The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

Class VI. consists of the un-looped Bronze Celt, which is of comparatively rare occurrence in Scotland, though frequently met with in Denmark. It differs only from the more common celt in the absence of the loop; but it is generally of a small size, and is never found of the proportions of the largest British celts.

Class VII.—The Bronze Celt is the most common of all the relics of this period, found of various sizes and degrees of ornament, from the plain small celt of scarcely an inch and half, to those of five and six inches long, fluted, and encircled with mouldings or cable-pattern borders, and ornamented with incised lines and embossed figures on the blade. In Sir Robert Sibbald's Portes, Coloniæ, &c., a Scottish example of the engraved celt is figured, with its blade decorated with the herring-bone pattern, in the same style, and perhaps with the same object as has been assumed for the origin of the incised axe-blades of the period. Examples of engraved celts are of much rarer occurrence than axe-blades, if indeed this one is not unique.[301] The use of the loop so generally attached to the bronze celt, as well as to one class of the palstaves, has been a subject of scarcely less industrious speculation than the probable purpose of the implement itself. The idea which has been repeatedly suggested of its design as a means of securing the celt, as an axe-head, to a bent shaft, is scarcely less unsatisfactory than in the previous class of looped palstaves. If it was used with a thong or cord, the fastening would be so readily exposed to injury, while at the same time it so imperfectly accomplished the object in view, that it appears altogether inconsistent with the general manifestation of ingenuity and skill in the workers in metal to conceive of them adhering to this clumsy device. The unique specimen found at Tadcaster, with an oval bronze ring attached to the loop, and a small ring or bead of jet upon it, so far from confirming such a theory, seems much more consistent with its use as a means of suspension or of securing a number together for convenient deportation.[302]

Such is an attempt to assign a consistent classification and nomenclature to a variety of bronze implements, hitherto most frequently described by British archæologists under the general name of Celts,—a matter perhaps of no very great moment, yet at least calculated to give facility and precision to future descriptions of the discovery of similar objects, and thereby to render such observations of greater avail to the archæologist. They are all more or less applicable to a variety of uses, both as mechanical tools and warlike weapons; and it is not improbable that in entering upon any very nice attempts at discriminating between the various purposes for which they were designed, we shall only ingraft on the products of primitive art a subdivision peculiar to modern civilisation. At a period much nearer our own time the same implement sufficed the Scottish border trooper for table-knife, couteau de chasse, and dagger; and it seems most probable that the older Briton carried the same bronze axe with him to battle with which he waged war against the giant oaks of his native forests. It is a matter worthy of note, however, and calculated to excite in us some surprise, that no bronze axe has yet been discovered, if I mistake not, either in Britain or Ireland, with a perforation through it,—the simplest of all means of securing it to a handle, and one which was already familiar to the workers in stone. The following description might indeed lead to a different conclusion, if we could depend on the strict use of the terms employed:—"On the banks of the Cree, in Galloway, there were several tumuli. In some of these, when they were opened in 1754, there were found the remains of weapons of brass, which were very much corroded. One of these was formed like a halbert; another was shaped like a hatchet, having in the back part an instrument resembling a paviour's hammer. A third was formed like a spade, but of a much smaller size, and each of these weapons had a proper aperture for a handle."[303] Unfortunately the researches of the Scottish archæologist are continually arrested by such tantalizing descriptions, conveyed in vaguest terms, and with no accompanying illustrations to help him to the true character of the objects; leaving him to mourn the apathy of Government, which refuses all aid to those who are striving to arrest such fleeting records of the past, and deposit them, where alone they ought to be, in national museums.

Lever. Pettycur.

Numerous other weapons and implements, of the same metal and character of workmanship, have been found in the Scottish tumuli, or in the chance hoards of bogs or alluvial deposits. Bronze gouges and chisels are among the most common of these, though hitherto apparently less frequently noted in Scotland than in England and Ireland. Of rarer implements of the same era, the bronze crow-bar, or lever, represented in the annexed woodcut, half the length of the original, is, I think, unique. It was found in 1810, in a barrow near Pettycur, Fifeshire, and is now in the collection of the Hon. James Talbot. It is figured in the Archæological Journal, in illustration of Mr. Yates's communication on the use of bronze celts in military operations, and is described as very strong.[304] Its longer end, bent perhaps accidentally, seems intended to be fixed in a stout handle of wood, to which it could be firmly secured by the perforated wings. Mr. Yates adds in describing it:—"The circumstance of its discovery in a barrow is an evidence that it was used for some military purpose, for barrows were not the tombs of agriculturists, gardeners, masons, or carpenters, but of chiefs and warriors." But in making use of such an argument it may be doubted if we are not applying the results of modern civilisation as the standard of primitive ideas. Most probably the greatest chief of the early Bronze Period was in many cases also the best mason, carpenter, and military engineer, and the most skilful worker in metals,—the literal chief, in fact, and true Teutonic king, or most knowing man of his tribe. Perhaps a better argument is to be found in the frequent decoration of the bronze celt. There is a sense of fitness in all minds, and most surely developed in the primitive stages of civilisation, where it acts intuitively, which teaches man to reserve the decorative arts for objects of luxury and pleasurable enjoyment,—then including war and the chase,—but not to expend them on tools of handicraft and implements of toil.[305]

The variety of lance and spear-heads is no less characteristic of the gradual progress of the primitive worker in bronze, from the imitation of the rude types of his obsolete stone weapons, to the production of the large and beautiful myrtle-leaf spear-heads, finished with the most graceful symmetry, and fully equal in character to the finest medieval workmanship. The earliest examples are mere pieces of hammered metal, reduced to the shape of a rude spear-head, but without any socket for attaching them to a shaft. They manifestly belong to the primitive transition-period, in all probability before the northern Briton had learned to smelt or mould the newly introduced metal. Lance and arrow-heads of the same form, or slightly improved by being made somewhat in the shape of the barbed flint arrow-head, are also preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries; and a curious example of the spear-head of the latter type, measuring 10½ inches in length, is engraved in the Archæological Journal.[306] It was found in 1844 by some workmen while dredging in the bed of the Severn, about a mile and a half below Worcester, and is made, like so many others of the simpler forms, of metal of very bright colour and hard quality, in appearance more nearly resembling brass than bronze. Others of the earlier forms of bronze spear-heads are perforated with holes at the broad end, and not unfrequently retain the rivets by which they have been attached to the shaft. A spear-head of this class, in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, measuring 14¾ inches in length, has been secured by three large rivets, two of which still remain. A drawing by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, in the collections of the Society, preserves the figure of another of the same type, but with four rivets, found in a cist on the moor of Sluie, Morayshire, in 1818. A third example, closely resembling the last, and found on the Eildon Hills, Roxburghshire, is in the Abbotsford collection.[307] They have been cast, but obviously by workmen chiefly familiar with the older forms of flint and stone. This class of weapons, or Spear-blades, as they may be termed, is by no means rare.

The earlier implements, chiefly constructed in imitation of the primitive stone models, were intended, for the most part, to be secured to the shaft by means of cords or leather thongs. But the worker in the new material soon learned its capabilities. The hollow socket was speedily superadded, generally accompanied with a projecting middle ridge to strengthen the weapon, and admit of its receiving more readily an acute edge and point. To these again were added the double loops, designed apparently for still further securing it to the shaft; and with this addition the merely useful and essential features may be supposed to terminate, though there is considerable variety in the forms which spear-heads of this class display. The most common and graceful shape might seem to be borrowed from the myrtle leaf. Several are engraved in Gordon's Itinerarium Septentrionale, (Plates L. and LI.,) from the collection of Sir John Clerk of Penicuick, including some interesting varieties. One, of very rude form, and which the author of course styles Roman, was found under a cairn in Galloway. Another, curiously incised with alternate chequers of diamond shape, is described as a hasta pura. A spear-head, decorated in the same style, though with a different pattern, was found near Bilton, Yorkshire, along with a quantity of other bronze weapons, in 1848.[308] But the most singular of all the "several sorts of hastæ or Roman spears," as Gordon delights to call them, is one figured on Plate LI., No. 6, of the Itinerarium, and which may be most fitly described as fiddle-shaped.[309] Neither of these remarkable examples is now to be found in the Penicuick collection. The woodcut represents a spear-head with two loops, which is one of the very commonest forms of the smaller class of Scottish bronze spears, most generally of the bright yellow metal, apparently peculiar to Scotland and Ireland. The other is a singular form of socketed spear, differing from any example I have met with elsewhere. It was found, along with various other bronze weapons and implements, in a moss near Campbeltown, Argyleshire, and is now the property of J. W. Mackenzie, Esq. It measures nearly seven inches in length, by one and a half inch in greatest breadth, and is covered with verd antique.