The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

"The elevation of the barrow was uncertain, from its crown having being levelled; its diameter was from eight to nine yards. The cist was nearly a circle of eleven or twelve feet. In this cist, excavated to the depth of about a foot and a half in the chalky rock, and on a nearly smooth pavement, the skeleton of a British charioteer presented itself, surrounded by what in life formed the sources of his pride and delight, and no inconsiderable part of his possessions. The head of the charioteer was placed to the north with an eastern inclination. He rested on his back, his arms crossed on his breast, and his thigh and leg-bones appearing to have been crossed in opposite directions. Very near to his head were found the heads of two wild boars. Inclining from the skeleton, on each side, had been placed a wheel; the iron tire and ornaments of the nave only remaining. In diameter the wheels had been a trifle more than two feet eleven inches. The diameter of the ornaments of iron, plated with copper, which had encircled the nave as a kind of rim, was very nearly six inches. Each of the wheels had originally rested on a horse, the bones of which were found under or adjoining to them; the head of each horse being not far from that of the charioteer on opposite sides. From the size of their leg-bones these horses were of unequal height, but probably neither of them reached thirteen hands."

In the charioteer's cist were also found the bridle-bits, rings, buckles, and others of the metallic furnishings of the harness. Many of these objects closely correspond to those found both at Stanwick and in the Middleby Moss, leaving no room to question their native origin and workmanship, and thus freeing us from any uncertainty apparent in the communication by Sir John Clerk to the London Antiquaries, who has thus cautiously labelled his drawings,—"Horse-furniture found in a moss in Annandale in Scotland, supposed to be Roman or old Danish, or British!" The chariot and horses, as well as the personal ornaments and weapons of war, deposited beside the buried chief, were no mere idle funeral pomp, but destined for his use in a future world. Doubtless his faithful attendants anticipated, when lavishing such costly rites on his sepulture, that they were furnishing them for his entrance into the Valhalla of the Gods, proudly borne in the chariot in which he had been wont to charge amid the ranks of the enemy, and achieve such deeds of valour as form the highest attainments of barbarian virtue. It is to be remarked, however, that the articles found in the Yorkshire barrows differ from those discovered in Annandale, in being of iron plated with copper; whereas the latter appear to be entirely formed of bronze, and perhaps should, on this account, be assumed to be of a somewhat earlier date; unless, as is fully more probable, they mark a period when the use, or the full knowledge of the working of iron, was very partially diffused throughout the British islands, and when, therefore, the older and more familiar metal was still to be looked for among the more northern tribes.

It is obvious, from the various examples already cited, that much diversity existed in the modes of interment practised in Scotland during the last heathen period. The cairn and tumulus, the cist and cinerary urn, all occur accompanied with contemporary relics. The Danish antiquaries are able to refer to a definite period when cremation was abandoned for inhumation. But if the date assigned by Mr. Worsaae for the close of the Danish Bronze Period be correct, it very nearly corresponds with that of the introduction of Christianity into Scotland, when our later Iron Period came to a close. Perhaps it is to this closing period of the Pagan era that we shall most consistently refer the substitution of the earliest forms of rude oaken coffins for the primitive cist of stone. Mr. Worsaae has described the investigation of a remarkable barrow in 1827, at the village of Vollerslev, containing a cist hollowed out of a very thick oaken stem, about ten feet in length, within which was found the remains of a woollen mantle, a sword, dagger, palstave, and brooch of bronze, a horn comb, and a round wooden vessel with two handles. English archæologists are familiar with a corresponding oaken cist brought to light a few years since, on the opening of a tumulus at Gristhorpe, near Scarborough, within which lay a skeleton, and beside it a bronze spear-head, flint javelin and arrow heads, ornaments of bone, and a small shallow basket of wicker-work. The whole of these interesting relics are now deposited in the Scarborough Museum. So far as this single example goes, it rather tends to connect the remarkable deposit with a much earlier period. It is referred to in Mr. Thom's interesting preface to the English edition of the Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, as, with one exception, the only discovery of the kind known to have taken place in England. Probably, however, such examples are less rare than is supposed. They have already been observed in more than one instance in Scotland, though little calculated to excite interest in the minds of those under whose observation unfortunately such discoveries most frequently come. On the removal of a tumulus, a few years since, on the estate of Cairngall, in the parish of Longside, Aberdeenshire, two such oaken cists were exposed. They are thus described by Mr. Roderick Gray:—"One of them was entire; the other was not. They had been hollowed out of solid trees, and measured each seven by two feet. The sides were parallel, and the ends were rounded, and had two projecting knobs to facilitate their carriage. The bark of the trees of which they had been formed remained on them, and was in the most perfect state of preservation. No vestige of bones was found in either of them. They had been covered over with slabs of wood, and lay east and west."[507] A more remarkable ancient sepulchre of somewhat similar character was discovered in the parish of Culsalmond, in the same county, in the month of May 1812. The following account of it is furnished by the Rev. F. Ellis:—

"In preparing a field for turnips, the plough, at a spot from which a large cairn of stones and moss had been removed about thirty years before, struck against something which impeded its progress. On examination this proved to be a wooden coffin of uncommon size, and of the rudest conceivable workmanship. It had been formed from the trunk of a huge oak, divided into three parts of unequal length, each of which had been split through the middle with wedges and stone axes, or perhaps separated with some red-hot instrument of stone, as the inside of the different pieces had somewhat the appearance of having been charred. The whole consisted of six parts,—two sides, two gables, a bottom, and a lid. Only a small part of the lid remained, the greater part of it having been splintered and torn up by the plough. The coffin lay due east and west,—the head of it being in the east end of the grave. The sides were sunk into the ground thirteen and a half inches below the bottom piece. In the middle of them were grooves of rough and incomplete workmanship, and of the same length at the bottom. The projecting parts of the sides rested on a hard substance much mixed with ashes which had undergone the action of a very strong fire, and on which part of the grave had evidently been erected the funeral pile. In a corner of the coffin was an urn which was broken in the digging out. It had been formed of a mixture of clay and sand; narrowest at bottom, very wide at the top, and about ten or eleven inches deep. After the different pieces were placed in the grave in their proper order, it appears to have been surrounded with a double row of unhewn stones."[508]

It was my good fortune to witness the exhumation during the present year of examples of this remarkable class of oaken cists, under circumstances of peculiar interest. In the course of constructing an immense reservoir on the Castlehill of Edinburgh for supplying the city with water, an excavation was made on this, the highest ground, and in the very heart of the ancient capital, to a depth of twenty-five feet.[509] After removing some buildings of the seventeenth century and several feet of soil, in which were found various coins of the Charleses and of James VI., a considerable portion of a massive stone wall was discovered, which there can be little doubt formed part of the defences of the city, erected by authority of James II., exactly four centuries before: A.D. 1450. Lower down, and entirely below the foundations of the ancient civic ramparts, the excavators came upon a bed of clay, and beneath this a thick layer of moss or decayed animal and vegetable matter, in which was found a coin of the Emperor Constantine, thus suggesting a date approximating to the beginning of the fourth century. Immediately underneath this were two coffins, each formed of a solid trunk of oak, measuring about six feet in length. They were rough and unshapen externally, as when hewn down in their native forest, and appeared to have been split open. But within they were hollowed out with considerable care, a circular space being formed for the head, and recesses for the arms; and indeed the interior of both bore considerable resemblance to what is usually seen in the stone coffins of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They lay nearly due east and west, with the heads towards the west. One of them contained a male and the other a female skeleton, unaccompanied by any weapons or other relics, but between the two coffins the skull and antlers of a gigantic deer were found, and alongside of them a portion of another horn, artificially cut, and most probably the head of the lance or spear with which the old hunter armed himself for the chase. The discovery of such primitive relics in the very heart of a scene of busy population, and the theatre of not a few memorable historical events, is even more calculated to awaken our interest, by the striking contrast which it presents, than when found beneath the lone sepulchral mound, or exposed by the chance operations of the agriculturist. An unsuccessful attempt was made to remove one of the coffins. Even the skulls were so much decayed that they went to pieces on being lifted, but the skull and horns of the deer found alongside of them are now deposited in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. It is not altogether unworthy of notice here, as possibly indicating the Celtic origin of this early substitute for the primitive stone cist, that our term coffin appears to be derived from the Gaelic, cobhan, a coffer or wooden chest; Greek, κοφινος, a wicker-basket or coffer, though the more usual modern Gaelic name applied to the coffin is ciste-mairbh, or chest of the dead.

The great diversity in the later heathen sepulchral rites may be traced with much probability to the causes which have suggested the term Teutonic as most applicable to the period immediately preceding the introduction of Christianity. The isolation of the British Celtæ was at an end. Not only were the Teutonic races of the Continent effecting numerous settlements in the British Isles, and falling back on the more northern and purely Celtic tribes, as they were compelled to give way to the inroads of the Roman legions on their earlier scenes of colonization; but even where the Celtic population maintained their ground, we have abundant evidence that very extensive intercourse with the south was familiarizing them with the arts and civilisation of the continent of Europe. Such intercourse could not fail also to introduce to them many novel rites and superstitions such as are still traceable in the folk-lore of the whole Teutonic races. Numerous independent proofs unite in confirmation of the fact of an entirely new era having taken the place of the early Bronze Period. The uses and relative values of the metals had obviously been finally adjusted. The Scottish bridle-bit shews the adaptation of the iron for use and the bronze for ornament; and this is even more apparent in the plated harness of the British charioteer found on the wolds of Yorkshire. All the evidence concurs in shewing how great was the change that had taken place since the primitive metallurgist laboriously fashioned his weapons from the rare and costly bronze, still supplying numerous deficiencies with implements of horn and stone. The variety, moreover, in the sepulchral deposits, and in the character of objects designed for the same purpose, is no less indicative of the important changes superinduced on primitive arts, than are the various modes of sepulture suggestive of a diversity of national customs and creeds, or of the indifference and scepticism which are the forerunners of change. Everything betokens the close of the long Pagan era which we have followed down from that remote dawn of archæological annals in which we catch the first dim traces of the aboriginal Briton mingled among alluvial relics of strange animal life, to the commencement of authentic written history and inscriptions, preparatory to a new period of which our own century forms a part.

FOOTNOTES:

[499] MS. Letter, S.A. Scot., Dec. 1832.