The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

The fact has already been adverted to, that all the descriptions of the weapons of the Gauls furnished by classic writers, lead us to the conclusion that the ancient bronze leaf-shaped sword had been entirely superseded by the more effective iron weapon prior to their collision with the veteran legions of Rome. The same is no less true of the contemporary Britons. Tacitus describes the Caledonians as "a strong, warlike nation, using large swords without a point, and targets, wherewith they artfully defended themselves against the Roman missiles." We know, moreover, that before the Romans effected a landing in Britain, they were familiar with the fact of an intimate intercourse having been long maintained with Gaul. The former is described by Julius Cæsar as the chief seat of a religion common to both; and the evidence is no less explicit which shews that many of the southern British tribes were of the same race, and differed little in arts or customs from the Gauls of the neighbouring continent. But still more, the reason assigned by Cæsar for the first invasion of Britain was the provocation its natives had given him by the aid which they furnished to his enemies in Gaul. There could not therefore exist any great disparity in their arts or military accoutrements; while we discover in this no slight evidence of the maritime skill to which they must have attained even at that early period, to enable them to embark such bodies of auxiliaries for the help of the continental tribes as attracted the notice and excited the indignation of the Roman general.

To the early part of this Age of Iron should most probably be assigned the construction of the vast monolithic temple of Stonehenge. Its difference from the older temples of Avebury and Stennis, as well as from all other British monuments of this class, has already been referred to. Rude and amorphous as its vast monoliths are, they are characterized by such a degree of regularity and uniformity of design, as marks them to belong to a different era from the Avebury or the Stennis circle, when the temple-builders had acquired the mastery of tools with which to hew them into shape. Much greater mechanical skill, moreover, was required to raise the superincumbent masses and fit them into their exact position, than to rear the rude standing stone, or upheave the capstone of the cromlech on to the upright trilith. Stonehenge, therefore, is certainly not a work of the Stone Period, and probably not of the Bronze Period, with the exception of its little central circle of unhewn stones, which may date back to a very remote era, and have formed the nucleus round which the veneration of a later and more civilized age reared the gigantic columns, still so magnificent and so mysterious even in ruin.

The isolation which we have reason to believe had hitherto exercised so much influence on the native tribes of Britain, is now seen to be finally at an end. The Celtic races are once more nomade, or mingling their blood with the more civilized tribes which are gradually securing a footing in the south-eastern portions of the island. The first stream of Teutonic colonization had set in, which, followed successively by the Romans with their legions of foreign auxiliaries, by Saxons, Angles, Scoti, Norwegians, Danes, and Normans, produced the modern hardy race of Britons. The term Teutonic has been adopted here as at once the most comprehensive and definite one by which to characterize this period. In Scotland the Celtic races maintained a progressive civilisation which ultimately developed itself in new forms, producing an essentially Celtic style and era of art at a later period; but throughout the last Pagan era, the arts of the Celtic Caledonians appear to have been modified by the same Teutonic influence as those of South Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Scandinavia. The tribes of North Britain were indeed only indirectly affected by the aggressive movements of the earlier Teutonic invaders, and were probably a pure Celtic race when the Roman legions penetrated into the Caledonian fastnesses in the second century of our era. But the close affinity between the relics of North and South Britain abundantly proves the rapid influence resulting alike from the friendly interchange of useful commodities and personal ornaments, and doubtless also from the frequent spoils of war. The beautiful coinage of the British Prince Cunobeline, (circa A.D. 13 to A.D. 41,) and supposed to be the work of a Roman, or of a native monier familiar with Roman art, exhibits the type which the Gauls imitated from the Didrachmas and Staters of Macedonia upwards of three centuries before. Little doubt is now entertained by our best numismatists that the coins of Comius and others of an earlier date than Cunobeline or the first Roman invasion, include native British mintage. There is no question, at any rate, that they circulated as freely in Britain as in Gaul, and have been found in considerable quantities in many parts of the island. The iron or bronze and copper ring-money of the first century must therefore be presumed as only analogous to our modern copper coinage, and not as the sole barbarous substitute for a minted circulating medium.

Several interesting discoveries of the primitive iron ring-money have been made in Scotland, though in no case as yet in such a state as to admit of its preservation. In a minute description of various antiquities in the parish of Kilpatrick-Fleming, Dumfriesshire, superadded to the Old Statistical Account, the contents of several tumuli opened about the year 1792 are detailed. In one was discovered a cist, inclosing an urn of elegant workmanship, filled with ashes. The urn was found standing with its mouth up, and covered with a stone. At a small distance from it, within the cist, lay several iron rings, each about the circumference of a half-crown piece, but so much corroded with rust that they crumbled to pieces on being touched.[402] A similar discovery made in Annandale is thus described by an eyewitness: "In the centre of the tumulus was found a red flag-stone laid level on the earth, on which were placed two other slabs of equal size, parallel to each other; and other two, one at each end; another was laid on the top as a cover. In the interior of this was an urn containing ashes, with a few very thin plates of iron in the form of rings, so completely corroded that when exposed to the air they crumbled into dust."[403] In these frail relics of the new material we can have little hesitation in recognising the annuli ferrei of Julius Cæsar, used by the Britons of the first century as their accredited native currency.

Assuming it as an established fact that the native Britons of the southern parts of the island, at least, had carried the arts of civilisation so far as to coin their own money, we perceive therein the evidence of a totally different era from the Archaic Period, in which direct imitation of the simplest positive forms is hardly traceable. Bronze, as has been already observed, continued to be used no less than in the former era, of which it has been assumed as the characteristic feature, in the manufacture of personal ornaments, domestic utensils, &c. In Denmark, indeed, some remarkably interesting relics have been found, seemingly belonging to the very dawn of the last transition-period, when iron was more precious than copper or bronze.

These include axes consisting of a broad blade of copper edged with iron, and bronze daggers similarly furnished with edges of the harder metal. Even in Denmark such examples are extremely rare, and no corresponding instance that I am aware of has yet been discovered in Britain. A great similarity is traceable between the bronze relics of the various northern races of Europe, belonging to the Iron age, and that not of an indefinite character, like the stone hammer or flint lance and arrow-heads of the Primeval Period, but a distinct uniformity of design and ornament, which has mainly contributed to confirm the prevalent opinion that the majority of British and especially of Scottish bronze relics are of Danish origin. In examining these relics in detail, I shall endeavour honestly to assign to Scandinavia whatever is her own, but if the arguments advanced here have any foundation in truth, it is obvious that the British Iron age had lasted well-nigh a thousand years, and as a Pagan era was at an end before we have any historical evidence of Scandinavian invaders effecting permanent settlements on our shores. The whole evidence of history manifestly leads to the conclusion that Britain long preceded the Scandinavian races in civilisation, nor was it till she had been enervated alike by Roman luxury and by the succeeding intestine jealousies and rivalries of native tribes, that Scandinavia, fresh in her young barbarian vigour, made of her a spoil and a prey.

On none of the native arts did Roman intercourse effect a more remarkable change than on British fictile ware. From the English Channel to the Frith of Tay, Roman and Anglo-Roman pottery have been met with in abundance, including the fine Samian ware, probably of foreign workmanship, the rude vessels of the smother kiln, and the common clay urns and coarse amphoræ and mortaria, designed for daily domestic use. Numerous Anglo-Roman kilns have been discovered, some of them even with the half-formed and partially baked vessels still standing on the form or disposed in the kiln, as they had been abandoned some fifteen or sixteen centuries ago. Cinerary urns of the same class have been frequently found accompanied with relics corresponding to the era of Roman occupation. But, be it observed, the bronze relics of the Teutonic type corresponding in general style and ornamentation to those discovered in the Scandinavian countries, when found in British sepulchral deposits are almost invariably accompanied with the primitive pottery, or with a class of urns, described in a succeeding chapter, in which we trace the first elements of improvement in the manufacture of native fictile ware. This must settle the question of the priority of their deposition to the earliest conceivable era of Scandinavian invasion. The native Britons did unquestionably greatly degenerate after being abandoned by their Roman conquerors; but it is opposed alike to evidence and probability to imagine that they resumed the barbarous arts of an era some centuries prior—a proceeding more akin to the ideas of the modern antiquary than to the practice of a semi-civilized race.

The devices most frequently employed in the decoration of the gold, silver, and bronze relics of this period, are what are called the serpentine and dragon ornaments. They are common to the works of all the northern Teutonic races, and are manifestly to be referred to the same Eastern origin as the wild legends of the Germano-Teutonic and Scandinavian mythic poems, in which dragons, snakes, and other monsters, play so conspicuous a part. Along with these, however, there are other patterns indirectly traceable to Greek and Roman models, as is also observable in the dies of the early Gaulish and British coins. This, however, will be more fully considered in treating of the personal ornaments of the period, but meanwhile we may draw the general conclusion, that the arts of the Iron age pertained to the whole Teutonic races of Northern Europe, and reached both Denmark and Britain from a common source, long prior to the natives of these two countries coming into direct collision. We see that an intimate intercourse was carried on between Britain and Gaul at the very period when the transition to the fully developed Iron age was progressing in the former country: it is easy, therefore, to understand how similar arts would reach the Danish Peninsula and the Scandinavian countries beyond the Baltic. But Scandinavia had long passed her Bronze Period, and succeeding transition era, when she sent forth her hardy Vikings to plunder the British coasts. It was with other weapons than the small leaf-shaped bronze sword that the Norse rovers came to spoil and desolate our shores.

In recent cuttings, during the construction of the Dublin and Cashel Railway, there were found a number of large and heavy iron swords, which are now deposited in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. These Mr. Worsaae examined during his visit to Ireland in 1846, and unhesitatingly pronounced them to be Norwegian. "The swords are long and straight, formed for cutting as well as thrusting, and terminate in points formed by rounding off the edge towards the back of the blade. The spears are long and slender, and similar in form to the lance-heads used in some cavalry corps."[404] They are formed of a soft kind of iron, like those referred to by Polybius, as in use among the Gauls more than a century prior to the invasion of Julius Cæsar; and, like them, they differ nearly as much in every essential point, as can well be conceived possible, from the bronze sword of the previous era, which has been so perseveringly bandied about by modern antiquaries between Romans and Danes. Mr. Worsaae especially referred to the great size and weight of the swords found in Ireland, and contrasted them with the lighter weapons of the same metal which he believed to be contemporary swords of the native Irish, from whence he drew the inference that Ireland was—like England, France, Germany, &c.—so weak, from about the eighth till the twelfth century, in consequence of intestine wars, that she fell an easy prey to small numbers of Scandinavian invaders. Mr. Worsaae farther remarked of the weapons found at Kilmainham:—"They are so like the Norse swords, that if they were mixed with the swords found in Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish tombs, and now in the collections of Christiania, Stockholm, and Copenhagen, it would be difficult to distinguish one from the other. The form of the handle, and particularly of the knob at the end of the handle, is quite characteristic of the Norse swords. Along with them some other antiquities of undoubtedly Scandinavian origin were also discovered."[405]