The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

Bronze Sword. Arthur Seat.

Fully seventy years after the marl-dredgers had brought to light the remarkable primitive relics buried beneath the alluvium at the bottom of Duddingstone Loch, the Honourable Board of Commissioners of Her Majesty's Woods and Forests determined on constructing a carriage-way round the neighbouring Royal Park, which includes both Arthur Seat and Salisbury Crags. In the progress of the necessary operations for carrying this plan into execution, and while the workmen were excavating the soil immediately above the singular group of basaltic columns popularly styled "Samson's Ribs," they uncovered a sepulchral deposit containing a cinerary urn, which was unfortunately broken to fragments by a stroke of the workman's shovel. Further to the eastward two, at least, and probably more bronze celts of large size were found, along with a small drinking-cup, engraved on a subsequent page. Still further to the east, almost directly above Duddingstone Loch—where the magnificent "Queen's Drive" is carried along the steep side of the hill at an elevation of nearly 300 feet above the level of the neighbouring loch—two most beautiful and perfect leaf-shaped bronze swords were dug up, in a bed of vegetable charcoal, but with no remains which would indicate its having been a sepulchral deposit. The largest of the two swords measures 26¼ inches long; the other 24¾ inches by 1¾ inches in greatest breadth. In other respects they entirely agree, resembling in figure the usual form of this graceful weapon, as will be observed from the annexed engraving of one of them. The swords and the largest of the bronze celts, figured above, are now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries. The other celt and the cup are in my own possession; and as they were obtained from an Irish labourer, who shewed no little reluctance to be questioned, it is extremely probable that these are but a portion of the valuable treasures disclosed in the course of the excavations. How many more may lie interred for the gratification and instruction of future generations covered only by a foot or two of soil!

It naturally becomes a question of considerable interest to us,—Are these weapons, of beautiful and varied forms, the product of native genius and skill? or were they brought hither by foreign conquerors, to remain only as the evidences of national inferiority in arts and arms? The question is one which no Briton can deem worthless; albeit we do not esteem ourselves the pure lineal descendants of the Allophylian aborigines, or of the primitive Celtæ, but, on the contrary, are content to derive our peculiar modern national characteristics as the product of mingled races of Picts, Scots, Romans, Tungrians and other barbarian legionary colonists, Norwegians, Danes, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans.[273] Such are indeed the strange and diverse elements which make up the genealogy of the modern Scot. Nevertheless, his nationality is not the less strong because he derives his inheritance from so many sources; nor is his interest lessened in the aboriginal root. A very simple theory has heretofore sufficed for the classification of all Scottish, and, until very recently, of all British antiquities. Whatever was rude and barbarous, such as unhewn standing stones and monolithic circles, stone hammers and axes, and flint arrows, were native and Druidical; whatever manifested skill, invention, or any progress in the arts, was either Phœnician, Roman, or Danish! Britain, it was tacitly assumed, was sunk in the lowest state of barbarism, until humanized by the bloody missionaries of Roman civilisation. Such ignorant assumption will no longer suffice.

Mr. Worsaae adopts an era extending over about eleven centuries for the continuation of the Danish bronze period. From geological evidence he arrives at the conclusion, which is not improbable, that bronze weapons and implements were in use fully five centuries before the Christian era. But that the Archaic Period continued so long after it, when the neighbouring countries to the south were long familiar with the common and more useful metal, and when the Norwegians, who, it is acknowledged, appear never to have known a bronze period, were already taking their position among the Scandinavian nations, preparatory to making their piratical descents on the British shores, seems altogether improbable and opposed to established truths.

No description furnished either by Julius Cæsar or any later classical writer, of the weapons used by the native Britons of the first or second century, in any degree corresponds with the familiar form of the bronze sword so frequently found in the earlier tumuli.[274] Tacitus describes the Caledonians as "a powerful warlike nation, using swords large and blunt at the point (sine mucrone) and targets wherewith they skilfully defend themselves against the Roman missiles." The bronze leaf-shaped sword in no respect corresponds with this. It is a short and small, though formidable weapon, and is not only designed for thrusting rather than striking with,—as a heavy, blunt-pointed sword could alone be used,—but was evidently adapted for a warfare in which the chief tactics of the swordsman consisted in the bold thrust; since no example of a bronze sword has ever been found with a guard, that simple and most natural contrivance for defending the hand from the downward stroke of the foe. With such unmistakable evidence before us, the conclusion seems inevitable that the era of the bronze sword had passed away ere the hardy Caledonian encountered the invading legions of Rome. Nevertheless, while there is abundant evidence of the native manufacture of the articles of the Bronze Period, there are no less manifest traces of considerable intercourse throughout Europe during this era, from the near resemblance discoverable in all the bronze articles. The British bronze sword bears a general likeness to those not only of Denmark, but of Gaul, Germany, and even of Italy and Greece; but it has also its peculiar characteristics. It is broader and shorter than the Danish bronze sword, swelling out more towards the middle, so as to suggest the term leaf-shaped, by which it is now distinguished. A very remarkable guide to the probable era of such weapons in the south of Europe is furnished by a comparison of some specimens of Hellenic fictile art with a beautiful vase discovered at Vulci by the Prince of Canino, and described in the Archæologia[275] by Mr. Samuel Birch. The same subject occurs on three vases, and has been supposed to represent the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles. On one, a Vulcian hydria of archaic style, a naked and bearded combatant bears a leaf-shaped sword without a guard. On a second, a cylix of later style from the Canino Collection, the combatants are armed with leaf-shaped swords, but with guards; while on the beautiful vase which Mr. Birch refers to as a specimen of Greek art contemporary with the Orestes of Æschylus, the same scene occurs, but the assailant has substituted for the primitive weapon a straight two-edged sword of modern form. Such comparisons cannot be deemed without their value; but independent of these, the variations in the bronze relics of the same type suffice to prove that neither the British antiquities of bronze were brought from Denmark, nor the Danish ones from Britain. The handles of the British weapon especially appear to have been always of wood or horn, while many are met with in Denmark with bronze handles, ornamented with a peculiar pattern, and even sometimes inlaid with gold, but all invariably without a guard.

Among an interesting collection of bronze weapons discovered near Bilton, Yorkshire, in 1848, parts of two broken swords were found, on which Mr. C. Moore Jessop makes the following observations:—"The portions of swords have each been broken off a few inches down the blade, thus leaving the metallic part of the handle entire; which has been covered on both sides with horn or some similar substance, affixed by rivets, which having become loose have allowed the horn to move slightly each way, thus wearing away the metal. They have left evident traces of the shape of the hilt, and likewise prove the weapons to have been long in use."[276] Gordon engraves a fine bronze sword, twenty-six inches long, which was found near Carinn, on the line of the wall of Antoninus Pius, and deposited in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. Its most remarkable feature is its handle, which is of brass, but after examining the original, I am satisfied that the latter is a modern addition.[277]

It is especially worthy of note in relation to the makers and owners of these swords, that the handles are invariably small. One of the most marked ethnological characteristics of the pure Celtic race, in contrast to the Teutonic, is the small hands and feet; a feature so very partially affected by the mingling of Teutonic with the old Celtic blood of Scotland, that many of the older basket-hilted Highland swords will scarcely admit the hand of a modern Scotsman of ordinary size. This has been observed in various primitive races, and is noted by Mr. Stephens as characteristic of the ancient temple builders of Yucatan. In describing the well-known symbol of the red hand, first observed at Uxmal, Mr. Stephens remarks,—"Over a cavity in the mortar were two conspicuous marks, which afterwards stared us in the face in all the ruined buildings of the country. They were the prints of a red hand, with the thumb and fingers extended, not drawn or painted, but stamped by the living hand, the pressure of the palm upon the stone. There was one striking feature about these hands—they were exceedingly small. Either of our own spread over and completely hid them."[278] This is another of the physical characteristics of the earlier races well worthy of further note. While the delicate small hand and foot are ordinarily looked upon as marks of high-breeding, and are justly regarded as pertaining to the perfect beauty of the female form, the opposite are found among the masculine distinctions of the pure Teutonic races,—characteristic of their essentially practical and aggressive spirit,—and are frequently seen most markedly developed in the skilful manipulator and ingenious mechanician.

The spear-heads of this period are also marked by national distinctive features; the exceedingly common British form, for example, with loops to secure it to the shaft, being unknown in Denmark, and a variety of pierced heads common in Scotland and Ireland being rarely or never found in England. So it is with other varieties of weapons, implements, and personal ornaments: some which are common in Denmark are unknown here, or assume different forms; others with which we are familiar are unknown to the Danish archæologist; while both are in like manner distinguished from those of Germany, France, and the south of Europe. The distinctive peculiarities may indeed be most aptly compared to those which mark the various national developments of medieval art, and give to each an individuality of character without impairing the essential characteristics of the style. The extent of international communication was only so much greater and more direct in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, than in those older centuries before the Christian era, as to produce a more rapid interchange of thought and experience.

This national individuality, accompanying such remarkable correspondence to a common type, may therefore be assumed as justifying the conclusion that some considerable intercourse must have prevailed among the different races of Europe during that remote period to which we refer; and hence we are led to assume an additional evidence of early civilisation, while at the same time no sufficient proof appears to point to such a sudden transition as necessarily to lead to the conclusion that the bronze relics belong entirely to a new people. On the contrary, the evidence of slow transition is abundantly manifest. The metallurgic arts, and the models by which their earliest application was guided, were in all probability introduced by a new race, who followed in the wake of the older wanderers from the same Eastern cradle-land of the human race. But the rude stone moulds, the sand-cast celts and palstaves, and the relics of the primitive forges in which they were wrought, all point to aboriginal learners slowly acquiring the new art, while perhaps its originators were introducing those works of beautiful form and great finish and delicacy of workmanship, which the antiquary of the eighteenth century could ascribe to none but the Roman masters of the world.