No less beautiful than the finest examples of gold torcs are the numerous armillæ which have been found in Scotland. Two funicular bracelets, discovered apparently on draining the same lake in Galloway previously referred to, are described and engraved in the Reliquiæ Galeanæ. Sir John Clerk, writing from Edinburgh in 1732, remarks,—"Since my last to you I have seen two other bracelets and a large ring, found on the draining of a lake or part of it. There are no letters or inscription, and the make is very clumsy. Each bracelet is in weight six or seven guineas, and their shape thus,[382] of two pieces of gold twisted. The ring is large, and about a guinea in weight."[383]
Another example found about forty years ago in Argyleshire was sold for a trifle to a Glasgow goldsmith, and consigned to the crucible.[384] In 1834, some workmen quarrying stones near the bridge over Douglas Water, Carmichael, Lanarkshire, discovered a pair of armillæ weighing twenty-nine sovereigns, which were destined to the same fate; but fortunately the Marquess of Douglas learned of the discovery in time to repurchase them ere they had been converted into modern trinkets, and they are now safe in that nobleman's possession. Mr. Albert Way illustrates his communication to the Archæological Journal, "On Ancient Armillæ of Gold," &c., with an engraving of one of a very beautiful pair, found in 1848 on the estate of Mr. Dundas of Arniston, at Largo, in Fifeshire, of the same type as those previously discovered in the Loch of Galloway. Mr. Way remarks of them,—"These beautiful ornaments are formed of a thin plate or riband of gold, skilfully twisted, the spiral line being preserved with singular precision. It would be easy to multiply examples of torc ornaments more or less similar in type found in this country, and especially in Ireland; but none that I have seen possess an equal degree of elegance and perfection of workmanship."[385] Mr. Dundas furnishes the following interesting note in relation to the discovery:—"The gold bracelets were found last winter on the top of a steep bank which slopes down to the sea, among some loose earth which was being dug to be carted away. The soil is sandy, and the men had dug about three feet, where the bracelets lay. It was at a place close to the sea-shore, called the Temple, which is part of the village of Lower Largo. An old woman who has lived close to the spot all her days, says that in her youth some coffins were found there, and one man was supposed to have found a treasure, having suddenly become rich enough to build a house." The neighbourhood of Largo Bay is celebrated in the annals of Scottish Archæology for one of the most remarkable hoards ever discovered, described in a later chapter as the "silver armour of Norrie's Law." Only a very small portion of this collection was rescued from the crucible; and the moiety of the Largo Bay relics which escaped the same fate appears to have been even less, if we may credit the extremely probable tradition of the locality. With the wonted perverse modesty of Scottish antiquaries, Mr. Dundas accompanies his account of the latter discovery with a reference to the advantages of the neighbouring bay as a safe anchorage, and the probability of its having been a favourite landing-place of the northern freebooters. How strange is it, that rather than believe in the possibility of the existence of early native art, this improbable theory should have been fostered and bandied about by intelligent writers without contradiction for upwards of a century. If there were no native arts and costly treasures, what, it may be asked, brought northern freebooters to our shores? Surely some less extravagant hypothesis may be suggested than that they crossed the ocean to bury their own golden treasures in our sands. It would seem, on the contrary, to afford undoubted evidence of a tumulus or sepulchral chamber being the work of natives or of resident colonists when it is found to contain objects of value. Only the confidence inspired by the universal recognition of the sacredness of such deposits could induce the abandonment of them under cover only of a few feet of soil. It was not until a very late period—towards the end of the ninth century—that the northmen established a footing even on the remoter Scottish islands; while their possession of any but a very small portion of the mainland in the immediate vicinity of their Orkney possessions was so brief and precarious, that it might well excite our surprise to discover any traces of their presence on the shores of the Forth.
Largo Armilla.
A variety of independent proofs, some of which have already been referred to, amply justify the archæologist in assigning the relics of the Archaic Period of British art to an era long prior to that of the Scandinavian Vikings. But there is not wanting evidence to shew that at the latter period also golden armillæ and other native personal ornaments were common in Scotland, and, indeed, frequently furnished the chief attractions not only to the piratical Vikings who first infested our shores, but to the more civilized northmen who supplanted them, and established trading colonies in the northern and western isles. Though the full consideration of the influence of Scandinavian aggression on early Scottish history belongs to a subsequent section, it will not be out of place to glance at some of these proofs here, tending as they do to shew that there is in reality greater probability in favour of some of the gold relics found in Denmark and Norway being of British origin, than that our native relics should be ascribed to a Scandinavian source.
Snorro tells us of two thanes from Fiord-riki, or the kingdom of the bay, as the southern coast of Fife was called, who, dreading the descent of Olave of Norway on their shores, put themselves under the protection of Canute. Snorro's account is literally,—"To Canute came two kings from Scotland in the north, from Fife; and he gave them up his, and all that land which they had before, and therewith received store of winning gifts, (vingiafir.) This quoth Sigvatr—
'Princes, with bowed heads,
Have purchased peace from Canute,
From the coast,
From the midst of Fife, in the north.'"[386]
Ringa eldingham, or bright rings, are frequently mentioned among the spoils of the Norse rovers; but it is not always easy to tell whether they refer to ornamental rings and bracelets, or to tribute paid with ring-money. In the Norwegian account of Haco's celebrated expedition against Scotland, A.D. 1263, frequent allusions occur to such golden spoils, and especially in the extracts from the "Raven's Ode," a song of Sturla, the Scandinavian bard, whose nephew, Sigvat Bodvarson, attended Haco in this expedition, and most probably supplied to Sturla materials for the narrative of his poem. The Scottish foes are described as terrified by "the steel-clad exactor of rings;" and Haco's reduction of the island of Bute is thus celebrated:—"The wide-extended Bute was won from the forlorn wearers of rings by the renowned and invincible hosts of the promoter of conquest. They wielded the two-edged sword; the foes of our Ruler fell, and the raven, from his field of slaughter, winged his flight for the Hebrides."[387] We find also, in the same poem, Haco restoring the island of Ila to Angus on similar terms to those by which the favour of Canute was purchased:—"Our sovereign, sage in council, the imposer of tribute and brandisher of the keen falchion, directed his long galleys through the Hebrides. He bestowed Ila, taken by his warriors, on the valiant Angus, the distributor of the beauteous ornaments of the hand," i.e., rings or bracelets. Here then we find the northern bard scornfully designating the Scottish foemen as "the forlorn wearers of rings," and their tributary chiefs as the "distributors of the beauteous bracelets." It is by the same name claimed by the Scandinavian poet, "exactors of rings," that the early Irish bards describe the northern warriors who infested their coasts from the ninth to the eleventh centuries; while older allusions abundantly prove their familiarity with the "rings" long before the first descent of the Vikings on their shores. An interesting passage illustrates this in an ancient MS. of the Brehon Laws, preserved in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin. The reference is to the wife of Nuada Neacht, King of Leinster, in the first century:—"The Righ of the wife of Nuada, she was used to have her hand (or arm) covered with rings of gold for bestowing them on poets."[388] It is abundantly manifest, therefore, that native artists had learned at a very early period to fabricate the golden armilla, so that the theory of Danish, or of any other foreign origin for these ancient relics, may at once and for ever be dismissed as equally unnecessary and untenable.