"A portion of a very rude pipe-head, formed of common red clay—a lump of clay moulded by hand, and ornamented with small circles pressed into it as from the end of a stick—has come under my notice, as have also others of an equally primitive character, found in different parts of this kingdom. These I have no hesitation in ascribing to a pre-Raleigh period. It is not to these, however, but to the small pipes formerly used in this kingdom for smoking tobacco, and tobacco alone, that I wish to draw attention. Most people, especially in the Midland and Northern counties of England, as well as in Scotland and Ireland, will have heard the name of Fairy Pipes applied to the small, old-fashioned, and sometimes oddly-shaped tobacco pipes which are not infrequently turned up in digging and plowing and other operations. To these and the general forms of old English pipes, I purpose confining myself in the present article. Many years ago I collected together a large number of these 'Fairy Pipes' from all parts of the kingdom. Since then, my own researches have, with the aid of inquiries carried on for me, enabled me to bring forward many interesting points, so as to verify dates of manufacture and more fully to carry out their classification. Like their Irish brethren and sisters, English people were formerly apt to ascribe everything unusually small to the fairies, and anything out of the common way to the people of very remote ages.
"Thus, these small pipes are commonly in England called 'fairy pipes,' or 'Carl's pipes,' or 'old man's pipes;' in Ireland, where they are likewise known as 'fairy pipes,' they are also called 'Dane's pipes;' and in Scotland, where their common name is 'elf pipes,' or 'elfin pipes,' they are, in like manner, known as 'Celtic pipes.' They are also sometimes named 'Mab pipes,' or 'Queen's pipes,' from the same fairy majesty, Queen Mab. Thus, while in each country they are ascribed to the elfin race—the 'small people' of Cornish folk-lore—their secondary names attach to them a popular belief in their extreme antiquity. Anything apparently old is at once, by the Irish, set down to the 'Danes;' by the Scots to the 'Celts;' and by people in the rural districts of our own country to the 'carls,' or 'old men'—carl being indicative of extreme antiquity. In Ireland, the pipes are believed to have belonged to the cluricaunes—a kind of wild, ungovernable, mischievous fairy-demon—who were held in awe by the 'pisantry;' and whenever found, these pipes were, with much superstitious feeling, immediately broken up, so as to destroy and break up the spell their finding might have cast around the finder. But it was not only among the peasantry that this belief in the extreme antiquity of tobacco pipes existed.
"Serious essays were written to prove their pre-historic origin, and to claim for them a history that in our day reads as arrant nonsense. In 1784, a short pipe was asserted to have been found between the jaws of the skull of an ancient Milesian exhumed at Bannockstown, county Kildare. Upon this discovery, an elaborate and learned paper was written in the 'Anthologia Hibernica,' setting forth this pipe as a proof of the use of tobacco in Ireland long before that country was invaded by the Danes. This pipe has been proved by comparison to be probably quite late in the reign of Elizabeth. They also have a more modern pipe, the stem of which describes one or more circles, while another is tied in a knot, yet allows a free passage of air. At another time, in opening an Anglo-Saxon grave mound, some of the men employed came across a fairy pipe which evidently had rolled down from among the surface-soil, and, being turned out in juxtaposition with undoubted Anglo-Saxon remains, was immediately set down by the learned director of the proceedings as a relic of that period. At another time I had brought to me, as a great curiosity, two 'Roman pipes,' as I was informed—the finders jumping to the conclusion that because they had dug them up at little Chester (the Roman station Derventio), they must be Roman pipes! I believe they expected to receive a large sum from these relics: how grievously they were disappointed I need not tell. Instances of this kind are far from rare.
Fairy Pipes.
"I remember a man once bringing me some fragments of Roman pottery and other things of the same period, which he had turned up in the course of excavations, and among them was a Tobacco stopper formed of a Sacheverell medal! and a George II. half-penny, all of which he was ready to swear he had found "all of a heap together," inside a hypocaust tile, which, on examination, certainly had remained in situ from Romano-British times! The cupidity of a man had evidently led him to collect together these odds and ends, and try to turn them to profitable account. Some twenty years ago, a large number of "elfin pipes" were dug up at Bomington, near Edinburgh, along with a quantity of placks or bodles of James VI., which thus gave trustworthy evidence of their true date. Others were found in the ancient cemetery at North Berwick, adjoining to which is a small Romanesque building of the Twelfth Century, close upon the shore. Within the last half-century, the sea has made very great inroads upon this ancient burial-place, carrying off a considerable ruin, and exposing the skeletons, and bringing to light many interesting relics at almost every spring-tide. Among these, many pipes have been washed down. A similar circumstance has occurred on the seashore at Hoy Lake, Cheshire, where several "fairy pipes" have been found.
"Notices of several discoveries occur. Dr. Wilson says, in the statistical accounts of Scotland, many of which are suggestive of a pre-Raleigh period. Thus, 'in an ancient British encampment in the parish of Kirk Michael, Dumfriesshire, on the farm of Gilrig, a number of pipes of burnt clay were dug up, with heads smaller than the modern tobacco-pipes, swelled at the middle and straighter at the top. Again, in the vicinity of a group of standing stones at Cairney Mount, in the parish of Carluke Lanarkshire, a celt or stone hatchet, elfin bolts (flint and bone arrow-heads), elfin pipes, numerous coins of the Edwards and of later date, and other things are all stated to have been found.' An example is also recorded of the discovery of a tobacco-pipe in sinking a pit for coal, at Misk, in Ayrshire, after digging through many feet of sand. All these notes are pregnant with significant warnings of the necessity for cautious discrimination in determining the antiquity of such buried relics."
In Turkey the jasmine is cultivated for the purpose of pipe smoking. Barillet describes the growing of the common jasmine near Constantinople. He says:
"The object sought is a long straight stem, free from leaves and side branches. For this purpose the plants are grown quickly in a rich soil, and drawn up by being grown in a sheltered situation, to which the sun has little access at the sides, but only at the top. Pinching is resorted to, and during the second year's growth one end of a thread is attached to the top of the jasmine stem. This thread passes over a pulley attached to the post to which this jasmine is trained, and from it is suspended a weight, the effect of which is to keep the stem always in a vertical direction. When the jasmine stem is about two centimeters (say three quarters of an inch) in diameter a cloth is wrapped around it to prevent access of dust and of the sun's rays. Twice or thrice in the year the stem is washed with citron-water, which is said to give the clear color so much esteemed. When the stem has acquired a length of some fifteen feet, it is cut down and perforated by the workmen, and fitted with a terra-cotta bow and an amber mouth-piece."