was supposed to have found a treasure, having suddenly become rich enough to build a house." The neighbourhood of Largo Bay is celebrated in the annals of Scottish Archæology for one of the most remarkable hoards ever discovered, described in a later chapter as the "silver armour of Norrie's Law." Only a very small portion of this collection was rescued from the crucible; and the moiety of the Largo Bay relics which escaped the same fate appears to have been even less, if we may credit the extremely probable tradition of the locality. With the wonted perverse modesty of Scottish antiquaries, Mr. Dundas accompanies his account of the latter discovery with a reference to the advantages of the neighbouring bay as a safe anchorage, and the probability of its having been a favourite landing-place of the northern freebooters. How strange is it, that rather than believe in the possibility of the existence of early native art, this improbable theory should have been fostered and bandied about by intelligent writers without contradiction for upwards of a century. If there were no native arts and costly treasures, what, it may be asked, brought northern freebooters to our shores? Surely some less extravagant hypothesis may be suggested than that they crossed the ocean to bury their own golden treasures in our sands. It would seem, on the contrary, to afford undoubted evidence of a tumulus or sepulchral chamber being the work of natives or of resident colonists when it is found to contain objects of value. Only the confidence inspired by the universal recognition of the sacredness of such deposits could induce the abandonment of them under cover only of a few feet of soil. It was not until a very late period--towards the end of the ninth century--that the northmen established a footing even on the remoter Scottish islands; while their possession of any but a very small portion of the mainland in the immediate vicinity of their Orkney possessions was so brief and precarious, that it might well excite our surprise to discover any traces of their presence on the shores of the Forth.
A variety of independent proofs, some of which have already been referred to, amply justify the archæologist in assigning the relics of the Archaic Period of British art to an era long prior to that of the Scandinavian Vikings. But there is not wanting evidence to shew that at the latter period also golden armillæ and other native personal ornaments were common in Scotland, and, indeed, frequently furnished the chief attractions not only to the piratical Vikings who first infested our shores, but to the more civilized northmen who supplanted them, and established trading colonies in the northern and western isles. Though the full consideration of the influence of Scandinavian aggression on early Scottish history belongs to a subsequent section, it will not be out of place to glance at some of these proofs here, tending as they do to shew that there is in reality greater probability in favour of some of the gold relics found in Denmark and Norway being of British origin, than that our native relics should be ascribed to a Scandinavian source.
Snorro tells us of two thanes from Fiord-riki, or the kingdom of the bay, as the southern coast of Fife was called, who, dreading the descent of Olave of Norway on their shores, put themselves under the protection of Canute. Snorro's account is literally,--"To Canute came two kings from Scotland in the north, from Fife; and he gave them up his, and all that land which they had before, and therewith received store of winning gifts, (vingiafir.) This quoth Sigvatr--
'Princes, with bowed heads, Have purchased peace from Canute, From the coast, From the midst of Fife, in the north.'"[386]
Ringa eldingham, or bright rings, are frequently mentioned among the spoils of the Norse rovers; but it is not always easy to tell whether they refer to ornamental rings and bracelets, or to tribute paid with ring-money. In the Norwegian account of Haco's celebrated expedition against Scotland, A.D. 1263, frequent allusions occur to such golden spoils, and especially in the extracts from the "Raven's Ode," a song of Sturla, the Scandinavian bard, whose nephew, Sigvat Bodvarson, attended Haco in this expedition, and most probably supplied to Sturla materials for the narrative of his poem. The Scottish foes are described as terrified by "the steel-clad exactor of rings;" and Haco's reduction of the island of Bute is thus celebrated:--"The wide-extended Bute was won from the forlorn wearers of rings by the renowned and invincible hosts of the promoter of conquest. They wielded the two-edged sword; the foes of our Ruler fell, and the raven, from his field of slaughter, winged his flight for the Hebrides."[387] We find also, in the same poem, Haco restoring the island of Ila to Angus on similar terms to those by which the favour of Canute was purchased:--"Our sovereign, sage in council, the imposer of tribute and brandisher of the keen falchion, directed his long galleys through the Hebrides. He bestowed Ila, taken by his warriors, on the valiant Angus, the distributor of the beauteous ornaments of the hand," i.e., rings or bracelets. Here then we find the northern bard scornfully designating the Scottish foemen as "the forlorn wearers of rings," and their tributary chiefs as the "distributors of the beauteous bracelets." It is by the same name claimed by the Scandinavian poet, "exactors of rings," that the early Irish bards describe the northern warriors who infested their coasts from the ninth to the eleventh centuries; while older allusions abundantly prove their familiarity with the "rings" long before the first descent of the Vikings on their shores. An interesting passage illustrates this in an ancient MS. of the Brehon Laws, preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. The reference is to the wife of Nuada Neacht, King of Leinster, in the first century:--"The Righ of the wife of Nuada, she was used to have her hand (or arm) covered with rings of gold for bestowing them on poets."[388] It is abundantly manifest, therefore, that native artists had learned at a very early period to fabricate the golden armilla, so that the theory of Danish, or of any other foreign origin for these ancient relics, may at once and for ever be dismissed as equally unnecessary and untenable.
Returning from this digression, which more properly belongs to the succeeding section, I am fortunately able, through the kind services of Sir James Ramsay, Bart. of Banff, to present an engraving of another gold armilla, of the same type as those discovered at Largo, in Fifeshire, but found alike remote from any convenient anchorage, or from any known Norwegian settlement on the Scottish shores. It is now the property of Lady Menzies, and though inferior in point of workmanship to those found at Largo, is an exceedingly tasteful example of primitive skill. The original bears obvious traces of the rough marks of the hammer, though they interfere very little with the beautiful reflected lights which its elegant spirals produce. It was found in the north-west of Perthshire, in what is described in Chambers' Gazetteer as "the black wilderness called the Moor of Rannoch; a level tract of country sixteen or twenty miles long, and nearly as many broad, bounded by distant mountains; an open, silent, and solitary scene of desolation; an ocean of blackness and bogs, with a few pools of water, and a long dreary lake." Yet how many such evidences may it contain of an era when the Scottish bogs were luxuriant forests, and such relics were the personal ornaments of the hunters that pursued the chase through their sylvan glades, or of the maidens and matrons that awaited their return! The Rannoch armilla is of sufficient size to encircle a lady's arm; and though exhibiting unmistakable traces of the imperfectly developed art and mechanical skill of the Archaic Period, its beauty is sufficient, in the estimation of its present noble owner, to induce her frequently to wear it along with the more elaborate productions of the modern jeweller's skill. A still more beautiful armilla, of a different type, and manifestly belonging to a later and more perfectly developed era of art, was discovered in 1846, at Slateford, about three miles west from Edinburgh, during the progress of the works required in constructing the Caledonian Railway. The labourer who found it decamped immediately with his prize. It was shewn by him to the Treasurer of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, but while negotiations were pending for its purchase, the discoverer took fright under the apprehension of having his spoil reclaimed, and before the clue could be recovered, it was consigned to the melting-pot. It was justly described by the distinguished Danish antiquary, Mr. Worsaae, who saw it during his visit to Scotland, as a relic that would have adorned any museum in Europe. Its loss affords another painful evidence of the necessity for some modification of the Scottish law of treasure-trove, as well as for a comprehensive system for the preservation of primitive works of native art. Fortunately a fac-simile was made of it previous to its destruction, and is now preserved in the Scottish Museum. Torcs of a similar type, terminating in solid cylindrical ends, are described by Mr. Birch as not uncommon, and are referred to a late period, possibly the fourth or fifth century.[389] Unfortunately no account could be obtained of the circumstances under which the Slateford Armilla was discovered. One nearly similar, found in Cheshire, and now in the possession of Sir Philip de Grey Egerton, is engraved in Dr. Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities," with other so-called Roman relics of unquestionable native origin.
The bronze armillæ clearly assignable to the Archaic Period are mostly of a very simple character, consisting either of solid or penannular rings, or more rarely of a thin spiral band of the metal. They are much rarer, however, in any form than those of gold. The following account of the discovery of bracelets in situ, in the parish of Glenholm, Peeblesshire, is possessed of peculiar interest, though we have to regret, as in so many other instances, the absence of more precise information. "There is a plain by the side of Tweed on which there are several mounts, apparently artificial. The proprietor had the curiosity to cause one of them to be digged, and there found the skeleton of a man, with bracelets on his arms. The body was inclosed in a stone building, with a stone cover, and nigh him was an urn."[390] In another grave opened at Westray in Orkney, a gold ring was found encircling one of the thigh-bones of the skeleton.[391] Similar examples are familiar to Scandinavian antiquaries.
The torc as well as the funicular armilla and other relics of corresponding type, though known to the Romans, were regarded by them as barbarian decorations. Like so many others of the characteristic peculiarities of the Celtæ, they are clearly traceable to an Eastern origin. The torc is introduced at Persepolis among the tribute brought to Darius; and in the mosaic of Pompeii, Darius and his officers are represented wearing it at the battle of Arbela.[392] Titus Manlius Torquatus took the golden torc from whence he derived his name from a Gaul he slew in single combat B.C. 361: and its first appearance in Italian art is round the neck of the moustached Gaulish hero, whose head forms the obverse of the As of Arminium, decorated probably according to the fashion of his country, four centuries before the Christian era. Still more interesting is its occurrence on the neck of the dying gladiator, the masterpiece of Ctesilaus. In this historic example of the torc, it is funicular with bulbous terminations, resembling one seen on the Sarcophagus of the Vigna Amendola, representing, as is believed, the exploits of the Romans over the Gauls or Britons. So far then from the torc being either Romish or Danish, it may be regarded as the most characteristic relic of primitive Celtic and Teutonic art, brought with the British Celtæ from the East centuries before the era of Rome's foundation, and familiar only to the Roman as one of the barbaric spoils which adorned the procession of a triumphant general, or marked the foreign captive that he dragged in his reluctant train.
In addition to torcs, armlets, and other ornaments for the neck and arms, metal rings of various kinds have been found in Scotland as in other countries, to which, though apparently designed for personal ornament, it is more difficult to assign an exact purpose. Several of these will fall to be described in the following section, as from their well defined characteristics more probably pertaining to the latest Pagan era; but others completely agree in their archaic style and workmanship with undoubted relics of the Bronze Period. To this class belong various bronze rings, generally with broad expanded ends overlapping each other, corresponding to a well-known class of continental antiquities, which the northern archæologists believe to have been worn about the head and entwined with the hair. Two of these, of very rude workmanship, now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, were found a few years since about 300 yards from a large cairn, in the parish of Lumphanan, Aberdeenshire, which popular local tradition affirms to mark the spot where Macbeth fell by the hand of the Thane of Fife. One of these is figured here on a small scale. Its dimensions, however, are abundantly sufficient to admit of its encircling the head, and both ends terminate in broad flattened plates, probably designed to rest on the forehead. Similar features occur in those of a later date and much more ornamental character, some of which are referred to in a future chapter. With this class also may be noted, among the relics belonging to the period in the same collection, an annulus of bronze, hollowed on the under side, measuring two and three-fourths inches in greatest diameter; and several bronze rings of various sizes, the largest three and a quarter inches in diameter, found in an urn in the parish of Kinneff, Kincardineshire.
Smaller personal ornaments were also made of bronze, and occur among the works of a later period frequently characterized by great beauty of form and delicacy of ornament. The woodcut represents a bronze ring-fibula, of simple but somewhat peculiar design, and a spiral bronze ring, both the size of the originals. They were found about nine years since, during the construction of a new road leading from Granton Pier to Edinburgh, in a small stone cist, distant only about twenty yards from the sea-shore. It contained two skeletons, which from the position of the bones and the square and circumscribed form of the cist, appeared to have been interred in a sitting posture. Mr. C. R. Smith has figured a bronze fibula of the same type, though of ruder workmanship, among the numerous relics pertaining to various periods found at Richborough in Kent.[393] Several examples of the spiral finger-ring have been found in Britain with remains of different periods. They are also known to northern antiquaries among the older relics of Denmark and Sweden. This may indeed be regarded as one of the earliest forms of the ring, since it is only at a comparatively late period that we discover any traces of a knowledge of the art of soldering among the native metallurgists. A silver ring of the same early type, formed one of the personal ornaments in the celebrated Norrie's Law hoard, found on the opposite shores of the Frith of Forth.
Hair-pins and bodkins are another class of relics contained in the tombs of this period, generally of bronze, though they have occasionally been met with, and especially in Ireland, both of gold and silver, and richly set with jewels. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharp, Esq., has in his possession three magnificent ornaments of the latter class, formerly in the collection of Major Surr, such as might rival the most costly and elaborate works of the modern jeweller. Among the rarest and most curious forms of the bronze pin is that with a head hollowed like a cup; one of which has already been referred to, found along with a variety of other bronze relics, in a bog in the Isle of Skye, and now in the possession of Lord Macdonald. It exactly corresponds to an Irish example engraved in the Archæological Journal. Others have the head decorated with a variety of grooves and mouldings, and occasionally perforated, as if for attaching to them some pendulous ornament. Perforated bronze implements are likewise found, which it can hardly be doubted were used as needles; and among the rare and most perishable contents of the tumuli have occasionally been recovered small fragments of knitted or woven tissues, the productions of the primitive weaver whose bones crumble into dust on being exposed, and almost literally vanish before our eyes. Douglas engraves in the Nenia some interesting fragments of such ancient manufactures, of the herring-bone pattern, found on opening some tumuli in Greenwich Park. But by far the most perfect specimen I have ever seen was procured by Dr. Samuel Hibbert, about the year 1838, from some labourers who had found it on the chance exposure of a stone cist, while excavating for railway work, near Micklegate Bar, York. This valuable relic is now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. It appears to be a sleeve, or the covering for the leg, and somewhat resembles the hose worn by the south-country Scottish farmers, drawn over their ordinary dress as part of their riding gear. It has been knitted, a process which doubtless preceded the art of weaving, probably by many centuries. The fabric is still strong, and, in careful keeping, may long suffice to illustrate the domestic manufactures of the ancient Briton. This is one of the examples to which reference has been made in a former chapter, as shewing the source to which it is conceived some of the ornamental designs on the early British pottery are traceable; though the resemblance is less striking here than in some more imperfect specimens of such products of the primitive knitting needle or loom. The accompanying woodcut, representing a portion of the knitted fabric, will enable the reader who is familiar with the style of ornamentation on the pottery of the tumuli, to judge for himself how far this idea is justified by the correspondence traceable between them.
In 1786 a much more complete specimen was found, seventeen feet below the surface of an Irish bog in the county of Longford. It is described by Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, in a Report to the Commissioners for improving the bogs in Ireland, as "a woollen coat of coarse but even net-work, exactly in the form of what is now called a spencer." Iron arrow-heads, large wooden bowls, some only half made, with what were supposed to be the remains of turning tools, lay alongside of it. The coat was presented by Mr. Edgeworth to the Society of Antiquaries, but is no longer known to exist. Possibly it rapidly decayed, as all such relies must be apt to do on exposure to the air; or perchance its history was lost sight of, in which case its value would appear very slight in the estimation of the ordinary class of curators.
In 1822 Professor Stuart of Aberdeen communicated to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland an interesting account of the opening of a tumulus at Fetteresso, Kincardineshire.[394] Within it was found a stone cist about four feet in length, containing a skeleton, with the legs so bent back that the knees almost touched the lower end of the cist. The bottom was strewed with round sea pebbles from the neighbouring beach. Above this appeared some vegetable substance, in which the body had been imbedded, and over that, covering the whole, a tissue of wrought net-work, beautifully executed, but which, along with all the other contents, crumbled to dust soon after being exposed to the air. A great number of small black balls were found surrounding the body, plainly vegetable, and described as closely resembling acorns. At the top of the cist there seemed to have been placed a fresh sod or turf, which still retained the impression of the head that had been pillowed on it ages before, though no parts of the skull, nor even any of the teeth, were found. Some of the hair, however, four or five inches long, and of an auburn colour, still remained, and over the breast were seen the remains of a small box of an oval shape, apparently of wood elegantly carved; but this also speedily crumbled to powder. In the month of November 1847, another cist was discovered about an hundred yards to the south of the Fetteresso tumulus, which may with much probability be assumed as a female grave; and if so, adds another to the examples already noted of the occurrence of the Scottish sepulchral urn accompanying female remains. The cist measured only three feet in length, by two feet in breadth, and contained a human skeleton which appeared to have been laid on the right side with the face to the south. The limbs were bent according to the usual disposition of the body in the circumscribed cist, and one of the leg bones seemed to have been broken. A rude urn, about six inches deep, lay as if it had been folded in the arms of the deceased, and upwards of a hundred jet beads, which had no doubt formed a necklace, were found beside the breast.
FOOTNOTES:
[338] Solinus, c. xxii. Bede Hist. lib. i. c. 1. Collectanea Antiqua, C. R. Smith, vol. i. p. 174.
[339] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. i. p. 330.
[340] Ibid. vol. xvi. p. 482.
[341] Ibid. vol. v. p. 392.
[342] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 49.
[343] New Stat. Acc. vol. xi. p. 147.
[344] Ancient Wiltshire, Plates XII. and XXXIV.
[345] Journal of Archæol. Assoc. vol. ii. p. 234.
[346] Vol. ii. p. 235.
[347] Vide John Sydenham "On the Kimmeridge Coal Money," Archæological Journal, vol. i. p. 347; and Journal of the Archæological Association, vol. i. p. 325, where accurate engravings of the "coal money" are given.
[348] New Statistical Account, vol. iv., Wigtonshire, p. 142.
[349] "Fugat serpentes ita, recreatque vulvæ strangulationes. Deprehendit sonticum morbum, et virginitatem suffitus. Hoc dicuntur uti Magi in ea, quam vocant axinomantiam: et peruri negant, si eventurum sit, quod aliquis optet."--Pliny, lib. xxxvi. cap. 34.
[350] Communication by Mr. Joseph Train to the New Statist. Acc. vol. iv., Kirkcudbrightshire, p. 196.
[351] Ure's Hist. of Rutherglen and Kilbride, p. 219.
[352] Portes, Coloniæ, &c. Append. 18, and Plate III.
[353] Sinclair's Statistical Account, vol. ix. p. 53.
[354] Ure's Rutherglen and Kilbride, p. 217, and Plate I.
[355] Sinclair's Statistical Account, vol. ix. p. 52.
[356] New Statist. Acc. vol. v. p. 454.
[357] Collectanea Antiqua, C. R. Smith, vol. i. p. 174.
[358] On the Tings of Orkney and Shetland. Archæol. Scotica, vol. iii. p. 120.
[359] Boece gives the following quaint description of amber, affording evidence of the mode of its introduction, though sufficiently extravagant in the style of its theorizing:--"Amang the rochis and craggis of thir ilis growis ane maner of electuar and goum, hewit like gold, and sa attractive of nature, that it drawis stra, flox, or hemmis of claithis to it, in the samin maner as dois ane adamont stane. This goume is generat of see froith, quhilk is cassin up be continewal repercussion of craggis againis the see wallis; and throw ithand motioun of the see it growis als teuch as glew, ay mair and mair; quhill, at last, it fallis doun of the crag in the see.... Twa yeir afore the cumin of this buke to licht, arrivit ane gret lomp of this goum in Buchquhane, als mekle as ane hors; and wes brocht hame be the hirdis quhilkis wer kepand thair beistis, to thair housis, and cassin in the fire. And becaus thay fand ane smelland odour thairwith, thay schew to thair maister that it wes ganand for the sens that is made in the kirkis. Thair maister wes ane rud man as thay wer, and tuke bot ane litill part thairof. The maist pairt wes destroyit afore it come to ony wise mannis eris; of quhome may be verifyit the proverb,--'The sow curis na balme.' Als sone as I wes advertist thairof, I maid sic diligence, that ane part of it wes brocht to me at Abirdene." Bellenden's Boece. The Cosmographie, chap. xv.
[360] Ure's Rutherglen, p. 164, Plate I.
[361] Vol iv. Plate XII.
[362] Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, vol. vi. p 270.
[363] Archæol. Journal, vol. vi. p. 57.
[364] Ibid. p. 48.
[365] Archæol. Jour. vol. vi. p. 56.
[366] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. x. p. 402.
[367] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xvii. p. 238.
[368] Sir R. C. Hoare describes a somewhat similar plated relic, found in a tumulus near Amesbury, along with objects of gold.--Ancient Wilts. vol. i. p. 201, Plate XXV.
[369] This may be assumed possibly as affording some confirmation of a theory suggested to me by an ingenious friend, that these rings were used in infibulation; a practice not unknown to the Romans. Martial thus alludes to it, (lib. ix. epig. 28):--
"Occurrit aliquis inter ista si draucus, Jam pædagogo liberatus, et cujus Refibulavit turgidum faber penem."
The subject is treated at great length in "Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains," &c., par M. de P... London, 1771.--"Pour brider les garçons, on leur mettoit dans le prépuce un anneau d'or ou d'argent, tellement rejoint par les extrémités qu'on ne pouvoit plus l'ouvrir qu'avec une lime; et c'est ce que les Romains nommoient refibulare."--Vol. ii. p. 123. The same Recherches Philosophiques include minute details of several kindred processes under the head, La manière d'infibuler le sexe,--e.g., "Parmi d'autres nations de l'Asie et de l'Afrique, on fait passer par les extrémités des nymphes opposées un anneau, qui dans les filles est tellement enchassé qu'on ne peut le déplacer qu'en le limant," &c.--Ibid. pp. 119-121.
[370] Vol. vi. p. 56.
[371] Caledonia, vol. i. p. 129.
[372] Archæol. Jour. vol. vi. p. 59.
[373] The skeleton is described by Mr. James Drummond, surgeon, Alloa, in a letter to the Secretary of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, of date 8th March 1828, as "bearing no marks of the action of fire, but from the position of the bones, the body must have been placed neck and heels together when interred." A third urn was found a few feet from the cist, filled, like the two others, with ashes and half-burnt bones.
[374] New Stat. Acc. vol. v. Buteshire, p. 23.
[375] Archæol. Journal, vol. vi. p. 60. It is only from analogy, and the want of more appropriate terms, that these relics can be called rings, many being less than semicircles. Possibly, however, the term suggested in the text may suffice to designate them by, at least till the establishment of some theory as to their use shall supply a more precise name. The term calicinated fibulæ would be preferable, did it not assume a use still open to challenge.
[376] Bibliotheca Topog. Brit. vol. ii. p. 280. Plate VI. fig. 5.
[377] Vol. iv. p. 217, Plate X.
[378] The drawing is simply marked "a gold collar found at Braidwood Castle, Edinburghshire," but there can be little doubt of its being the same referred to in the text. The additional particulars concerning it have been communicated to me by a lady who had often heard of this discovery in her younger days, as one of the remarkable events of her native place.
[379] New Statist. Acc. vol. vi. p. 57.
[380] New Statist. Acc. vol. xii. p. 1061.
[381] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xi. p. 24.
[382] Biblio. Topog. Brit. vol. ii. Plate VI. fig. 8.
[383] Ibid. p. 299.
[384] New Statist. Acc. vol. vii. p. 206.
[385] Archæol. Journal, vol. vi. p. 54.
[386] Notes to "Lodbrokar-Quida." Rev. J. Johnstone. Denmark, 1782.
[387] Haco's Expedition, Rev. J. Johnstone, p. 65.
[388] Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland. 8vo. P. 215.
[389] Archæological Journal, vol. ii. p. 379.
[390] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. iv. p. 435.
[391] Nenia Britannica, p. 76. In the Guide to Northern Archæology, p. 54, reference is made to similar discoveries in Denmark; and I am informed by Dr. Ludwig Becker of a skeleton with several penannular bronze rings on the arm bones, found recently in a large tumulus near Mayence.
[392] This interesting inquiry is entered on at large by Mr. Samuel Birch, in two able articles on the Torc of the Celts. Archæological Journal, vol. ii. p. 360, and vol. iii. p. 27.
[393] Antiquities of Richborough, Reculver, and Lymne, p. 85.
[394] Archæologia Scotica, vol. ii. p. 462.
VII. SEPULCHRES
The tombs of the Bronze Period appear to differ, in various important respects, from those which are clearly assignable to the Primeval Period. Some of their peculiar features have already been noticed, in describing the circumstances under which sepulchral pottery and their relics have been met with; but others equally characteristic of the first era of development and progress remain to be described. To this epoch, as has been already observed, it seems probable that we must assign the introduction of the practice of cremation, while the huge cromlechs and chambered barrows and cairns, appear to have been abandoned along with the simpler rites of primitive inhumation, for the smaller cist and cinerary urn. To this period also we can have little hesitation in ascribing the earliest attempts at sculpture or inscription which are met with on primitive sepulchral memorials. The two most remarkable examples of sculptured monolithic structures hitherto explored are the celebrated chambered cairn of Newgrange, in the county of Meath, and that on the small island of Gavr' Innis in Brittany. These gigantic and complicated works appear indeed to pertain to the transition between the Primeval and Archaic Periods, and partake at once of the earliest cyclopean characteristics and the later ornamental decorations.
An abridged extract of the account furnished by Mr. J. W. Lukis of the remarkable structure of Gavr' Innis will best illustrate the peculiar features of such decorated sepulchral chambers. Gavr' Innis is a small island, about a quarter of a mile in length, situated in the department du Morbihan, Brittany. It is elevated somewhat above the neighbouring islands, and with its tumulus, which still covers the cromlech, forms one of the most conspicuous objects of the inland Archipelago. The tumulus is about thirty feet high, and three hundred feet in circumference. The cromlech beneath forms a large central chamber, with a passage, constructed like it of huge masses of granite, leading out to the south side of the mound.
"Being furnished," says Mr. Lukis, "with candles, I entered the cromlech Gavr' Innis by a small opening at the south end, which is between three and four feet wide, by about the same in height. Having reached the third and fourth props, my attention was at once arrested by finding them covered with engraved lines, forming patterns resembling the tattooing of the New Zealander. On proceeding farther into the interior the height increased, rendering the passage to the end more easy; and I found nearly the whole of the props covered with similarly engraved lines. Here there is much to excite admiration at the regularity and beauty of so extraordinary a place; and on turning to a prop on the western side, the imagination is farther exercised to perceive the purpose or use of three circular holes, sunk into the face of the stone, each about six inches deep, and the same in diameter: they communicate with each other, and form a sort of trough within the stone. It is divided in front by two raised parts resembling in form the handles to a jar."[395]
Other cromlechs in Brittany are similarly decorated; and Mr. Lukis arrives at the conclusion that in some of them the stones must have been engraved prior to their erection, from the ornaments extending round the sides which are now covered by adjoining stones. The sculptured decorations at Newgrange are no less remarkable, and the same observation has been made in regard to them, that the carvings must have been executed before the stones upon which they appear had been placed in their present positions. We shall not probably err in assigning as contemporaneous works with these rare and most primitive examples of sculptured sepulchral chambers, the rude cists occasionally found decorated with similar devices, though otherwise entirely unhewn. The annexed view of one of these incised slabs is engraved from a drawing presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Colonel Hugh Montgomery of Shielmorly, in 1785, and subsequently transferred to the Society of Antiquaries. It formed the cover of a cist, discovered in digging a gravel-pit at Coilsfield, in Ayrshire, and underneath it was found an urn filled with incinerated bones. The dimensions of the stone were about five feet in length by two and a half feet in breadth. The original drawing includes the representation of the portion of the urn shewn here, which it will be seen presents only the usual characteristics of primitive sepulchral pottery. A subsequent discovery of cinerary urns at the same spot has been assumed to authenticate one of the many dubious incidents recorded by our earlier chroniclers in relation to a no less celebrated hero than "Old King Coil." Near Coilsfield House is a large tumulus, crowned with two huge blocks of granite, which local tradition affirmed to mark the place of sepulture of the redoubted hero, of whom Boece records,--"King Coyll, unwarly kepit be his nobilis, was slane, in memory wherof the place quhare he was slane wes namit efter Coyll; quhilk regioun remanis yit under the same name, or litill different thairfra, callit now Kyle."[396] Certain zealous local antiquaries having resolved to put tradition to the test, the tumulus was opened in 1837, and found to inclose a cist covered by a circular stone about three feet in diameter, beneath which four plain urns were disposed, the largest of which measured nearly eight inches in height. The author of a recent topographical work on the district of Kyle has gravely assumed this discovery as giving "to the traditionary evidence, and to the statements of early Scottish historians in regard to Coil, except with respect to the date, a degree of probability higher than they formerly possessed!"[397] What more might not the antiquaries of Kyle have been able to establish had they known of the older discovery on the same spot, and of the mysterious symbols traced on the sepulchral stone!
Another cist, decorated with concentric circles in a manner nearly similar to the Coilsfield stone, was exposed a few years since in constructing the road which leads from South Queensferry through the Craigiehall estate. It still remains, nearly perfect, in the high bank on the side of the road, the end of the cist only having been removed, and the covering slab left in its place. It contained bones and ashes, without any urn. In Mr. J. Walker Ord's "History and Antiquities of Cleveland," an interesting account is given of the opening of some tumuli on Bernaldby Moor, in 1843, in one of which--a bell-shaped barrow--was found a remarkably fine cinerary urn sixteen and a half inches high, covered with an unhewn slab carved with rude devices similar in style to those described above. Of the same class also is another slab figured here, the drawing of which was made by George Scott, the friend of Mungo Park, who accompanied him to Africa and died there. It was forwarded to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland by Sir Walter Scott, in 1828, who described the original as a rough sandstone, about six feet long by perhaps two and a half broad, which was raised by the plough at a place called Annan Street, upon the farm of Wheathope. The drawing is designated, probably by the original draftsman, "a Druid stone found at Annan Street, figured with the sun and moon." Little doubt can be entertained that it had formed the cover of a cist, though few probably will now be inclined to attempt a solution of the enigmatic devices rudely traced on its surface. The spot where it was found is about half a mile from the church of Yarrow, and close by there are two large stones, about 120 yards apart, which are believed to mark the scene of the memorable struggle that has given "The dowie houms of Yarrow" so touching a place in the beautiful legendary poetry of Scotland. Thus does the human mind delight to give a local habitation to the mythic and traditional characters and incidents that take hold on the fancy, whether it be the old mythological smith Wayland, associated with the cromlech of Berkshire; the fabulous King Coil, and the sepulchral barrow of Ayrshire; or The Flower of Yarrow, the creation of some nameless Scottish minstrel, whose pathetic ballad will live as long as our language endures.
The rude attempts at sculpture figured here are certainly as artless, and to us as meaningless, as the chance traces of wind and tide on the deserted sea-beach. Doubtless they had a meaning and an object once, and were not produced without the expenditure both of time and labour by the primitive artist, provided almost for the first time with metallic tools. To us they are simply of value as probably indicating the infantile efforts of the old British sculptor, and the rudiments of the art to which we owe such gorgeous piles as the Cathedral of Salisbury, and such sculptures as those of Wells and York. Even as the parent delights to trace in the prattle of his child the promises of future years, the archæologist may be pardoned if he is sometimes tempted to linger too fondly on those infantile efforts of the human race until he sees in them the germ of future arts, the first attempts at symbolic prefigurements, and the rudiments of those representative signs from which have sprung letters and all that followed in their train.
The most interesting and characteristic features, however, which the tombs of the Bronze Period disclose, are the weapons and implements deposited alongside of the deceased, or inclosed with his ashes in the cinerary urn. Much variety is traceable in the design as well as in the mode of disposing of these enduring tokens of reverence and affection. But we have already examined them with sufficient minuteness, and have found a distinctive uniformity traceable throughout the whole; marking with no doubtful features the products of an epoch in which we discern the germ of all future progress, and the dawn of that civilisation the full development of which we are now privileged to enjoy.
FOOTNOTES:
[395] Journal of the Archæological Association, vol. iii. p. 272.
[396] Bellenden's Boece, book i. chap. ix.
[397] Land of Burns, vol. i. p 82.
VIII. RELIGION, ARTS, AND DOMESTIC HABITS
The title of this chapter, as of some others of those relating to British history prior to the first century of the Christian era, may perhaps appear to readers of indices as not a little presumptuous. These chapters deal exclusively with a period believed to have long preceded written history, and of which we possess no other records than those that have been garnered in the grave, wherein is "no knowledge," or chance-found amid the alluvium and peat-mosses, in which the geologist discerns many evidences of antiquity, but from which he has yet failed to deduce any defined measure that will help us to their age. Still we have found, in the ruder productions of the primitive period, that the simplest works of man bear some ineffaceable traces of his intelligence. The sagacious inductions of Cuvier have met with universal acceptation in their definition of the form, the size, the food, and the general haunts and habits of the Megalonyx, a gigantic antediluvian sloth, only a few disjointed bones of which are known to exist. We need not therefore despair of learning somewhat of the early Caledonian, of his habits, his thoughts, and even of his faith, when we are able to refer to so many specimens of his handiwork and inventive design, and retain some relics of his ruined temples, and abundant illustrations of his sepulchral rites. It is by simple induction, however, that the discovery of such truths is aimed at. Intentionally, at least, no rein is given here to fanciful speculation, nor are any theories advanced but such as are believed to be based on the suggestive aspects of ascertained truths.
We have no reason to assume that the aboriginal Caledonian of the Bronze Period ever carried civilisation so far as materially to affect the social character of the community. The patriarchal system of tribes or clans, we may presume, continued nearly as we know them to have existed at the first dawn of written history, or, at most, were only modified by the union of a greater or less number of petty tribes under some general chief. Many improvements on the accommodation and conveniencies of the native hut and its furnishings would necessarily result from the possession of metallic tools. With these only could the art of the carpenter be developed, and the implements of husbandry and the chase, as well as the weapons of war, be moulded into useful and convenient forms. The clothing also, we have seen, was aided by the ingenuity and skill of feminine arts. The skins of the deer or the wild bull, as well as of the fox, the hare, and the smaller fur-clad animals, would thus be superseded in part, and fashioned, where they were retained, with such improved taste as made them correspond to the beautiful ornaments of the period. Of very much of this all evidence has disappeared, but enough remains to prove that the Caledonian of the Bronze Period was no naked painted savage. Whether the ingenious knitters of the garments, the precious fragments of which have occasionally been rescued from the tumuli, had learned to adorn them with any interwoven parti-colours may be doubted; but the learned Scottish antiquary, Dr. Jamieson, has already suggested the Gaelic breac, signifying parti-coloured, and breacan, a tartan plaid, as perhaps the true source of derivation of the name Gallia Braccata, which would thus refer to the colour rather than to the fashion of the Celtic dress. We know certainly, from the sculptures on Trajan's column, that the Bracæ were not so unfamiliar to the Romans as to be adopted as the peculiar characteristic of a single race. It is to be borne in remembrance, however, that in so far as this archæological period is strictly defined to include only the era of Archaic art, and the working in gold, copper, and bronze, prior to the knowledge or economic use of iron, it must be assigned to an epoch which had drawn to a close before the Britons were known to the Romans, unless by vague traditions indirectly acquired through Carthage or Spain, or by the imperfect notices of the Cassiterides to be found in the pages of early Greek writers.
An interesting inquiry suggests itself in relation to this as to all unknown states of society--What was the social position of woman? To this the answer we can at present give is very uncertain. But the traces already noted are not such as to discourage all hope of attaining to greater definiteness and certainty. The frequent occurrence of what appear to be female personal ornaments among the contents of the Scottish tumuli, seems to afford satisfactory indications that woman possessed, at that early era, somewhat of the equality of social position which still peculiarly characterizes the races of Northern Europe. Further investigations can hardly fail to add more certainty to our deductions, while they may also greatly enlarge the evidence on which they are based. For the rest, we infer with more certainty that the dog was the chosen companion of man in these old days, as he is still; for the bones of the buried favourite have been frequently found laid beside his master's urn. Doubtless his value in the chase was well known, and his fidelity fully recognised at the hearth. Whether the horse had also become, thus early, man's useful companion and servant, appears still open to further inquiry. Probably not till the succeeding era had fairly brought its civilizing influences into full operation, did the Briton establish his dominion over the noble and intelligent quadruped which assumed so important a place in the symbolism and mythology of his latest Pagan creed; though the investigations of the geologist leave no room to question its presence prior to, if not contemporarily with the earliest colonists of the British Isles. From diverse points, and by various means, we thus seek to catch a glimpse of those old historic eras. But, with all such aids, our view must be owned to be sufficiently slight, and our outline to stand in need of much filling in, before we can picture as we would wish to do, the intelligent Briton of that old time when he was still, perhaps, a barbarian, but had ceased to be a savage, and is therefore the just object of our earnest sympathy as the originator of much the beneficent results of which we even now inherit.
This first era of civilisation, which succeeded the introduction of metals and is known as the Bronze or Archaic Period, manifestly differs, in many essential points, from that primeval period previously considered. It is the birth-time of native arts wherein we discern the possibility of still better things. There pertains to it an interest altogether peculiar. Its acquired knowledge probably long exceeded its means. Copper and bronze could at no time be so plentifully supplied as to admit of the facilities to which the abundance and cheapness of iron have for so many centuries accustomed us. With a thorough knowledge of the superiority of metals, the ingenious artificer was compelled, throughout the whole Bronze Period, to manufacture nearly all his bulkier implements of stone. Still he was being educated, so that when the greater facilities did come within his reach, he was able to avail himself of them. We must look, indeed, upon this whole period, as upon the early years of an intelligent child--rich with the freshness, the originality, and the unconscious simplicity of youth. Its efforts are extremely unequal, blending the most Archaic works with occasional productions rivalling the ingenuity and taste of the polished eras which have succeeded. We detect, moreover, the evidences of a social state wherein the value of combined operations had still to be learned, and where isolation led to abundant manifestations of ingenuity and skill, without producing any immediate results beyond the little sphere of the native hut, or hamlet, or patriarchal clanship. We discover, indeed, nothing inconsistent with such a social and political state as we know to have pertained among the most civilized British tribes in the century immediately preceding the Christian era, when, for the first time, we are able to look upon them with the aid of definite, though somewhat prejudiced and disparaging narratives of classic historians. I would only add, that there appears no shadow of evidence thus far discoverable, on which to found a single doubt as to the indigenous character of British relics of the Primeval and Archaic Periods. As to the favourite idea of their Danish origin, it is altogether absurd and irreconcilable with known facts. Nothing is more certainly established in the history of these northern races, and, indeed, involved in the nature of things, than that, long before the Scandinavian races emerged from the viks and fiords of the north, the Archaic Periods both of Scandinavian and British arts had been superseded by others more compatible with the social status which such aggressive movements very manifestly indicate.
The term Archaic has been adopted as a definition of this era, because, in the sense which is now most generally attached to it, it peculiarly applies to the artistic productions of the period. The ornamentation is almost without exception only improvements on the accidents of manufacture. The incised decorations of the pottery appear, in many cases, to have been produced simply by passing twisted cords round the soft clay. More complicated designs, most frequently consisting of chevron, saltire, or herring-bone patterns, where they are not merely the primary results of a combination of such lines, have been suggested, as I conceive, by the few and half-accidental patterns of the industrious female knitter. In no single case is any attempt made at the imitation of a leaf or flower, of animals, or any other simple natural objects. It is curious, indeed, and noteworthy, to find how entirely every trace of imitative art is absent in the British Archaic relics, for it is by no means an invariable characteristic of the primitive arts of Allophylian nations. The objects recovered from the sepulchral mounds of the Great Valley of the Mississippi, as well as in the regions of Mexico and Yucatan, display, along with the weapons and implements of stone, silex, and obsidian, numerous indications of imitative design. Among the relics of the aboriginal mound-builders of the Great Valley especially, pipe-heads, tubes, masks, and a great variety of nondescript articles, are often characterized by evidences of very considerable ingenuity and imitative skill. Even the pottery is occasionally moulded into the forms of animals, and when only decorated with lines these are very frequently arranged in such definite or flowing patterns as suggest their derivation from flowers and other objects in nature.[398] The natives of the Polynesian Islands display a similar though perhaps inferior taste in their clubs, paddles, and mallets, the prows of their boats, and numerous other objects, carving them into grotesque imitations of human and other animal forms.
The indefinite and Archaic character which marks the ornamentation of the early British pottery, characterizes the most elaborate and costly ornaments of gold. Though the peculiar form of one class of gold ornaments found in the British Isles has suggested a name for it derived from the calix of a flower, which the cups of its rings seem in some degree to resemble, yet no example has been found bearing the slightest traces of ornament suggestive of such similarity having been detected by the old British goldsmith. Where incised lines are superinduced upon the flower-like forms, they are the old chevron and saltire patterns of the rude clay pottery, though executed with considerable delicacy and taste. It is obvious that ideas of comparison, which enter so largely into the spirit of modern artistic design, and also form so considerable an element in the more artificial poetic compositions of modern bards, were altogether undeveloped in these old times. Art was, in fact, the child of necessity, and continued to receive the adjuncts of adornment from the same sources from whence it had first derived its convenient but arbitrary forms.
The gold "sceptre head" found at Cairnmure in Peeblesshire, and engraved on a former page, is one of the very few examples of defined forms of ornamentation found along with objects some of which at least may admit of being classed with those belonging to this period. They are still arbitrary, and, strictly speaking, not imitative, though they approach towards forms directly imitative, or at least designed to be representative, with which we shall become familiar in the succeeding era. Little doubt, however, can be entertained that the sceptre head belongs to the succeeding era. The funicular torc was undoubtedly in use in the latest Pagan period, and the whole Cairnmure hoard may very consistently be assigned to it. The large ornaments on the sceptre head, though very partially defined, resemble in some degree the "snake-pattern," which forms one of the commonest decorations of the last Pagan era. The woodcut exhibits a much more characteristic primitive symbol of office. It is the gold lituus dug up in the year 1824, within the monolithic circle of Leys, Inverness-shire. The parts united together form a rod nearly eighteen inches long, the rude workmanship of which strikingly contrasts with the delicate though imperfectly defined ornamentation of the Cairnmure sceptre head.[399] This entire absence of imitation in the primitive British arts is an important fact in its bearing on our present inquiries, seeing that it is not a universal or even a very general characteristic of Allophylian nations. The relics, as we have seen, recovered from the sepulchral mounds of the Great Valley of the Mississippi, as well as in the regions of Mexico and Yucatan, display numerous indications of imitative skill. The same is observable in the arts of various tribes of Africa, Polynesia, and of other modern races in an equally primitive state. What is to be specially noted in connexion with this is, that both in the ancient and modern examples, the imitative arts accompany the existence of idols, and the abundant evidences of an idolatrous worship. So far as we yet know the converse holds true in relation to the primitive British races, and as a marked importance is justly attached to the contrasting creeds and modes of worship and polity of the Allophylian and Arian nations, I venture to throw out this suggestion as not unworthy of further consideration.[400] Yet we are not entirely dependent on negative evidence in relation to the primitive creed. We are led to the conclusion that the ancient Briton lived in the belief of a future state, and of some doctrine of probation and of final retribution, from the constant deposition beside the dead, not only of weapons, implements, and personal ornaments, but also of vessels which may be presumed to have contained food and drink. That his ideas of a future state bore little resemblance to "the life and immortality brought to light by the Gospel," is abundantly manifest from the same evidence. Somewhat, however, is added to our knowledge of his religion, if the inference be admitted to be a legitimate one which deduces from the absence of all imitation of natural objects in his ornamental designs, the conclusion that idolatry has pertained under no form to the worship of the native Briton. Whether his religion was a fetish-worship, with spells and strange magical rites; or that he brought from his far eastern birthland the Chaldean star-worship or the Persian fire-worship; or knelt to Sylvanus and the Campestres Æterni Britanniæ,--the supposed haunters of his native fields and forests, to whom the Roman legions afterwards reared altars and poured out libations,--it seems consistent with all analogy to conclude that no visible forms were worshipped within the Caledonian groves or monolithic temples. Julius Cæsar, in his oft-quoted account of the Druids, describes the Gauls as much addicted to religious observances, and names Mars, Apollo, Jupiter, Minerva, and Mercury, as objects of their worship. Of Mercury especially, he adds, they have many images, and they esteem him as the inventor of the arts. This, however, might be true enough of the continental Gauls of that late period, who had then long been partially brought into contact with the Romans, and yet be totally inapplicable to the Caledonians, who had no direct knowledge of them for fully a century after the date of Cæsar's first landing on the white cliffs of England. As to the theories relating to Celtic Druidism, concerning which so much has been written, an opinion has already been expressed. It is one of the many branches of primitive history, in which, after having perused all the ponderous tomes which have been devoted to its elucidation, the archæologist returns with renewed satisfaction to the trustworthy though imperfect and scanty records which he finds in the relics of primitive invention and archaic design. The truths contained in these ample dissertations are mostly too few and uncertain to be worth the labour of sifting them from the heap in which they may be buried, at the rate of about a grain of truth to a bushel of fancy. Still, from the authentic allusions of classic writers, we may safely conclude thus far, that a native priesthood exercised a most important influence over the later Celtic and Teutonic races of Britain, as appears to have been the case among most of the nations of the Indo-European family.
In the present state of archæological inquiry, it would be presumptuous to assign dogmatically the precise races to which the arts of each period pertain. Still the indications both of archæological and direct historical evidence manifestly point to the Celtæ as comparatively late intruders, and leave us to seek, with little hesitation, in their Allophylian precursors for the metallurgists of the Archaic Period. In the Kumbe-kephalic Allophyliæ, we may expect to trace the rude primeval workers in stone, with undefined sepulchral rites, and no distinct evidences of a faith or hope beyond the grave. Upon this meanly gifted race the Brachy-kephalic Allophyliæ intruded, bringing with them, in all probability, the knowledge of metallurgic arts, yet effecting their aggressions by such slow degrees that, as we have seen, their arts appear to have reached our northern regions long before the rude aborigines were called upon to employ them in repelling their originators. From these as well as other arguments we infer, that when the earliest Celtic nomades first reached our coasts, they found the older natives already in possession of weapons of bronze, and familiar with the most essential processes of the metallurgist. Whether the Celtæ had acquired any knowledge of iron at the period of their arrival in Europe must have depended to a great extent on the nature of their previous intercourse with the civilized nations of Central Asia; but the smelting of the iron ore and the working of the metal to any great extent, are manifestly altogether incompatible with the condition of a nomade people, migrating across a continent the partial clearings of which were already occupied by hostile races. Some reference has been made in a former chapter to evidence which an investigation of the languages of the Indo-European nations furnishes as to the degree of progress to which they had attained at the period of their dispersion. It would lead us to infer that they were either entirely ignorant of the use of the metals, or had lost this useful knowledge amid the exigencies and privations of their nomade life. In so far, therefore, this important source of ethnological evidence involves nothing essentially inconsistent with the idea of the metallurgic arts being introduced in Britain for the first time among a Celtic population already established on the soil. The earliest knowledge, however, which we acquire of the continental Celtæ exhibits them as skilled workers in metals, and even the Romans appear to have acquired their principal supplies of iron and the art of converting it into steel, from the Norici, a Celtic race who occupied a considerable tract of country south of the Danube. Whatever was the precise state to which this race had sunk at the period of its earliest pioneers intruding on the Allophylian nations of Europe, the supremacy acquired by them is sufficient evidence of their innate superiority. Possessed originally of good mental capacity, so soon as the successive wandering hordes of the Indo-European stock formed permanent locations, it is to be presumed that evidences of their powers would be manifested; but even in their nomade state they bore with them some of the elements by which the Arian tribes are held to be distinguishable from the older Allophylian nations.
"They had bards or scalds, vates, ἀοιδοι, who were supposed under a divine influence to celebrate the history of ancient times, and connect them with revelations of the future, and with a refined and metaphysical system of dogmas, which were handed down from age to age, and from one tribe to another, as the primeval creed and possession of the enlightened race. Among them, in the West as well as in the East, the doctrine of metempsychosis held a conspicuous place, implying belief in an after state of rewards and punishments, and a moral government of the world. With it was connected the notion that the material universe had undergone and was destined to undergo a repetition of catastrophes by fire and water; and after each destruction to be renewed in fresh beauty, when a golden age was again to commence, destined in a fated time to corruption and decay. The emanation of all beings from the soul of the universe, and their refusion in it, which were tenets closely connected with this system of dogmas, border on a species of Pantheism, and are liable to all the difficulties attendant upon that doctrine.
"Among most of the Indo-European nations the conservation of religious dogmas, patriarchal tradition, and national poetry, was confided not to accidental reminiscences and popular recitations, but to a distinct order of persons, who were venerated as mediators between the invisible powers and their fellow-mortals, as the depositaries of sacred lore, and interpreters of the will of the gods expressed of old to the first man, and handed down orally in divine poems, or preserved in a sacred literature known only to the initiated. In most instances they were an hereditary caste, Druids, Brahmans, or Magi. Among the Allophylian nations, on the other hand, a rude and sensual superstition prevailed, which ascribed life and mysterious powers to the inanimate objects."[401]
The contrasting religion of fetisses and spells, ascribed to the Allophylian nations, has already been referred to. It still exists among the Finns and Lappes of the north of Europe, and the Vogules, Ostiakes, and Esquimaux, occupying the northern regions of Asia and America, whither we may naturally conclude they have been driven by the intrusion of the superior races. To these, perhaps, we must look for the living type of the primeval Briton, and to their rude superstitions for some shadowy tradition of the creed by which his untutored mind took hold of the unseen. How much of the refined system of metaphysical dogmas ascribed by Dr. Prichard as a general characteristic of the Arian nations, pertained to those of them that colonized Britain, we can only partially surmise. We know, however, that at the period when the annals of our island are first embraced within the limits of authentic written history, a native priesthood existed, combining not only the sacerdotal and judicial characters, so frequently found united in the priesthood of even comparatively civilized races, but also such influence as leaders and chiefs that the Romans found in them their most implacable and unrelenting foes. Hence their religious rites were early proscribed by the imperial lieutenants; and the Druid priest, who held fast by his mysterious faith and passionate love of national independence, fell back before the advancing legions of Rome, till he found partial and temporary repose within the ancient groves of the Caledonian Celt, beyond the Tyne and Solway. The traces of this, however, are extremely indistinct and uncertain; and so little evidence does Celtic tradition preserve of the distinction between the refined pantheistic creed of the Arian races, and the spells and superstitions of Allophylian aborigines, that the name of Druid, or Druidheadh, is used only by the modern Gael as significant of a magician or wizard. Before, however, the hereditary British priesthood had been driven into the northern fastnesses of the island, if not, indeed, before his race had effected a landing on its shores, the proofs which we possess seem clearly to manifest that the Archaic Period of native art had come to an end, and the last great change within the Pagan era, resulting from the introduction of the more abundant and more useful metal, iron, had begun to operate. Within that closing primitive era we arrive at the first glimpses of authentic records. Thus much has, meanwhile, proved to be recoverable, in the form of suggestive inferences, if not of ascertained truths, from amid the dim shadows that have for ages covered, as with the pall of oblivion, the history of our national infancy, and of its first youth.
FOOTNOTES:
[398] Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. i. pp. 193, 194, 244-271, &c.
[399] After making vain inquiries about this very remarkable relic, I have been fortunate enough, since the previous notice (ante, p. 114) was printed, to recover a drawing of it from a cast taken from the original, and now in the possession of J. Anderson, Esq., W.S., of Inverness. The shorter pieces appear to have formed the two extremities.
[400] The views here advanced were submitted to the Ethnological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at its meeting at Edinburgh, in 1850, along with those on the crania of the tumuli, in a communication entitled "An Inquiry into the Evidence of the Existence of Primitive Races in Scotland prior to the Celtæ."
[401] Prichard's Natural History of Man, p. 187.