The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

A stone implement in my own possession, somewhat similar in general form to these flail-stones, was found beside a group of cists near North Berwick, East-Lothian, but its original destination is obvious. It is made of hard sandstone, of a flattened oval form in section, and is worn on the two alternate sides where it has been used as a whetstone—a use for which the hardness and high polish of the others render them totally unfit.

Not the least curious among the primitive relics in the celebrated museum of northern antiquities at Copenhagen, are the various whetstones, some of which have been found in barrows and elsewhere under ground, with half-finished stone-wedges lying upon them, as if the workman had been suddenly interrupted by death in the midst of his laborious industry, and his unaccomplished task had been deemed the fittest memorial to lay beside him. It formed no part of the old Pagan creed that "there is no work nor device in the grave." Possibly enough the buried celt-maker was expected to resume his occupation and finish his axe-grinding in the spirits' land. No similar example has yet been noted in Scotland, though smaller hand whetstones, like the one found at North Berwick, are not uncommon. One which is described as very smooth and neat, was obtained among the contents discovered on excavating within the area of the vitrified fort of Craig Phaidrick, near Inverness;[168] several such were found in cists at Cockenzie, East-Lothian; and Barry mentions among the miscellaneous contents of the tumuli or cists in the island of Westray, "a flat piece of marble, of a circular form, about two inches and a-half in diameter, and several stones, in shape and appearance like whetstones that had never been used."[169]

Great as are the numbers and varieties of the stone weapons and implements of Denmark, compared with those found in Britain, they appear to be surpassed in both respects by the corresponding relics of the Mexican Stone Period. Such facts suggest the inference, which history in some degree confirms, that the metallurgic arts were earlier known in Britain than in Denmark, thereby superseding the arts of the stone-workers before they had been elaborated as elsewhere; while in Mexico, Yucatan, and throughout the districts of the North American continent, where a native civilisation is known to have prevailed, iron was totally unknown, and copper had not completely superseded the stone hatchet and arrow-point when Columbus opened a way to that new world. But who shall say how many more curious and noteworthy reminiscences of the past may have been ignorantly destroyed in Scotland, among the thousands of burial-mounds annually invaded by the unlettered peasant in his agricultural labours.

Among the larger implements of this period the most remarkable and varied are the Stone Hammers and Axes. They are of common occurrence, and present a variety of forms, evidently designed to adapt them to a considerable diversity of purposes. They are therefore available as evidence in estimating the degree of inventive talent manifested in the primitive state of society in which they were produced, showing as they do the intelligent savage coping with the untractable materials with which he had to deal, and supplying many deficiencies by his own ingenuity and skill. With these, as with the elf-bolts of the same period, we find in the reminiscences of early superstition the evidence of their frequent occurrence long after all traces of their origin and uses had been obliterated by the universal substitution of metallic implements. As we find the little flint arrow-head associated with Scottish folk-lore as the Elfin's bolt, so the stone hammer of the same period was adapted to the creed of the middle ages. The name by which it was popularly known in Scotland almost till the close of last century was that of the Purgatory Hammer. Found as it frequently was within the cist and beside the mouldering bones of its old Pagan possessor, the simple discoverer could devise no likelier use for it than that it was laid there for its owner to bear with him "up the trinal steps," and with it thunder at the gates of purgatory till the heavenly janitor appeared, that he might

"ask,
With humble heart, that he unbar the bolt."[170]

The stone hammer is frequently found in the older cists. In 1832 a farm-servant while ploughing a field on the farm of Downby, in Orkney, struck his ploughshare on a stone which proved to be the cover of a cist of the usual contracted dimensions, in which lay a skeleton that seemed to have been interred in a sitting posture. At the right hand lay a highly polished mallet-head of gneiss, beautifully marked with dark and light streaks.[171]

Stone Hammers and Axes.

The examples figured here furnish a few of the most characteristic varieties of Scottish hammers that have been preserved. They by no means equal in number those found in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. But only a very partial and extremely superficial investigation of such relics has yet been made, and we possess no national collection in Scotland, similar to that of the Christiansborg Palace of Copenhagen, to which the whole available financial and legal machinery of the kingdom is employed in gathering the primitive national antiquities so soon as they are discovered. The Old and New Statistical Accounts abound with notices of opened tumuli and cairns, and of their valuable archæological contents; but unfortunately in nearly every case these are either conveniently ascribed to Romans and Danes, or mentioned so vaguely that no use can be made of them as illustrations of the period to which they belong.