[14]. This is a frequently-occurring characteristic of the vessels partially filled with charcoal found in graves of the Carlovingian period and down to the seventeenth century in France. They are usually pierced with holes irregularly placed. In some cases the holes have been made when the clay was soft. In others the vessels have been pierced by holes driven through their sides after they were fired, as if by a nail or other pointed instrument.
[15]. At Bernay, where 150 of these incense vases were found, the most common arrangement was four in one coffin, two at the head and two at the feet.
[16]. Two instances are cited by the Abbé Cochet. Claud d’Escarbotte left orders in his will that the young lads, orphans, who were to follow him to the grave should carry each a torch and a pot with incense. Jehan Thelinige described the custom more particularly, for he prescribes in his will that the small pots with the fire and the incense shall be thrown into the grave. In the district of Morvan, says M. Jules Chevrier, the peasants even in our own days continue the custom of using funeral vases. They throw upon the coffin, when it is lowered into the grave, a porringer or some such dish of earthenware which had been ordinarily used by the defunct; and in certain parts of La Bresse they still throw into the grave the holy water vessel which had stood at the feet of the defunct previous to the ceremony of inhumation.
[17]. Pennant figures an iron sword of this type in the second volume of his Tour in Scotland, plate xliv., but dismisses it with the remark that it is “part of an iron sword found in Islay.”
[18]. The pins of all the other specimens of this type of brooch that are preserved in the Museum have been of iron, and have consequently disappeared by oxidation. Without the Ballinaby brooches we should not have known the construction of the pin.
[19]. See the figure of the Tiree brooch, which is engraved with the upper shell removed from its place, and each shown separately (Fig. [31]).
[20]. A portion of a similar chain occurred in the Croy find (Scotland in Early Christian Times, Second Series, p. 23); also in the Skaill hoard, to be subsequently described; in the hoard at Cuerdale; and in a small hoard found in the Isle of Inchkenneth.
[21]. For this reason the geographical distribution of these brooches marks the range of the Scandinavian conquests of the ninth and tenth centuries. In Iceland, in Russian Livonia, in Normandy, in England, in Ireland, and on our own shores in Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, and Sutherland, and in the Hebrides, including even the remote St. Kilda, their presence attests the historical fact of the Viking settlements from Norway. But the area in which they are specially abundant, of course, is in Scandinavia itself. I find on comparing the different records that there are now upwards of five hundred of them known in Norway. When we add the number known in Sweden, which exceeds four hundred, and those of Denmark, which only amount to thirty-eight, we have a gross total of nearly a thousand, of which the larger portion are from Norway. No archæological period in any country is marked by such a distinctly peculiar and characteristic type.
[22]. In a letter to me acknowledging receipt of a copy of my “Notes of the Relics of the Viking Period of the Northmen in Scotland,” Professor Rygh, Curator of the Museum at Christiania, says:—“Among the oval brooches which you have figured, there is not one that might not have been found in Norway. The brooch from Pierowall is of a form exceedingly common with us, of which I know no fewer than one hundred and eight specimens. The commonest form of all in Norway is that of the brooches from Islay and Tiree, of which we have one hundred and eighteen examples. The brooches from the Longhills at Wick belong to a variety of the last form well known with us, and that from Castletown in Caithness has many analogous examples here in Norway, although they are not so common as the two previously mentioned types.”
[23]. When showing the relics from the Ballinaby graves to a lady, she remarked that in her home in Caithness she remembered seeing a similar article of glass, which she was told was formerly used for a similar purpose. Though now resident in Edinburgh, she believed the implement was still preserved, and at my request she made search for it, found it, and sent it to the Museum. It is an implement so similar in form to the ancient specimen, that there can be no question as to the identity of type. It is of black bottle glass, 3 inches in diameter, and 1¾ inch thick, and is here engraved (Fig. [28]) to the same scale as the specimen from the Ballinaby grave (Fig. [26]). That the discovery of this lump of glass in a Pagan grave should be the means of bringing to light the existence of similar implements in Scotland which had continued in use till within living memory, is a curious illustration of the rapidity with which the knowledge of special implements and special processes becomes extinct when the implement has been superseded by a new form and its use rendered obsolete by an improved process. The placing of this specimen (of the modern type) in the Museum has brought to light other three specimens of modern calendaring implements of glass. They are of larger size and furnished with handles, which are also of glass.