In that case, who, in earlier times, made an
useless axe-head of soft micaceous stone, and why? It could be of no practical service. On the other hand, people who had the metals might fashion a soft stone into an arme d’apparat. “It cannot have been intended for ordinary use,” “the axe may have been a sacred or ceremonial one,” says Mr. Mackenzie, and he makes the same conjecture as to another Scottish stone axe-head. [115]
Here, then, if Mr. Mackenzie be right, we have a soft stone axe-head, decorated with “later ornament,” the property of a people who knew the metals, and regarded the object as “a sacred or ceremonial one,” enfin, as an arme d’apparat.
Dr. Munro doubtless knows all that is known about armes d’apparat, but he unkindly forgets to credit the forger with the same amount of easily accessible information, when the forger dumps down a decorated slate spear-head, eleven inches long.
Believe me, this forger was no fool: he knew what he was about, and he must have laughed when critics said that his slate spear-heads would be useless. He expected the learned to guess what he was forging; not practicable weapons, but armes d’apparat; survivals of a ceremonial kind, like Mr. Mackenzie’s decorated axe-head of soft stone.
That, I think, was our forger’s little game; for even if he thought no more than Dr. Munro seems to do of the theory of “survivals,” he knew that the theory is fashionable. “Nothing like these spear-heads . . . has hitherto been found in Scotland, so that they cannot be survivals from a previous state of things in our country,” says Dr. Munro. [116a] The argument implies that there is nothing in the soil of our country of a nature still undiscovered. This is a large assumption, especially if Mr. Mackenzie be right about the sacred ceremonial decorated axe-head of soft stone. The forger, however, knew that elsewhere, if not in Scotland, there exist useless armes d’apparat, and he obviously meant to fake a few samples. He was misunderstood. I knew what he was doing, for it seems that “Mr. Lang . . . suggested that the spear-heads were not meant to be used as weapons, but as ‘sacred things.’” [116b] I knew little; but I did know the sacred boomerang-shaped decorated Arunta churinga, and later looked up other armes d’apparat. [116c]
Apparently I must have “coached” the forger, and told him what kinds of things to fake. But I protest solemnly that I am innocent! He got up the subject for himself, and knew more than many
of his critics. I had no more to do with the forger than M. Salomon Reinach had to do with faking the golden “tiara of Saitaphernes,” bought by the Louvre for £8000. M. Reinack denies the suave suggestion that he was at the bottom of this imposture. [117a] I also am innocent of instructing the Clyde forger. He read books, English, French, German, American, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
From the Bulletino di Palaetnologia Italiana, vol. xi. p. 33, 1885, plate iv., and from Professor Pigorini’s article there, he prigged the idea of a huge stone weapon, of no use, found in a grotto near Verona. [117b] This object is of flint, shaped like a flint arrow-head; is ten inches and a half in length, and “weighs over 3½ pounds.” “Pigorini conjectured that it had some religious signification.”
Inspired by this arrow-head of Gargantua, the Clyde forger came in with a still longer decorated slate spear-head, weighing I know not how much. It is here photographed (figs. 17, 18). Compare the decoration of three parallel horizontal lines with that on the broken Portuguese perforated stone (figs. 9, 10). Or did the Veronese forger come to Clyde, and carry on the business at Dumbuck?