Cæsar tells us that dying the skin blue with woad was a practice common among our British ancestors some 1900 years ago;—are Claudian and Herodian equally correct in describing the very name of Picts as being derived from a system of painting or tattooing the skin, that was in their time as fashionable among some of our Scottish forefathers, as it is in our time in New Zealand, and among the Polynesians?
According to Cæsar, the Britons wore a moustache on the upper lip, but shaved the rest of the beard; and the sole stone—fortunately a fragment of ancient sculpture—which has been saved from the ruins of the old capital of the Picts at Forteviot, shows a similar practice among them. But what did they shave with? Were their razors of bronze, or iron, or steel? And where, and by whom, were they manufactured?
Was the state of civilisation and of the arts among the Caledonians, when Agricola invaded them, about A.D. 80 or 81, as backward as some authorities have imagined, seeing that they were already so skilled in, for example, the metallurgic arts, as to be able to construct, for the purposes of war,—chariots, and consequently chariot-wheels, long swords, darts, targets, etc.?
As the swords of the Caledonians in the first century were, according to Tacitus, long, large, and blunt at the point, and hence in all probability made of iron, whence came the sharp-pointed leaf-shaped bronze swords so often found in Scotland, and what is the place and date of their manufacture? Were they earlier? And what is the real origin of the large accumulation of spears and other instruments of bronze, some whole, and others twisted, as if half-melted with heat, which, with human bones, deer and elk-horns, were dredged up from Duddingston Loch about eighty years ago, and constituted, it may be said, the foundation of our Museum? Was there an ancient bronze-smith shop in the neighbourhood; or were these not rather the relics of a burned crannoge that had formerly existed in this lake, within two miles of the future metropolis of Scotland?
Could the deputation inform us where we might find, buried and concealed in our muirs or mosses, and obtain for our Museum some interesting antiquarian objects which we sadly covet—such as a specimen or two, for instance, of those Caledonian spears described by Dion, that had a brazen apple, sounding when struck, attached to their lower extremity? or one of those statues of Mercury that, Cæsar says, were common among the Western Druids? or one of the covini mentioned by Tacitus—(for we are anxious to know if its wheels were of iron or bronze; how these wheels made, as Cæsar tells us the wheels of the British war-chariots made, a loud noise in running; and whether or not they had, as some authorities maintain, scythes or long swords affixed to their axles)? or where we might dig up another specimen of such ancient and engraved silver armour as was some years ago discovered at Norrie's Law, in Fife, and unfortunately melted down by the jeweller at Cupar? or could any of the deputation refer us to any spot where we might have a good chance of finding a concealed example of such glass goblets as were, according to Adamnan, to be met with in the royal palace of Brude, king of the Picts, when St. Columba visited him, in A.D. 563, in his royal fort and hall (munitio, aula regalis) on the banks of the Ness?
Whence came King "Cruithne," with his seven sons, and the Picts? Were they of Gothic descent and tongue, as Mr. Jonathan Oldbuck maintained in rather a notorious dispute in the parlour at Monkbarns? or were they "genuine Celtic," as Sir Arthur Wardour argued so stoutly on the same memorable occasion?
Were the first Irish or Dalriadic Gaeidhil or Scots who took possession of Argyll (i.e., Airer-Gaeidheal, or the district of the Gaeidhel), and who subsequently gave the name of Scot-land to the whole kingdom, the band of emigrants that crossed from Antrim about A.D. 506 under the leadership of Fergus and the other sons of Erc; or, as the name of "Scoti" recurs more than once in the old sparse notices of the tribes of the kingdom before this date, had not an antecedent colony, under Cairbre Riada, as stated by Bede, already passed over and settled in Cantyre a century or two before?
Our Reformed British Parliament is still so archæological as to listen, many times each session, to Her Majesty, or Her Majesty's Commissioners, assenting to their bills, by pronouncing a sentence of old and obsolete Norman French—a memorial in its way of the Norman Conquest; and our State customs are so archæological that, when Her Majesty, and a long line of her illustrious predecessors, have been crowned in Westminster Abbey, the old Scottish coronation-stone, carried off in A.D. 1296 by Edward I. from Scone, and which had been previously used for centuries as the coronation-stone of the Scotic, and perhaps of the Irish, or even the Milesian race of kings, has been placed under their coronation-chair—playing still its own archaic part in this gorgeous state drama. But is this Scone or Westminster coronation-stone really and truly—as it is reputed to be by some Scottish historians—the famous Lia Fail of the kings of Ireland, that various old Irish writings describe as formerly standing on the Hill of Tara, near the Mound of the Hostages? Or does not the Lia Fail—"the stone that roared under the feet of each king that took possession of the throne of Ireland"—remain still on Tara—(though latterly degraded to the office of a grave-stone)—as is suggested by the distinguished author of the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill? If any of our deputies from ghostdom formerly belonged to the court of Fergus MacErc, or originally sailed across with him in his fleet of currachs, perhaps they will be so good as tell us if in reality the royal or any other of the accompanying skin-canoes was ballasted then or subsequently with a sacred stone from Ireland, for the coronation of our first Dalriadic king; and especially would we wish it explained to us how such a precious monument as the Lia Fail of Tara was or could be smuggled away by such a small tribe as the Dalriadic Scots at first were? Perhaps it would be right and civil to tell the deputation at once, that the truth is we are anxious to decide the knotty question as to whether the opinions of Edward I. or of Dr. Petrie are the more correct in regard to this "Stone of Fate?" Or if King Edward was right politically, is Dr. Petrie right archæologically, in his views on this subject? In short, does the Lia Fail stand at the present day—as is generally believed—in the vicinity of the Royal Halls of Westminster, or in the vicinity of the Royal Halls of Tara?
What ancient people, destitute apparently of metal tools and of any knowledge of mortar, built the gigantic burgs or duns of Mousa, Hoxay, Glenelg, Carloway, Bragar, Kildonan, Farr, Rogart, Olrick, etc., with galleries and chambers in the thickness of their huge uncemented walls? Is it true, as the Irish bardic writers allege, that some of the race of the Firbolgs escaped, after the battle at one of the Moyturas to the Western Islands and shores of Scotland, and that thence, after several centuries, they were expelled again by the Picts, after the commencement of the Christian era, and subsequently returned to the coast of Galway, and built, or rebuilt, there and then, the great analogous burgs of Dun Ængus, Dun Conchobhair, etc., in the Irish isles of Aran?[10]
What is the signification of those mysterious circles formed of diminishing concentric rings which are found engraved, sometimes on rocks outside an old aboriginal village or camp, as at Rowtin Lynn and Old Bewick; sometimes on the walls of underground chambers, as in the Holm of Papa Westray, and in the island of Eday; sometimes on the walls of a chambered tumulus, as at Pickaquoy in Orkney; or on the interior of the lid of a kistvaen, as at Craigie Hall, near Edinburgh, and probably also at Coilsfield and Auchinlary; or on a so-called Druidical stone, as on "Long Meg" at Penrith?