The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

CHAPTER V.
PERSONAL ORNAMENTS.

It has been already noticed that silver appears to have been a metal very little known in Britain, or the north of Europe, prior to the changes which we associate with the introduction of iron; nor is it difficult, as we have seen, to account for this. The rarity of iron during the primitive periods arises chiefly from the occurrence of the ore in a form least resembling metal, and requiring the most laborious and difficult processes to reduce it to a state fit for use; while the absence of silver is no less satisfactorily accounted for from the mining operations requisite for reaching the argentiferous veins, which were only possible when the introduction of the more useful metals had supplied an abundance of the requisite tools. One class of the earliest silver ornaments, however, retains the same primitive and indefinite style of decoration which has already been described as occurring on the pottery, and also on some of the bronze and gold ornaments found in the tumuli. A very valuable series of examples of this type are figured in the Archæological Journal, in illustration of an account by Mr. Hawkins of the discovery of a number of armlets, and various other silver relics, at Cuerdale, near Preston, along with Anglo-Saxon, Cufic, and other coins.

In the month of November 1830, some labourers engaged in digging for stones, in a field near Quendale, Orkney, came upon the remains of an old building, and, in digging among the rubbish, they found a decayed horn, which appeared to have been wrapped up in a piece of cloth, but the whole crumbled to pieces on exposure to the air. On the outside of the horn were what were at first supposed to be metal hoops, but which proved to be six silver bracelets. They were penannular, and tapered nearly to a point at the ends. The largest of them were square, and ornamented with a kind of herring-bone pattern; the remainder were round. The weight of the heaviest was nearly six ounces, that of the least one ounce, and one which weighed nearly one and a-half ounce, had silver wire coiled round it. Within the horn were pieces of other bracelets, and a quantity of Anglo-Saxon silver coins, including those of Ethered, Athelstan, Edwg, Eadgar, and Ethelred; and alongside were also discovered several broken stone basins. A few of the coins were preserved, but the armillæ, and the remainder of the hoard, were disposed of to a goldsmith in Lerwick, and melted down. Slight sketches of the armillæ, and a deposition taken before the sheriff-substitute of Zetland by the discoverers, are deposited in the library of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Barry describes another hoard extremely similar to this, found at Caldale near Kirkwall. Two horns were discovered by a man while digging peats: they contained about three hundred silver coins of Canute the Great, and near them lay "several pieces of fine silver, in the form of crescents or fibulæ, differing from one another a good deal, both in figure and dimensions. Some of them were flat, others angled; some round, some nearly met at the ends; others were wider at the extremities; one resembled in shape the staple of a door, and another a loop for hanging clothes upon."[486] A portion of the coins alone escaped the usual fate of British relics of the precious metals. A silver armilla, of the same type as those discovered at Cuerdale, was found, in the year 1756, in a cist, along with a quantity of burnt human bones, underneath a large cairn at Blackerne, Kirkcudbrightshire, when the stones composing the cairn were taken to inclose a plantation. It is now in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. A silver bracelet, of a rarer and more artistic design, was found at Brough Head, Morayshire, by labourers engaged in digging the foundation for a new house, and is figured of the full size in the Archæologia Scotica.[487] The woodcut represents another remarkable Scottish relic, a massive silver chain, found in the year 1808, near Inverness, in the course of the excavations for the Caledonian Canal. It now forms one of the most valued treasures of the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. It weighs a little more than ninety-three ounces, and each link is open, and only bent together, so that it may perhaps be assumed with considerable probability, that it was designed to be used in barter, being in fact silver ring money. There are thirty-three links in all, each of them measuring one and nine-tenths inches in diameter, and about two-fifths of an inch in thickness, excepting two at one extremity, and one at the other, each of which are two and one-fifth inches in diameter. With this exception the links appear to be of uniform size, and would probably be found to correspond in weight. An additional link, which was in an imperfect state, was destroyed by the original discoverers, in an attempt to ascertain the nature of the metal. Another silver chain is described in the New Statistical Account, which was found within the area of an intrenched camp, about two miles above Greenlaw, Berwickshire, at the confluence of the Blackadder and Faungrass rivers.

Silver Chain, Caledonian Canal

Reference has already been made to the discovery of nine lunar ornaments of silver, on opening one of the great tumuli, or Knowes of Brogar, at Stennis, in Orkney. Notices of fibulæ, and other relics of the same metal, are to be found scattered through the Statistical Accounts, but mostly described in such vague terms as to render them of little avail to the archæologist. The information is usually added that they were immediately concealed or destroyed. A rude chain, now in my own possession, was found during the present season in the Isle of Skye; two of the links are of silver, and the third of bronze. It corresponds to relics composed of fragments of rings broken in pieces for the purpose of exchange, with which both British and Scandinavian antiquaries are familiar. They are not uncommonly linked together, as in the example now referred to.

The bronze relics of this period are much more abundant, and here it is that we, for the first time, come in contact with examples bearing undoubted traces of Scandinavian art, though these belong more correctly to the succeeding era, and will be treated of in detail, among objects of the primitive Christian Period of Scotland. The distinguishing characteristic of the ornamentation of the last Pagan era, as has already been remarked, is its definiteness and positive development of a peculiar style, along with the imitation of natural forms. A very great similarity, however, is traceable in the ornamentation of the whole northern races of Europe throughout a very considerable period; and in numerous cases it is only by a careful discrimination of details, or from some well-defined objects peculiar to certain districts or countries, that we are able to assign a specific epoch or nationality to discoveries. The interlaced ornament, or "runic knotwork," as it is customary to call it, is not unfrequently referred to as of Scandinavian origin; but of this there is not the slightest evidence.[488] It was familiar to the Greeks and Romans, and in its classic forms is known to architects by the term Guilloche, borrowed from the French. A beautiful and early example of its use occurs on the torus of the Ionic columns of the Erectheum at Athens. It pertains, in like manner, to Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Irish and Scottish Celtic art, and more or less to that of all the Northern races of the last Pagan era; while it forms a no less characteristic ornament of early Christian art. In Scotland especially it is the commonest decoration of a very remarkable class of monuments, more particularly referred to hereafter, but of which it is sufficient meanwhile to say that they do not occur, so far as I am aware, in any part of the Hebrides, or in the Orkney and Shetland Islands, where the Scandinavian influence was longest predominant in Scotland, and its relics are still most frequently found. The suggestive source of the beautiful interlaced patterns may be very naturally traced, as in the ornamentation of the earlier pottery, to the knitting and netting of the primitive industrial arts; nor is it at all necessary to assume that it was introduced from Greece to the north of Europe, though it is found, to a certain extent, common to both. But, indeed, many of the earlier decorations of the Scandinavian Bronze Period are also to be found in use by the Romans. The annular ornaments figured in the Guide to Northern Archæology occur on almost every Anglo-Roman patella; the spiral and double spiral ornaments are both frequently met with on mosaics; and an urn, shewn in the same work, is surrounded with one of the simplest varieties of the frette, a still more familiar classic pattern.[489] The only essentially characteristic ornaments of the arts of the northern European races are the serpentine and dragon patterns. In so far as these are not the obvious creations of fancy, they are clearly traceable to an eastern source, the traditions of which, it will be seen, are even more obvious in monuments of Scottish than of Scandinavian art.

So much has been already said in reference to the legitimate conclusions deducible from the various relics of primitive art, that it will now suffice to indicate a few of the objects most characteristic of this period. One of the most familiar of these is the snake bracelet. Examples of it have been very frequently found in Scotland, and several very fine ones are preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. The annexed woodcut represents one of these, weighing thirty-one ounces. It was found at Pitalpin, near Dundee, in 1732, and bears considerable resemblance to another, and still more beautiful one, found, about the year 1823, among the sand-hills of Culbin, near the estuary of the river Findhorn, Morayshire. The circumstances attending the discovery of the latter are thus narrated by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, in a communication which accompanied a drawing of it exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland:—"Some of the sand-hills of Culbin are a hundred feet in perpendicular height; but the material composing them being an extremely comminuted granite sand, is so loose and light, that, except in a dead calm, it is in eternal motion, so that parts of the original soil are laid entirely bare. Though flints are not included in the mineralogical list of this country, yet there is one small spot among the sand-hills where flinty fragments are often picked up; and as elf-bolts, or flint arrow-heads, have been not unfrequently found on this spot, it is supposed that a manufactory of those rude aboriginal weapons may have once existed there. The finder having accidentally lost his gun-flint, went to the spot to look for a flint to replace it, and in searching about he discovered the antique."[490] The weight of the bracelet is two pounds nine ounces avoirdupois, and the form of the snake-heads, with which both ends terminate, seems to indicate that they have been originally jewelled. It can hardly be supposed that either of the above beautiful, but ponderous ornaments, were designed to be worn on the wrist. Such a weight would cumber the sword-arm of the most athletic hero; and this is still further confirmed by the form of the example found at Pitalpin, the inner edges of which are so sharp that they would not only gall the arm, but would even be apt to wound it on any violent action. Such ponderous bracelets were, in all probability, honorary gifts or votive offerings, though there is also reason to believe that they may have been regarded in the same light as the Scandinavian sacramental rings previously referred to. A very remarkable passage in illustration of this occurs in the Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 876, where it is recorded that when the Danes made peace with Alfred, at Wareham in Wessex, they gave him the noblest amongst them as hostages, and swore oaths to him upon the holy bracelet. (Halza Beage.)[491] Examples, however, of bronze snake bracelets of lighter weight, and evidently designed to be worn, are of more frequent occurrence. In 1833 there were exhibited at a meeting of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, two bronze bracelets in the shape of serpents, found in the district of Bunrannoch, Perthshire, on the northern declivity of the mountain Schehallion. The one weighed one pound two ounces, the other, one pound fourteen and a-half ounces avoirdupois, and they are described as similar to the armilla found at Findhorn.[492] Another example in the Society's Museum, covered with verd antique, is a light and beautiful bracelet, of the same type, weighing only ten ounces.