Have the graffiti on slate at St. Blane’s, in Bute, been found—I mean have graffiti on slate like those of St. Blane’s, been found elsewhere in Scotland? [125] The kinds of art, writing, and Celtic ornament, at St. Blane’s, are all familiar, but not their presence on scraps of slate. Some of the “art” of the Dumbuck things is also familiar, but not, in Scotland, on pieces of slate and shale. Whether they were done by early wags, or by a modern and rather erudite forger, I know not, of course; I only think that the question is open; is not settled by Dr. Munro.
XXXI—GROTESQUE HEADS. DISPUTED PORTUGUESE PARALLELS
Figurines are common enough things in ancient sites; by no means so common are the grotesque heads found at Dumbuck and Langbank. They have recently been found in Portugal. Did the forger know that? Did he forge them on Portuguese models? Or was it chance coincidence? Or was it undesigned parallelism? There is such a case according to Mortillet. M. de Mortillet flew upon poor Prof. Pigorini’s odd things, denouncing them as forgeries; he had attacked Dr. Schliemann’s finds in his violent way, and never apologised, to my knowledge.
Then a lively squabble began. Italian “archaeologists of the highest standing” backed Prof. Pigorini: Mortillet had not seen the Italian things, but he stood to his guns. Things found near Cracow were taken as corroborating the Breonio finds, also things from Volósova, in
Russia. Mortillet replied by asking “why under similar conditions could not forgers” (very remote in space,) “equally fabricate objects of the same form.” [127] Is it likely?
Why should they forge similar unheard-of things in Russia, Poland, and Italy? Did the same man wander about forging, or was telepathy at work, or do forging wits jump? The Breonio controversy is undecided; “practised persons” can not “read the antiquities as easily as print,” to quote Mr. Read. They often read them in different ways, here as fakes, there as authentic.
M. Boulle, reviewing Dr. Munro in L’Anthropologie (August, 1905), says that M. Cartailhac recognises the genuineness of some of the strange objects from Breonio.
But, as to our Dumbuck things, the Clyde forger went to Portugal and forged there; or the Clyde forger came from Portugal; or forging wits coincided fairly well, in Portugal and in Scotland, as earlier, at Volósova and Breonio.
In Portugalia, a Portuguese archaeological magazine, edited by Don Ricardo Severe, appeared an article by the Rev. Father José Brenha on the dolmens of Pouco d’Aguiar. Father Raphael Rodrigues, of that place, asked
Father Brenha to excavate with him in the Christmas holidays of 1894. They published some of their discoveries in magazines, and some of the finds were welcomed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos, in his Religiões da Lusitania (vol. i. p. 341). They dug in the remote and not very cultured Transmontane province, and, in one dolmen found objects “the most extraordinary possible,” says Father Brenha. [128] There were perforated plaques with alphabetic inscriptions; stones engraved with beasts of certain or of dubious species, very fearfully and wonderfully drawn; there were stone figurines of females, as at Dumbuck; there were stones with cups and lines connecting the cups, (common in many places) and, as at Dumbuck, there were grotesque heads in stone. (See a few examples, figs. 20-24).