The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

Jet Necklace, Ross-shire.

Various interesting personal ornaments obtained under similar circumstances, are preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, and one set in particular, found inclosed in an urn within a rude stone cist, on the demolition of a tumulus near the Old House of Assynt, Ross-shire, in 1824, very closely correspond in appearance to the description of the Renfrewshire relics. They include a necklace of irregular oval jet beads, which appear to have been strung together like a common modern string of beads, and are sufficiently rude to correspond with the works of a very primitive era. The other ornaments which are represented here, about one-fourth the size of the original, are curiously studded with gold spots, arranged in patterns similar to those with which the rude pottery of the British tumuli are most frequently decorated, and the whole are perforated with holes, passing obliquely from the back through the edge, evidently designed for attaching them to each other by means of threads.[342] Several other urns were discovered in a large cairn, a few miles distant from the tumulus which contained these interesting and tasteful relics of female adornment, as they are with great probability assumed to be; though it is well known that the modes of personal decoration which modern taste and refinement reserve for the fair sex are very differently apportioned in ruder states of society. The comparative anatomist can alone absolutely determine this question by future observations on the bones discovered along with similar remains. Meanwhile these examples are of peculiar value from the conclusion previously assumed by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, after examination of various sepulchral deposits containing similar relics, that the female barrow very rarely contains urns. Another sepulchral deposit of similar personal ornaments, including two fibulæ or discs of bituminous shale measuring one and a half inches in diameter, found in a grave at Letham, was presented to the Scottish Museum in 1820 by Sir David Brewster. It probably formed a portion of the contents of a group of cists discovered in a round gravel knoll or tumulus, near the Den of Letham, and described in the New Statistical Account of Dunnichen Parish, Forfarshire. They contained urns of red clay with rude ornaments upon them, and human bones irregularly disposed. "The neck-bones of some were adorned with strings of beads of a beautiful glossy black colour, neatly perforated longitudinally, and strung together by the fibres of animals. They were of an oval figure; large and small ones were arranged alternately, the large ones flat on the two opposite surfaces, the small ones round. They seemed to consist of ebony, or of some fine-grained wood which had been charred and then finely polished. On keeping them some time they split into plates, and the woody fibres separated. In some of these graves rusty daggers were found, which fell in pieces by handling."[343] One is almost tempted to challenge the completeness of this account, and to suspect the position of the necklaces, and perhaps the fibre-strings also, to be creations of the statist's imagination, more especially as the graves contained no perfect skeleton, but only loose bones. The woodcut represents a fibula of the same material, in the possession of James Drummond, Esq. It is drawn one-half the size of the original, which was recently found in a moss at Crawford Moor, near Carstairs, Lanarkshire. Simple as its form is it is not unfamiliar to the British antiquary. Sir R. C. Hoare describes and figures one exactly similar, found on opening a bell-shaped barrow at Blandford, and examples are referred to in the Ancient Wiltshire and other works.[344] Whether we regard this uniformity of type as evidence of the extent of intercourse anciently carried on among the most widely severed tribes, or of some system by which such relics were diffused by the wandering trader throughout the whole British islands, such comparisons cannot fail to interest the student of primitive history, trifling though they may appear, and to stimulate him to further investigation of such analogies.

English antiquaries have long been familiar with relics of this class, under the local name of ornaments of Kimmeridge Coal, and also with a more mysterious variety formed of the same material, on which the name of "Kimmeridge Coal Money" was conferred, from the idea that these symmetrical pieces of shale were used as a circulating medium before the introduction of the metals. The material of which the whole of this class of relics are composed has obviously been applied to the manufacture of personal ornaments from a very remote era, though the so-called coal money probably belongs to a comparatively late period. Some interesting examples of necklaces and other ornaments, precisely similar in style and character to those found in the Renfrew, Ross, and Fifeshire tumuli, were discovered on opening some Derbyshire barrows in 1846. These "female decorations of Kimmeridge coal," as they are styled in the account of the discovery in the Journal of the Archæological Association,[345] were deposited beside a female skeleton, in a cist formed of large stones. "The other instruments found on this occasion were all of flint, not the least fragment of metallic substance being visible. The ornament appears to have been a kind of necklace, with a central decoration, enriched by bone or ivory plates, ornamented with the chevron pattern so prevalent on articles of presumed Celtic manufacture, terminating with two laterally perforated studs of the coal; the remainder of the ornament consists of two rows of bugle-shaped beads of the same material." A few days later, two more necklaces, of similar design and material, were found in a cist under a barrow in the same county, in like manner accompanied only with implements of flint and bone. Engravings of some of these relics accompany the narrative of their discovery; and their remarkable similarity to those of the early Scottish tumuli, leaves no doubt that both belong to the same period. It is remarked of the Derbyshire relics by their discoverer,—"On the most superficial examination, it is quite evident that these articles have never received their form from the lathe, as the armlets of Kimmeridge coal are clearly proved to have done. This, coupled with the fact that the perforation through the length of the bead is in no instance carried through from one end, but is bored each way towards the centre, (as would be the case if a rude drill of flint were used for the purpose,) bespeaks a far more remote period than the one in which the use of the lathe was prevalent."[346] Both the unsymmetrical form, and the perforation of the beads found in the Ross-shire tumulus, fully correspond with these in the indications of the imperfect skill and rude instruments of their manufacturers. But the slow progress of native art was first aided, as we have seen, by the introduction of the potter's wheel; and from this, in all probability, originated the more ingenious contrivance of the turning-lathe. Whencesoever derived, its influence is abundantly apparent on the later relics of native art.

The "coal money" of the elder school of English antiquaries is found almost exclusively in two little secluded valleys at Purbeck, on the southern coast of Dorsetshire, known as Kimmeridge and Worthbarrow Bays. Similar relics, however, it will be seen, are not unknown in Scotland, though designated by other names than the local term derived from Kimmeridge Bay. They consist of flat circular pieces of shale, with bevelled and moulded edges, varying in size from 1¼ to nearly 3 inches in diameter, and frequently perforated or indented with one or more holes. The actual purpose for which this coinage of the Kimmeridge Mint was destined, long formed an antiquarian riddle, which baffled the acutest English archæologists; for the popular name was rather adopted as a convenient term, than seriously regarded as properly applicable to articles so fragile and valueless. One ingenious but somewhat fanciful theorist did, indeed, attempt to prove these relics to be the work of Phœnician artists, designed, not as an actual circulating medium, "but as representatives of coin, and of some mystical use in sacrificial or sepulchral rites!" All such ideas, however, are now entirely exploded, and it is no longer doubted that these are the waste pieces produced in the formation of rings from the shale on the turning-lathe. The fragments of pottery, and other relics discovered along with these curious exuviæ of early art, leave little room to doubt that during the Anglo-Roman period a manufacture of amulets, beads, and other personal ornaments of Kimmeridge shale, must have been carried on to a considerable extent in the Isle of Purbeck.[347]

The popular idea of the use of such circular pieces of shale as money is found attached to them in Scotland as well as in England. In the account of the parish of Portpatrick, it is remarked,—"Circular pieces, from two to three inches diameter, cut out of a black slate not found in the parish, are frequently dug up in the churchyard, along with rings out of which these pieces seem to have been cut. Both of these are supposed by the people here to have been used as money."[348]

Similar relics have been found in Kirkcudbright and other southern shires; and Mr. Joseph Train describes others, not greatly differing in character, found near the large moat or tumulus on the farm of Hallferne, parish of Crossmichael, where also a beautiful Druidical bead was discovered, nearly an inch in diameter, composed of pale-coloured glass, with a waving stripe of yellow round the circumference. In Kirkcudbrightshire, these ornaments of shale have retained nearly to our own day the same rank in popular estimation for their medicinal virtues, or supernatural powers, as we find ascribed to the ornaments and amulets of jet among the Romans.[349] Mr. Train remarks,—

"There have been found, at different times, near the same moat, several round flat stones, each five or six inches diameter, perforated artificially in the centre. Even within the memory of some persons yet alive, these perforated stones were used in Galloway to counteract the supposed effects of witchcraft, particularly in horses and black cattle. 'The cannie wife o' Glengappoch put a boirt stane into ane tub filled with water, and causit syne the haill cattell to pass by, and, when passing, springled ilk ane o' them with a besome dipped in it.' One of these perforated stones, as black and glossy as polished ebony, is also in my possession. It was recently found in the ruins of an old byre, where it had evidently been placed for the protection of the cattle."[350]

Ure remarks in his History of Kilbride, "a ring of a hard black schistous, found in a cairn in the parish of Inchinan, has performed, if we believe report, many astonishing cures. It is to this day preserved in the parish as an inestimable specific."[351] Similar proofs of the superstitious reverence attached to these ancient relics are by no means rare.