Part II The Archaic or Bronze Period
“In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword Excalibur.”
Morte D’Arthur.
Chapter I — Introduction of Metals
The evidence adduced in the previous section furnishes the basis of the argument from whence we arrive at the conclusion, that Scotland and the whole British Isles were occupied by a human population many ages prior to the earliest authentic historical notices. Of the character and habits of the barbarian Briton of the primeval period we have also been able to arrive at some knowledge. His dwellings, the remains of which have lain unheeded around the haunts of so many generations, shew his domestic accommodation to have been of the simplest and most humble description. His imperfect tools and weapons furnish no less satisfactory evidence of his scanty knowledge, his privations, and his skill. Searching amid the records of that debateable land to which the geologist and the antiquary lay equal claim, we learn that vast areas of our country were covered at that remote era with the primitive forest; that oaks of giant height abounded where now the barren heath and peat-bog cumber the land; and that even, at a comparatively recent period, the fierce Caledonian bull, the wolf, and the wild boar asserted their right to the old forest-glades. The primitive Caledonian was, in fact, an untutored savage. The race was thinly scattered along the skirts of the continuous range of forest, occupying the coasts and river valleys, and retreating only to the heights or the dark recesses of the forest when the fortunes of war compelled them to give way before some more numerous or warlike neighbouring tribe. The vast forests which then occupied so large a portion of the soil, while they confined the primitive inhabitants to the open country along the coasts and estuaries, supplied them with more valuable fruits than the unoccupied grounds could have afforded to their scanty numbers and untutored skill. Besides the fiercer natives of the forest, we are familiar with the remains of the elk and the rein-deer, as well as of smaller beasts and birds of chase. In the Anglo-Saxon Ode on Athelstan’s Victory, in which—
| Scotta leode, | The Scottish lads |
| And scip flotan | And the men of the fleets |
| Fæge feollon. | In fight fell, |
we have the following curious enumeration from the old MSS. in the British Museum, dated A.D. 937, in Gibson’s Chronicle, and supposed to be written by a contemporary bard:224—
The war screamers
Left they behind;
The hoarse bittern,
The sallow paddock,
The swarth raven
With horned bill,
And the wood-housing heron
Eating white fish of the brooks,
The greedy gos-hawk,
The grey deer,
And wolf wild.
We are not without abundant evidence that the primitive Caledonian waged successful war with the wild natives of the forest. By arrow, sling, and lance, and also, no doubt, with help of gins and traps, the largest and fiercest of them fell a prey to the wild hunter. The horns especially of the deer supplied him with weapons, implements, ornaments, and sepulchral memorials. His wants were few, his tastes simple and barbarous, his religion probably as unspiritual as the most base of savage creeds. In the long wanderings of his nomade fathers across the continents of Asia and Europe, they had greatly deteriorated from the primal dignity of the race, they had forgotten all the heaven-taught knowledge of Eden, and had utterly lost the antediluvian metallurgic arts. It may perhaps be asked if the annals of so mean a race are worthy of the labour required in dragging them to light from their long-forgotten repositories? The answer is, they are our ancestry, even though we may question our lineal descent; our precursors, if not our progenitors. From them we derive our inheritance and birthright; nor, amid all the later mingling of races, can we assume that no drop of their blood mingles in our veins.
There can be no question that this aboriginal race continued to occupy their island home, with slow and very slight progression, for many centuries. The disclosures of the latest alluvial deposits have furnished evidence of the appearance which the face of the country presented within the historic era, and leave no room to doubt that vast forests covered so large a portion of the soil as to afford no great area for the occupation of its aboriginal colonists. Taking into account with this the abundance of those rude weapons and implements from whence we give that era the name of the Stone Period, and the general uniformity of the circumstances under which they are discovered, we are furnished with satisfactory evidence of a thinly peopled country, occupied by the same tribes with nearly unchanging habits for many ages.
The elements, however, of a great revolution were at length introduced among this simple race, and, as usual in the history of progressive civilisation, they appear to have come from without. The change by which we detect the close of the long era of barbarism, and the introduction of a new and more advanced period, is the discovery of the art of smelting ores, and the consequent substitution of metallic weapons and implements for those of stone. The former presents us with the helplessness of childhood without its promise; the latter is the healthful infancy of a vigorous and magnificent manhood.
The insular position of Britain has already furnished an indisputable and well-defined base on which to rear the argument of primitive colonization. The valuable mineral wealth of some portions of its soil happily supply no less satisfactory data for those of its early civilisation. Little doubt can now be entertained that Herodotus, in his allusions to the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands, refers to the celebrated districts of Cornwall and the neighbouring isles, which still abound with the same mineral wealth that conferred on them such ancient and wide-spread fame. The era of the father of history dates from B.C. 484—the year assigned as that of his birth—probably to nearly the close of the century. At this early period, then, while the Republic of Rome was only assuming form, and Athens was just rising into importance, the commerce of the British Isles attracted the navies of Tyre and Carthage; nor does it seem improbable that the Phœnicians traded with the miners of Cornwall and the Scilly Islands at a much earlier period, if indeed we must not look to these ancient Cassiterides as one of the chief sources from whence even the Egyptians and Assyrians derived the tin with which they alloyed and hardened their earliest tools. More definite, and, as it is believed, authentic information regarding the British Isles is derived from the “Ora Maritima” of Festus Avienus, circa B.C. 400, from which we learn that Britain was visited at that early period by Carthaginian voyagers, and that the Albiones occupied the larger island, while the smaller island was possessed by the Gens Hibernorum. In so far as this early writer may be relied upon, his observations appear to sanction the conclusion that a pure Celtic population then possessed the whole British Isles, and that it is in the interval between this epoch and the invasion of Julius Cæsar that we must look for the intrusion of the newer continental races, indiscriminately termed by Cæsar, Britanni. In complete confirmation of this, and of the consequent retreat of the aboriginal Albiones towards the remoter districts, we find the name of Albion afterwards exclusively applied to the northern part of Britain, and all the earliest traditions and writings of both the Welsh and Scottish Celtæ assigning to them the name of Albanich. A Celtic race, however, continued to occupy the primeval districts of Cornwall, and preserved almost to our own day a distinct dialect of the Celtic tongue.
The familiarity of the ancient Britons with tin, though this metal does not occur in a native state, may be readily accounted for from the ore being frequently found near the surface, and requiring only the use of charcoal and a very moderate degree of heat to reduce it to the state of metal. We have no specific mention of any other source from whence the ancients derived the tin which they compounded with the copper found so abundantly in several parts of Asia; with the single and somewhat vague exception made by Strabo, where he calls a certain place in the country of the Drangi, in Asia, by the name of Cassiteron. That tin was known, however, from very early times is proved, not only by the discovery of numerous early Egyptian and Assyrian bronze relics, but also by its being noted by Moses among the spoils of the Midianites which were to be purified by fire;225 and by Ezekiel among the metals of which Tarshish was the merchant of Tyre.226 The allusions of Herodotus leave no room to doubt that his information was derived indirectly from others. The Phœnicians long concealed the situation of the Cassiterides from all other nations; and even Pliny treats as a fable the report of certain islands existing in the Atlantic from whence white-lead or tin was brought. It need not therefore surprise us to learn so little of these islands from ancient writers, even though we adopt the opinion that they continued for many centuries to be the chief source of one of the most useful metals. Antimony is found in the Kurdish mountains, and pure copper ore abounds there, as well as in those of the desert of Mount Sinai, but no tin is known throughout any part of Assyria. It is indeed a metal of rare occurrence, though found in apparently inexhaustible quantities in a very few localities. The only districts, according to Berzelius, where it is obtained in Asia, are the island of Banca, only discovered in 1710, and the peninsula of Malacca, where Wilkinson conceives it possible that tin may have been wrought by the Egyptians. The mines of Malacca are very productive, and may have been the source from whence Tyre derived “the multitude of riches,” but we have no evidence in support of such conjectures. Cornwall still yields a larger quantity of the ore than any other locality of the Old or New World where it has yet been discovered, and many thousands of tons have been exported by modern traders to India and China, and to America. Taking all these circumstances into consideration, it seems in no degree improbable, that long before Solomon sent to Tyre for “a worker filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning, to work all works in brass,” or employed the fleets of Hiram, King of Tyre, to bring him precious metals and costly stores for the Temple at Jerusalem, the Phœnician ships had passed beyond the pillars of Hercules, and were familiar with the inexhaustible stores of these remote islands of the sea which first dawn on history as the source of this most ancient alloy. Strabo’s description of the natives of the Cassiterides is not to be greatly relied upon. According to him they were a nomade pastoral race, of peaceful and industrious habits; but he refers especially to their mines of tin and lead, the produce of which they exchanged with the foreign traders, along with furs and skins, for earthenware, salt, and copper vessels and implements.
It is scarcely possible to conceive of such an intercourse carried on for centuries, by nations far advanced in the arts, and familiar with the civilisation and learning of the oldest races of Asia and Africa, without the natives of the Cassiterides acquiring from them some knowledge of the fruits of ancient civilisation. From them, indeed, it has been supposed that the British miner first learned even to smelt the ores, though we are almost forced to the conclusion that the working of the mines must have originated with natives or new colonists, familiarized in some degree with the nature of the metals, and with metallurgic arts. It seems surprising, however, that relics formed of the most abundant native metal, tin, should not be found in the tumuli. The facility with which it could be wrought rendered it readily convertible into personal ornaments, equally beautiful as those so abundant in copper and bronze. Borlase describes a patera of tin found at Bossens, in the parish of St. Erth, Cornwall, in 1756, rudely inscribed in mixed characters,—λIVIVS. MOδESTVS δηIVλI. F. ΔEO. MARTI.227 Along with this were two other vessels of the same metal, an uninscribed patera, and a vase or præfericulum. In 1793 a tin cup of singular form was found, along with a circular ornament of bronze, evidently of native British workmanship, in searching for the ore in a stream work called Hallivich, in the same county,228 so that we are not without some evidence that this metal was employed at an early period in the manufacture of sacred and domestic vessels. Probably, indeed, we should infer, from the great rarity of such relics, that it was only so used before its native workers had learned to mix it with copper and produce the more useful alloy which superseded the pure metals; as bronze and copper appear to have been at first imported, and received in exchange for the pure tin. Barter, however, could not possibly be continued for centuries, exchanging the ore of a metal so readily fusible as tin for wrought materials of copper, whether pure or alloyed—a metal found in the same locality, in a state requiring little smelting to bring it into use-without the British miner and trader learning to turn their own native mineral wealth to account. The facilities of a metallic currency were also little likely to remain unappreciated by the British trader, familiar as these already were to the seamen of the Mediterranean, or the Phœnician colonists of Cadiz, the ancient Gadeira. Independently of the ring-money which was probably derived from these sources, evidence in confirmation of this idea is not wanting. So recently as the year 1833 a bi-frontal bust of the Egyptian Isis was dug up in South Street, Exeter.229 According to Mr. W. T. P. Shortt’s reading of the hieroglyphics upon it, it is inscribed with the prefix Isis, Lady, Mistress of the World. Beneath this has been a cartouche, the greater portion of which is unfortunately cut away. Mr. Shortt conceives it to have been the cartouche of Cleopatra Tryphæna, of the race of the thirteenth Ptolemy, B.C. 51; but as there is only the fragment of one of the phonetics, this reading is necessarily conjectural. In 1835 some Carthaginian medals were found at Abbeville, in Picardie; and at Noyelles sur Mer, another figure of Isis was discovered in bronze, along with a statuette of the Hawk-headed deity, or elder Horus.230 Egyptian relics of the era of the later Ptolemies are not unknown as accompaniments of Roman sepulchral deposits, both in Britain and on the Continent; but they must be assumed to belong to an older era when found along with Greek and Carthaginian coins.
But more conclusive evidence exists in proof of early intercourse with the Mediterranean, if not, indeed, of the opinion advocated by a zealous local antiquary, that Exeter had been the seat of a Phœnician colony many centuries prior to the arrival of the Romans.231 It was long maintained by the great majority of English numismatists, that the Britons had no native coinage prior to the Roman invasion and the mintage of Cunobeline,—the work, as is presumed, of a Roman artist. The evidence against the existence of an early native coinage was, at best, purely negative, and is now giving way before the investigations of our ablest numismatists. The coins peculiar to the Channel Islands are generally acknowledged to be of an earlier character, and it is maintained not only that a native mintage existed prior to the Roman invasion, but that the convex and concave form, which characterizes the earliest British types, affords evidence that they were formed in imitation of Greek coins.232 The Rev. Beale Post has most ingeniously traced the Gaulish coinage to its primitive Greek type. The conclusions he arrives at are, that about B.C. 600, the Phœnicians colonized Marseilles, subsequent to which coins of that city make their appearance, their type being that of human heads, birds, beasts, &c. About B.C. 335 the Gauls adopted as their model the gold coinage struck by Philip II. of Macedon, and from that early Greek type, with its reverse of Diana driving her biga, we may trace the original of all the singular and rude representations of the horse on the primitive Gaulish and British native coinage, which have been supposed to involve so many mythological fancies. There is something greatly more characteristic of the imperfect ideas of a native currency likely to be formed by a primitive and partially civilized people, in this arbitrary imitation of a foreign type, than in any abstruse embodiment of the national creed. No precise date has yet been attempted to be assigned for the first native British coinage, but the numerous examples of Gaulish types discovered in Britain leave no room to doubt that the native Britons were familiar with such a circulating medium long prior to the Roman invasion. Nor is this the most primitive form of native currency. Several hoards have been discovered at different times in Scotland, of small gold pellets, marked with a cross or star in relief, and which, there can be little doubt, is the earliest Scottish minted money.233 Examples of this primitive coinage are more particularly described in a subsequent chapter, among the contents of the later tumuli.
But entirely apart either from this or the coinage derived from the Gauls, very remarkable discoveries of ancient foreign coins, such as those referred to above, suffice to suggest the probability that the primitive Briton had other sources from whence to acquire a knowledge of the convenience and fashion of a coined circulating medium. In the same locality where the bust of the Egyptian Isis was dug up at Exeter, numerous Greek coins have been found of late years, chiefly belonging to the autonomous Greek colonial cities in Syria and Asia Minor. Many have been discovered pertaining to Alexandria in Egypt, including coins of the Ptolemies of a very early date, frequently met with at great depths, and apparently in older strata than that of the Anglo-Roman period.234 In making a large drain in the Fore Street of Exeter, in 1810, at a depth of twenty feet below the present pavement, an immense quantity of ancient money was found, including many early coins of the autonomous Greek cities, and along with them two British coins, one bearing the wheel and the other the horse.235 Coins of Agrigentum, in Sicily, of Hiero I. of Syracuse, B.C. 460; of Ptolemy I. B.C. 323, and many others described and engraved in Mr. Shortt’s interesting works, have been found at various times in Exeter and its neighbourhood.
But though these singularly interesting tokens of intercourse with the Phœnician and Greek maritime colonies long prior to the era of the Roman occupation of Britain abound, as might be anticipated, only in the localities where mineral wealth tempted the sojourn of the ancient trader, yet some few remarkable traces of the same communication with the elder empires of the world have been found within our more northern limits. Occasionally Greek coins have been discovered in Scotland; as, for example, a gold didrachm of Philip of Macedon, three Greek silver coins, including one of his son, and a brass of the Brutii in Magna Græcia, found on the estate of Cairnbulg, Aberdeenshire, in 1824; and a very fine gold coin of Alexander the Great, at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire.236 In the year 1845 a still more remarkable hoard was discovered on the farm of Braco, in the parish of Shotts, Lanarkshire, only a very small portion of which was rescued from the usual fate of such recovered treasures. I have examined a few of these, in the hands of John Henderson, Esq., Queen’s Remembrancer for Scotland. They include of Greek coins: one of Athens, obverse Archaic head of Pallas; reverse: Α Θ, owl in deep indented square, an olive branch behind. One of Phocis, obverse: laureated head of Apollo; reverse: full-faced head of bull. One of Bœotia, obverse: Bœotian shield; reverse: vase. Also one Parthian coin. (Eckhel, vol. i. p. 254. Arsaces XV.) A correspondent from whom I first received information of this important discovery, saw several more of the Athenian type; some with the Greek scarabæus or tortoise, and others, which from the description appear to have been Parthian coins. But on inquiry being made after them, nearly the whole disappeared, and it is to be feared were immediately consigned to the melting pot. This remarkable hoard, unequalled in historic value, as far as I know, by any discovery of coins yet made in Scotland, may perchance after all have only been the treasure of some Roman auxiliary, as Braco is on the line of the iter which came from the south, towards the station of Castlecarry, on the wall of Antoninus Pius. Only the year after, a most valuable hoard of undoubted Roman treasure was found on the same farm. According to the account of their discoverer—a farm servant—“nearly a barrowful” were recovered, but they were squandered and lost before information of the discovery could reach those who were competent to appreciate their value as anything but old metal. An intelligent correspondent, to whom I am indebted for some particulars of this last discovery at Braco, succeeded in securing a few of the coins, comprehending Vespasian, Titus, both the Antonines, Lucius Verus, both the Faustinas, Trajan, Hadrian, and Commodus. These, however, lay entirely apart from the former hoard, and apparently much nearer the surface, so that we need not necessarily assume the deposition of the former coins, belonging to a period so long prior to the era of Roman invasion, as depending on the Roman iter, which like more recent thoroughfares, may have followed in the line of older pathways through the Caledonian forests.
Along with these examples, suggestive of direct or indirect intercourse between the early Britons and Greek or Phœnician traders, should also perhaps be mentioned two Greek altars in the British Museum, found at Corbridge in Northumberland; the one dedicated to the Syrian Astarte, thus—ΑΣΤΑΡΤΗΣ, ΒΩΜΟΝ Μ’ΕΣΟΡΑΣ ΠΟΥΛΧΕΡ Μ’ΑΝΕΘΗΚΕΝ. On its sides are sculptured the most common sacrificial vessels, the præfericulum and patera, and the top is crowned with the usual thuribulum of the Roman altar. The other, which was discovered in the churchyard of Corbridge, is dedicated to the Tyrian Hercules. It bears on the one side a bull’s head, with the secespita beside it, and on the other a laurel crown. In front is the inscription,—ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙ ΤΥΡΙΩ ΔΙΟΔΩΡΑ ΑΡΧΙΕΡΕ, Α.
The curious reader will find by reference to the Archæologia,237 how the learned reconcile with previous theories the discovery in this northern region of altars thus dedicated to Phœnician deities, to whom according to Josephus, Hiram king of Tyre, the contemporary of Solomon, erected separate temples. Camden records, on the authority of Solinus, called Polyhistor, that a votive altar was erected in North Britain, in honour of Ulysses, and inscribed in Greek characters.238 Whatever credit be attached to this, we have no reason to doubt that Greek voyagers traded to the British Isles long before the Roman war galleys touched its shores; though the site of the former altars, near the Roman wall, and their correspondence in form and decorations to the Roman altars so frequently found in Britain, seem to justify the conclusion that they are the work of Greek auxiliaries of the Anglo-Roman era, and indicate a late rather than an early date within that period.
The interest which attaches to the determination of the extent and probable date of the first intercourse of the Britons with traders from the far east, has led to the anticipation of some points not strictly belonging to the present section of our inquiry. This question of the existence of a native coinage, or of the substitution of a foreign metallic currency for the rude process of barter, at a period prior to the introduction of Roman customs by the legionaries of the first and second centuries, well merits the careful study it is now receiving, since no other evidence could furnish equally satisfactory proof of early progress in social civilisation. It cannot admit of doubt, however, that long before even the Greek or Phœnician trader had taught the Cornish miner this ingenious substitute for a direct exchange of commodities, he had learned to fuse and work the rich veins of ore with which his native soil abounded, and to fashion them into a variety of personal ornaments as well as of weapons and implements. The Phœnician sought his tin in order to mix it with the copper which he already possessed, and thereby to produce bronze weapons combining the ductility of copper with that indispensable hardness which could alone fit them to supersede the older implements of stone. How early this interchange first took place, it appears now altogether vain to inquire. The evidence already adduced, however, is at least sufficient to justify us in assigning to it a very remote period, while the more abundant and far more useful metal, iron, was little known even to the oldest nations along the Mediterranean coasts. Worsaae remarks, “There are geological reasons for believing that the Bronze Period must have prevailed in Denmark five or six hundred years before the birth of Christ.”239 Denmark, however, had all its metal to import, while the earliest historic allusion to England represents her exporting her abundant metallic ores, and bartering them with the southern merchant for the productions of his superior skill. The metallic riches of England have not escaped the attention of the intelligent Danish archæologist:—“It is highly probable,” he remarks, “that the ancient bronze, formed of copper and tin, was diffused from one spot over the whole of Europe; which spot may be supposed to be England, because, not to mention the quantity of copper which that country produces, its rich tin mines have been known from the earliest historic periods to the nations of the south, while in the other parts of Europe there occur only very few and doubtful remains of far less important tin mines which we are justified in believing to have been worked at that time.”240
When we consider that copper is not only found in a state requiring little smelting to render it fit for manufacture, but that it is even discovered at times so pure that we may conceive of its occasional substitution for stone implements, before the art of smelting had become known, we can feel no hesitation in assuming, a priori, that it was the precursor of iron as a material for the construction of weapons and tools. Iron, on the contrary, bears, in its natural state, little resemblance to a metal, and is smelted by so difficult and tedious a process that, even after its superiority had become known, the older metal would probably be preferred by the natives of a thinly peopled country, where the benefits of mutual cooperation and the division of labour still remained among the unsolved problems of their political economy. The tools and weapons of the ancient Mexicans we know were of copper, and we are not without evidence that even the Egyptians were far advanced in their early developed civilisation before iron had superseded the older copper tools. The architectural monuments of Mexico and Yucatan show how much might be accomplished with such imperfect implements. Both in the magnificent work of the French savans, and in the more accurate delineations of M. Rosellini, various Egyptian paintings are shewn, in which the implements of the sculptors are evidently of bronze or copper, and workmen are seen cutting blocks of granite and hewing out colossal statues with yellow tools. Numerous bronze weapons, implements, and personal ornaments found in the catacombs, attest the use of this metal by the Egyptians at a comparatively late period. Implements of copper are also among the relics found in some of the ancient and long abandoned mines discovered in Asia. The celebrated tables in the copper mines of Wady Maghara, near Sinai, record the conquest of that part of Asia by Suphis, the builder of the great pyramid, and prove that these mines had been wrought prior to the early date of his reign. Dr. Layard also refers to copper mines still existing in the mountains within the confines of Assyria, worked at a very remote period, probably by the Assyrians, and used not only to supply the material for ornaments, but also for weapons and tools.241 But there is not wanting abundant direct evidence to prove that Asia had her Bronze Period as well as Europe and Africa. Dr. Prichard remarks, “Silver and golden ornaments of rude workmanship, though in abundant quantity, are found in the Siberian tombs. The art of fabricating ornaments of the precious metals seems to have preceded by many ages the use of iron in the northern regions of Asia.”242 A very interesting account is given in the Archæologia of a tumulus opened in the neighbourhood of Asterabad, on the south-eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, in 1841. It contained several vessels and two small trumpets, all of pure gold; spears, pikes, forks, and other weapons, including a well-shaped hammer and hatchet of copper, but no traces of iron.243 The descriptions of Homer point out the era of the Iliad and the Odyssey as a bronze period; and Hesiod, as well as later writers, intimate clearly the use of bronze by the Greeks before they had learned to smelt or work the iron ore. The golden age of Saturn, and the succeeding silver, brazen, and iron ages, by which the Greek Sagas figure the gradual decline of mankind from a state of primeval purity and happiness, are not to be regarded as mere poetical images. “In the brazen age,” says Schlegel, in his Philosophy of History, “crime and disorder reached their height; violence was the characteristic of the rude and gigantic Titans. Their arms were of copper, and their implements and utensils of brass or bronze. Even in their edifices copper was employed; for as the Greek poet says, ‘black iron was not then known;’ a circumstance which must be considered as strictly historical, and as characteristic of the primitive nations.”244
We have seen, in so far as the imperfect data already referred to afford trustworthy indications of the physical characteristics of the primitive colonists of Britain, that the race of the later era differed greatly from their elder and probably aboriginal precursors of the primeval period. We must depend not only on the united observations of British archæologists for adding to these ethnological data, but also on Continental research for supplying the necessary elements of comparison by which we may hope to trace out the origin of the Brachy-kephalic race of Scotland, to whom it seems probable that the introduction of the primitive metallurgic arts must be ascribed; while it may be that we shall yet be able clearly to associate the full development of these, prior to the working of iron, with the intrusion of the Celtæ upon the elder Allophylian British races.
Whencesoever the first knowledge of the metallurgic arts was derived, it introduced into the British Isles the elements of a change scarcely less momentous than those which later ages trace to letters, the magnet, the printing-press, or these latest applications of the metals—the railway and the electric telegraph. The native Briton was no longer confined to his little clearing on the coast, nor compelled with ingenious toil to fashion the shapeless flint and stone into the weapons and implements that supplied his simple wants. The forests rang with the axe and the wedge; the low grounds were gradually cleared of their primeval forests; and the fruits of patient industry were substituted, in part at least, for the spoils of the chase. Still the change was wrought, as might be anticipated, only by very slow degrees. The weapons and implements would in many localities long precede the knowledge of the arts by which they were formed. The old generation would die out, and be buried with the stone war-hatchet and spear, while the younger race were learning to despise such imperfect arms. Necessity also, arising from their costliness and scarcity, would long confine the majority to the primitive and inefficient tools and weapons of their fathers. Even after the flint lance had been entirely superseded by the bronze sword and spear, the missile weapons would still be made of the old material, and the large stone hammer would be retained in use as too bulky an object to be constructed of the more costly metal. It is probable, indeed, that stone implements were never entirely abandoned throughout the whole Bronze Period. No large bronze hammers have ever been found in Britain, while those of stone frequently occur along with metallic remains; and the larger hammers and axes, chiefly of granite, are among the most abundant of Scottish primitive relics. So recently as the month of October 1849, an ancient working of great extent was broken into at the Llandudno Copper Mines, at Ormes Head, in North Wales. In this were found a great number of stone hammers or mauls of various sizes, weighing from two to forty pounds, supposed to have been used in crushing the ore or detaching it from the rock. There also lay beside them a number of bones, and the portion of a bronze tool; affording altogether one of the most interesting discoveries yet made illustrative of the arts of the British Bronze Period.245 Traces of ancient mining operations have also been found in Scotland. Pennant describes trenches in the Island of Jura by which the veins both of lead and copper have been wrought in very early times, and by instruments unknown to the modern miner.246
Abundant evidence is found in accordance with these indications, proving the existence of a long transition-period, during which metallic tools and arms were only very partially introduced, and were manifestly esteemed as rare and precious possessions. To this transition-period we should probably assign the formation of the smaller and most carefully wrought varieties of the stone hammer, with which we may presume the ingenious worker in the newly mastered metals to have wrought, and fashioned into shape, many of the rude but massive gold ornaments found in the tumuli. From the number of these relics of the precious metals which have been discovered, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that gold must have been much more abundant at that remote era than it has been within the period of authentic history. Nor is it difficult to account for such a state of things. Though usually found in very small quantities, gold is well known as one of the most widely diffused of all the metals; and the clay slate which frequently forms the depository of gold, silver, and copper, exists in great abundance throughout the Highlands. In the Leadhills of Scotland considerable quantities of gold have been procured at no very distant period, while numerous allusions suffice to shew its greater abundance in former times.247 In the twelfth century the Abbey of Dunfermline received a grant from David I. of the tithe of all the gold produced by the surrounding districts of Fife and Forthrev;248 and even in the sixteenth century the Laird of Merchiston is said to have wrought gold in the Pentland Hills.249 In the remoter era, however, to which we now refer, when the rude Caledonian was learning, for the first time, to fashion his weapons and tools of bronze, and to substitute the golden torc and armilla for the necklace of perforated shells or stone and amber beads, we are justified in assuming from analogy that in many of the channels of the Scottish mountain streams,—amid the strata of which the ore has been found,—not only the gold dust, but pure masses of native gold would be occasionally discovered, and wrought with no better tools than the stone hammer and anvil into the personal ornaments of distinguished leaders or priests. Strabo, in referring to the great mineral wealth of Spain, which made it to the ancients what America became to the Spaniards long after their native mineral treasures were exhausted, remarks,—“In no country are gold, silver, copper, and iron, so abundant or of such fine quality; even the rivers and mountain streams bring down gold in their beds, which is found in their sands.” Yet such a description is now as little applicable to Spain as to Scotland. But more recent and conclusive evidence exists. Much sensation was excited in 1795 by the discovery of gold dust in the bed of the brook Ballinasloge, a feeder of the Avonmore river, about seven miles west from Arklow, county Wicklow. The stream is formed there at the junction of three ravines; and in this spot John Lloyd, Esq., F.R.S., a correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks,250 describes upwards of three hundred women, besides men and children, all engaged at one time in searching for the precious metal:—a scene not difficult to parallel in our own day. The searchers, however, were abundantly rewarded for their labour. The gold was found in masses varying from a few grains to five ounces in weight, and one piece, weighing twenty-two ounces, was reserved as a present to His Majesty. A later correspondent,251 in a communication to the Royal Society, calculates that 800 ounces of gold were collected in the short space of six weeks, at the end of which time the gatherers were dispersed by a body of militia, and the gold area held for behoof of Government. “The gold,” says Mr. Mills, “is of a bright yellow colour, perfectly malleable; the specific gravity of an apparently clean piece 19,000. A specimen, assayed here in the moist way, produced from 24 grains 22-58/101 grains of pure gold, and 1-45/101 of silver. Some of the gold is intimately blended with, and adherent to quartz; some, it is said, was found united to the fine grained iron-stone, but the major part was entirely free from the matrix; every piece more or less rounded on the edges, of various weights, forms, and sizes.”252 Specimens were afterwards assayed by the Royal Mint Master at the Tower of London. One piece contained, in 24 carats, 21-6/8 of fine gold, 1⅞ of fine silver, and ⅝ of alloy, which seemed to be copper tinged with a little iron.253
Such an example may be reasonably received as supplying one satisfactory clue to the sources of the gold which we find to have been so abundant in early times; though we shall still, perhaps, consistently account for the introduction of some portion of it indirectly by foreign barter, and chiefly in the shape of the ring-money hereafter referred to. But when the fact is borne in remembrance that articles of silver are rarely, if ever, found in connexion with relics of the Bronze Period, it must be acknowledged as most consistent with the geological and mineralogical characteristics of auriferous and argentiferous deposits to look to native sources for the supply of gold. While silver is found only in large quantities by mining, gold has invariably been discovered in largest quantities in the superficial detritus, and accumulated in circumscribed areas. Whenever, therefore, we are enabled to trace the supply of gold to a foreign, as, for example, to a Phœnician source, we can hardly fail to find accompanying relics of silver; and accordingly, in the succeeding, or Iron Period, the gold becomes of rare occurrence, and the silver abundant. One other argument should not be altogether overlooked. The great purity of very many of the gold ornaments found in the tumuli is such as may perhaps add to the probability of its native origin. This well-known fact has frequently supplied an additional inducement to transfer to the crucible many of the rarest and most valuable relics of this period. Others found alloyed with silver are in no fixed or uniform proportions, but rather in accordance with the accidental mixtures likely to occur in the operations of the primitive miner and metallurgist. But this, though diminishing their bullion value, has not sufficed to save such national heirlooms from destruction. After reposing in the safe muniment chambers of their original owners, with but a foot of earth above them, while ancient races have become extinct and new colonists have risen to mighty nations above their forgotten graves, these treasures have only been restored to light to be immediately destroyed. The barbarity of such proceedings has hardly yet been fully exposed. It is the destruction of national records in the meanest spirit of cupidity, which no wealth could restore, and for which not even the poor excuse can be found that satisfied the fanatic Caliph Omar when he converted the treasures of the Alexandrian Library into fuel for the city baths.
Remote as is the period when the novel arts of the metallurgist broke in upon the simple and unsophisticated habits of the British aborigines, some traces of the memory of this mighty change still linger amid the popular traditions of England. The use which Sir Walter Scott has made of the Berkshire legend of Wayland Smith has sufficed to confer a fictitious interest on, perhaps without exception, the most remarkable of all the mythic traditions common to the nations of northern Europe, and which may be unhesitatingly received as the traditionary memorial of the advent of the Bronze Period among the Teutonic races. True, indeed, in the only definite form in which it is now recoverable from the early and medieval literature of Europe, it is associated with the later age of iron rather than with that of bronze; but little importance can be attached to this. The legend is manifestly of an older date even than the Edda, that venerable collection of the sacred writings of the north. We see in it the hero-worship of the fierce Norsemen deifying their Scandinavian Vulcan, and assigning to him a superhuman origin as an evidence of their estimate of the divine gift he is supposed to have bestowed. But the mythic legend finds its prototype in the Greek Dædalus, if not in the Mosaic Tubal-Cain. It is incorporated into nearly all the older European tongues with singular uniformity of idea. In the Icelandic the name of the renowned northern metallurgist is Vælund and Vaulundr; in old high German, Wiolant, Wielant; in Anglo-Saxon, Wêland; in old English, Weland and Velond; and in the modern popular dialect, Wayland. In the Latin of the middle ages it becomes Guielandus; and in old French, Galans and Galant. It is probable that Spain, Italy, and the East above all, had analogous traditions, some of which at least may yet be recovered.254 According to a singular, and seemingly arbitrary caprice of the medieval Germanic traditions, the forge of Weland is supposed to be erected in the Caucasus; and Michel remarks, as a proof that there has been a common origin of these legends of the east and west relating to skilful workers in iron, that some of the traditions still preserved on the banks of the Euphrates present the same traits recorded by the poets of the middle ages on the banks of the Rhine.255 But Humboldt has justly remarked that “the characteristic features of nations, like the internal construction of plants spread over the surface of the globe, were the impressions of a primitive type.” The Aztecks,—to whom we have already referred as a remarkable example of considerable civilisation, and the extensive practice of many useful and ornamental arts, among a people destitute of iron and very partially furnished with metals,—had their mythic metallurgist as well as the older races of Europe and Asia. Quetzalcoath, whose reign was the golden age of the people of Anahuac, was the Weland of the Aztecks, worshipped among them with strange and bloody rites. Their traditions told that he had dwelt among them twenty years, and had taught them to cast metals, ordered fasts, and regulated the intercalations of the Tolteck year.256 Prominent as the place is which the mythic legend of the smith-god occupied in the popular creed of the middle ages throughout the greater part of Europe, the tradition of a gifted worker in metals is doubtless of eastern origin, and far more fitly impersonates and deifies the restoration of the metallurgic arts in the primitive Bronze Period than the mere transition from bronze to iron, important as the latter change undoubtedly was.
The remarkable analogy of the mythic legends of the North with the ancient Greek fable of Dædalus, has not escaped the notice of modern critics, and MM. Depping and Michel remark:—“We do not hesitate to believe that it is the history of this Greek artist, altered and disfigured, adapted to the manners and creeds of the people of the north of Europe, which has given rise to the romance of Weland.” The resemblance, however, is scarcely less manifest, in many respects, to the lame smith-god Ἡφαιστος, or Vulcan; and the widely-diffused mythic fable is far too complete and unique to have been transferred directly from the Greek to the Teutonic mythology, where scarce another trace of similar correspondence is discernible. Jupiter, Mars, Hercules, Venus, Orpheus, all find their counterparts indeed, but with scarce a shadow of resemblance to Greek prototypes, in the wild Scandinavian and old German pantheon, which may reasonably excite our wonder, if we assume a Greek origin for the Vœlundar Quida contained in the Edda. In the simplest form in which it is still recoverable, it is obviously overlaid with spurious additions of a later age; and when it gets into the monkish chronicles and romances of chivalry compiled in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the wild faith of the Norsemen is outdone by the wilder fictions of the Trouveres, and nearly all the symbolic spirit of the original disappears. Some of these even assign precise periods as the era of the northern smith. Several of the French romances mention Galand as the maker of Charlemagne’s famous sword Durendal, while others describe armour forged by him and weapons inscribed with his name. But the most curious notice of this kind occurs in an English manuscript written about the time of Edward I. It contains a description of the sword of Gauvain, one of the most celebrated knights of Arthur’s “Round Table,” made by Galant, and having the following lines inscribed in canello gladii:—
“Jeo su forth trenchant e dure;
Galaan me fyth par mult grant cure;
Catorse anz [out] Jhesu Cristh,
Quant Galaan me trempa e fyth;”
i.e., “I am very sharp and hard; Galaan made me with very great care; fourteen years old was Jesus Christ when Galaan tempered and made me.” Other romances furnish with swords of Galant’s workmanship both Julius Cæsar and Alexander the Great, and by inheritance from the latter, Ptolemy, Judas Maccabæus, and the Emperor Vespasian.257 Such spurious inventions, however, lack all the value of the original symbolic legend. We read indeed in the romance of Fierabras d’Mixandre, of three famous swords made by Galans and his two brothers; of one of which it is related,—
“Césars li emperères l’ot maint jor en demagne,
Engleterre en conquist, Angou et Alemagne,
Et France et Normendie, Saisone et Aquitaigne,
Et Puille et Hungerie, Provence et Moriaigne.”258
If this idea stood alone, or was conceived in the simple spirit of the Scandinavian Vœlund-Chaunt, we might imagine it to be designed as a symbolic myth representing the advent of the Iron Period and its irresistible progress over the north; but the general spirit of the romance is characterized by the usual extravagance of medieval poetry.
The Greeks assigned to the history of Dædalus a very high antiquity, carrying him back to somewhere about the thirteenth century before the Christian era; but it may admit of doubt if Greece had then passed her own primitive stage. Among the relics of the European Stone Period preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries are some small flint-flakes and arrow-heads, gathered on the elevated mound of the tomb of the Plateans at Marathon, which it will not greatly outrage the ideas of the critical historian to assume as weapons used by the Greek patriots in repelling the Persian invader. At first the word Dædalus was, among the Greeks, like that of Weland among the Scandinavians, a generic name. Δαιδαλλω signified to work artistically, as Voelundr signified a smith in Islandic; and Dædalus was, like Weland, pre-eminently the artist and the workman. The word became a proper name only because of their attributing to this mythological being all the perfections of the art. For this reason also, it appears equally erroneous to regard the Islandic word voelund, a smith, as derived from Weland: it is the contrary that should be assumed. The word voelund existed before the history of the famous smith Weland had been invented, just as the word δαιδαλλω existed before the personification Dædalus had been adopted into the mythology of the Greeks.259 This is no new idea. It was obviously from a recognition of it that King Alfred, when translating the De Consolatione Philosophiæ of Boethius into Anglo-Saxon, used the name of the northern Weland as synonymous with Fabricius. Mr. Singer has employed the Greek fable of Dædalus to restore the connexion of the arts of the north with the elder civilisation of Europe, and Dr. Sickler has applied the same classic legend with great ingenuity in his argument of the Phœnician origin of the Greek metallurgic arts.[260] Whencesoever that knowledge may have been immediately derived, we shall adopt the most consistent idea if we turn back to the Eastern cradle-land both of the Hellenic and Scandinavian races, and assume a common origin for the mythic fable which records with corresponding symbolic legends the restoration of the art of Tubal-Cain to the postdiluvian race.
It is a remarkable and interesting fact, that while modern learning and research have brought to light the most ancient literate forms of this northern myth, in the Edda and the Niebelungen Lied, it is in England only that it has survived to our own day as a living popular tradition; and it is due to the somewhat grotesque travesty of its rude Berkshire version inwrought into the tragic tale of Kenilworth, that it has been restored to the favour of modern Europe. Among the old Scandinavian nations, and in Iceland, where the language of their runic literature is still a living tongue, as well as in France, and throughout the whole Germanic races of the Continent, all memory of the restoration of this divine gift of the metals has utterly passed away. In England only—towards which we see the galleys of the elder inheritors of civilisation winging their way in quest of its metallic treasures with the first glimpse we catch of it as it emerges out of the night of time—the mythic legend has retained vitality till now. How the story of our northern Dædalus came to be associated with the monolithic group at the foot of White-Horse Hill, in the vale of Berkshire, it is now equally vain and useless to inquire. There, according to rustic folk-lore, dwelt the invisible smith. No one ever saw him; but he who had the courage to avail himself of his skill had only to deposit a piece of money on one of the stones, and leave his horse beside it. On his return the horse was found to be shod, and the money gone. Such was the last shadowy tradition of the venerable myth. On one of the rarer coins of Cunobeline an armourer or coiner is represented. Some numismatists have supposed it to be Vulcan forging a helmet.
May it not more probably be assumed as the northern Weland, whose metallurgic skill was so widely celebrated among the Teutonic nations? Before the great Alfred had won his way to the English throne the symbolic impersonation had assumed a perfect individuality; and in the translation of the De Consolatione Philosophiæ into Anglo-Saxon, he thus paraphrases the passage,—Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent? Quid Brutus, aut rigidus Cato?
“Where are now the bones
Of the wise Weland,
The goldsmith
Formerly most famous?
* * * * * * *
Who knows now the bones
Of the wise Weland,
Under what mound (or barrow)
They are concealed?”261
If little importance be due to the association of Weland’s name with the working in iron, not very much more is to be ascribed to the no less frequent depiction of him as a cunning jeweller and goldsmith. Nevertheless, the circumstance is worthy of notice in passing, since it is not impossible that the working in gold may have preceded even the age of bronze, and in reality have belonged, as already hinted, to the Stone Period. If metal could be found capable of being wrought and fashioned without smelting or moulding, its use was perfectly compatible with the simple arts of the Stone Period. Of such use masses of native gold, such as have been often found both in the Old and the New World, are peculiarly susceptible; and some of the examples of Scottish gold personal ornaments fully correspond with the probable results of such an anticipatory use of the metals. One very remarkable example, more particularly referred to hereafter, occurs in a pair of armillæ of pure gold, found in an urn of the rudest and most artless construction in a cist in Banffshire. They are merely hammered into rounded bars and then bent to fit the arm, and they retain the rough marks of the tool, which it is more easy to imagine one of stone than any more delicate or artificial implement. It is not impossible that it may be owing to some faint traditional remembrance of this primitive origin of the working of metals, that the oldest notices of Weland represent him chiefly as the cunning goldsmith, as in the fifth stanza of the Vœlundar Quida of the Edda:—
“Vœlund alone remained in Ulfdale,
He wrought red gold, with jewells rare,
Securing on a withy rings many.”
So it is in all the earliest existing forms of this ancient myth, the working in iron is only superadded to the skill of the famous goldsmith.
No Celtic legend preserves an equally distinct memorial of the introduction of the metallurgic arts among the ancient colonists of the British Isles. Nevertheless the Scottish Highlanders have their native Ἡφαιστος also, personified, like the Teutonic Weland, in many romantic legends. The fame of Luno, the son of Leven, who made the swords of Fingal and his heroes, is preserved in old traditional poems, which figure him as a wild savage clad in a mantle of black hide, and with an apron of similar materials. The additional features of the picture furnish no inapt personification of the classic Vulcan. He is described as lame; going on one leg, with a staff in his hand, yet remarkable for his swiftness.262 Dr. Macculloch, in demonstrating the affinity between the Celtic and Teutonic superstitions and the Oriental and classic mythology, remarks,—“Fingal is not an absolute original himself. His sword is the sword of sharpness of the Edda, made by Velent or Weyland, the hyperborean Vulcan. It is the wonderful sword Skoffnung, and also Balmung, and it is the Mimmung in Ettin Langshanks. It is equally Tyrsing, the fairy blade of Suafurlami; and it is also the sword which Jack begged of the giant. It is the sword Durandal, with which Orlando cuts rocks in two; and it is Escalibor, the sword of Arthur.”263 Thus common as the metal from which it is forged is some form or other of the mythic legend which commemorates the restoration of old Tubal-Cain’s weapon of war. Still the venerable Teutonic myth does not appear to have been preserved by the Scottish medieval chroniclers or romancers, unless in some extremely modified form, or it could hardly have escaped the notice of Dunbar, in his satire of “The Fenyeit Freir of Tungland.” The incident which gave rise to this whimsical effusion of our great Scottish poet against the Italian charlatan occurred in 1507, (a year famous for the introduction of the printingpress into Scotland,) and is thus described by Bishop Lesley.264 Referring to an embassy sent to France in that year, he remarks,—“This tyme thair wes ane Italiane with the king, quha wes maid Abbott of Tungland, and wes of curious ingyne. He causet the king believe that he, be multiplyinge and utheris his inventions, wold make fine golde of uther mettall, quhilk science he callit the quintassence; quhairupon the king maid greit cost, bot all in vaine. This Abbott tuik in hand to flie with wingis, and to be in Fraunce befoir the saidis ambassadouris; and to that effect he causet mak ane pair of wingis of fedderis, quhilkis beand fessinit apoun him, he flew of the Castell wall of Striveling, bot shortlie he fell to the ground and brak his thee bane. Bot the wyt thairof he ascryvit to that thair was sum hen fedderis in the wingis, quhilk yarnit and covet the mydding and not the skyis.” The Scottish historian compares him to “ane king of Yngland callit Bladud.” The poet’s similes are still more pertinent; though since we learn from the Scottish Treasurers’ Accounts, that the Abbot of Tungland was paid, in 1513, “to pass to the myne of Crawfurd-moor,” which the king was then working for gold: and from the satire, that he sometimes practised the Blacksmith’s craft: Dunbar could scarcely have avoided the addition of the Weland legend to his other similes, had it been known to him, since the points of resemblance are such, that, with less historic evidence for the truth of the Abbot’s history, we might assume it as the rude Scottish version of the Vœlundar Quida:—
“Sum held he had bene Dedalus,
Sum the Mynataur mervaluss,
Sum Mertis blak smyth Vulcanus,
And sum Saturnus cuk.
And evir the cuchettis at him tuggit,
The rukis him rent, the ravynis him druggit,
The huddit crawis his hair furth ruggit,
The hevin he micht nocht bruke.”
Chapter II — The Metallurgic Transition
In the earliest glimpse we are able to catch of the British Isles with the dawning light of historic records, we learn of them as already celebrated for their mineral wealth. So long, however, as Britain retained its vast tracts of natural forests, and was only occupied by thinly scattered nomade tribes, the tin mines of Cornwall, and the foreign trade which they invited to the southern shores of the island, might reward the toil and sagacity of the ancient Cornubii or other primitive colonists of Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, without exercising any perceptible influence on neighbouring tribes, or being known to the remoter dwellers beyond the Solway and the Tyne. The spoils of war, more probably than any peaceful interchange of commodities, would first introduce the bronze weapons imported into Cornwall to the knowledge of the northern tribes. But the superiority of the sword and spear of metal over the old lance of flint or bone would speedily be appreciated, and we accordingly find abundant traces of one of the first elements of civilisation, viz., an interchange of commodities and the importation of foreign manufactures, having accompanied the advent of the Bronze Period. The rude aboriginal Briton no longer confined his aim in the chase to the supply of his own table and simple wardrobe. The Phœnicians traded to Britain for its furs as well as its metals, and for these the products of a wider district than the tin country would be required. The Caledonian hunter would learn to hoard up the skins won in the chase, to barter with them for the coveted sword and spear of bronze,—and thus the first elements of civilisation would precede the direct knowledge of the metallurgic arts.
The advent of the Bronze Period, however, cannot be held to have been fairly introduced until the native Caledonian had learned, at least to melt the metals, and to mould the weapons and implements which he used, if not to quarry and smelt the ores which abound in his native hills. The progress consequent on the indirect introduction of the metals would speedily create new wants and the desire for modifications and improvements on the implements of foreign manufacture. The demands on his sagacity and skill would increase with the gradual progress in intelligence and civilisation consequent on the new impulses brought into operation; and thus would the arts of the smith and the jeweller be superinduced on the originally barbarian devices of the Caledonian. Once introduced, by whatever means, he was not slow to improve on the lessons furnished in the novel art; and while, with a pertinacious adherence to ancient models singularly characteristic of primitive races, we find implements and personal ornaments of the modern Scottish Highlander not greatly differing from those of fully ten centuries ago, we also find the natives of isolated districts, beyond the reach of changing influences, practising the ingenious arts of this remote period when every man was his own armourer and goldsmith.
It needs not either the authority of revelation, or the demonstrations of ethnology, to prove that God has made of one blood all that dwell upon the earth. Man, placed under the same conditions, everywhere exhibits similar results. The ancient Stone Period of Assyria and Egypt resembles that of its European successor, and that again finds a nearly complete parallel in the primitive remains of the valley of the Mississippi, and in the modern arts of the barbarous Polynesians. So, too, with the higher state which succeeds this. The characteristics of the early Bronze Period are long since familiar to us. Milton, who accords equally stinted honours to Mulciber and to Mammon, by whose suggestion taught, men
“Ransack’d the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother earth
For treasures better hid,”—
refers to the introduction of the metallurgic arts as first among those great sources of change which the Archangel Michael makes known to Adam when exhibiting to him the future destiny of his seed. The knowledge of working in metals is there also introduced in contrast to the simpler arts of the pastoral state, and as the chief source of social progress with all its accompanying development of luxury and crime. On one side Adam sees the shepherds’ huts and grazing herds;
“In other part stood one who, at the forge
Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass
Had melted, (whether found where casual fire
Had wasted woods on mountain or in vale,
Down to the veins of earth; thence gliding hot
To some cave’s mouth; or whether washed by stream
From under ground,) the liquid ore he drained
Into fit moulds prepared, from which he formed
First his own tools, then what might else be wrought
Fusil, or graven in metal.”
Amid the highly artificial results of modern civilisation we might find some difficulty in conceiving of such a social state, in which considerable taste and ingenuity were displayed in the forging of arms and tools, and in the manufacture of personal ornaments. But not only are we able to compare the results of the division of labour with the fruits of such isolated skill, in races only now beginning to develop these first elements of civilisation; we can also look upon the living representatives of the Caledonian at the dawn of his historic era. Dr. Layard, in describing a visit to an ancient copper mine in the Tiyari Mountains, remarks,—“In these mountains, particularly in the heights above Lizan, and in the valley of Berwari, mines of iron, lead, copper, and other minerals, abound. Both the Kurds and the Chaldæans make their own weapons and implements of agriculture, and cast bullets for their rifles—collecting the ores which are scattered on the declivities, or brought down by the torrents.”265 This affords a parallel modern picture of such a state of society as that we have to conceive of in the early dawn of the British Bronze Period. Martin, in his description of the Western Isles, written at the commencement of the eighteenth century, remarks of the islanders,—“When they travel on foot the plaid is tied on the breast with a bodkin of bone or wood, just as the spina worn by the Germans, according to the description of Tacitus.” He then furnishes a detailed account of the ancient dress, even then becoming rare, and of the breast-buckle or brooch, of silver or brass, which appears to have formed, from the very earliest times, the most favourite personal ornament of both sexes. “I have seen some of the former,” says he, “of an hundred marks value: it was broad as any ordinary pewter plate, the whole curiously engraven with various animals, &c. There was a lesser buckle, which was worn in the middle of the larger, and about two ounces weight. It had in the centre a large piece of crystal, or some finer stone, and this was set all round with several stones of a lesser size.”266 The Rev. John Lane Buchanan, visiting these islands nearly a century later, found the same customs unchanged, and the primitive metallurgic arts of the ingenious Hebrideans not greatly in advance of the modern Asiatic Kurds. This writer remarks of the females,—“All of them wear a small plaid, a yard broad, called guilechan, about their shoulders, fastened by a large brooch. The brooches are generally round, and of silver, if the wearer be in tolerable circumstances; if poor, the brooches, being either circular or triangular, are of baser metal and modern date. The first kind has been worn time immemorial even by the ladies. The married women bind up their hair with a large pin into a knot on the crown of their heads.”267 The same writer thus describes the practice of every necessary art and trade by the simple islanders:—“It is very common to find men who are tailors, shoemakers, stocking-weavers, coopers, carpenters, and sawyers of timber. Some of them employ the plane, the saw, the adze, the wimble, and they even groove the deals for chests. They make hooks for fishing, cast metal buckles, brooches, and rings for their favourite females.”268 They were, in fact, at that very recent period practising nearly the same arts as we may trace out at a time when the Phœnician traders were still seeking the harbours of Cornwall, and exchanging the manufactures of Carthage, and perhaps of Tyre, for the products of the English mines. A no less unquestionable proof of the unchanging character of the Celtic arts is to be found in the fact that the ornamentation, not only on many of the old Highland brooches and drinking horns, but invariably employed in decorating the handle of the Highland dirk and knife, down to the last fatal struggle of the clans on Culloden Moor which abruptly closed the tradition of many centuries, is exactly the same interlaced knotwork which we are familiar with on the most ancient class of sculptured standing stones in Scotland. The annexed figure of a Highland powder-horn of the seventeenth century is from one in the possession of Mr. James Drummond, bearing inscribed on it the initials and date, G. R. 1685. The triple knot, so common on early Scottish and Irish relics that it has been supposed to have been used as a symbol of the Trinity, is no less frequently introduced on the Highland targets and brooches of last century, and is shewn along with other interlaced ornaments, on an example of the latter introduced in a subsequent chapter.
On the theory of the introduction of metallurgic arts assumed here, not altogether without evidence, it is not requisite that we should conceive of the aboriginal Caledonians disturbed by the invasion of foreign tribes armed with weapons scarcely less strange to them than those with which the Spanish discoverers astonished the simple natives of the New World. The changes, however, already noted in the forms and modes of sepulture, the abandonment of the long barrow, the introduction of cremation, of the sitting or folded posture of the dead with the correspondingly abbreviated cist, and of a uniform and defined direction of laying the dead, are all suggestive of the probable intrusion of new races in earlier as well as in later times. The facilities afforded by the more pliable metal tools would speedily work no less remarkable changes on the mansions of the living than on the sepulchres of the dead. The subterranean weem would give place to the wooden structure, which the new arts rendered at once a more convenient and simpler style of architecture; while the inroads on the forests which such changes led to would necessitate the clearing of the neighbouring lands preparatory to the extended labours of the agriculturist. To the same cause also we may probably trace the origin of many of those extensive tracts of bog and peat-moss which still encumber the limited level areas of Scotland. The wasteful profusion of the natives of a thinly peopled country would lead to the destruction of the forests with little heed to aught but the supply of their own immediate wants. In the extensive mosses of Kincardine and Blair-Drummond, which have yielded such valuable archæological relics, when the surface of the underlying clay was exposed by the removal of the moss, it was in many places covered with trees, chiefly oak and birch, of a great size. These were found lying in all directions beside their roots, which continued firm in the ground in their natural position; and from impressions still visible it was evident that they had been cut with an axe or some similar instrument.269 The like discoveries in other Scottish mosses prove their origin from the same wasteful inroads of early times.
The occupants of the country at this period were necessarily isolated tribes and clans, with no common interest, and little peaceful intercourse. The arts were therefore practised as in their primeval dawn described by Milton, when the artist formed
“First his own tools, then what might else be wrought.”
Among all the varied primitive relics which have been from time to time discovered, both in Scotland and other countries of northern Europe, none exceed in interest the stone and bronze moulds in which the earliest tools and weapons of the native metallurgist were formed. They have been found in Scotland, England, Ireland, and in the Channel Islands, exhibiting much diversity of form, and various degrees of ingenuity and fitness for the purpose in view. Some of them are of bronze, and highly finished, examples of which from the British Museum are engraved in the Archæological Journal, (vol. iv. p. 336,) in Plate VII. vol. v. of the Archæologia, and elsewhere. If the account, however, furnished by Warburton to Stukely may be relied upon, such objects are by no means rare. According to him, a bushel of celts, each inclosed in a brass mould or case, was found in 1719, at Brough, in the Humber. Mr. Worsaae refers to another example of a number of bronzes found in Mecklenburg, accompanied by the moulds in which they were cast, together with pieces of unwrought metal; and similar bronze celt-moulds have been discovered at various times in different parts of France. In the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland there are casts of a pair of large and very perfect bronze celt-moulds, of unusual size and peculiar form, found at Theville, Arrondissement de Cherbourg.
But still more interesting are the ruder stone moulds, in some of which we may trace the first efforts of the aborigines of the Stone Period to adapt the materials with which they were familiar to the novel arts of the metallurgist. This is particularly observable in a mould-stone preserved in the Belfast Museum. It is polygonal in form, and exhibits upon four of its surfaces indented moulds for axe-heads of the simplest class. In this example there is no reason to believe that any corresponding half was used to complete the mould. The melted metal was simply poured into the indented surface, and left to take shape by its equilibrium on the exposed surface. Weapons formed in this way may frequently be detected, while others, full of air-holes, and roughly granulated on the surface, appear to have been made in the still simpler mould formed by an indentation in sand. Others of the stone moulds have consisted of pairs, like those of bronze. A very curious example of this description was found a few years since in the Isle of Anglesea, and is engraved in the Archæological Journal.270 It is a cube of hone-stone, nine inches and a quarter in length, by four inches in breadth at its widest extremity. Each of the four sides is indented for casting different weapons: two varieties of spear, a lance or arrow-head, and a celt with two loops. Only the one stone was found, but another corresponding one is obviously requisite, by means of which four complete moulds would be obtained. At the Congress of the Archæological Institute, held at Salisbury in 1849, the temporary Museum contained a mould of serpentine, found in Dorsetshire, designed for casting spear-heads, and another of granite, found near Amesbury in Wiltshire, intended to cast ornamented celts of two sizes. Of the same class are two pairs of celt-moulds recently discovered in the parish of Rosskeen, Ross-shire. The site of this interesting discovery is about four miles inland, on the north side of the Cromarty Frith, on a moor which the proprietor is reclaiming from the wild waste, and restoring once more to the profitable service of man. In the progress of this good work abundant evidence demonstrated the fact, that the same area from which the accumulated vegetable moss of many centuries is now being removed, had formed the scene of a busy, intelligent, and industrious population ere the first growth of this barren produce indicated its abandonment to solitude and sterility. Near to the spot where the moulds were discovered there stood till recently a large sepulchral cairn; and in forming a road through the moss several cists were exposed containing human bones and cinerary urns. Amid these evidences of ancient population the two pairs of moulds were discovered, at a depth of only sixteen inches from the surface. They are very perfect, and are composed of a hard and very close-grained stone. One pair is notched and perforated through both moulds, so as to admit of their being exactly fitted and tied together for casting. Close to the spot where they were discovered there was also disclosed the remains of a rude inclosure or building of stone, containing a bed of ashes and scoriæ; so that here no doubt had been the forge of the primitive metallurgist, from whence, perhaps, the natives of an extensive district obtained their chief supplies of weapons and tools. These Scottish moulds give evidence both of taste and ingenuity. In one of them is also a matrix for forming a smaller implement, the use of which is not easy to determine, while both the celts are large and elegant in form. The woodcut represents one of the celts cast from the mould, which measures fully five inches long.
In most cases, however, it may be assumed that the earliest weapons of metal were furnished, as the modern sportsman casts his bullets, by each warrior or craftsman becoming his own smith and founder; and when we consider the slow and tedious process indispensable for the completion of the stone hammer or lance-head of flint, we may readily perceive that it would be from the scarcity of the metals and not from any preference for primitive and more familiar arts, that the Briton of the transition-period continued to use the weapons of his fathers, or intermingled them with the more efficient ones which the new art supplied. Still it was probably long before he overcame the difficulty of casting metal in metal, and learned to model and cast his mould instead of laboriously cutting it from stone.
In these, as in other stages of improvement, we detect, as it were, the old tide-marks in the progress of civilisation. The rude chip-axe improves into the highly polished wedge and celt; this in its turn gives way to the rude sand-cast axe, or to the similar weapon moulded in the indented stone. The celt and spear-head follow, gracefully formed and looped in the double mould of stone or bronze. The taste of the more experienced metallurgist also finds room for the exercise of the decorative arts, and transfers to the bronze implements the incised and chevron patterns which were first introduced on his vessels of unbaked clay. Still further evidences of progress will come under our notice, showing the extent to which civilisation had advanced before the late and more familiar metal superseded the works of bronze.
In the romantic outskirts of the old Scottish capital some of the most remarkable evidences of the abundant remains of this era have been discovered. Reference has been made in a former chapter to the finding of stone cists and cinerary urns as the modern city extended over the suburban fields which lay beyond the old North Loch. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, when the spirit of agricultural improvement, which has been productive of such important results to Scotland, was beginning to take effect, the use of marl as a valuable manure was advocated and practised with a zeal no less wide spread and enthusiastic than has resulted in our own day from the discovery of the Guano Islands of the Pacific. One of the most zealous of these Scottish agriculturists was Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, whose estate is bounded on the north by the romantic Duddingstone Loch, which there separates it from the ancient royal demesne of Holyrood Palace. In 1775 he constructed a canal, and prepared a couple of flat-bottomed boats, with the requisite dredging machinery attached to them. These were set afloat on the loch, and their projector thus describes some of the most interesting results of his labours in a letter communicated to the Earl of Buchan, the founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, shortly after its institution in 1780.
“In the third year of my progress in dragging successfully great quantities of marl, now and then in the middle of the lake I met with large fragments of deer’s horns of an uncommon magnitude. As my operations were proceeding northward, about one hundred and fifty yards from the verge of the lake next the King’s Park, the people employed in dredging in places deeper than usual, after having removed the first surfaces of fat blackish mould, got into a bed of shell marl from five to seven feet deep, from which they brought up in the collecting leather bag a very weighty substance, which when examined as it was thrown into the marl boat, was a heap of swords, spears, and other lumps of brass, mixed with the purest of the shell marl. Some of the lumps of brass seemed as if half melted; and my conjecture is that there had been upon the side of the hill, near the lake, some manufactory for brass arms of the several kinds for which there was a demand.”271
Rarely has a more interesting discovery been made, or one on an equally extensive scale, illustrative of the Scottish Bronze Period. Some of the most perfect and beautiful of these ancient weapons were presented to His Majesty George III.; others, doubtless also among the best specimens, were retained as family heirlooms, some of which were afterwards given to Sir Walter Scott;272 but the remainder, including upwards of fifty pieces of swords, spear-heads, and fragments of other weapons, most of them more or less affected by fire, were presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and formed the very first donation towards the founding of their valuable collection of national antiquities. The royal gifts and nearly all the family heirlooms have disappeared, but the whole of those presented to the Society still remain in their Museum. The swords are of the usual leaf-shaped form, with perforated handles, to which horn or wood has been attached. Some of the larger broken spear-heads have been pierced with a variety of ornamental perforations, and in addition to these there were bronze rings and staples, similar to those found on various occasions with other remains of the same period. The accompanying woodcut represents one of these, measuring three inches in diameter, along with a larger one in the Scottish Museum, which was found along with several bronze celts and swords, on the estate of Kilkerran, Ayrshire, in 1846, and more closely resembles the examples most frequently met with both in style and dimensions.
The discovery of gigantic deer’s horns and fragments of others along with the weapons and masses of melted bronze, would seem to add to the probability that some considerable manufacture of such weapons had been carried on, at some remote period, on the margin of the loch, and that these were collected for supplying them with handles. But other relics besides those which speak to us of the ingenious arts of the metallurgist, were dredged, along with the shell marl, from the bottom of the loch. “There were likewise brought up,” says Sir Alexander Dick, “out of the same place with these brass arms, several human skulls and bones, which had been undoubtedly long preserved in the shell marl, which Dr. Monro and I examined very accurately, and by their very black colour we concluded they had been immersed in the marl for an immense time.” Unfortunately neither the skulls nor the horns have been preserved. In this, as in a thousand other instances, we seek in vain for the minuter details that would confer so much value on the vague glimpses of archæological truths scattered through old periodicals, Statistical Accounts, and other unsatisfactory sources of information. Here we might say, with tolerable confidence, lay the manufacturer beside his tools. It becomes an interesting question to know if the deer’s horns exhibited marks of artificial cutting, as this would go far to prove their use in the completion of the weapons beside which they lay, and might further help us in forming an opinion as to how they were applied. But still more, we would seek to learn if these skulls corresponded with either of the old types of the tumuli, or if they exhibited the later Celtic type intermediate between the lengthened and shortened oval, and were characterized by superior cerebral development such as their progress in the arts might lead us to expect. It is possible that some record of these facts has been preserved, since the skulls were submitted to one of the most distinguished anatomists of his day; but I have failed to discover any clue to such, after inquiries submitted both to Dr. Alexander Monro, and to Professor Goodsir who now fills the Chair of Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh.
Fully seventy years after the marl-dredgers had brought to light the remarkable primitive relics buried beneath the alluvium at the bottom of Duddingstone Loch, the Honourable Board of Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Woods and Forests determined on constructing a carriage-way round the neighbouring Royal Park, which includes both Arthur Seat and Salisbury Crags. In the progress of the necessary operations for carrying this plan into execution, and while the workmen were excavating the soil immediately above the singular group of basaltic columns popularly styled “Samson’s Ribs,” they uncovered a sepulchral deposit containing a cinerary urn, which was unfortunately broken to fragments by a stroke of the workman’s shovel. Further to the eastward two, at least, and probably more bronze celts of large size were found, along with a small drinking-cup, engraved on a subsequent page. Still further to the east, almost directly above Duddingstone Loch—where the magnificent “Queen’s Drive” is carried along the steep side of the hill at an elevation of nearly 300 feet above the level of the neighbouring loch—two most beautiful and perfect leaf-shaped bronze swords were dug up, in a bed of vegetable charcoal, but with no remains which would indicate its having been a sepulchral deposit. The largest of the two swords measures 26¼ inches long; the other 24¾ inches by 1¾ inches in greatest breadth. In other respects they entirely agree, resembling in figure the usual form of this graceful weapon, as will be observed from the annexed engraving of one of them. The swords and the largest of the bronze celts, figured above, are now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. The other celt and the cup are in my own possession; and as they were obtained from an Irish labourer, who shewed no little reluctance to be questioned, it is extremely probable that these are but a portion of the valuable treasures disclosed in the course of the excavations. How many more may lie interred for the gratification and instruction of future generations covered only by a foot or two of soil!
It naturally becomes a question of considerable interest to us,—Are these weapons, of beautiful and varied forms, the product of native genius and skill? or were they brought hither by foreign conquerors, to remain only as the evidences of national inferiority in arts and arms? The question is one which no Briton can deem worthless; albeit we do not esteem ourselves the pure lineal descendants of the Allophylian aborigines, or of the primitive Celtæ, but, on the contrary, are content to derive our peculiar modern national characteristics as the product of mingled races of Picts, Scots, Romans, Tungrians and other barbarian legionary colonists, Norwegians, Danes, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans.273 Such are indeed the strange and diverse elements which make up the genealogy of the modern Scot. Nevertheless, his nationality is not the less strong because he derives his inheritance from so many sources; nor is his interest lessened in the aboriginal root. A very simple theory has heretofore sufficed for the classification of all Scottish, and, until very recently, of all British antiquities. Whatever was rude and barbarous, such as unhewn standing stones and monolithic circles, stone hammers and axes, and flint arrows, were native and Druidical; whatever manifested skill, invention, or any progress in the arts, was either Phœnician, Roman, or Danish! Britain, it was tacitly assumed, was sunk in the lowest state of barbarism, until humanized by the bloody missionaries of Roman civilisation. Such ignorant assumption will no longer suffice.
Mr. Worsaae adopts an era extending over about eleven centuries for the continuation of the Danish bronze period. From geological evidence he arrives at the conclusion, which is not improbable, that bronze weapons and implements were in use fully five centuries before the Christian era. But that the Archaic Period continued so long after it, when the neighbouring countries to the south were long familiar with the common and more useful metal, and when the Norwegians, who, it is acknowledged, appear never to have known a bronze period, were already taking their position among the Scandinavian nations, preparatory to making their piratical descents on the British shores, seems altogether improbable and opposed to established truths.
No description furnished either by Julius Cæsar or any later classical writer, of the weapons used by the native Britons of the first or second century, in any degree corresponds with the familiar form of the bronze sword so frequently found in the earlier tumuli.274 Tacitus describes the Caledonians as “a powerful warlike nation, using swords large and blunt at the point (sine mucrone) and targets wherewith they skilfully defend themselves against the Roman missiles.” The bronze leaf-shaped sword in no respect corresponds with this. It is a short and small, though formidable weapon, and is not only designed for thrusting rather than striking with,—as a heavy, blunt-pointed sword could alone be used,—but was evidently adapted for a warfare in which the chief tactics of the swordsman consisted in the bold thrust; since no example of a bronze sword has ever been found with a guard, that simple and most natural contrivance for defending the hand from the downward stroke of the foe. With such unmistakable evidence before us, the conclusion seems inevitable that the era of the bronze sword had passed away ere the hardy Caledonian encountered the invading legions of Rome. Nevertheless, while there is abundant evidence of the native manufacture of the articles of the Bronze Period, there are no less manifest traces of considerable intercourse throughout Europe during this era, from the near resemblance discoverable in all the bronze articles. The British bronze sword bears a general likeness to those not only of Denmark, but of Gaul, Germany, and even of Italy and Greece; but it has also its peculiar characteristics. It is broader and shorter than the Danish bronze sword, swelling out more towards the middle, so as to suggest the term leaf-shaped, by which it is now distinguished. A very remarkable guide to the probable era of such weapons in the south of Europe is furnished by a comparison of some specimens of Hellenic fictile art with a beautiful vase discovered at Vulci by the Prince of Canino, and described in the Archæologia275 by Mr. Samuel Birch. The same subject occurs on three vases, and has been supposed to represent the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles. On one, a Vulcian hydria of archaic style, a naked and bearded combatant bears a leaf-shaped sword without a guard. On a second, a cylix of later style from the Canino Collection, the combatants are armed with leaf-shaped swords, but with guards; while on the beautiful vase which Mr. Birch refers to as a specimen of Greek art contemporary with the Orestes of Æschylus, the same scene occurs, but the assailant has substituted for the primitive weapon a straight two-edged sword of modern form. Such comparisons cannot be deemed without their value; but independent of these, the variations in the bronze relics of the same type suffice to prove that neither the British antiquities of bronze were brought from Denmark, nor the Danish ones from Britain. The handles of the British weapon especially appear to have been always of wood or horn, while many are met with in Denmark with bronze handles, ornamented with a peculiar pattern, and even sometimes inlaid with gold, but all invariably without a guard.
Among an interesting collection of bronze weapons discovered near Bilton, Yorkshire, in 1848, parts of two broken swords were found, on which Mr. C. Moore Jessop makes the following observations:—“The portions of swords have each been broken off a few inches down the blade, thus leaving the metallic part of the handle entire; which has been covered on both sides with horn or some similar substance, affixed by rivets, which having become loose have allowed the horn to move slightly each way, thus wearing away the metal. They have left evident traces of the shape of the hilt, and likewise prove the weapons to have been long in use.”276 Gordon engraves a fine bronze sword, twenty-six inches long, which was found near Carinn, on the line of the wall of Antoninus Pius, and deposited in the Advocates’ Library at Edinburgh. Its most remarkable feature is its handle, which is of brass, but after examining the original, I am satisfied that the latter is a modern addition.277
It is especially worthy of note in relation to the makers and owners of these swords, that the handles are invariably small. One of the most marked ethnological characteristics of the pure Celtic race, in contrast to the Teutonic, is the small hands and feet; a feature so very partially affected by the mingling of Teutonic with the old Celtic blood of Scotland, that many of the older basket-hilted Highland swords will scarcely admit the hand of a modern Scotsman of ordinary size. This has been observed in various primitive races, and is noted by Mr. Stephens as characteristic of the ancient temple builders of Yucatan. In describing the well-known symbol of the red hand, first observed at Uxmal, Mr. Stephens remarks,—“Over a cavity in the mortar were two conspicuous marks, which afterwards stared us in the face in all the ruined buildings of the country. They were the prints of a red hand, with the thumb and fingers extended, not drawn or painted, but stamped by the living hand, the pressure of the palm upon the stone. There was one striking feature about these hands—they were exceedingly small. Either of our own spread over and completely hid them.”278 This is another of the physical characteristics of the earlier races well worthy of further note. While the delicate small hand and foot are ordinarily looked upon as marks of high-breeding, and are justly regarded as pertaining to the perfect beauty of the female form, the opposite are found among the masculine distinctions of the pure Teutonic races,—characteristic of their essentially practical and aggressive spirit,—and are frequently seen most markedly developed in the skilful manipulator and ingenious mechanician.
The spear-heads of this period are also marked by national distinctive features; the exceedingly common British form, for example, with loops to secure it to the shaft, being unknown in Denmark, and a variety of pierced heads common in Scotland and Ireland being rarely or never found in England. So it is with other varieties of weapons, implements, and personal ornaments: some which are common in Denmark are unknown here, or assume different forms; others with which we are familiar are unknown to the Danish archæologist; while both are in like manner distinguished from those of Germany, France, and the south of Europe. The distinctive peculiarities may indeed be most aptly compared to those which mark the various national developments of medieval art, and give to each an individuality of character without impairing the essential characteristics of the style. The extent of international communication was only so much greater and more direct in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, than in those older centuries before the Christian era, as to produce a more rapid interchange of thought and experience.
This national individuality, accompanying such remarkable correspondence to a common type, may therefore be assumed as justifying the conclusion that some considerable intercourse must have prevailed among the different races of Europe during that remote period to which we refer; and hence we are led to assume an additional evidence of early civilisation, while at the same time no sufficient proof appears to point to such a sudden transition as necessarily to lead to the conclusion that the bronze relics belong entirely to a new people. On the contrary, the evidence of slow transition is abundantly manifest. The metallurgic arts, and the models by which their earliest application was guided, were in all probability introduced by a new race, who followed in the wake of the older wanderers from the same Eastern cradle-land of the human race. But the rude stone moulds, the sand-cast celts and palstaves, and the relics of the primitive forges in which they were wrought, all point to aboriginal learners slowly acquiring the new art, while perhaps its originators were introducing those works of beautiful form and great finish and delicacy of workmanship, which the antiquary of the eighteenth century could ascribe to none but the Roman masters of the world.
Mr. Worsaae remarks, after pointing out the correspondence, in many respects, between the bronze relics of Denmark and those of other countries of Europe, these “prove nothing more than that certain implements and weapons had the same form among different nations.”279 And again, “from these evidences it follows that the antiquities belonging to the Bronze Period, which are found in the different countries of Europe, can neither be attributed exclusively to the Celts, nor to the Greeks, Romans, Phœnicians, Sclavonians, nor to the Teutonic tribes. They do not belong to any one people, but have been used by the most different nations at the same stage of civilisation; and there is no historical evidence strong enough to prove that the Teutonic people were in that respect an exception. The forms and patterns of the various weapons, implements, and ornaments, are so much alike, because such forms and patterns are the most natural and the most simple. As we saw in the Stone Period how people at the lowest stage of civilisation, by a sort of instinct, made their stone implements in the same shape, so we see now, in the first traces of a higher civilisation, that they exhibit in the mode of working objects of bronze a similar general resemblance.”280 But are the forms and patterns thus natural and simple? This argument, which abundantly satisfies us as to the universal correspondence of the majority of tools and weapons of the Stone Period, entirely fails when thus applied to the works of the Bronze Period. The former are in most cases of the simplest and most rudimentary character: the perforated oblong stone for a hammer, the pointed flint for an arrow-head, and the longer edged and pointed flint for a knife or spear. Human intelligence, in its most barbarous state, suggests such simple devices with a universality akin to the narrower instincts of the lower animals. They are, in truth, mathematically demonstrable as the simplest shapes. But the beauty and variety of form and decoration in the productions of the Bronze Period bring them under a totally different classification. They are works of art, and though undoubtedly exhibiting an indefiniteness peculiarly characteristic of its partial development, are scarcely less marked by novel and totally distinct forms than the products of the many different classic, medieval, or modern schools of design. The form of the leaf-shaped sword, indeed, is unsurpassed in beauty by any later offensive weapon. We are justified, therefore, in assuming that the general correspondence traceable throughout the productions of the European Bronze Period, affords evidence of considerable international intercourse having prevailed; while the peculiarities discoverable on comparing the relics found in different countries of Europe compel us to conclude that they are the products of native art, and not manufactures diffused from some common source. We have already traced them as pertaining to the infantile era of Greece, and may yet hope to find them among the indications of primitive Asiatic population, thereby supplying a new line of evidence in illustration of the north-western migration of the human race, and probably also a means of approximation towards the date of the successive steps by which the later nomades advanced towards the coasts of the German Ocean.
In the former section numerous instances have been referred to of the discovery of canoes belonging, by indisputable evidence, to the Primeval Period. One example, at least, has been recorded of a ship apparently belonging to the succeeding era of bronze, and which, both in size and mode of construction, amply accords with the assumed characteristics of the more advanced period, and with the idea of direct intercourse with the continent of Europe. “In this town,” (Stranraer,)says the old historian of Galloway, writing in 1683, “the last year, while they were digging a water-gate for a mill, they lighted upon a ship a considerable distance from the shore, unto which the sea at the highest spring tides never comes. It was transversely under a little bourn, and wholly covered with earth a considerable depth; for there was a good yard, with kail growing in it, upon the one end of it. By that part of it which was gotten out, my informers, who saw it, conjecture that the vessel had been pretty large; they also tell me that the boards were not joined together after the usual fashion of our present ships or barks, as also that it had nailes of copper.”281 Here we find remarkable evidence of progress. The rude arts of the aboriginal seaman, by which he laboriously hollowed the oaken trunk and adapted it for navigating his native seas, have been superseded by a systematic process of ship-building, in which the metallic tools sufficed to hew and shape the planks as well as to furnish the copper fastenings by which they were secured. Vessels thus constructed were doubtless designed for wider excursions than the navigation of native estuaries and inland seas; nor must we assume, because the records of ancient history have heretofore concentrated our interest on the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, that therefore the German Ocean and the British seas were a waste of unpeopled waters, save, perhaps, when some rude canoe, borne beyond its wonted shelter on the coasts, timorously struggled to regain the shore. Enough has already been advanced to disabuse us of the fallacy, that where no annals of a people have been preserved nothing worth chronicling can have existed.
Much will be gained if faith can be established in the fact, that deeds worth recording were enacted in Britain in these old times when no other chronicler existed but the bard who committed to tradition his unwritten history, and the more faithful mourner who entrusted to the grave the records of his reverence or his love. Faith is required for the honest and zealous study of the subject; but with this we doubt not that many links will be supplied which are still wanting to complete the picture of the past. This much, however, seems already established, that at a period long prior to the first century of the Christian era the art of working in metals was introduced into Britain, and gradually superseded the rude primitive implements of stone. The intelligent British savage, supplied with this important element of civilisation, wrought and smelted the ores, melted and mixed the metals, formed moulds, and improved on early and imperfect models, until he carried the art to such perfection that even now we look upon his later bronze works with admiration, and are hard to be persuaded that they are not the creations of Phœnician or Roman, rather than of native British civilisation prior to the introduction of letters.
How remote the origin of this transition-period of civilisation dates we cannot as yet presume to say; but with our preconceived notions, derived chiefly from an exclusively classical education, we are more apt to err on the side of too modern than of too remote a date. Mr. Worsaae, after discussing and rejecting the idea of a Roman origin for the bronze relics of Denmark, adds,—“Nor in all probability have these bronzes reached us from Greece, although, both with regard to their form and ornaments, particularly the spiral ornaments, a greater similarity appears to exist between those which occur in the north and those found in the most ancient tombs of Greece. For independently of the fact, that the latter have hitherto occurred but seldom, so that our knowledge of them is extremely imperfect, they belong to so very remote a period—1000 or 1400 years before the birth of Christ—that we can by no means be justified in supposing that any active intercourse then existed between countries so remote from each other.”282 But why not? Active it might be, though indirect; or, what is equally likely, both might derive their models from a common source—perhaps Phœnician, the apparent source of Greek metallurgic art; perhaps from the older regions of central Asia, whence both were sprung. We see, at least, from evidence which appears to me incontrovertible, that at a much more remote period a human population occupied the British Isles; and we shall allow our judgments to be misled by very fallacious reasoning if we conclude that they could not have attained to any degree of civilisation at the period referred to, merely because no notice of them occurs in the pages of classic writers. The Greeks and Romans looked with contempt on all other nations. Partly from this national pride, but still more perhaps from a want of that philological talent peculiar to modern times, they gave little heed to the languages of their most civilized contemporaries, and looked on their barbarian arts and manners with contempt. Yet among the barbarians of the Greeks we must include the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, and the Hebrews; even as we ourselves rank among the barbarians of the modern Chinese, whose annals at most will tell of us as a roving race who first appeared in history towards the end of the seventeenth century!
The civilisation of the British Bronze Period does not appear to have been of so active a nature as to have produced any very rapid social changes. It did not break up the isolated tribes of Britain, and unite them into kingdoms or associated states. Its material element was never so abundant as to admit of any such great contemporaneous development. It was rather such a change as might slowly operate over many centuries; and that it did so is rendered most probable by the many relics of it which still remain. The Toltecans and Yucatecs of the New World achieved much in their Bronze Period unknown to medieval Europe; nor is it altogether impossible that even now, beyond the vast forests so recently explored by Mr. Stephens, a native race may be found practising arts akin to those of Montezuma’s reign. Certain it is that the British Bronze Period was passing away in the transition-state of a later era when the Roman galleys first crossed the English Channel, and from the last century B.C. we must reckon backward up to that remote and altogether undetermined era, when the elder Stone Period passed by slow transition into that of Bronze.
Chapter III — Primitive Bronze
Among the various means of arriving at definite truths in relation to primitive works in metal, that of chemical analysis has not been lost sight of, and a number of ascertained results are now on record. Before proceeding to examine in detail the relics of this second period, it will be useful to glance at the bearings of this branch of scientific evidence on the general question.
It may now be received as an established fact, that the manufactures of this period consist entirely of bronze and not of brass—that is, of an alloy of copper and tin, and not of copper and zinc; but also including other metals, and especially a proportion of lead, in some examples exceeding the quantity of tin present. Even among the Romans we have abundant evidence that the alloy of copper and zinc was rarely used, although it is now known to be both more economical, and easier to work into a variety of forms. Mr. Worsaae, after remarking on the resemblance observable among the weapons, implements, and ornaments of bronze found in various countries, both in the north and south of Europe, adds,—“They have all been cast in moulds, and the metal is of the same composition—nine-tenths copper, and one-tenth tin. From this there would be farther reason to suppose that they all originated with one people.”283 This country, as has been already shewn, he elsewhere supposes may be England. From a careful examination and comparison of the antiquities themselves, however, the Danish archæologist is led to the conclusion that the bronze objects were manufactured in the various countries of Europe, where they are now found, and that only the metal was imported from some common centre. The same idea appears at one period to have been adopted by the Rev. Dr. Robinson, an Irish archæologist still more distinguished for his devotion to astronomical science than for his intelligent elucidation of antiquarian investigations; but the results of more extended observation, communicated by him to the Royal Irish Academy in 1848, shew that he was ultimately led to a different conclusion. Minute examination of the bronzes themselves will be found to throw fully as much doubt on the probability of a common origin for the mixed metal, as for the weapons into which it has been fashioned. The difference even in colour and texture is very great, and in some cases still only imperfectly accounted for. Many of the bronze weapons found both in Scotland and Ireland, are of a bright yellow colour, like brass, or rather resembling gilded metal; it does not tarnish, and, on analysis, is found to contain no zinc. Others are more of a copper colour, also little liable to tarnish or corrode; while a third quality, if polished, rapidly resumes a dark and nearly black colour, and is frequently found covered with verd antique. To the first of these the term Celtic brass is often applied, though it is in common use for all the varieties of primitive bronze. Analysis of these relics by no means bears out the idea of any uniform system of combination of the pure metals, or of their being derived from a single source in the form of bronze. The variations in the proportionate admixture of the metals were indeed necessarily confined within a limited range, especially in the manufacture of weapons. It did not require any mutual intercourse between the old Scandinavian and British armourer to teach them the most useful combinations of the new alloy. If the sword or spear proved either too ductile or too brittle for use, it would be consigned anew to the furnace, with such additions to the mixed metals as experience must soon suggest. The same would hold good even if we suppose that, as Cæsar affirms, the Britons used imported bronze, (ære utuntur importato.) Whether the tin and copper were mixed by Phœnician, Roman, or British metallurgists, similar proportional combinations of the two would necessarily be the result of experience. It will be seen, however, that the “Celtic brass” of British archæologists is neither invariably composed of exactly the same proportions of tin and copper, nor even solely of these two metals.
One of the most elaborate and valuable reports published on this subject is contained in a communication read to the Royal Society of London, June 9, 1796, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions of that year. It is entitled, “Observations on some metallic arms and utensils, with experiments to determine their composition,” by George Pearson, M.D., F.R.S. His experiments were both analytic and synthetic, and consequently enable us to trace the probable experience of the primitive metallurgist, before he had ascertained the most useful proportions of the metals for practical purposes. Copper, we know, is not unfrequently found native in its metallic state, and fit for immediate use. Tin, though never found in this state, occurs in England in the same locality with the copper, and often near the surface. It might, therefore, even accidentally be combined with the former metal. The fact of the two possessing, when in combination, the requisite hardness for domestic or warlike purposes which neither of them has when alone, appears to have been ascertained at a very remote period. In addition to this indispensable property, the combination possesses the valuable qualities of being more readily fusible and continuing longer in the fluid state. Hence the mixture of two of the metals most readily accessible to the native Briton greatly facilitated all his other operations.
The synthetic experiments of Dr. Pearson furnish the following results applicable to the present argument:—The bronze relics submitted to analysis and comparison consisted—1. of a lituus, or musical wind-instrument, found in the river Witham, Lincolnshire, in 1768; 2. A spear-head of the common unperforated form, “made of cast metal, as appears from its rough surface, figure, texture, and grain.... It is open grained almost as copper, and porous, as if made of bad metal, of a blackish-brown or dark-grey colour;” 3. A sauce-pan, (Anglo-Roman patella,) also made of cast metal, open grained, impressed on the handle with a stamp, C. ARAT.; 4. A bronze scabbard, with a sword of iron within it, thought to be Danish; and, 5. Three celts, (Nos. 1 and 3, what we now term axe-heads, No. 2 an axe-shaped palstave,) all found in the bed of the river Witham. In his comparative experiments Dr. Pearson fused fifty grains of tin with 1000 grains of copper; i.e., one part of tin to twenty parts of copper. The result, when polished, differed in shade of colour from that of the celt metals, being much darker—a point not unworthy of note in determining some of the characteristics of primitive bronze relics. Its fracture shewed a colour inclining to the peculiar red of copper. One hundred grains of tin united by fusion with 1500 grains of copper; i.e., one part of the former to fifteen parts of the latter, resembled the celt metals, Nos. 1 and 2 in colour, polished surface, grain and brown colour of the fracture, the red of the copper being no longer apparent. It was stronger than the celt metals, but not so hard, while it was harder than the spear-head and the patella. No very remarkable differences are observable in the experiments of the combinations of twelve, ten, nine, and eight parts of copper with one of tin. When, however, the copper is reduced to seven parts to one of tin, the increase in hardness and brittleness becomes very apparent, while the alloy is decidedly paler in colour. The same characteristics were still more marked on successively reducing the proportions of copper to seven, six, five, four, and three; and when an alloy was made of two parts of copper with one part of tin, it “was as brittle almost as glass.” It is not difficult, from these results, to imagine the process pursued by the old worker in bronze, who, having ascertained that he could harden his copper by alloying it with tin, would not fail to diminish the added quantities of the latter till he had secured an efficient practical admixture for the purposes of his manufacture, in which it is apparent, from the above results, that no very great nicety of apportionment of the ingredients was required. The most fit proportions for the manufacture of weapons and tools Dr. Pearson considers to be one part of tin to nine parts of copper.
The result of a comparison of numerous analyses of primitive bronze relics will, I think, lead to the conclusion that their correspondence is not greater than might be anticipated to arise from the experience acquired by isolated workers, when dealing with the same metals, with similar objects in view, while the frequent presence of other metals besides tin and copper may, in the majority of cases, be accepted as additional proof of the unsystematic processes of the old metallurgist; though in some instances we may trace, in the adaptation to a special purpose, the evidence of design.
The results of Dr. Pearson’s analytic experiments are as follows:—
The Lituus contained a little more than twelve per cent. of tin; i.e., about one part of tin to seven and a half parts of copper. Specific gravity, (before melting,) 8.3.
The Spear-head; fourteen per cent. of tin, or somewhat less than one part of tin to six parts of copper; in addition to which it contained the proportion of fifteen grains of silver in a troy pound of the mixed metal. Specific gravity, 7.795.
The Patella; a little more than fourteen per cent. of tin, or about one part of tin and six parts of copper. Specific gravity, 7.960.
Bronze Scabbard; a little more than ten per cent. of tin, or about one part of tin to nine parts of copper. Specific gravity, 8.5.
Celts, Nos. 1 and 2; a little more than nine per cent. of tin, or about one part of tin to ten parts of copper. Specific gravity, No. 1, 8.780; No. 2, 8.680; No. 3, a little more than twelve per cent. of tin, or about one part of tin to seven and a half parts of copper. Specific gravity, (after melting,) 8.854.
In the month of August 1816, some labourers employed in lowering the road on the top of a small eminence, called Huckeridge Hill, near Sawston, Cambridgeshire, discovered the remains of a human skeleton, at the feet of which stood two large bronze vessels. On the left side of the skeleton were also found an iron sword greatly corroded, and fragments of a very coarse urn, half an inch in thickness. The rim of the largest bronze vessel was ornamented with a row of bosses, indented from the under side. Dr. Clarke, Professor of Mineralogy in the University of Cambridge, subjected portions of the bronze to analysis, and communicated the result to the Society of Antiquaries of London. The conclusion he arrived at was, that they consisted of 88/100 of copper with 12/100 of tin, or about one part of tin to seven and a half parts of copper. Dr. Clarke also assigns exactly the same proportions of copper and tin as constituting the bronze coinage of Antoninus Pius, and of his successor Marcus Aurelius; which it will be seen correspond with those of the lituus and one of the celts analyzed by Dr. Pearson. The process adopted by the former, however, in the chemical analysis of those bronzes is much less satisfactory than that of Dr. Pearson, as he appears to have assumed the absence of all other metals, and sought only for copper and tin.284 A bronze sword, found in France, proved on analysis to contain 87.47 parts of copper to 12.53 of tin in every 100 parts, with a portion of zinc so small as not to be worth noticing, or capable of affecting the bronze.285 The analyses of various specimens of antique bronze, including a helmet with an inscription, found at Delphi, and now in the British Museum, some nails from the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ, an ancient Corinthian coin, and a portion of a breastplate or cuirass of exquisite workmanship, also in the British Museum, are stated to have afforded about eighty-seven or eighty-eight parts copper to about twelve or thirteen of tin per cent.286
In the communication of Dr. Robinson to the Royal Irish Academy, previously referred to, he laid before that body a report of a most valuable discovery made about eighteen years since in King’s County. It consisted of a large bronze vessel, which contained, in addition to various relics acquired by the late Dean of St. Patrick’s and other individuals, thirteen litui or trumpets of bronze, the largest having their seams rivetted; thirty-one bronze celts of different sizes; twenty-nine spear-heads; three gouges; and thirty-one bells, believed to be for sheep or cattle—all of bronze. The account of this remarkable discovery had been reserved for sixteen years, owing to the strange suspiciousness of the Irish peasants by whom it was found, who imposed on the purchaser the promise of keeping the details secret during their lives. The last of them died in the winter of 1848, and then he felt himself at liberty to communicate the particulars which Dr. Robinson laid before the Academy.
“The vessel, which is now in the collection of the Earl of Rosse, was found in the townland marked Dooros Heath, in sheet 30 of the Ordnance Map of King’s County, near Whigsborough, in what appears from the description to have been a piece of cut-out bog, about eighteen inches below the surface. It is composed of two pieces neatly connected by rivets. The bronze of which the sheets are formed possesses considerable flexibility, but is harder than our ordinary brass, and it must have required high metallurgic skill to make them so thin and uniform. On the other hand, it is singular that neither in this or any other bronze implements with which I am acquainted, are there any traces of the art of soldering; if it might be supposed objectionable in vessels exposed to heat, yet in musical instruments this would not apply. Such vessels have often been found, but the contents of this are peculiar. When discovered (without any cover) it seemed full of marl, on removing which it was found to contain an assortment of the instruments which may be supposed most in request among the rude inhabitants of such a country as Ireland must have been at that early epoch.... It seems likely that the collection was the stock of a travelling merchant, who, like the pedlar of modern times, went from house to house provided with the commodities most in request, and it is easily imagined that if entangled in a bog with so heavy a load, a man must relinquish it.
“This is connected with another question, the source from which the ancient world was supplied with the prodigious quantity of bronze arms and utensils which we know to have existed. This caught my imagination many years since, and I then analyzed a great variety of bronzes, with such uniform results that I supposed this identity of composition was evidence of their all coming from the same manufactures. Afterwards I found that the peculiar properties of the atomic compound already referred to are sufficiently distinct to make any metallurgist who was engaged in such a manufacture select it. It also appears to me more permanent in the crucible.”
Dr. Robinson states that this alloy, when used for weapons, is a constant chemical compound containing fourteen equivalents of copper and one of tin, or nearly eighty-eight parts of the former and twelve of the latter by weight. But no account is given by him of the process of analysis, and the results justify the supposition that in these experiments, as in those of Dr. Clarke of Cambridge, he had assumed the absence of all other metals, and sought only for copper and tin.287 Notwithstanding the opinions quoted above, Dr. Robinson still inclines, on other grounds, to the conclusion that we are justified in tracing the bronze to some common source, and this he conceives to be the Phœnicians. In all the weapons and implements the points are entire and sharp, and the edges unbroken. The spear-heads are the most remarkable as specimens of workmanship. They are of various sizes, and of great diversity of pattern, and also have their points and edges perfect as if they had never been used. They prove, as Dr. Robinson remarks, not only that the workmen who made them were masters of the art of casting, but also that they possessed high mechanical perceptions; their productions shewing a skilful adaptation of the material to the end in view. These indications appear to him to confirm the idea of their derivation from some foreign source. “Yet,” he also adds, “in many of them the colour of the bronze is such as, at first sight, to excite a suspicion that they were gilded.” This has already been noted as a peculiarity observed hitherto almost exclusively in the primitive bronze relics of Scotland and Ireland, and even there occurring in greatest abundance in certain districts. Dr. Petrie observed, at the meeting of the Academy, that all the bronze relics found in King’s County have the characteristic golden tinge referred to, and added that the number of beautiful moulds for hatchets and other implements of warfare found from time to time in Ireland, prove that the ancient Irish understood the art of manufacturing bronze instruments such as those discovered in the vessel found at Dooros Heath.
With the desire of testing as far as possible the exact bearing of the chemical evidence on this interesting inquiry in relation to relics of the Scottish Bronze Period, I obtained permission from the Council of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland to submit various specimens of bronze in the Society’s collection to chemical analysis. The results will be found to differ very remarkably from that ideal uniformity which has been supposed to establish the conclusion of some single common origin for the metal, if not indeed for the manufactured weapons and implements. The experiments have been made in the laboratory and under the directions of my brother, Dr. George Wilson, whose acknowledged experience as an analyst is sufficient guarantee for the accuracy of the results. In these analyses it will be seen that the presence of lead has been detected in every instance in greatly varying quantities, but in two of the examples exceeding the tin.
Five of the examples were selected from specimens in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, the sixth (No. 4) is an axe in my own possession.288 They are arranged according to the quantity of copper present in each. No. 1 is a piece of a large bronze cauldron found in the neighbourhood of Lauder, Berwickshire. The chief portions of it, which still remain in the Scottish Museum, appear to have been partially melted by excessive heat, so as to make a large hole in the side of the vessel, and above this a thin plate of metal has been rudely rivetted to repair the injury. No. 2 is a piece of a leaf-shaped sword dredged out of Duddingstone Loch near Edinburgh; No. 3, part of one of the large bronze vessels usually styled Roman camp-kettles, found at Huntly Wood, near West Gordon, Berwickshire; No. 4, an axe-head in my own possession, which was found in draining a field near the village of Pentland, Mid-Lothian. This was of the bright yellow metal so common in the earlier bronze relics of Scotland and Ireland, and of the very rudest workmanship, having apparently been cast in sand. It was full of air-holes, and only ground at the edge like the most primitive axe-heads of flint. Its specific gravity, however, it will be observed, is high, so that it must have been hammered in order to give firmness and consistency to the imperfect results of the crucible and mould. No. 5 is a piece of a bronze cauldron dredged up from Duddingstone Loch, which appears, like other large vessels of this period, to have had bronze rings attached to it for suspension, one of which has been figured on a previous page, from the original in the Scottish Museum. No. 6 is one of the implements to which the name of Palstave is now given. It was found in the parish of Denino, Fifeshire, and appears to have been very imperfectly cast—probably in loam. Like the axe-head No. 4, it was rough and full of air-holes, while from its peculiar form it could not be subjected to the after-process of hammering. Its specific gravity is accordingly unusually small. The examples, it will be seen, present every requisite of variety, including weapons, implements, and vessels, from Fife, Mid-Lothian, and Berwickshire, selected solely as furnishing a comprehensive diversity in the elements of comparison. The following are the results of the analyses and the description of the process by which they were obtained, nearly the whole of the experiments having been repeated several times:—
ANALYSES OF ANCIENT BRONZES.
| No. 1. | No. 2. | No. 3. | No. 4. | No. 5. | No. 6. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copper, | 92.89 | 88.51 | 88.22 | 88.05 | 84.08 | 81.19 |
| Tin, | 5.15 | 9.30 | 5.63 | 11.12 | 7.19 | 18.31 |
| Lead, | 1.78 | 2.30 | 5.88 | 0.78 | 8.53 | 0.75 |
| 99.82 | 100.11 | 99.73 | 99.95 | 99.80 | 100.25 | |
| Loss, | 0.18 | ··· | 0.27 | 0.05 | 0.20 | ··· |
| Gain, | ··· | 0.11 | ··· | ··· | ··· | 0.25 |
| 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. | |
| Specific Gravity, | 6.37 | 6.23 | 6.77 | 8.27 | 7.75 | 6.16 |
“These bronzes were first carefully qualitatively analyzed, and found to consist of copper, tin, and lead. Zinc, bismuth, antimony, and silver were carefully sought for, but could not be found. It is probable, however, that a minute trace of the last metal, too small to admit of detection, was present, not, however, as an artificial addition to the alloy, but as a natural accompaniment of the lead.
“In the quantitative analysis, a weighed portion of the bronze was digested in nitric acid, which dissolved the copper and lead, and converted the tin into the insoluble white peroxide. This was collected on a filter, carefully washed, dried, and weighed, after the filter had been burned. The filtered solution containing the copper and the lead was then evaporated to dryness along with a portion of sulphuric acid, which converted the lead into the insoluble sulphate of that metal. This was collected on a filter, treated like the oxide of tin, and weighed. The solution of copper which passed through the filter was precipitated by solution of caustic potass added in excess, and kept at the boiling point till the oxide of copper became dark brown. It was then collected on a filter, washed with boiling water, and weighed after the combustion of the filter.
“The number obtained by adding together the quantities of copper, tin, and lead exceeds that of the quantity of bronze taken in the second and sixth analysis. The increase is marked as excess, and is subtracted from the added numbers, so as to reduce their sum to 100. It should probably be deducted from the copper, which in the state of oxide is not easily deprived of the whole of the potass employed to precipitate it, and is liable, moreover, to retain a little moisture even when it appears quite dry. The presence, accordingly, of potass or water, or both, increases the apparent weight of the copper. As the excess, however, amounts in the one case only to 11/10,000th of the weight of the bronze analyzed, and in the other to 25/10,000th of it, it does not materially influence the result, whether as deducted from the entire alloy, or only from the copper.”
To this chemical evidence I am able, through the kindness of Mr. Bell of Dungannon, to add the following results of an analysis recently made for him by Professor Davy of portions of two leaf-shaped bronze swords found in Ireland:—
“No. 1.
—Very brittle.
| Copper, | 88.63 |
| Tin, | 8.54 |
| Lead and Iron, | 2.83 |
The lead and iron in this alloy are most likely impurities in copper and tin.
No. 2.
—Much more malleable.
| Copper, | 83.50 |
| Lead, | 8.35 |
| Tin, | 5.15 |
| Iron, | 3.00 |
The iron in this alloy is probably an impurity in the other metals.”
These are not the only instances in which the presence of iron has been ascertained in Irish bronze swords. In 1774 Governor Pownall laid before the Society of Antiquaries of London an account of some Irish antiquities, including two bronze swords found in a bog at Cullen, county Tipperary. In the communication he remarks,—“That the Society might have a precise and philosophic description of the metal, I applied to the Master of the Mint; and by his direction Mr. Alchorn, His Majesty’s Assay-master, made an accurate assay of the metal. ‘It appears,’ he says, ‘to be chiefly copper, interspersed with particles of iron, and perhaps some zinc, but without containing either gold or silver. It seems probable that the metal was cast in its present state, and afterwards reduced to its proper figure by filing. The iron might either have been obtained with the copper from the ore, or added afterwards in the fusion, to give the necessary rigidity of a weapon. But I confess myself unable to determine anything with certainty.’”289 The analysis here appears to have been merely qualitative; and from the indefinite reference to the possible presence of zinc, it cannot be assumed to have been made with great strictness. The presence of iron, however, may be assumed as undoubted, whether it was the result of accident or design.
One important result which these experiments furnish is, that the composition of the mixed metal of the Bronze Period indicates no such uniformity as might be anticipated in manufactures derived entirely from one source; but, on the contrary, that different examples of it belonging to the same period exhibit all the degrees of variation that might be expected in the work of isolated manufacturers, very partially acquainted with the chemical properties of the standard compound, and guided, for the most part, by the practical experience of the result of their labours. The variations in the proportions of the elements of the bronze are obviously such as to preclude all comparison with any ancient type. In regard to the favourite theory of Phœnician origin for these relics comparison is impossible, as we possess no authentic remains of Phœnician art. An analysis of Egyptian bronze relics, however, would furnish interesting results in regard to the ancient metallurgic arts practised in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Such arts, however, were by no means confined to the few ancient historic races, among whom the Tyrians and Phœnicians generally rank the foremost for skill in the working of metals. The Turditani, a tribe occupying the province of Andalusia, in Spain, are described by Polybius as related to the Celtæ, though Dr. Prichard conceives it more probable that they were of Iberian than of Celtic kindred.290 They are stated to have been the most learned and polished people in Spain. They had books, poems, and laws composed in verse, and boasted of a knowledge of the use of letters for 6000 years. It is said of this people, that when the Carthaginians made an expedition into Spain they found the Turditani possessed of furniture and vessels of silver, and far advanced in wealth and luxury. It is not, therefore, indispensable that Irish antiquaries should trace their metallurgic arts to a Phœnician source, when a country so much nearer their own, and with which many of their historic traditions indicate an early intercourse, was in possession of similar arts at so remote a period.
The other point of greatest importance brought out in the above analyses is the uniform presence of lead, though in greatly varying quantities; amounting in the palstave to only 75/10,000; while in the cauldron dredged from Duddingstone Loch, along with leaf-shaped swords, perforated spear-heads, &c., it exceeds the whole tin present in the compound; amounting to 8.53 per cent. of the whole. Lead is known to have been used by the Romans in a similar manner, possibly from motives of economy, as in their brass coinage, in which the antiquary has long been familiar with the presence of this metal.291 It is also worthy of special note how greatly all the ingredients of No. 2 and No. 5 vary in proportion, though both were found together, and undoubtedly belong to the same period. Possibly the very marked difference in the proportion of the alloys may prove to be the result of design, as the only other example at all resembling the Duddingstone cauldron, No. 5, is the so-called Roman camp-kettle, No. 3, from Berwickshire. The difference between them is considerable, but in both the quantity of lead present is greater than of tin. No such conclusion, however, can by any possibility be assumed in reference to the weapons analyzed by Professor Davy. These were both swords, similar in form, and designed for the same purpose; yet in one the proportion of lead present greatly exceeds that of tin, while in the other it is so small as to suggest the possibility of its presence being accidental. A greatly more limited scale of variations would afford evidence enough to establish the certainty of a local and independent manufacture carried on throughout the Bronze Period, by numerous native metallurgists possessed of just such an amount of crude practical skill as sufficed to render the new material available for their use.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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 Archæologia328 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.
Chapter 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 Boece359 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
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.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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
224 Ellis’s Specimens. The abundance of wild beasts and game of all kinds in the Caledonian forests is frequently alluded to. Boece describes “gret plente of haris, hartis, hindis, dayis, rais, wolffis, wild hors, and toddis.” (Bellenden’s Boece. Cosmographe, chap. xi.) The following curious enumeration in Gordon’s History of the House of Sutherland, (fol. p. 3,) written about 1630, furnishes a tolerably extensive list of wild natives of Sutherland even in the seventeenth century:—“All these forrests and schases are verie profitable for feiding of bestiall, and delectable for hunting. They are full of reid deir and roes, woulffs, foxes, wyld catts, brocks, skuyrrells, whittrets, weasels, otters, martrixes, hares, and fumarts. In these forrests, and in all this province, ther is great store of partriges, pluivers, capercalegs, blackwaks, murefowls, heth-hens, swanes, bewters, turtledoves, herons, dowes, steares or stirlings, lair-igigh or knag, (which is a foull lyk vnto a paroket or parret, which maks place for her nest with her beck in the oak trie,) duke, draig, widgeon, teale, wildgouse, ringouse, routs, whaips, shot-whaips, woodcok, larkes, sparrowes, snyps, blakburds or osills, meweis, thrushes, and all other kinds of wildfowle and birds, which ar to be had in any pairt of this kingdome. Ther is not one strype in all these forrests that wants trouts and other sorts of fishes.... Ther is vpon these rivers, and vpon all the cost of Southerland, a great quantitie of pealoks, sealghes or sealls, and sometymes whaills of great bignes, with all sorts of shell fish, and dyvers kynds of sea-foull.” When we remember that this ample inventory is of a late date, and lacks not only the Caledonian bull, the elk, and “the wild-bore, killed by Gordoun, who for his valour and great manhood was verie intire with King Malcolme-Kean-Moir,” but also, in all probability, many more of the older prizes of the chase, we can readily perceive the abundant stores that lay within reach of the thinly-peopled districts of the primitive era. One of the most interesting of the extinct animals of Scotland, on many accounts, is the beaver, (Castor Europæus,) already referred to among the mammals of the primeval transition. Its remains have been discovered under circumstances indicative of equal antiquity with the extinct mammoth, (Owen, p. 191.) But their most frequent situation is at the bottom of the peat-bog; as in the Newbury peat-valley, where they were found twenty feet below the present surface, associated with the remains of the wild-boar, roebuck, goat, deer, and wolf. Fine specimens of a skull, under-jaw, and haunch bone, found in Perthshire, and now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, have been made the subject of a valuable memoir by Dr. P. Neill, a Fellow of the Society, in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, (vol. i. p. 183, and Wern. Mem. vol. iii. p. 207.) Dr. Neill, Professor Fleming, and subsequent writers, including Professor Owen, in referring to the historical notices of the beaver, remark on the absence of any mention of such an animal in the Scottish public records. This, however, is an error. In an Act of David I. fixing the rate of custom-duties, beavers’ skins are mentioned among the Scottish exports, along with those of the fox, the weasel, the martin, the wild cat, the ferret, &c.—“Of Peloure.—Of a tymmyr of skynnis of toddis, quhytredis, mertrikis, cattis, beueris, sable firettis, or swylk vthyr of ilk tymmyr at þe outpassing, iiij ᵭ. Of þe tymmer of skurel, ij ᵭ.,” &c., (Act. Parl. Scot. vol. i. p. 303.) Dr. Neill has pointed out the interesting fact, that the Scottish Highlanders still retain a peculiar Gaelic name for the beaver, Dobran losleathan, the broad-tailed otter. By the Welsh it is called Llosdlydan, and Pennant refers to waters in the principality still bearing the name of the Beaver Lake.
225 Numbers xxxi. 22.
226 Ezekiel xxvii. 12.
227 Borlase’s Cornwall, vol. i. p. 317. Plate XXVIII.
228 Archæologia, vol. xvi. p. 137. Plates IX. and X.
229 Collectanea Curiosa Antiqua Dumnonia, by W. T. P. Shortt, Esq., p. 71.
230 Mémoires de la Société d’Emulation d’Abbeville, 1844-1848, p. 135.
231 W. T. P. Shortt, Esq. of Heavitree, near Exeter. Antiqua Dumnonia, Pref. p. iv. Vide also Sylva Antiqua Iscana, pp. 79, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93-105. Gent.’s Mag., Aug. and Sep. 1837, &c., for notices of the discovery of numerous early Greek and Egyptian, and some Phœnician coins.
232 Numismatic Chronicle, vol. i. p. 3. Vide also the able series of Articles by the Rev. Beale Post, on the coins of Cunobeline, and of the Ancient Britons. Journ. of Archæol. Assoc. vols. i. ii. iii. iv. and v.
233 Boece assigns the earliest native Scottish coinage to an apocryphal king Donald, circa A.D. 200. This account, however, includes some interesting notices of hoards discovered in his own day: “King Donald was the first king of Scottis that prentit ane penny of gold or silver. On the ta side of this money was prentit ane croce, and his face on the tothir. The Scottis usit na money, bot merchandice, quhen thay interchangeit with Britonis and Romanis, afore thir dayis, except it war money of the said Romanis or Britonis, as may be previt be sindry auld hurdis and treasouris, found in divers partis of Scotland, with uncouth cunye. For in the yeir of God M.DXIX. yeris, in Fiffe, nocht far fra Levin, war certane penneis found, in ane brasin veschell, with uncouth cunye; sum of thaim war prentit with doubill visage of Janus; otheris with the stam of ane schip; otheris had the figure of Mars, Venus, Mercurius, and siclike idolis; on otheris war prentit Romulus and Remus soukand ane wolf; and on the tothir side war prentit S. P. Q. R. Siclike, in Murray-land, beside the see, in the ground of ane auld castill, the yeir of God M.CCCCLX. yeris, was found ane veschell of merbill, full of uncouth money; on quhilkis was prentit the image of ane ganar fechtant with edderis,”—i.e., a goose fighting with adders.—Bellenden’s Boece, book iv. chap. xvi.
234 Sylva Antiqua Iscana, p. 79, Plate VI.
235 Ibid. p. 90, where a minute account of the coins is given. Also pp. 76, 88, 91, 93, &c.
236 New Statist. Acco. vol. iv. p. 292.
237 Archæologia, vol. ii. p. 92; vol. iii. pp. 234, 332. A monumental tablet, dedicated to the memory of Antiochus Lysimachus, now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, is engraved and described by mistake in Stuart’s “Caledonia Romana” as the only Greek inscription which has been met with north of the Tweed. It was found, along with a statue of Esculapius and other fine marbles, near the fountain of Cyrene, on the site of an ancient Greek colony in Africa.
238 Gibson’s Camden, p. 926.
239 Primeval Antiquities, p. 135.
240 Primeval Antiquities, p. 45.
241 Layard’s Nineveh, vol. ii p. 418.
242 Natural History of Man, p. 191.
243 Archæologia, vol. xxx. p. 248.
244 Schlegel’s Philosophy of History, Lecture II.
245 Archæol. Journal, vol. vii. p. 68.
246 Pennant, vol. ii. p. 250.
247 “It seems our ancestors had more gold than silver, and indeed there are several places in Scotland where there has been much digging for gold. I have had the curiosity to consider the nature of them, and always found them just the same with those the Emperor has on the borders of Hungary, at two places, Nitria and Presburg. Those, like ours, consist of a vein or stratum of sand and gravel, which being brought up some fathoms from below ground, and washed, produce gold in very small particles.”—Sir John Clerk to Mr. Gale, August 6, 1732; Biblo. Topog. Brit. vol. ii. p. 299.
In the Miscellanea Scotica, printed in 1710, various notices of the ancient working of gold in Scotland occur. Pieces of gold, mixed with spar and other substances, weighing thirty ounces, are described among the fruits of the Laughain and Phinland mines. See also Pennant’s Tour, App. x. vol. iii. for a curious account “of the gold mines of Scotland.”
The introduction of the metals into southern Europe in ancient times appears to have borne no analogy to that in the north. Gold was not used in the Roman coinage till B.C. 207, sixty-two years after the adoption of a silver coinage. So, too, in the records of sacred history, Abraham weighed unto Ephron 400 shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. The earliest notice of gold used otherwise than for jewels and ornaments only occurs in the reign of David, when he purchased the threshing-floor of Ornan for 600 shekels of gold by weight; 1 Chron. xxi. 25. Compare this with 2 Samuel xxiv. 24.
248 Regist. de Dunferm. p. 16.
249 Miscel. Scot., Napier of Merchiston, p. 228.
250 “Account of the late discovery of native gold in Ireland.” Philosoph. Transac. London, 1796, p. 34.
251 Ibid. p. 38. “A Mineralogical Account of the native gold lately discovered in Ireland,” by Abraham Mills, Esq.
252 Philosoph. Transac. London, 1796, p. 43.
253 Ibid. p. 45.
254 Wayland Smith, by W. S. Singer, from the French of Depping and Michel, Preface.
255 Ibid. p. lxxvi.
256 Humboldt’s Researches, vol. i. p. 94.
257 Archæologia, vol. xxxii. p. 321.
258 MS. de la Bib. Roy. Supplem. Française, No. 540, fol. 33. Singer’s Wayland Smith, p. lvii.
259 Singer’s Wayland Smith, p. lxx.
260 Die Hieroglyphen in dem Mythus des Æsculapius. Meiningen, 1819. Singer, p. lxx.
261 Vide Thomas Wright on the Legend of Weland the Smith. Archæologia, vol. xxxii. p. 315. Also his article on Alfred, in the Biographia Literaria of the Royal Society of Literature regarding the authorship of this metrical version.
262 Logan’s Scottish Gael, vol. ii. p. 195.
263 Macculloch’s Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, vol. iv. p. 327.
264 Bishop Lesley’s Hist. Bannatyne Club. 4to. Edinburgh, 1830. P. 76.
265 Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i. p. 224.
266 Martin’s Western Isles. Lond. 1703, p. 208. The Glenlyon brooch and the brooch of Lorn—worn according to the tradition of the Macdougals, by Robert the Bruce, and still preserved in that family—beautiful examples of this favourite Celtic ornament, are engraved on Plates II. and III. The Lorn brooch corresponds in some degree to the description in the text; and a common brass one, probably of the seventeenth century, in the Collection of C. K. Sharpe, Esq., figured on a later page, furnishes a good example of native Celtic art.
[267] Travels in the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790. London, 1793, p. 87.
268 Ibid. p. 83.
269 Kincardine Moss. General Append. Sinclair’s Stat. Acc. vol. xxi. p. 154.
270 Archæol. Jour. vol. iii. p. 257.
271 MS. Letter Book, vol. i. p. 43, 1780-1781, Libr. Soc. Antiq. Scot. In a subsequent letter, (Ibid. p. 70,) Sir Alexander Dick describes several very large deer’s horns, in addition to the fragments previously found. The results of a careful analysis of some of these bronze relics are given in the succeeding chapter.
[272] They are figured in the Abbotsford Edition, vol. ii. p. 103.
273 A curious illustration of the mixed stock of the Scottish Lowlanders is furnished in a charter of Malcolm IV., which is addressed to the bishops, abbots, priors, barons, and king’s lieges in general, whether French, English, Scots, or Galwegians, and describes the inhabitants of the burgh of St. Andrews as Scots, French, Flemings, and Englishmen.—Lib. Cart. Prior. Sancti Andree, p. 193.
274 Vide Biblio. Topog. Britan. vol. ii. Part 3, for a learned controversy “On brass arms and other antiquities of Scotland,” in a series of letters between Sir John Clerk and Mr. Gale.—Reliquiæ Galeanæ, pp. 226-232.
275 Vol. xxxii. Plates IX. X. XII.
276 Journal of Archæological Association, vol. v., p. 350.
277 Itinerar. Septent., p. 118. Sir Robert Sibbald also engraves one with a handle, perfect and more elegant than the former, but he gives no description of it further than naming it a sword of brass.
278 Stephens’ Travels in Yucatan, vol. i. p. 178.
279 Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, p. 41.
280 Primeval Antiquities, p. 138.
281 “A large Description of Galloway, by Mr. Andrew Symson,” p. 83. App. vol. ii. Hist. of Galloway from the earliest period to the present time. Kirkcudbright, 1841.
282 Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, p. 41.
283 Primeval Antiquities, p. 137.
284 Archæologia, vol. xviii. p. 343.
285 Mongez, Mém. de l’Instit.
286 Article Bronze, Penny Cyclopædia, vol. v. p. 468.
287 The extracts from Dr. Robinson’s interesting communication are copied from a report of the Second Meeting of the Royal Irish Academy, session 1848-9, in Freeman’s Dublin Journal. From the length of the report, its minuteness, and explanatory footnotes, it appears to have been furnished by the author; but like all newspaper reports of scientific proceedings, it must be liable to errors for which the author is not responsible. From a personal opportunity courteously afforded me, during the meeting of the British Association at Edinburgh this year, of consulting Dr. Robinson on the subject, I learned that the uniformity of results in his analyses was only comparative, and that lead had not been tested for.
288 It may be proper to add, that in selecting specimens of native bronze implements from the Scottish collection for the purpose of analysis, no difficulty was found in obtaining broken fragments suitable for the purpose, without destroying any perfect example of primitive art.
[289] Archæologia, vol. iii. p. 355.
290 Prichard’s Hist. of Mankind, vol. ii. p. 92.
291 Biblio. Topog. Britan. vol. ii. p. 303.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
← Back to The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland