The tombs of the Bronze Period appear to differ, in various important respects, from those which are clearly assignable to the Primeval Period. Some of their peculiar features have already been noticed, in describing the circumstances under which sepulchral pottery and their relics have been met with; but others equally characteristic of the first era of development and progress remain to be described. To this epoch, as has been already observed, it seems probable that we must assign the introduction of the practice of cremation, while the huge cromlechs and chambered barrows and cairns, appear to have been abandoned along with the simpler rites of primitive inhumation, for the smaller cist and cinerary urn. To this period also we can have little hesitation in ascribing the earliest attempts at sculpture or inscription which are met with on primitive sepulchral memorials. The two most remarkable examples of sculptured monolithic structures hitherto explored are the celebrated chambered cairn of Newgrange, in the county of Meath, and that on the small island of Gavr' Innis in Brittany. These gigantic and complicated works appear indeed to pertain to the transition between the Primeval and Archaic Periods, and partake at once of the earliest cyclopean characteristics and the later ornamental decorations.
An abridged extract of the account furnished by Mr. J. W. Lukis of the remarkable structure of Gavr' Innis will best illustrate the peculiar features of such decorated sepulchral chambers. Gavr' Innis is a small island, about a quarter of a mile in length, situated in the department du Morbihan, Brittany. It is elevated somewhat above the neighbouring islands, and with its tumulus, which still covers the cromlech, forms one of the most conspicuous objects of the inland Archipelago. The tumulus is about thirty feet high, and three hundred feet in circumference. The cromlech beneath forms a large central chamber, with a passage, constructed like it of huge masses of granite, leading out to the south side of the mound.
"Being furnished," says Mr. Lukis, "with candles, I entered the cromlech Gavr' Innis by a small opening at the south end, which is between three and four feet wide, by about the same in height. Having reached the third and fourth props, my attention was at once arrested by finding them covered with engraved lines, forming patterns resembling the tattooing of the New Zealander. On proceeding farther into the interior the height increased, rendering the passage to the end more easy; and I found nearly the whole of the props covered with similarly engraved lines. Here there is much to excite admiration at the regularity and beauty of so extraordinary a place; and on turning to a prop on the western side, the imagination is farther exercised to perceive the purpose or use of three circular holes, sunk into the face of the stone, each about six inches deep, and the same in diameter: they communicate with each other, and form a sort of trough within the stone. It is divided in front by two raised parts resembling in form the handles to a jar."[395]
Coilsfield Stone.
Other cromlechs in Brittany are similarly decorated; and Mr. Lukis arrives at the conclusion that in some of them the stones must have been engraved prior to their erection, from the ornaments extending round the sides which are now covered by adjoining stones. The sculptured decorations at Newgrange are no less remarkable, and the same observation has been made in regard to them, that the carvings must have been executed before the stones upon which they appear had been placed in their present positions. We shall not probably err in assigning as contemporaneous works with these rare and most primitive examples of sculptured sepulchral chambers, the rude cists occasionally found decorated with similar devices, though otherwise entirely unhewn. The annexed view of one of these incised slabs is engraved from a drawing presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh by Colonel Hugh Montgomery of Shielmorly, in 1785, and subsequently transferred to the Society of Antiquaries. It formed the cover of a cist, discovered in digging a gravel-pit at Coilsfield, in Ayrshire, and underneath it was found an urn filled with incinerated bones. The dimensions of the stone were about five feet in length by two and a half feet in breadth. The original drawing includes the representation of the portion of the urn shewn here, which it will be seen presents only the usual characteristics of primitive sepulchral pottery. A subsequent discovery of cinerary urns at the same spot has been assumed to authenticate one of the many dubious incidents recorded by our earlier chroniclers in relation to a no less celebrated hero than "Old King Coil." Near Coilsfield House is a large tumulus, crowned with two huge blocks of granite, which local tradition affirmed to mark the place of sepulture of the redoubted hero, of whom Boece records,—"King Coyll, unwarly kepit be his nobilis, was slane, in memory wherof the place quhare he was slane wes namit efter Coyll; quhilk regioun remanis yit under the same name, or litill different thairfra, callit now Kyle."[396] Certain zealous local antiquaries having resolved to put tradition to the test, the tumulus was opened in 1837, and found to inclose a cist covered by a circular stone about three feet in diameter, beneath which four plain urns were disposed, the largest of which measured nearly eight inches in height. The author of a recent topographical work on the district of Kyle has gravely assumed this discovery as giving "to the traditionary evidence, and to the statements of early Scottish historians in regard to Coil, except with respect to the date, a degree of probability higher than they formerly possessed!"[397] What more might not the antiquaries of Kyle have been able to establish had they known of the older discovery on the same spot, and of the mysterious symbols traced on the sepulchral stone!
Annan Street Stone.