Is it true that a long past era—and, if so, at what era—our predecessors in this old Caledonia had nothing but tools and implements of stone, bone, and wood? Are there no gravel-beds in Scotland in which we could probably find large deposits of the celts and other stone weapons—with bored and worked deer-horns, of that distant stone-age—such as have been discovered on the banks of the Somme and the Loire in France? And were the people of that period in Scotland Celtic or pre-Celtic?
When the first wave of Celtic emigrants arrived in Scotland, did they not find a Turanian or Hamitic race already inhabiting it, and were those Scottish streams, lakes, etc., which bear, or have borne, in their composition, the Euskarian word Ura (water)—as the rivers Urr, Orr, and Ury, lochs Ur, Urr, and Orr, Urr-quhart, Cath-Ures, Or-well, Or-rea, etc., named by these Turanian aborigines?
We know that in Iona, ten or twelve centuries ago, Greek was written, though we do not know if the Iona library possessed—what Queen Mary had among the sixteen Greek volumes[11] in her library—a copy of Herodotus; but we are particularly anxious to ascertain if the story told by Herodotus of Rhampsinitus, and the robbery of his royal treasury by that "Shifty Lad" "the Master Thief,"[12] was in vogue as a popular tale among the Scottish Gaels or Britons in the oldest times? The tale is prevalent in different guises from India to Scotland and Scandinavia among the Aryans, or alleged descendants of Japhet; Herodotus heard it about twenty-three centuries ago in Egypt, and consequently (according, at least, to some high philologists), among the alleged descendants of Shem; and could any Scottish Turanians, as alleged descendants of Ham, in the deputation, tell us whether the tale was also a favourite with them and their forefathers? For if so, then, in consonance with the usual reasoning on this and other popular tales, the story must have been known in the Ark itself, as the sons of Noah separated soon after leaving it, and yet all their descendants were acquainted with this legend. But have these and other such simple tales not originated in many different places, and among many different people, at different times; and have they not an appearance of similarity, merely because, in the course of their development, the earliest products of the human fancy, as well as of the human hand, are always more or less similar under similar circumstances?
Or perhaps, passing from more direct interrogatories, we might request some of the deputation to leave with us a retranslation of that famous letter preserved by Bede, which Abbot Ceolfrid addressed about A.D. 715 to Nectan III., King of the Picts, and which the venerable monk of Jarrow tells us was, immediately after its receipt by the Pictish King and court, carefully interpreted into their own language? or to be so good as write down a specimen of the Celtic or Pictish songs that happened to be most popular some twelve or fourteen centuries ago? or describe to us the limits at different times of the kingdoms of the Strathclyde Britons and Northumbrians, and of the Picts and Dalriadic Scots? or fill up the sad gaps in Mr. Innes' map of Scotland in the tenth century, containing, as it does, the names of one river only, and some thirteen Scottish church establishments and towns; or tell us where the "urbs Giudi" and the Pictish "Niduari" of Bede were placed, and why Ængus the Culdee speaks (about A.D. 800) of Cuilenross, or Culross, as placed in Strath-h-Irenn in the Comgalls, between Slieve-n-Ochil and the Sea of Giudan? or identify for us the true sites of the numerous rivers, tribes, divisions, and towns—or merely perhaps stockaded or rathed villages—which Ptolemy in the second century enters in his geographical description of North Britain? or particularise the precise bounds of the Meatæ and Attacotti, and of the two Pictish nations mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus, namely, the Dicaledonæ and Vecturiones? or trace out for us the course of Agricola's campaigns in Scotland, especially marking the exact site of the great victory of the Mons Grampius, and thus deciding at once and for ever whether the two enormous cairns placed above the moor of Ardoch cover the remains of the 10,000 slain; or whether the battle was fought at Dealgin Ross, or at Findochs, or at Inverpeffery, or at Urie Hill in the Mearns, or at Mormond in Buchan, or at the "Kaim of Kinprunes?" which last locality, however, was, it must be confessed, rather summarily and decisively put out of Court some time ago by the strong personal evidence of Edie Ochiltree.
If these, and some thousand-and-one similar questions regarding the habits, arts, government, language, etc., of our Primæval and Mediæval Forefathers could be at once summarily and satisfactorily answered by any power of "gramarye," then the present and the future Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland would be saved an incalculable amount of difficult investigation and hard work. But unfortunately I, for one at least, have no belief that any human power can either unsphere the spirits of the dead for a night's drawing-room amusement, or seduce the "wraiths" of our ancestors to "revisit the glimpses of the moon" even for such a loyal and patriotic object as the furtherance of Scottish Archæology. Nevertheless I doubt not, at the same time, that many of these supposed questions on the dark points of Scottish antiquities will yet betimes be answered more or less satisfactorily. But the answers, if ever obtained, will be obtained by no kind of magic except the magic of accumulated observations, and strict stern facts;—by no necromancy except the necromancy of the cautious combination, comparison, and generalisation of these facts;—by no enchantment, in short, except that special form of enchantment for the advancement of every science which the mighty and potent wizard—Francis Bacon—taught to his fellow-men, when he taught them the spell-like powers of the inductive philosophy.
The data and facts which Scottish antiquaries require to seek out and accumulate for the future furtherance of Scottish Archæology, lie in many a different direction, waiting and hiding for our search after them. On some few subjects the search has already been keen, and the success correspondingly great. Let me specify one or two instances in illustration of this remark.
As a memorable example, and as a perfect Baconian model for analogous investigations on other corresponding topics—in the way of the full and careful accumulation of all ascertainable premises and data before venturing to dogmatise upon them—let me point to the admirable work of Mr. Stuart on the Sculptured Stones of Scotland—an almost national work, which, according to Mr. Westwood (the highest living authority on such a subject), is "one of the most remarkable contributions to Archæology which has ever been published in this or any other country."
"Crannoges"—those curious lake-habitations, built on piles of wood, or stockaded islands,—that Herodotus describes in lake Prasias, five or six centuries before the Christian era, constituting dwellings there which were then impregnable to all the military resources of a Persian army,—that Hippocrates tells us were also the types of habitation employed in his day by the Phasians, who sailed to them in single-tree canoes,—that in the same form of houses erected upon tall wooden piles, are still used at the present day as a favourite description of dwelling in the creeks and rivers running into the Straits of Malacca, and on the coasts of Borneo and New Guinea, etc., and the ruins of which have been found in numerous lakes in Ireland, England, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, etc.;—Crannoges, I say, have been searched for and found also in various lochs in our own country; and the many curious data ascertained with regard to them in Scotland will be given in the next volume of our Society's proceedings by Mr. Joseph Robertson, a gentleman whom we all delight to acknowledge as pre-eminently entitled to wield amongst us the pen of the teacher and master in this as in other departments of Scottish antiquities.
Most extensive architectural data, sketches, and measurements, regarding many of the remains of our oldest ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland (including some early Irish Churches, with stone roofs and Egyptian doors, that still stand nearly entire in the seclusion of our Western Islands), have been collected by the indomitable perseverance and industry of Mr. Muir; and when the work which that most able ecclesiologist has now in the press is published, a great step will doubtless be made in this neglected department of Scottish antiquities.