Andrew Lang

“ We now approach the disputed and very puzzling objects found in the three Clyde sites. My object is, not to demonstrate that they were actually fashioned in, say, 410-550 a.d., or that they were relics of an age far more remote, but merely to re-state the argument of Dr. Joseph Anderson, Keeper of the Scottish National Museum, and of Sir Arthur Mitchell, both of them most widely experienced and sagacious archaeologists. They play the waiting game, and it may be said that they “sit upon the fence”; I am proud to occupy a railing in their company. ”

“ Munro, apart from his most valuable books of crannog lore, I owe his kind attention to my private inquiries, and hope that I successfully represent his position and arguments. It is quite undeniable that the disputed objects are most anomalous as far as our present knowledge goes, and I do not think that science can give more than all I plead for, an open verdict. ”

“ Bruce was able to locate his finds at the bottom of the canoe.
If I understand Mr. Bruce’s narrative, a canoe was found under the mud, and was “cleared out inside,” by Mr. Bruce himself. Had the forger already found the canoe, kept the discovery dark, inserted fraudulent objects, and waited for others to rediscover the canoe? Or was he present at the first discovery, and did he subtly introduce, unnoted by any one, four objects of shell, stone, and bone, which he had up his sleeve, ready for an opportunity? One or other alternative must be correct, and either hypothesis has its difficulties. ”

“ What is admitted to be true of survivals in the Family among the Picts may also be true as to other survivals in art, superstition, and so forth. I would, therefore, compare the disputed Clyde objects with others analogous to them, of known or unknown purpose, wheresoever they may be found. I am encouraged in this course by observing that it is pursued, for example, by the eminent French archaeologist, Monsieur Cartailhac, in his book Les Ages Préhistoriques de France et d’Espagne. ”

“ These designs make an unfavourable impression because some, not all of them, are stiff and regular. The others make an unfavourable impression because they are so laxly executed. For what conceivable purpose did the forger here resort to the aid of compasses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind? Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, not have compasses, like the Cairn-wight of Lough Crew? ”

“ No modern could make the designs on shells that were hurrying into dust. We have Mr. Bruce’s word for these mouldering shells, and we have the absolute certainty that such decomposing shells could not be incised by a hand of to-day, as shale, slate, schist, and sandstone can now be engraved upon, fraudulently. ”

“ They cross to land on their stone causeway at low water. They abandon the old canoe in the little dock where it was found by Mr. Bruce. They throw down the venerable ladder. They leave behind only the canoe, the deer horns, stone-polishers, sharpened bones, the lower stone of a quern, and the now obsolete, or purely folk-loreish stone “amulets,” or “pendants,” and the figurines, which to call “idols” is unscientific, while to call them “totems” is to display “facetious and rejoicing ignorance.” Dr. Munro merely quotes this foolish use of the term totem by others. ”

“ Beyond this lay scattered about some rough cobble stones, as if they had fallen down from a stone structure which had been raised over the woodwork. The space intervening between these wooden structures was filled up in its eastern third with a refuse heap, consisting of broken and partially burnt bones of various animals, the shells of edible molluscs, and a quantity of ashes and charcoal, evidently the débris of human occupancy. ”

“ No objects of metal or fragments of pottery were discovered in course of the excavations, and of bone there were only two small pointed objects and an awl having a perforation at one end. The majority of the following worked objects of stone, bone, and shell are so remarkable and archaic in character that their presence in a fort, which cannot be placed earlier than the Broch period, and probably long after the departure of the Romans from North Britain, has led some archaeologists to question their genuineness as relics of any phase of Scottish civilisation. ”

“ If men then lived on the top of a cairn till their food refuse became “a veritable kitchen midden,” as Dr. Munro says, [45] would that refuse exhibit bones of Bos Longifrons; and over ninety bone implements, sharpened antlers of deer, stone polishers, hammer stones, “a saddle stone” for corn grinding, and the usual débris of sites of the fifth to the twelfth centuries? (3) Would such a modern site exhibit these archaic relics, plus a “Late Celtic” comb and “penannular brooch,” and exhibit not one modern article of metal, or one trace of old clay tobacco pipes, crockery, or glass? ”

“ The reader who desires to be hopelessly perplexed, may desert the contemplation of the Fiscal Question, and turn his eyes upon The Mystery of the Clyde. “Popular” this puzzle cannot be, for there is no “demmed demp disagreeable body” in the Mystery. No such object was found in Clyde, near Dumbarton, but a set of odd and inexpensive looking, yet profoundly enigmatic scraps of stone, bone, slate, horn and so forth, were discovered and now repose in a glass case at the National Museum in Queen Street, Edinburgh. ”

“ If ever they come to abandon stone implements, while retaining their magic or religion, they will keep on using their stone churinga nanja.
While I was studying these novel Australian facts, in the autumn of 1898, a friend, a distinguished member of Clan Diarmaid, passing by my window, in London, saw me, and came in. He at once began to tell me that, in the estuary of the Clyde, and at Dunbuie, some one had found small stones, marked with the same archaic kinds of patterns, “cup-and-ring,” half circles, and so forth, as exist on our inscribed rocks, cists, and other large objects. ”

“ So far the Scottish and the Portuguese fakers have hit on parallel lines of fraud. Meanwhile I know of no archaeologists except Portuguese archaeologists, who have seen the objects from the dolmen, and of no Portuguese archaeologist who disputes their authenticity. So there the matter rests. [130] The parallelism appears to me to be noticeable. I do not say that the styles of art are akin, but that the artists, by a common impulse, have produced cupped stones, perforated and inscribed stones, figurines in stone, and grotesque heads in stone. ”

“ Schliemann he was not an excavator of trained experience. I gather that he kept no minute and hourly-dated log-book of his explorations, with full details as to the precise positions of the objects discovered, while, again like Dr. Schliemann, he had theories of his own, with some of which I do not concur.
Dr. Munro justly insists on “the absolute necessity of correctly recording the facts and relics brought to light by excavations.” [14a] An excavator should be an engineer, or be accompanied by a specialist who can assign exact measurements for the position of every object discovered. ”

“ Egypt is a great centre of the Early Slate School of Art, the things ranging from slate plaques covered with disorderly scratchings “without a conscience or an aim,” to highly decorated palettes. There is even a perforated object like the slate crooks of M. Cartailhac, from Portugal, but rather more like the silhouette of a p. 121bird, [121a] and there are decorative mace-heads in soft stone. [121b] Some of the prehistoric figurines of human beings from Egypt are studded with “cups,” cupules, écuelles, or whatever we may be permitted to name them. ”

“ Are the archaic markings on the disputed objects better, or worse, or much on a level with the general run of such undisputably ancient markings on large rocks, cists, and cairns in Scotland? I think the art in both cases is on the same low level. When the art on the disputed objects is more formal and precise, as on some shivered stones at Dunbuie, “the stiffness of the lines and figures reminds one more of rule and compass than of the free-hand work of prehistoric artists.” [85c] The modern faker sometimes drew his marks “free-hand,” and carelessly ”

“ On Clyde (if the disputed things be genuine) we find decorated plaques or slabs of soft stone, of very various dimensions and shapes. In Australia some of these objects are round, many oval, others elongated, others thin and pointed, like a pencil; others oblong—while on Clyde, some are round, one is coffin-shaped, others are palette-shaped, others are pear-shaped (the oval tapering to one extremity) , one is triangular, one is oblong. ”

“ I have spent much time in the study of comparative anthropology; of the manners, ideas, customs, implements, and sacred objects of uncivilised and peasant peoples. Mr. “---” may not have done so, whoever he is. Again, as “practised people” often vary widely in their estimates of antique objects, or objects professing to be antique, I cannot agree with Mr. Read that “the antiquities” are “as readable as print,”—if by “antiquities” he means antiquities in general. ”

“ Dr. Munro now objects that among the objects reckoned by me as analogous to churinga is a perforated stone with an incised line, and smaller slanting side lines, said to have been found at Dumbuck; “9 inches long, 31⁄2 inches broad, and 1⁄2 an inch thick.” [108] I wish that he gave us the weight. He says, “that no human being would wear this as an ornament.”
No human being wears any churinga “as an ornament!” Nobody says that they do.
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, moreover, speak of “a long stone churinga,” and of “especially large ones” made by the mythical first ancestors of the race. ”

“ I have now established the coincidence between the markings of rocks in Australia, in tropical America, and in Scotland. I have shown that p. 76such markings occur, in Scotland, associated with remains, in a crannog, of the Age of Iron. They also occur on stones, large (cupped) and small, in Dumbuck. My next business is, if I can, to establish, what Dr. Munro denies, a parallelism between these disputed Clyde stones, and the larger or smaller inscribed stones of the Arunta and Kaitish, in Australia, and other small stones, decorated or plain, found in many ancient European sites. ”

“ For all that I know, a dweller in Dunbuie might have compasses, like the Lough Crew cairn artist.
If I have established the parallelism between Arunta churinga nanja and the disputed Clyde “pendants,” which Dr. Munro denies, we are reduced to one of two theories. Either the Picts of Clyde, or whoever they were, repeated on stones, usually small, some of the patterns on the neighbouring rocks; or the modern faker, for unknown reasons, repeated these and other archaic patterns on smaller stones. ”

“ If two strongly built structures large enough for occupation exist on opposite sides of a ford, their purpose is evident: they guard the ford, like the two stone camps on each side of the narrows of the Avon at Clifton.
Dr. Munro, on the other hand, says, “the smallness of the habitable area on both “sites” puts them out of the category of military forts.” [51b] My suggestion is that the structure was so far “military” as is implied in its being occupied, p. 52with Langbank on the opposite bank of Clyde by keepers of the ford. ”

“ We are all fallible, even the oldest of us. I conceive Mr. Read, however, to mean the alleged and p. 8disputed “antiquities” of the Clyde sites, and in that case, his opinion that they are a “curious swindle” is of the most momentous weight.
But, as to practised opinion on antiquities in general, Dr. Munro and I agree that it is really very fallible, now and again. The best authorities, he proves, may read antiquities differently. He is not certain that he has not himself, on occasion, taken “fakes” for true antiques. ”

“ In short, early and rude races turn out much the same set of crude works of art almost everywhere, and the extraordinary thing is, not that a few are found in a corner of Britain, but that scarce any have been found.
As to the Russo-Finnish flint figurines, Mr. Abercromby thinks that these objects may “have served as household gods or personal amulets,” and Dr. Munro regards Mr. Abercromby’s as “the most rational explanation of their meaning and purpose.” He speaks of figurines of clay (the most usual material) in Carniola, Bosnia, and Transylvania. ”

“ Sir John Evans does not reject the pear-shaped object of shale, “a pendant,” found in a Scottish site, and associated with querns, and an iron axe, and cup and ring stones. Sir John sees no harm in the “pendant,” but Dr. Munro rejects a “pear-shaped” claystone “pendant” decorated with “cup-shaped indentations,” found at Dunbuie. [101] It has a perforation near each end, as is common in North American objects of similar nature (see fig. 11) .
Why should the schist pendant of the Tappock chamber be all right, if the claystone pendant of Dunbuie be all wrong? ”

“ Now, as to “goddess” nobody knows anything. Dr. Schliemann thought that the many figurines of clay, in Troy, were meant for Hera and Athene. Nobody knows, but every one not wholly ignorant sees the absurdity of speaking of figurines as “totems”; of course the term is not Dr. Munro’s.
We know not their original meaning, but they occur “all over the place”; in amber on the Baltic coast, with grotesque faces carved in amber. In Russia and Finland, and in sites of prehistoric Egypt, on slate, and in other materials such grotesques are common. ”

“ The strange “vandyked” crozier-like stone objects of schist or shale from Portugal were possibly armes d’apparat, or heads of staves of dignity. There is a sample in the American room at the British Museum, uninscribed. I submit that the three very curious and artistic stone axe-heads, p. 114figured by M. Cartailhac, [114] representing, one an uncouth animal; another, a hooded human head, the third an extremely pretty girl, could never have been used for practical purposes, but were armes d’apparat. ”

“ It seems to me nearly equally improbable that a forger has been at work on a large scale, and that sets of objects, unexampled in our p. 141isle, have really turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence. ”

“ It is not shown that any men ever lived on the tops of cairns, and, even if they did so in modern times (1556-1758) they could not leave abundant relics of the broch and crannog age (said to be of 400-1100 a.d.) , and leave no relics of modern date. This theory, or suggestion, is therefore demonstrably untenable and unimaginable.
Dr. Munro, however, “sees nothing against the supposition” that “Dr. Murray is right,” but Dr. Munro’s remarks about the hypothesis p. 46of modern cairns, as a theory “against which he sees nothing,” have the air of being an inadvertent obiter dictum. ”

“ On the other hand, neither men nor angels can explain why the forger faked his figurines, for which he certainly had a model—at least as regards the female figure—in a widely distributed archaic feminine type of “dolly.” The forger knew a good deal!
Dr. Munro writes: “That the disputed objects are amusing playthings—the sportive productions of idle wags who inhabited the various sites—seems to be the most recent opinion which finds acceptance among local antiquaries. But this view involves the contemporaneity of occupancy of the respective sites, of which there is no evidence. ”