An Attempt to Explain the Origin and Meaning of the Early Interlaced Ornamentation Found on the Sculptured Stones of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man

by Gilbert J. French

The firm hold with which long-established customs, combined with convenience, fix themselves upon the reason of men, and the pertinacity with which nations cling to their old habits, refusing, for the sake of old associations, alterations of the most obvious utility, is altogether marvellous. Speaking of this power and permanency of custom, Lord Bacon curiously illustrates this subject by an anecdote pertinent to the matter before us. “I remember, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s time, of England, an Irish rebel condemned, put up a petition to the Deputy that he should be hanged in a withe, and not in an halter, because it had been so used with former rebels.”[10] Another author, in his version of the same story, says that this “favour of being hanged in gads (twisted withes, so called after the manner of the country), was not refused.”[11] This, though probably an extreme, is by no means an unique prejudice in favour of ancient modes of execution, a prejudice which extends beyond life, influencing nations in their adherence to old-established sepulchral customs.

A manufacture which was probably progressing for many centuries before the Romans invaded Britain, must necessarily have acquired a certain amount of refined ornament as a result of so much experience and practice. We have, indeed, direct evidence that the Romans greatly admired the ornamental baskets of the British, which were exported in large quantities to Rome, and became fashionable appendages among the extravagantly luxurious furniture of the imperial city. Juvenal, writing about A.D. 120, mentions the popularity of these baskets;[12] and that they were productions of the British islanders is distinctly stated by the epigrammatist Martial,[13] who wrote about the end of the first century. It is not improbable that these British baskets were enriched with colour, and even gilding. The former we know was profusely and permanently applied to the persons of the aborigines; the latter—probably one of the earliest discovered metals—was used in the middle of the fifth century for so common a purpose as decorating the roofs of important buildings.[14] It is not, therefore, likely that they were denied as additional means of ornament to these highly valued baskets.

When the aboriginal Briton had made his first step in domestic civilization by constructing useful baskets, he would still be subjected to a great inconvenience from the absence of any suitable vessel of sufficient size to convey or store a supply of water. Nature in this country did little to assist him, denying even the slight aid of the gourd and calabash common in warmer climates. To invent a water vessel would thus become to him a necessity; without it he must have been compelled to reside on the bank of some river or brook, in which he and his family could quench their thirst in the same manner and as frequently as the wild animals of the surrounding forests. Nor is it improbable that many generations of people were restricted to such localities for this reason.

There appears at first sight to be no possible analogy between baskets and water vessels; yet I apprehend that they are in reality almost twin inventions. The same reasoning which induced the naked Briton to line the wicker walls of his hut with clay for the purpose of excluding cold, would, after some experience, lead to an application of the same material as a coating to the inside of his baskets, which, when dried in the sun or hardened by fire applied to the inside, would then be enabled to retain liquids at least for a time, and consequently permit the desired migration from the immediate margin of a river. This is of course a gratuitous assertion, of no value without proof; but it is also a reasonable induction, and one which is, I venture to think, worthy the considerate attention of archæologists.

Fortunately vessels of this description have been preserved in the ancient burial places of the Britons, and are occasionally exhumed in a state of tolerable preservation. They are for the most part not turned on the potter’s wheel, but moulded by the hand, and marked on the exterior by ornaments, not in relief, but always depressed or incised, having the appearance of indentations made in the soft clay by plaited osiers, rushes, or strips of hide, more or less distinct, but, so far as I know, all referrible to such an origin.[15] In some the coating of clay appears not to be carried to the mouth of the basket, but the plaited rushes seem to have been folded inside, and thus the interior of the urn is on its upper portions indented with the same pattern of basket-work as that on the outer side. All British urns are, comparatively with Roman or with Saxon examples, wide-mouthed, a condition essential to their being made by hand on an exterior frame-work of plaited rushes or willows; and some appear to have been constructed on two separate baskets, one inverted over the other. There is rarely any attempt at ansation, the nearest approach to handles being heavy perforated knobs placed a little beneath the mouth, for the evident purpose of attaching to them the twigs, withes, or thongs, which served both to protect and to suspend these fragile vessels.

I must not be supposed to assert that the ornaments found on British, occasionally on Anglo-Roman, and abundantly on Anglo-Saxon urns, were in all cases real impressions of basket-work; but merely that the use of that style of ornament probably originated in the manner I have described, and that it was continued after the introduction of the potter’s wheel by force of habit and long-continued custom. This induced the potter to stamp or incise on the surface of the vessels he made ornamental devices similar to those on the honoured urns of an earlier people; for that they were honoured and held in high estimation is apparent from the sacred purposes to which they were applied as receptacles for the ashes of the dead. In absence of all direct proof of this assumed origin of urn ornamentation, I have thought it right to test the possibility of the process;—with a result entirely satisfactory. Taking such small baskets as I found used by my family for ordinary domestic purposes, I have roughly coated them inside with different clays, subjecting some to the action of fire in the kiln, while others I have left exposed to the sun, and to a few I have applied heat inside only. On all the indentations of the basket-work are sufficiently marked; but they are best defined on the sun-dried specimens, since the shrinking of the clay under the action of fire in the kiln obliterates some of the more salient ridges. A comparison of these jars with ancient British urns will, I apprehend, be more satisfactory and convincing than any elaborate argument, leaving little doubt that both have been produced by similar processes, and that the British urn is, in truth, a secondary application of the British basket.

Mr. Birch, in his learned and most valuable History of Ancient Pottery, applies the term “bascaudæ,” employed by Juvenal and Martial, not to baskets but to sepulchral urns with basket-like ornamentation.[16] Though most unwilling to hazard a contrary opinion, I still cannot avoid suggesting that such urns, judging from the specimens which have been preserved for our inspection, were not likely to be acceptable ornaments on the tables of the luxurious Romans, accustomed as they must have been to elegant products of high art in the plastic manufactures of Etruria, Greece, and Egypt. It is, I think, greatly more probable that ornamental baskets to contain fruit or flowers were indicated by that name.

Though there is good proof that the Britons had acquired much skill in the art of basket making at the time of the occupation of this island by the Romans, it is equally certain that they were ignorant of the art of constructive masonry; for when the legions left the British to their own resources, they advised them to build a wall between the two seas across the island, to keep off their northern enemies. They, indeed, “raised the wall as they had been directed,” but “not of stone as having no artist capable of such work, but of sods [which] made it of no use.”[17] From this it is apparent that the British people at that time, and probably for some centuries afterwards, were unaccustomed to the use of building materials of a kind more permanent than wood, wattle-work and clay. Such an arrangement quite accords with the manners of the people and the state of the country at that period, covered as it was with extensive forests, and swamps abounding with osiers. A people of migratory habits, occupied in perpetual warfare, and depending in a great measure on the chase for their food, must have had little inducement to build residences of great durability; and this would happily lead to the more rapid clearing of the country, and consequently to its earlier civilization.