The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

CHAPTER I.—THE INTRODUCTION OF IRON.

The changes consequent on the introduction of Iron, to a people already familiar with the smelting of tin and copper ores and the fabrication of weapons and implements of bronze, were not necessarily of a radical character, and undoubtedly were first experienced in the gradual acquirement of the new metal from foreign sources. Had bronze been obtainable in sufficient quantities to admit of its application to the numerous purposes for which iron has since been used, there was nothing to prevent the accomplishment of nearly all to which European civilisation has since attained, without the knowledge of the new metal. The opposite, however, was the case. The metal was costly and scarce, and hence one of the most obvious sources of the lengthened period over which we have seen reason to believe that the Archaic era extended. Throughout that whole period metal in every form was a rare and valued luxury, and it was as such that iron, the most widely diffused, the most abundant and most useful of all the metals, was first introduced into the British Isles. This is sufficiently accounted for from the fact, that iron rarely, if ever, occurs in nature in a metallic state; and that it requires great labour and a most intense heat to fuse it.

The age of iron was introduced by a transition-period, occupying possibly as long a time as that which marked the gradual introduction of the era of bronze; but it was not characterized by results of the same direct value. So long as the knowledge of the new metal merely extended to the substitution, by barter or other means, of iron for bronze weapons or implements, its influence could be little more noteworthy than may be the substitution of percussion-caps for flints in our British standing army, to some archæologist or historian of the year 1950. But even such traffic, no doubt, tended through time to make metals more abundant, and metallic weapons and implements more readily attainable, so that the artisan and fabricator were at length enabled to dispense entirely with the primeval stone-hammer and hatchet, and greatly to extend the application of the new and useful material.

It was only when iron had become thus plentiful that it could be productive of any effective change on the characteristics of the races by whom it was used. But though iron is the most abundant of all the metals, and was the latest to be introduced into use, it is at the same time the most perishable, rapidly oxidizing, unless preserved by the most favourable circumstances. Accordingly, very few iron relics, properly pertaining to the closing Pagan era, have been found in such a state of preservation as to enable us to make the use of them, in judging of the skill of their fabricators, which has already been done with those of the Bronze Period. The new and more useful metal, however, did not supersede the gold and bronze in their application to purposes of personal adornment; neither did it put a stop to the manufacture of pottery, to the use of bronze in the construction of vessels for sacred or domestic purposes, nor to those sepulchral rites by which so many evidences of primitive arts and manners have been chronicled for our instruction. It rather increased all these, superadding the additional material of silver, wherewith to multiply the personal ornaments which extending civilisation and refinement more largely demanded. The superior fitness of the new metal for the construction of weapons of war would, no doubt, be first discovered and turned to account. The absence of the guard on all the swords of the Bronze Period, to which attention has been directed, no doubt originated mainly in the mode of using the weapon, which its own capabilities rendered indispensable. The fence and clash of weapons consequent on modern swordsmanship, in which the sword is made to supply both offensive and defensive arms, was altogether incompatible with weapons of cast bronze, liable to shiver like glass at a violent blow. Experience would soon teach the old swordsman the true use of his weapon; and so long as he had only to contend with neighbouring tribes equally armed, he would deem his graceful leaf-shaped sword and his massy spear of bronze the perfect models of a warrior's arms. But while the changes which we have aimed at tracing out in the previous section were progressing slowly but effectively within our sea-girt isle, very remarkable occurrences were affecting the continent of Europe, and extending their influences towards its remotest limits. Carthage had risen from a Tyrian colony, planted on the site of an older Phœnician settlement on the African coast, to be one of the chief commercial and maritime states of the world. The younger builders on the banks of the Tiber had founded the capital destined twice to form the centre of universal empire. Rome and Carthage had come into collision, as was inevitable, according to the notions of these elder times, which held it impossible that two ambitious republics should exist as neighbours. The Punic wars followed, and for upwards of a century—till 147 B.C. when the African capital was razed to the ground—the seat of war was far removed from the British Isles. The second Punic war carried the arms of the rival republics into Spain, and then possibly some faint rumour of it may have reached the Cassiterides, stimulating for a time the trade of their ports, and checking it again, as disasters thickened around the devoted African kingdom. Spain still continued the seat of war after the total annihilation of the Carthaginian power; and during the intestine struggles which followed in the Jugurthan war, there appeared for the first time on the northern frontiers of Italy, hosts of the Teutones, Cimbri, and other northern barbarians. By these several Roman armies were defeated, and the growing power threatened with annihilation from this unexpected source, at the very time when it seemed to be without a rival. From an incidental notice of Polybius we learn the important fact that these northern tribes were already familiar with iron, and possessed of weapons of that metal, though apparently ignorant of the art of converting it into steel. One of the earliest European sources of iron, of which we know anything definite, was the country of the Norici, a tribe occupying a considerable region to the south of the Danube, the exact boundaries of which are only imperfectly known. The invention of the art of converting iron into steel is ascribed to this Celtic race. Noricum was conquered by Augustus, and, in his time, the Noric swords were as celebrated at Rome as the Damascus blades or Andrea Ferraras in more recent times. To this source, therefore, we should probably look for the earliest supplies of iron weapons. Polybius also refers to the country of the Norici as abounding in gold; so that they appear to have excelled in all the metallurgic arts, and may be supposed to have supplied the arms with which the Teutones and the Cimbri invaded the Roman frontiers. The latter, indeed, advanced through Noricum, and bore perhaps from thence the sword which the haughty Gaul flung into the balance of the Capitol when Quintus Sulpicius purchased the safety of Rome, not with iron but gold.

The argument deduced from the apparently independent origin of the oldest European names of the metals, confirms the evidence derived from other sources in proof of the ignorance of the Arian nomades of the working of metals on their first settlement in Europe. The same line of argument, however, adds strong confirmation to the conclusion suggested here, that the Celtæ had obtained considerable mastery of the metallurgic arts at the time when they were brought into direct intercourse and collision with the growing power of Rome, and renders it probable that the Romans derived both the names of some at least of the metals, and their knowledge of their economic uses from this older race. The Saxon gold differs not more essentially from the Greek χρυσος, than that from the Latin aurum; or iron, from σιδηρος, or ferrum; but when we come to examine the Celtic names of the metals it is otherwise. The Celtic terms are:—Gold—Gael. or; golden, orail; Welsh, aur; Lat. aurum. Silver—Gael. airgiod; made of silver, airgiodach; Welsh, ariant; Lat. argentum, derived in the Celtic from arg, white or milk, like the Greek αργος, whence they also formed their αργυρος. Nor is it improbable that the Latin ferrum and the English iron spring indirectly from the same Celtic root:—Gael. iarunn; Welsh, haiarn; Sax. iren; Dan. iern; Span. hierro, which last furnishes no remote approximation to ferrum. Nor with the older metals is it greatly different: as bronze—Gael. umha or prais; Welsh, pres, whence our English brass—a name bearing no very indistinct resemblance to the Roman æs. Lead in like manner has its peculiar Gaelic name, luaidhe, like the Saxon læd, while the Welsh, plwm, closely approximates to the Latin, plumbum. It may undoubtedly be argued that the Latin is the root instead of the offshoot of these Celtic names, but the entire archæological proofs are opposed to this idea; and the direct historic evidence of the early Noric arts, and of the arms of the barbarian invaders of Italy who dictated terms to Quintus Sulpicius in the Roman Capitol, prove that the Celtic and Teutonic races of the north of Europe preceded the Romans in their mastery of the art of working in metals. To this period, (circa B.C. 113-100,) or probably a little earlier, while Rome was preoccupied with the struggle for existence, we may refer the close of the isolated state of the British Isles, and the irruption of newer races among the original occupants of the country. This it is, and not the mere alteration of the old metallurgist's materials, which gives a totally new character to the Iron Period. The gold and the bronze are still there, but the shapes which express to us the intellectual progress of their artificers and owners are essentially changed. The indefiniteness of archaic art gives place to forms and ornaments as positive and characteristic as any in which we recognise the expressive types of medieval art, or the changing fashions of the Elizabethan and Louis Quatorze styles. It is important that we should fix as nearly as possible the true date of this change, when for the first time we find our inquiries bringing us in contact with ascertained epochs and recorded facts. From this, as from a central point, we may perhaps yet be able to reckon backward as well as forward, and at least secure a basis for future observations.

When iron first became known to the native Britons its value was naturally estimated in accordance with its rarity, and it was applied to such uses as we now devote the precious metals. Converted into personal ornaments, it formed rare, if not beautiful trinkets, and in the shape of ring-money it even superseded or supplemented the older gold. Julius Cæsar speaks of the Britons as using such a rude currency; but we may infer from other evidence already referred to that this did not arise, at that comparatively late period, from its extreme rarity. Herodian indeed speaks still later of the Britons wearing "iron about their bellies and necks, which they esteem as fine and rich an ornament as others do gold." But we have abundant evidence that they were familiar with the value and beauty of gold, and we shall not, I think, overstrain the allowances to be made for the prejudiced accounts of the most intelligent Roman, in receiving even the narrative of Cæsar with some limitations. His personal opportunities of observation could extend only to a very limited section of the native Britons, and these seen under the most disadvantageous circumstances; while the polished and haughty Roman was little likely to trouble himself with attempting any very impartial estimate of what were in his eyes only different phases of barbarism.

The fact has already been adverted to, that all the descriptions of the weapons of the Gauls furnished by classic writers, lead us to the conclusion that the ancient bronze leaf-shaped sword had been entirely superseded by the more effective iron weapon prior to their collision with the veteran legions of Rome. The same is no less true of the contemporary Britons. Tacitus describes the Caledonians as "a strong, warlike nation, using large swords without a point, and targets, wherewith they artfully defended themselves against the Roman missiles." We know, moreover, that before the Romans effected a landing in Britain, they were familiar with the fact of an intimate intercourse having been long maintained with Gaul. The former is described by Julius Cæsar as the chief seat of a religion common to both; and the evidence is no less explicit which shews that many of the southern British tribes were of the same race, and differed little in arts or customs from the Gauls of the neighbouring continent. But still more, the reason assigned by Cæsar for the first invasion of Britain was the provocation its natives had given him by the aid which they furnished to his enemies in Gaul. There could not therefore exist any great disparity in their arts or military accoutrements; while we discover in this no slight evidence of the maritime skill to which they must have attained even at that early period, to enable them to embark such bodies of auxiliaries for the help of the continental tribes as attracted the notice and excited the indignation of the Roman general.

To the early part of this Age of Iron should most probably be assigned the construction of the vast monolithic temple of Stonehenge. Its difference from the older temples of Avebury and Stennis, as well as from all other British monuments of this class, has already been referred to. Rude and amorphous as its vast monoliths are, they are characterized by such a degree of regularity and uniformity of design, as marks them to belong to a different era from the Avebury or the Stennis circle, when the temple-builders had acquired the mastery of tools with which to hew them into shape. Much greater mechanical skill, moreover, was required to raise the superincumbent masses and fit them into their exact position, than to rear the rude standing stone, or upheave the capstone of the cromlech on to the upright trilith. Stonehenge, therefore, is certainly not a work of the Stone Period, and probably not of the Bronze Period, with the exception of its little central circle of unhewn stones, which may date back to a very remote era, and have formed the nucleus round which the veneration of a later and more civilized age reared the gigantic columns, still so magnificent and so mysterious even in ruin.

The isolation which we have reason to believe had hitherto exercised so much influence on the native tribes of Britain, is now seen to be finally at an end. The Celtic races are once more nomade, or mingling their blood with the more civilized tribes which are gradually securing a footing in the south-eastern portions of the island. The first stream of Teutonic colonization had set in, which, followed successively by the Romans with their legions of foreign auxiliaries, by Saxons, Angles, Scoti, Norwegians, Danes, and Normans, produced the modern hardy race of Britons. The term Teutonic has been adopted here as at once the most comprehensive and definite one by which to characterize this period. In Scotland the Celtic races maintained a progressive civilisation which ultimately developed itself in new forms, producing an essentially Celtic style and era of art at a later period; but throughout the last Pagan era, the arts of the Celtic Caledonians appear to have been modified by the same Teutonic influence as those of South Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Scandinavia. The tribes of North Britain were indeed only indirectly affected by the aggressive movements of the earlier Teutonic invaders, and were probably a pure Celtic race when the Roman legions penetrated into the Caledonian fastnesses in the second century of our era. But the close affinity between the relics of North and South Britain abundantly proves the rapid influence resulting alike from the friendly interchange of useful commodities and personal ornaments, and doubtless also from the frequent spoils of war. The beautiful coinage of the British Prince Cunobeline, (circa A.D. 13 to A.D. 41,) and supposed to be the work of a Roman, or of a native monier familiar with Roman art, exhibits the type which the Gauls imitated from the Didrachmas and Staters of Macedonia upwards of three centuries before. Little doubt is now entertained by our best numismatists that the coins of Comius and others of an earlier date than Cunobeline or the first Roman invasion, include native British mintage. There is no question, at any rate, that they circulated as freely in Britain as in Gaul, and have been found in considerable quantities in many parts of the island. The iron or bronze and copper ring-money of the first century must therefore be presumed as only analogous to our modern copper coinage, and not as the sole barbarous substitute for a minted circulating medium.

Several interesting discoveries of the primitive iron ring-money have been made in Scotland, though in no case as yet in such a state as to admit of its preservation. In a minute description of various antiquities in the parish of Kilpatrick-Fleming, Dumfriesshire, superadded to the Old Statistical Account, the contents of several tumuli opened about the year 1792 are detailed. In one was discovered a cist, inclosing an urn of elegant workmanship, filled with ashes. The urn was found standing with its mouth up, and covered with a stone. At a small distance from it, within the cist, lay several iron rings, each about the circumference of a half-crown piece, but so much corroded with rust that they crumbled to pieces on being touched.[402] A similar discovery made in Annandale is thus described by an eyewitness: "In the centre of the tumulus was found a red flag-stone laid level on the earth, on which were placed two other slabs of equal size, parallel to each other; and other two, one at each end; another was laid on the top as a cover. In the interior of this was an urn containing ashes, with a few very thin plates of iron in the form of rings, so completely corroded that when exposed to the air they crumbled into dust."[403] In these frail relics of the new material we can have little hesitation in recognising the annuli ferrei of Julius Cæsar, used by the Britons of the first century as their accredited native currency.

Assuming it as an established fact that the native Britons of the southern parts of the island, at least, had carried the arts of civilisation so far as to coin their own money, we perceive therein the evidence of a totally different era from the Archaic Period, in which direct imitation of the simplest positive forms is hardly traceable. Bronze, as has been already observed, continued to be used no less than in the former era, of which it has been assumed as the characteristic feature, in the manufacture of personal ornaments, domestic utensils, &c. In Denmark, indeed, some remarkably interesting relics have been found, seemingly belonging to the very dawn of the last transition-period, when iron was more precious than copper or bronze.

These include axes consisting of a broad blade of copper edged with iron, and bronze daggers similarly furnished with edges of the harder metal. Even in Denmark such examples are extremely rare, and no corresponding instance that I am aware of has yet been discovered in Britain. A great similarity is traceable between the bronze relics of the various northern races of Europe, belonging to the Iron age, and that not of an indefinite character, like the stone hammer or flint lance and arrow-heads of the Primeval Period, but a distinct uniformity of design and ornament, which has mainly contributed to confirm the prevalent opinion that the majority of British and especially of Scottish bronze relics are of Danish origin. In examining these relics in detail, I shall endeavour honestly to assign to Scandinavia whatever is her own, but if the arguments advanced here have any foundation in truth, it is obvious that the British Iron age had lasted well-nigh a thousand years, and as a Pagan era was at an end before we have any historical evidence of Scandinavian invaders effecting permanent settlements on our shores. The whole evidence of history manifestly leads to the conclusion that Britain long preceded the Scandinavian races in civilisation, nor was it till she had been enervated alike by Roman luxury and by the succeeding intestine jealousies and rivalries of native tribes, that Scandinavia, fresh in her young barbarian vigour, made of her a spoil and a prey.

On none of the native arts did Roman intercourse effect a more remarkable change than on British fictile ware. From the English Channel to the Frith of Tay, Roman and Anglo-Roman pottery have been met with in abundance, including the fine Samian ware, probably of foreign workmanship, the rude vessels of the smother kiln, and the common clay urns and coarse amphoræ and mortaria, designed for daily domestic use. Numerous Anglo-Roman kilns have been discovered, some of them even with the half-formed and partially baked vessels still standing on the form or disposed in the kiln, as they had been abandoned some fifteen or sixteen centuries ago. Cinerary urns of the same class have been frequently found accompanied with relics corresponding to the era of Roman occupation. But, be it observed, the bronze relics of the Teutonic type corresponding in general style and ornamentation to those discovered in the Scandinavian countries, when found in British sepulchral deposits are almost invariably accompanied with the primitive pottery, or with a class of urns, described in a succeeding chapter, in which we trace the first elements of improvement in the manufacture of native fictile ware. This must settle the question of the priority of their deposition to the earliest conceivable era of Scandinavian invasion. The native Britons did unquestionably greatly degenerate after being abandoned by their Roman conquerors; but it is opposed alike to evidence and probability to imagine that they resumed the barbarous arts of an era some centuries prior—a proceeding more akin to the ideas of the modern antiquary than to the practice of a semi-civilized race.

The devices most frequently employed in the decoration of the gold, silver, and bronze relics of this period, are what are called the serpentine and dragon ornaments. They are common to the works of all the northern Teutonic races, and are manifestly to be referred to the same Eastern origin as the wild legends of the Germano-Teutonic and Scandinavian mythic poems, in which dragons, snakes, and other monsters, play so conspicuous a part. Along with these, however, there are other patterns indirectly traceable to Greek and Roman models, as is also observable in the dies of the early Gaulish and British coins. This, however, will be more fully considered in treating of the personal ornaments of the period, but meanwhile we may draw the general conclusion, that the arts of the Iron age pertained to the whole Teutonic races of Northern Europe, and reached both Denmark and Britain from a common source, long prior to the natives of these two countries coming into direct collision. We see that an intimate intercourse was carried on between Britain and Gaul at the very period when the transition to the fully developed Iron age was progressing in the former country: it is easy, therefore, to understand how similar arts would reach the Danish Peninsula and the Scandinavian countries beyond the Baltic. But Scandinavia had long passed her Bronze Period, and succeeding transition era, when she sent forth her hardy Vikings to plunder the British coasts. It was with other weapons than the small leaf-shaped bronze sword that the Norse rovers came to spoil and desolate our shores.

In recent cuttings, during the construction of the Dublin and Cashel Railway, there were found a number of large and heavy iron swords, which are now deposited in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. These Mr. Worsaae examined during his visit to Ireland in 1846, and unhesitatingly pronounced them to be Norwegian. "The swords are long and straight, formed for cutting as well as thrusting, and terminate in points formed by rounding off the edge towards the back of the blade. The spears are long and slender, and similar in form to the lance-heads used in some cavalry corps."[404] They are formed of a soft kind of iron, like those referred to by Polybius, as in use among the Gauls more than a century prior to the invasion of Julius Cæsar; and, like them, they differ nearly as much in every essential point, as can well be conceived possible, from the bronze sword of the previous era, which has been so perseveringly bandied about by modern antiquaries between Romans and Danes. Mr. Worsaae especially referred to the great size and weight of the swords found in Ireland, and contrasted them with the lighter weapons of the same metal which he believed to be contemporary swords of the native Irish, from whence he drew the inference that Ireland was—like England, France, Germany, &c.—so weak, from about the eighth till the twelfth century, in consequence of intestine wars, that she fell an easy prey to small numbers of Scandinavian invaders. Mr. Worsaae farther remarked of the weapons found at Kilmainham:—"They are so like the Norse swords, that if they were mixed with the swords found in Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish tombs, and now in the collections of Christiania, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, it would be difficult to distinguish one from the other. The form of the handle, and particularly of the knob at the end of the handle, is quite characteristic of the Norse swords. Along with them some other antiquities of undoubtedly Scandinavian origin were also discovered."[405]

The source from whence Europe derived this great gift of iron has yet to be ascertained. It certainly was not from Rome. The Norici, it has already been observed, furnished the chief supplies of iron to Rome, and taught her metallurgists the art of converting it into steel. It is not impossible, however, that it was from the remote North that this source of civilisation was sent to the Mediterranean coasts. British antiquaries have obtained as yet only a partial view of Scandinavian archæology, notwithstanding the valuable publications of Mr. Worsaae. The ancient land of the Scandinavian races includes Denmark,—a country of peculiar geological formation, having abundant stores of silex in its chalk strata, but no minerals to tempt the skill of its aboriginal occupants,—and Sweden, including Norway, a country abounding in minerals, and still furnishing Europe with the finest iron from its native ores. It is remarkable that this latter country appears, from its primitive relics, to have had its primeval stone period and birth-time of the mechanical arts, but, with the exception of the small district of Sweden adjacent to Denmark, so far as yet appears, this was immediately succeeded by the Iron Period. No bronze archaic era is indicated in its archæological annals. We cannot assume from this, as some are inclined to do, that therefore Norway must have remained an unpeopled waste, while Denmark was advancing into the period of well developed mechanical and ornamental arts. With our present imperfect materials for judging, we are better perhaps to assume nothing, but wait for some able Norwegian archæologist doing that for his native antiquities which Thomsen and Worsaae have done for those of Denmark. Yet good evidence has been furnished in part, especially in one important department, by Professor Nillson's Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvänare, or Primitive Inhabitants of Northern Scandinavia, though in this he assigns to the true Swea race, and the first workers of the native iron, no earlier a date as the colonists of Sweden than the sixth century. The Samlingar för Nordens fornälskare, already referred to, is also of considerable avail, especially from its copious illustrations. From these we learn that the primitive tumuli-builders of Denmark and Norway are of the same race, and that Norway had her monolithic era, of which no less remarkable traces remain than that of Denmark. Hence we are led to ask the question,—May not her Archaic Period have been an iron instead of a bronze one, and her forges the source from whence the Norici and other Teutonic and Celtic races of Europe learned that the iron-stone was also an ore, and could be smelted and wrought like the more ductile bronze? Northern mythological traditions throw some imperfect and uncertain light on this subject. They refer, for example, to their Gnomes and Dwarfs, their Alfes, and other supernatural metallurgists, as inhabiting mountain regions lying beyond and around them. This is peculiarly noticeable in all the oldest mythic fables, mixed up with the wild inventions of dragons, serpents, and the like fanciful machinery, which tell of their far birthland in the older continent of Asia. But it is worthy of notice, that the topography of these mythological legends in no way corresponds with the natural features of the Scandinavian peninsulas, lying as they do between two seas. May we not infer, therefore, that they had their origin while yet the Scandinavian nomades were wandering towards their final destination between the Baltic and the German Ocean, and that these distant mountains, with their metallurgic Gnomes and Alfes, were none other than the mountain ranges of Norway, the mineral treasures of which now furnish so valuable a source of national wealth to their descendants? The Germanic tradition has already been noticed which places the forge of the mythic Weland in the Caucasus, a fading memorial, perhaps, of the wanderings of their Teutonic fathers towards their western home. Such wild traditions must necessarily be used with much doubt and caution; yet they are not meaningless, nor the mere baseless offspring of fancy. Other and more direct evidence may possibly be within reach of the Norwegian archæologist, to induce the belief that the Alfes of his ancestral myths may have been a hardy race of Finnish, Celtic, or other primitive metallurgists, who, like the Norici, supplied the weapons by which themselves were subjugated. All this, however, is advanced with the greatest hesitation, not as a theory which it is proposed to maintain, but only as guessings at truth which lies at present beyond our grasp. By far the most important iron ore wrought in Norway and Sweden is Magnetite, which appears to pertain nearly as exclusively to the North as tin does to the British Isles. The largest known masses occur in Scandinavia, Lapland, Siberia, and in North America. In Norway, Arendal is the most important locality; and in Sweden, Dannemora, Utoe, Norberg, and Taberg. The fine quality of the Magnetite ores is ascribed to their being mixed with calc-spar, thallite, hornblende, and other natural adjuncts advantageous for their reduction, so that the granular ores often require no other flux. Such a condition of the iron ore was manifestly peculiarly calculated to facilitate the processes of smelting and fusing, and thereby to adapt it for working by the primitive metallurgist. Magnetite is not unknown in several of the remoter parts of Scotland, but the distance from fuel has hitherto prevented its application to economic purposes, at least in modern times. Bog iron ore, an hydrated oxide of iron still more readily fused, is also common in Sweden, and abundant in the northern and western islands of Scotland; but though well adapted for castings, it is inapplicable for other purposes. Hæmatite, or specular iron, is another of the most abundant iron ores specially worthy of notice here, because it is found in a state more nearly resembling the metal than any other ore of iron, and occurs in the most ancient metallurgic districts of England, where the previous native industrial arts were so well calculated to suggest its economic use when observed in such a form. It appears at Lostwithiel, in Cornwall, in the form of fine red crystals of pure iron peroxide, and is also found at Tincroft and St. Just in the same district, and in Devonshire, Wales, Cumberland, and Perthshire. Such are some of the lights by which mineralogy enables us to trace out the probable origin of the working of iron in Europe; but after all, it is to Asia we are forced to return for the true source of nearly all our primitive arts, nor will the canons of Archæology be established on a safe foundation till the antiquities of that older continent have been explored and classified. The advocate of Druidical theories may find his so-called "Druidical temple" in the steppes of Asia as well as on Salisbury Plain; and probably very many other supposed national relics, exclusively appropriated by the local antiquary, will yet be discovered to have their types and counterparts in the evidences of primitive Asiatic art.

"Sepulchral tumuli are spread over all the northern and western parts of Europe, and over many extensive regions in northern Asia, as far eastward at least as the river Yenisei. They contain the remains of races either long ago extinct, or of such as have so far changed their abodes and manner of existence, that the ancestors can no longer be recognised in their descendants. They abound on the banks of the great rivers Irtisch and Yenisei, where the greatest numbers of the then existing people were collected, by the facilities afforded to human intercourse. In Northern Asia these tombs are ascribed to Tschudes, or barbarians, nations foreign and hostile to the Slavic race. The erectors of these sepulchral mounds were equally distinct and separate from the Tartar nations, who preceded Slaves; for the tombs of the Tartars, and all edifices raised by them, indicate the use of iron tools; and the art of working of iron mines has ever been a favourite attribute of the Tartar nations. But 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."[406]

Keeping these important facts in view, which so entirely coincide with the ascertained truths of primitive European history, it is still worthy of note that there appears to be something altogether remarkable in the archæology of Sweden and Norway, destitute as these countries would appear to be of the traces of the primitive metallurgic arts discoverable elsewhere, equally in the Asiatic seats of earliest population, and in the other European countries colonized by the Arian nomades. If we accept the conclusions arrived at by Professor Nillson, that the Swea race did not settle in Scandinavia till the sixth century, we shall be the more certainly forced to the conclusion that they were then a people far advanced in the arts of civilisation; since it is the same race whose powerful fleets are found ravaging the northern coasts of Europe in the ninth century, establishing colonies on their shores, and soon after planting Scandinavian settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and in Vinland on the continent of North America. Leaving, however, the question of dates to further inquiry, the curious coincidence of these northern mythological fables with the topography of the country and the peculiar characteristics of its primitive antiquities, suggest the conclusion that the latest intruding race brought with it—probably from Asia—a knowledge of the art of working the metals; and found on settling in the northern Scandinavian countries that their predecessors were already familiar with the mineral treasures of the North, and knew how to smelt the dark iron-stone and convert it to economic purposes. The latter, according to the craniological investigations of Professor Nillson, were a race of Celtic origin, having skulls longer than the first and broader than the second of the two elder races of the Scandinavian barrows. There is therefore nothing in the ethnological character of the race inconsistent with such metallurgic skill, but, on the contrary, much to add to the probability of an early practice of the arts of the founder and the smith, the Celtæ having shewn, wherever circumstances favoured it, a remarkable aptitude for working in metals.

This digression pertains, perhaps, more to general Archæology than to the direct elucidation of Scottish antiquities. But independently of the legitimate interest attached to the inquiry into the origin of these metallurgic arts which brought civilisation in their train, the history of Scotland at the period we are now approaching is more intimately connected with Norway than with any other country, except Ireland. To the primitive Scandinavian literature we still look for some of the earliest traces of authentic national history; and whatever tends to illuminate the Iron Period of the North can hardly fail to throw some light upon our own. This must be the work of the archæologists of Scandinavia; nor are they insensible to its importance.

The traditional Vœlund-myth has already been attempted to be connected with a definite historic epoch, the reign of King Nidung, king of Nerika, in Sweden, in the sixth century. Such a mode of interpretation, however, shews a very imperfect appreciation of the true nature of this remarkable myth, which belongs in reality to no single country, but is as essential a link in the history of the human race as are to each of us the momentous years which form the stage between infancy and manhood. We cannot, indeed, too speedily abandon this misdirected aim, of seeking for precise dates of epochs in primitive history. With these the archæologist, in his earlier historical investigations, has generally little more to do than the geologist. Both must rest content with a relative chronology, which yet further investigation will doubtless render more definite and precise. Where dates are clearly ascertainable, the archæologist will gladly avail himself of them; and in this Iron Period much of the indefiniteness of primeval annals gives place to authentic history. But while rejecting the localization of the Vœlund-myth at the court of Nerika, it is of importance for our present purpose to note the general evidences of Scandinavian progress in the arts by which nations attain their majority. Not in the ninth century only, but perhaps in this era of King Nidung, in the sixth century, or in the fifth or fourth—we know not indeed how early—the Northmen may have begun to build ships, and learned boldly to quit their fiords for the open sea. Our annals prior to the ninth century are so meagre that we must lie open to the recovery of many traces of important events unnoted by them, in the interval between that ascertained epoch and the older one when the Roman legions were compelled to abandon the vallum of Antoninus, and repair the barrier beyond the Tyne. We cannot too speedily disabuse ourselves of the idea, that because no Celtic or Scandinavian Herodotus has left us records of our old fatherland, therefore the North had no history prior to its Christian era. We owe to the Romans the history of centuries which otherwise must have remained unwritten, yet not the less amply filled with the deeds of Cassivelaunus, Boadicea, Galgacus, and many another hero and heroine, all unsung; though they wanted but their British Homer, or Northern Hermes with his graphic runes, to render the sieges of the White Caterthun as world-famous as that of Troy.