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.
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.
Engraved by Wm. Douglas, from Drawings in possession of the Soc. Antiq. Scot.
THE GLENLYON BROOCH.
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.
Celt-Moulds, Ross-shire.
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.
Celt-Moulds, Ross-shire.
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.
Rings and Staples.
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.
Bronze Sword. Arthur Seat.
Fully seventy years after the marl-dredgers had brought to light the remarkable primitive relics buried beneath the alluvium at the bottom of Duddingstone Loch, the Honourable Board of Commissioners of Her Majesty's Woods and Forests determined on constructing a carriage-way round the neighbouring Royal Park, which includes both Arthur Seat and Salisbury Crags. In the progress of the necessary operations for carrying this plan into execution, and while the workmen were excavating the soil immediately above the singular group of basaltic columns popularly styled "Samson's Ribs," they uncovered a sepulchral deposit containing a cinerary urn, which was unfortunately broken to fragments by a stroke of the workman's shovel. Further to the eastward two, at least, and probably more bronze celts of large size were found, along with a small drinking-cup, engraved on a subsequent page. Still further to the east, almost directly above Duddingstone Loch—where the magnificent "Queen's Drive" is carried along the steep side of the hill at an elevation of nearly 300 feet above the level of the neighbouring loch—two most beautiful and perfect leaf-shaped bronze swords were dug up, in a bed of vegetable charcoal, but with no remains which would indicate its having been a sepulchral deposit. The largest of the two swords measures 26¼ inches long; the other 24¾ inches by 1¾ inches in greatest breadth. In other respects they entirely agree, resembling in figure the usual form of this graceful weapon, as will be observed from the annexed engraving of one of them. The swords and the largest of the bronze celts, figured above, are now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. The other celt and the cup are in my own possession; and as they were obtained from an Irish labourer, who shewed no little reluctance to be questioned, it is extremely probable that these are but a portion of the valuable treasures disclosed in the course of the excavations. How many more may lie interred for the gratification and instruction of future generations covered only by a foot or two of soil!
It naturally becomes a question of considerable interest to us,—Are these weapons, of beautiful and varied forms, the product of native genius and skill? or were they brought hither by foreign conquerors, to remain only as the evidences of national inferiority in arts and arms? The question is one which no Briton can deem worthless; albeit we do not esteem ourselves the pure lineal descendants of the Allophylian aborigines, or of the primitive Celtæ, but, on the contrary, are content to derive our peculiar modern national characteristics as the product of mingled races of Picts, Scots, Romans, Tungrians and other barbarian legionary colonists, Norwegians, Danes, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans.[273] Such are indeed the strange and diverse elements which make up the genealogy of the modern Scot. Nevertheless, his nationality is not the less strong because he derives his inheritance from so many sources; nor is his interest lessened in the aboriginal root. A very simple theory has heretofore sufficed for the classification of all Scottish, and, until very recently, of all British antiquities. Whatever was rude and barbarous, such as unhewn standing stones and monolithic circles, stone hammers and axes, and flint arrows, were native and Druidical; whatever manifested skill, invention, or any progress in the arts, was either Phœnician, Roman, or Danish! Britain, it was tacitly assumed, was sunk in the lowest state of barbarism, until humanized by the bloody missionaries of Roman civilisation. Such ignorant assumption will no longer suffice.
Mr. Worsaae adopts an era extending over about eleven centuries for the continuation of the Danish bronze period. From geological evidence he arrives at the conclusion, which is not improbable, that bronze weapons and implements were in use fully five centuries before the Christian era. But that the Archaic Period continued so long after it, when the neighbouring countries to the south were long familiar with the common and more useful metal, and when the Norwegians, who, it is acknowledged, appear never to have known a bronze period, were already taking their position among the Scandinavian nations, preparatory to making their piratical descents on the British shores, seems altogether improbable and opposed to established truths.
No description furnished either by Julius Cæsar or any later classical writer, of the weapons used by the native Britons of the first or second century, in any degree corresponds with the familiar form of the bronze sword so frequently found in the earlier tumuli.[274] Tacitus describes the Caledonians as "a powerful warlike nation, using swords large and blunt at the point (sine mucrone) and targets wherewith they skilfully defend themselves against the Roman missiles." The bronze leaf-shaped sword in no respect corresponds with this. It is a short and small, though formidable weapon, and is not only designed for thrusting rather than striking with,—as a heavy, blunt-pointed sword could alone be used,—but was evidently adapted for a warfare in which the chief tactics of the swordsman consisted in the bold thrust; since no example of a bronze sword has ever been found with a guard, that simple and most natural contrivance for defending the hand from the downward stroke of the foe. With such unmistakable evidence before us, the conclusion seems inevitable that the era of the bronze sword had passed away ere the hardy Caledonian encountered the invading legions of Rome. Nevertheless, while there is abundant evidence of the native manufacture of the articles of the Bronze Period, there are no less manifest traces of considerable intercourse throughout Europe during this era, from the near resemblance discoverable in all the bronze articles. The British bronze sword bears a general likeness to those not only of Denmark, but of Gaul, Germany, and even of Italy and Greece; but it has also its peculiar characteristics. It is broader and shorter than the Danish bronze sword, swelling out more towards the middle, so as to suggest the term leaf-shaped, by which it is now distinguished. A very remarkable guide to the probable era of such weapons in the south of Europe is furnished by a comparison of some specimens of Hellenic fictile art with a beautiful vase discovered at Vulci by the Prince of Canino, and described in the Archæologia[275] by Mr. Samuel Birch. The same subject occurs on three vases, and has been supposed to represent the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles. On one, a Vulcian hydria of archaic style, a naked and bearded combatant bears a leaf-shaped sword without a guard. On a second, a cylix of later style from the Canino Collection, the combatants are armed with leaf-shaped swords, but with guards; while on the beautiful vase which Mr. Birch refers to as a specimen of Greek art contemporary with the Orestes of Æschylus, the same scene occurs, but the assailant has substituted for the primitive weapon a straight two-edged sword of modern form. Such comparisons cannot be deemed without their value; but independent of these, the variations in the bronze relics of the same type suffice to prove that neither the British antiquities of bronze were brought from Denmark, nor the Danish ones from Britain. The handles of the British weapon especially appear to have been always of wood or horn, while many are met with in Denmark with bronze handles, ornamented with a peculiar pattern, and even sometimes inlaid with gold, but all invariably without a guard.
Among an interesting collection of bronze weapons discovered near Bilton, Yorkshire, in 1848, parts of two broken swords were found, on which Mr. C. Moore Jessop makes the following observations:—"The portions of swords have each been broken off a few inches down the blade, thus leaving the metallic part of the handle entire; which has been covered on both sides with horn or some similar substance, affixed by rivets, which having become loose have allowed the horn to move slightly each way, thus wearing away the metal. They have left evident traces of the shape of the hilt, and likewise prove the weapons to have been long in use."[276] Gordon engraves a fine bronze sword, twenty-six inches long, which was found near Carinn, on the line of the wall of Antoninus Pius, and deposited in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. Its most remarkable feature is its handle, which is of brass, but after examining the original, I am satisfied that the latter is a modern addition.[277]
It is especially worthy of note in relation to the makers and owners of these swords, that the handles are invariably small. One of the most marked ethnological characteristics of the pure Celtic race, in contrast to the Teutonic, is the small hands and feet; a feature so very partially affected by the mingling of Teutonic with the old Celtic blood of Scotland, that many of the older basket-hilted Highland swords will scarcely admit the hand of a modern Scotsman of ordinary size. This has been observed in various primitive races, and is noted by Mr. Stephens as characteristic of the ancient temple builders of Yucatan. In describing the well-known symbol of the red hand, first observed at Uxmal, Mr. Stephens remarks,—"Over a cavity in the mortar were two conspicuous marks, which afterwards stared us in the face in all the ruined buildings of the country. They were the prints of a red hand, with the thumb and fingers extended, not drawn or painted, but stamped by the living hand, the pressure of the palm upon the stone. There was one striking feature about these hands—they were exceedingly small. Either of our own spread over and completely hid them."[278] This is another of the physical characteristics of the earlier races well worthy of further note. While the delicate small hand and foot are ordinarily looked upon as marks of high-breeding, and are justly regarded as pertaining to the perfect beauty of the female form, the opposite are found among the masculine distinctions of the pure Teutonic races,—characteristic of their essentially practical and aggressive spirit,—and are frequently seen most markedly developed in the skilful manipulator and ingenious mechanician.
The spear-heads of this period are also marked by national distinctive features; the exceedingly common British form, for example, with loops to secure it to the shaft, being unknown in Denmark, and a variety of pierced heads common in Scotland and Ireland being rarely or never found in England. So it is with other varieties of weapons, implements, and personal ornaments: some which are common in Denmark are unknown here, or assume different forms; others with which we are familiar are unknown to the Danish archæologist; while both are in like manner distinguished from those of Germany, France, and the south of Europe. The distinctive peculiarities may indeed be most aptly compared to those which mark the various national developments of medieval art, and give to each an individuality of character without impairing the essential characteristics of the style. The extent of international communication was only so much greater and more direct in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, than in those older centuries before the Christian era, as to produce a more rapid interchange of thought and experience.
This national individuality, accompanying such remarkable correspondence to a common type, may therefore be assumed as justifying the conclusion that some considerable intercourse must have prevailed among the different races of Europe during that remote period to which we refer; and hence we are led to assume an additional evidence of early civilisation, while at the same time no sufficient proof appears to point to such a sudden transition as necessarily to lead to the conclusion that the bronze relics belong entirely to a new people. On the contrary, the evidence of slow transition is abundantly manifest. The metallurgic arts, and the models by which their earliest application was guided, were in all probability introduced by a new race, who followed in the wake of the older wanderers from the same Eastern cradle-land of the human race. But the rude stone moulds, the sand-cast celts and palstaves, and the relics of the primitive forges in which they were wrought, all point to aboriginal learners slowly acquiring the new art, while perhaps its originators were introducing those works of beautiful form and great finish and delicacy of workmanship, which the antiquary of the eighteenth century could ascribe to none but the Roman masters of the world.
Mr. Worsaae remarks, after pointing out the correspondence, in many respects, between the bronze relics of Denmark and those of other countries of Europe, these "prove nothing more than that certain implements and weapons had the same form among different nations."[279] And again, "from these evidences it follows that the antiquities belonging to the Bronze Period, which are found in the different countries of Europe, can neither be attributed exclusively to the Celts, nor to the Greeks, Romans, Phœnicians, Sclavonians, nor to the Teutonic tribes. They do not belong to any one people, but have been used by the most different nations at the same stage of civilisation; and there is no historical evidence strong enough to prove that the Teutonic people were in that respect an exception. The forms and patterns of the various weapons, implements, and ornaments, are so much alike, because such forms and patterns are the most natural and the most simple. As we saw in the Stone Period how people at the lowest stage of civilisation, by a sort of instinct, made their stone implements in the same shape, so we see now, in the first traces of a higher civilisation, that they exhibit in the mode of working objects of bronze a similar general resemblance."[280] But are the forms and patterns thus natural and simple? This argument, which abundantly satisfies us as to the universal correspondence of the majority of tools and weapons of the Stone Period, entirely fails when thus applied to the works of the Bronze Period. The former are in most cases of the simplest and most rudimentary character: the perforated oblong stone for a hammer, the pointed flint for an arrow-head, and the longer edged and pointed flint for a knife or spear. Human intelligence, in its most barbarous state, suggests such simple devices with a universality akin to the narrower instincts of the lower animals. They are, in truth, mathematically demonstrable as the simplest shapes. But the beauty and variety of form and decoration in the productions of the Bronze Period bring them under a totally different classification. They are works of art, and though undoubtedly exhibiting an indefiniteness peculiarly characteristic of its partial development, are scarcely less marked by novel and totally distinct forms than the products of the many different classic, medieval, or modern schools of design. The form of the leaf-shaped sword, indeed, is unsurpassed in beauty by any later offensive weapon. We are justified, therefore, in assuming that the general correspondence traceable throughout the productions of the European Bronze Period, affords evidence of considerable international intercourse having prevailed; while the peculiarities discoverable on comparing the relics found in different countries of Europe compel us to conclude that they are the products of native art, and not manufactures diffused from some common source. We have already traced them as pertaining to the infantile era of Greece, and may yet hope to find them among the indications of primitive Asiatic population, thereby supplying a new line of evidence in illustration of the north-western migration of the human race, and probably also a means of approximation towards the date of the successive steps by which the later nomades advanced towards the coasts of the German Ocean.
In the former section numerous instances have been referred to of the discovery of canoes belonging, by indisputable evidence, to the Primeval Period. One example, at least, has been recorded of a ship apparently belonging to the succeeding era of bronze, and which, both in size and mode of construction, amply accords with the assumed characteristics of the more advanced period, and with the idea of direct intercourse with the continent of Europe. "In this town," (Stranraer,)says the old historian of Galloway, writing in 1683, "the last year, while they were digging a water-gate for a mill, they lighted upon a ship a considerable distance from the shore, unto which the sea at the highest spring tides never comes. It was transversely under a little bourn, and wholly covered with earth a considerable depth; for there was a good yard, with kail growing in it, upon the one end of it. By that part of it which was gotten out, my informers, who saw it, conjecture that the vessel had been pretty large; they also tell me that the boards were not joined together after the usual fashion of our present ships or barks, as also that it had nailes of copper."[281] Here we find remarkable evidence of progress. The rude arts of the aboriginal seaman, by which he laboriously hollowed the oaken trunk and adapted it for navigating his native seas, have been superseded by a systematic process of ship-building, in which the metallic tools sufficed to hew and shape the planks as well as to furnish the copper fastenings by which they were secured. Vessels thus constructed were doubtless designed for wider excursions than the navigation of native estuaries and inland seas; nor must we assume, because the records of ancient history have heretofore concentrated our interest on the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, that therefore the German Ocean and the British seas were a waste of unpeopled waters, save, perhaps, when some rude canoe, borne beyond its wonted shelter on the coasts, timorously struggled to regain the shore. Enough has already been advanced to disabuse us of the fallacy, that where no annals of a people have been preserved nothing worth chronicling can have existed.
Much will be gained if faith can be established in the fact, that deeds worth recording were enacted in Britain in these old times when no other chronicler existed but the bard who committed to tradition his unwritten history, and the more faithful mourner who entrusted to the grave the records of his reverence or his love. Faith is required for the honest and zealous study of the subject; but with this we doubt not that many links will be supplied which are still wanting to complete the picture of the past. This much, however, seems already established, that at a period long prior to the first century of the Christian era the art of working in metals was introduced into Britain, and gradually superseded the rude primitive implements of stone. The intelligent British savage, supplied with this important element of civilisation, wrought and smelted the ores, melted and mixed the metals, formed moulds, and improved on early and imperfect models, until he carried the art to such perfection that even now we look upon his later bronze works with admiration, and are hard to be persuaded that they are not the creations of Phœnician or Roman, rather than of native British civilisation prior to the introduction of letters.
How remote the origin of this transition-period of civilisation dates we cannot as yet presume to say; but with our preconceived notions, derived chiefly from an exclusively classical education, we are more apt to err on the side of too modern than of too remote a date. Mr. Worsaae, after discussing and rejecting the idea of a Roman origin for the bronze relics of Denmark, adds,—"Nor in all probability have these bronzes reached us from Greece, although, both with regard to their form and ornaments, particularly the spiral ornaments, a greater similarity appears to exist between those which occur in the north and those found in the most ancient tombs of Greece. For independently of the fact, that the latter have hitherto occurred but seldom, so that our knowledge of them is extremely imperfect, they belong to so very remote a period—1000 or 1400 years before the birth of Christ—that we can by no means be justified in supposing that any active intercourse then existed between countries so remote from each other."[282] But why not? Active it might be, though indirect; or, what is equally likely, both might derive their models from a common source—perhaps Phœnician, the apparent source of Greek metallurgic art; perhaps from the older regions of central Asia, whence both were sprung. We see, at least, from evidence which appears to me incontrovertible, that at a much more remote period a human population occupied the British Isles; and we shall allow our judgments to be misled by very fallacious reasoning if we conclude that they could not have attained to any degree of civilisation at the period referred to, merely because no notice of them occurs in the pages of classic writers. The Greeks and Romans looked with contempt on all other nations. Partly from this national pride, but still more perhaps from a want of that philological talent peculiar to modern times, they gave little heed to the languages of their most civilized contemporaries, and looked on their barbarian arts and manners with contempt. Yet among the barbarians of the Greeks we must include the Egyptians, the Phœnicians, and the Hebrews; even as we ourselves rank among the barbarians of the modern Chinese, whose annals at most will tell of us as a roving race who first appeared in history towards the end of the seventeenth century!
The civilisation of the British Bronze Period does not appear to have been of so active a nature as to have produced any very rapid social changes. It did not break up the isolated tribes of Britain, and unite them into kingdoms or associated states. Its material element was never so abundant as to admit of any such great contemporaneous development. It was rather such a change as might slowly operate over many centuries; and that it did so is rendered most probable by the many relics of it which still remain. The Toltecans and Yucatecs of the New World achieved much in their Bronze Period unknown to medieval Europe; nor is it altogether impossible that even now, beyond the vast forests so recently explored by Mr. Stephens, a native race may be found practising arts akin to those of Montezuma's reign. Certain it is that the British Bronze Period was passing away in the transition-state of a later era when the Roman galleys first crossed the English Channel, and from the last century B.C. we must reckon backward up to that remote and altogether undetermined era, when the elder Stone Period passed by slow transition into that of Bronze.