The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

The singular correspondence between many of the weapons and implements of the Stone Period, in almost every quarter of the globe, has already been referred to; but there are not wanting many others presenting such national and local peculiarities as are worthy of careful noting and comparison. In this respect much still remains to be done for Scottish Archæology. A far more abundant store of materials, and a much larger class of intelligent and educated observers are required, before the subject can be placed in its true light as an elementary basis from whence to deduce the legitimate inferences involved in this branch of science. It will meanwhile help towards the establishment of a fixed nomenclature and the basis of more extended classification, as observers increase, to exhibit at one view the chief known varieties of the weapons and implements of the Scottish Stone Period.

The rude and unshapely fragments of flint known by the name of Flint Flakes, and now recognised as specimens of the first stages of weapon manufacture of the period to which they belong, have only very recently fully attracted the attention of archæologists. The merit in this, as in so many other important elementary principles of the science, is due to the intelligence and sagacity of the antiquaries of Copenhagen, and the admirable facilities afforded by the liberality of the Danish Government. The flakes of flint, which are met with in considerable abundance, appear to have been struck off from a solid mass. They are ordinarily found from about one to six inches long, and frequently present a curved form, it being apparently a property of flint to flake off in this manner. Sometimes they occur in the simplest state; in other cases they are partially reduced to their intended form. But rude as they are, they are of the utmost value to us, from the insight which is thereby obtained into the process of manufactory of the primitive lance and arrow-head. It is obvious, from the frequent discovery of such among sepulchral deposits, that considerable value was attached to them; nor must we overlook the fact, that while flint is found in the greatest abundance both in Denmark and the south of England, there are many parts of Scotland where it is scarcely to be met with. Here, therefore, we discover the first traces of primitive trading and barter. The flint flakes were, in fact, the raw material, which had to be imported from other districts before the hunter of the Stone Period could supply himself with the indispensable requisites for the chase. A few examples will suffice to shew the abundance of such materials, and the circumstances under which they are found, though it will readily be believed that it is only rarely that their occurrence is noted, or falls under the observation of those who consider them of the slightest value.

In one of the cases in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland there is a skull found in an ancient cist, on the farm of Clashfarquhar, parish of Banchory-Devenich, Aberdeenshire, in 1822. It is chiefly curious from having on the crown of the head a hole nearly circular, and rather more than an inch in diameter, which there can be little doubt was occasioned by the death-blow. The size and cerebral development of the head nearly resembles the usual character of skulls found in the earliest cists; and it is not difficult to conceive of the wound having been inflicted with the narrow end of a stone celt. In each corner of the cist a few flint flakes were carefully piled up into a little heap. Alexander Thomson, Esq. of Banchory, remarks of them, in a letter which accompanied the donation of the skull:—"They are very proper for being made into arrow-heads, but none of them appear to have been wrought."[149] Similar relics of early art have been noted at various times in the same district of the country:—"On the alluvial soil near the sea," remarks the author of the New Statistical Account of Belhelvie, "there is a bed of yellow flints, in which a number of very well formed arrow-heads are frequently found;" and in no part of Scotland are these primitive relics more abundant than in the landward districts of Aberdeenshire. In the large cairn of Menzie, on Cairn Moor, Buchan, there was found, in a stone cist, "along with earth and bones, a dart-head of yellow flint, most perfectly shaped, and a little block, also of yellow flint, as if intended to furnish the deceased with more darts, should he have occasion for them on the passage."[150] In 1821 several flint flakes, and imperfectly formed flint implements, were found, along with two perfect arrow-heads of the same material, in an urn containing incinerated bones, on the estate of Closeburn, Dumfriesshire. The urn, and several of the half-formed flints, are now in the Scottish Museum. A similar deposit was discovered only last year (1849) by workmen engaged in digging for stones to build a march dyke between the farm of Swinie and an adjoining one on the neighbouring estate of Wells, Roxburghshire. There were four cairns, two of which, on being demolished, disclosed cists containing urns, and beside them a quantity of flint flakes of various sizes, several of which are now in my possession. Similar examples are of frequent occurrence, but one other may be noted from the unusual amount of flint flakes found with it. North of the Mull of Islay, Argyleshire, there is a road which leads from Port Ellen, in a north-easterly direction, towards the shooting lodge of Islay. At a point in this road, where it is cut into the side of the hill, distant about four miles from Port Ellen, some workmen engaged in widening the road exposed a cist in cutting into the sloping ground, within which lay a skeleton with a large quantity of flint flakes and chips beside it. A distinguished artist, who happened fortunately to be in the neighbourhood at the time of this interesting discovery, has furnished me with sketches of the locality. He describes the flint flakes as so numerous, that they formed a heap of from eighteen inches to two feet in height when removed from the cist.[151]

Other and scarcely less interesting evidences of ancient population are still observable in remote nooks of the Western Highlands, where the Dalriadic Scots first effected a settlement in the land which has borne their name for so many centuries. The road from Port Ellen to the site of the ancient cist, above described, passes for a considerable way through a narrow winding valley, studded with huge boulders and detached masses of rock, preserving evidences of remarkable geological changes many ages anterior to the earliest occurrence within the range of archæological science. Similar evidences are of frequent occurrence along these western shores, where now the restless Atlantic is slowly but unceasingly gnawing the rocky coast into wilder and more picturesque forms, while it strews the stolen debris on its ocean bed, to form new strata and continents for younger worlds than ours. With these evidences of change we have not now to deal. But in various districts of the same neighbourhood, and particularly amid the scenes on which a new interest has been conferred as those in which the poet Campbell passed some of his early years, the curious traveller may descry, amid "the desolate heath" of the poet,[152] indications on the hill-sides of a degree of cultivation having existed at some former period far beyond what is exhibited in that locality at the present day. The soil on the sloping sides of the hills appears to have been retained by dwarf walls, and these singular terraces occur frequently at such altitudes as must convey a remarkably vivid idea of the extent and industry of an ancient population, where now the grazing of a few black cattle alone tempts to the claim of property in the soil. In other districts the half-obliterated furrows are still traceable on heights which have been abandoned for ages to the wild fox or the eagle. Such evidences of ancient population and industry are by no means confined to the remote districts of ancient Dalriada. They occur in many parts of Scotland, startling the believer in the unmitigated barbarism of Scotland prior to the medieval era with evidence of a state of prosperity and civilisation at some remote epoch, the date of which has yet to be ascertained; though there are not wanting periods within the era of authentic Scottish history to which some of these may with considerable probability be assigned. The very simple explanation of such ancient plough-marks which has satisfied the popular mind is apparent in the appellation of elf furrows, by which they are commonly known. The prevalence of these infallible tokens of former industry was noted by the Rev. George Maxwell when drawing up an account of the parish of Buittle, in Galloway, towards the close of last century. The rustic tradition by which the reverend Statist seeks to account for the greater agricultural skill of former ages, though amusing enough, is not without its value to us from the proof it affords of the extent to which such traces must have existed when they made so great an impression on the popular mind:—

"It is here to be observed," he remarks, "that there are few hills in this part of Galloway, where cultivation is at all practicable, that do not bear distinct marks of the plough. The depths of the furrows, too, plainly declare that this tillage has not been casual, or merely experimental, but frequent and successive. This should set both the ancient population and industry of this part of Scotland in a more favourable light than that in which they are usually held. It also affords probability to a tradition repeated by the country people to this day: that at a time when Scotland was under a Papal interdict, or sentence of cursing from the Pope, it was found that his Holiness had forgot to curse the hills, though he had commanded the land, usually arable, to yield no increase; and that while this sentence remained, the people were necessitated to seek tillage ground in places unusual and improbable!"[153]

Returning, however, from this digression, to the consideration of the rude primitive implements of stone and flint, and the flint flakes out of which the latter were formed,—the flint arrow and lance heads constructed from these furnish evidence of much patient ingenuity, and exhibit considerable variety of form. It is difficult, indeed, to conceive of the process by which workmen, provided with such imperfect tools as we must presume them to have possessed, were able to split the flint into flakes, and reduce these to such regular forms. The remoteness of the period when this primitive art was superseded by the workers in metal, is proved by the incorporation of the ancient flint implements into some of the most prevalent popular superstitions of the north. The terms Elf-bolt, Elf-shot, or Elfin-arrow, are invariably applied to the flint arrow-head throughout the Scottish Lowlands. The Gaelic name, Sciat-hee, is completely synonymous; while in Shetland and Orkney the idea of their supernatural origin is more frequently conveyed by the term thunderbolt, invariably applied to the stone celt. This variation in the popular mode of giving expression to the idea of the supernatural origin of these primitive weapons, among the inhabitants of the mainland and the northern isles of Scotland, is worthy of passing note, from the evidence it affords of one well-defined early date to which we may refer as a known period when the stone weapons were fully as much relics of a remote past, and objects of popular wonder, as now. The name still applied to the Elf-bolt, by the Norwegian peasantry, is Tordenkiler, or thunderstone,[154] so that we can feel little hesitation in assigning to the old Norse colonists of Orkney, the difference still discernible in these expressions of the same popular idea, and inferring from thence, what all other evidence confirms, that the Scottish Stone Period belongs to an era many centuries prior to the oldest date of her written history. The Elf-bolt is associated with many rustic fancies not yet altogether eradicated from the popular mind. It occupied no unimportant part among the paraphernalia of Scottish witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the occurrence of any sudden disease amongst cattle was ascribed until a comparatively recent period, to their having been shot by the fairies with Elfin arrows. This ancient superstition is not peculiar to Scotland. In Norway similar diseases, not only of cattle but of men, were called by the same name of Alfskot, and in Denmark, of Elveskud, that is, Elf-shot; though the flint arrow-head is not recognised as the bolt which furnishes for such purposes the quivers of the malignant elves. But other, and probably more ancient Scandinavian legends, prove the existence of similar northern associations with the primitive arrow-head of flint. In the "Fornaldar Sögur Nordlanda," or Legends from the primitive period of the North, derived from ancient manuscripts, Orvar Odd's Saga furnishes a curious evidence of this,—

Orvar Odd, who is already furnished with three iron arrows, the gift of Guse, a Fin king possessed of magic power, in the course of his wanderings is hospitably entertained by an old man of singular appearance. On the side where the old man sat he laid three stone arrows on the table near the dish. They were so large and handsome that Orvar thought he had never seen anything like them. He took them up and looked at them, saying, "These arrows are well made." "If you really think them to be so," replied his host, "I shall make you a present of them." "I do not think," replied Orvar, smiling, "that I need cumber myself with stone arrows." The old man answered, "Be not sure that you will not some time stand in need of them. I know that you possess three arrows, called the Guse's gifts, but, though you deem it unlikely, it may happen that the Guse's weapons prove useless, then these stone arrows will avail you." Orvar Odd accordingly receives the gift, and chancing soon after to encounter a foe who by like magic was impenetrable to all ordinary weapons, he transfixes him with the stone arrows, which immediately vanish.[155]

From references to the geographical divisions of Russia, as well as other internal evidence, this version of the legend is believed to have been written not later than the twelfth century. The tradition, however, is doubtless based on a much older belief, so that we cannot err in assuming that at the earliest period of intercourse between Scotland and Norway, sufficiently frequent to assimilate the popular superstition of the two countries, the Stone Period was only known as a state of society so essentially different from every historic tradition with which the people were familiar, that they referred its weapons and implements to the same invisible sprites by whose agency they were wont to account for all incomprehensible or superhuman occurrences.

The Elf-arrow was almost universally esteemed throughout Scotland as an amulet or charm, equally effectual against the malice of Elfin sprites, and the spells of witchcraft. Dipt in the water which cattle were to drink, it was supposed to be the most effectual cure for their diseases, while sewed in the dress, it was no less available for the protection of the human race; and it is still occasionally to be met with perforated or set in gold or silver, for wearing as an amulet. Like other weapons of Elfin artillery, it was supposed to retain its influence at the will of the possessor, and thus became the most effective talisman against elvish malice, witchcraft, or the evil-eye, when in the hands of man. Such traditional myths of vulgar superstition are not without their value, however humble their direct origin may be. They are frequently only distorted images of important truths, and we shall find more than one occasion to recur to them for aid in reuniting the broken skein of primitive history. To follow out the simile, it may sometimes be said of them with truth, that where all other lines of connexion with the past are broken, these are only ravelled and confused.

Arrow-heads of the Stone Period are found in Scotland in great numbers, and of a considerable variety of forms. They are for the most part made of silex, though also met with of agate, cornelian, and other native pebbles, and are frequently finished with much neatness and care. The woodcut exhibits a very fine one, the full size of the original, which was found in the Isle of Skye, and is now in the collection of Mr. John Bell of Dungannon. Pennant has engraved a large cinerary urn, discovered along with three others, on opening a cairn on the hill of Down, near Banff. They contained, in addition to the incinerated remains, bone implements and flint arrow-heads, the largest of them having in it thirteen of the latter, all of the shape to which the term barbed is most commonly applied. This, indeed, while it appears to be one of the most artificial forms, involving the greatest amount of labour and skill in fashioning the material, is also one of most frequent occurrence in Scotland. Those already referred to as found, along with an ancient wooden wheel, in the Blair-Drummond Moss, were of the same shape. So also were some obtained on opening a tumulus in the parish of Killearn, Stirlingshire, during the past year; and indeed they have been met with in nearly every district of the mainland, and of the northern and western isles. Lance- and spear-heads of silex are also not uncommon, both in the tumuli and among the objects turned up where the scenes of primitive population are subjected for the first time to the plough. A very fine spear-head of silex, fifteen inches long, and beautifully finished, was discovered a few years since on the demolition of a cairn on the estate of Craigengelt, near Stirling. Another of somewhat smaller dimensions, also found in a cairn, on the estate of John Guthrie, Esq., Forfarshire, about 1796, is figured and described in the Gentleman's Magazine of the following year.[156]