Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

“ Now worn out and near the end of my course, I can Only be a broken monument to prove that the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland are zealous to preserve even the least valuable remains of a former age, and to recompense all who have contributed their mite towards illustrating our common island. ”

“ The bronze relics are all engraved by Ure, so that a tolerably perfect idea can be formed of their design and workmanship. He pronounces them, according to the fashion of his time, to be Roman, but they bear no resemblance to the rudest specimens of Anglo-Roman art. Similar ornaments of shale have been discovered both in the Northern and Western Isles, furthest removed from Roman arts and influence. One example, which is here engraved one half the natural size, was found in the Isle of Skye, and presented to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries in 1782. ”

“ This well-known work, the “Itinerarium Septentrionale, or a Journey thro’ most of the Counties of Scotland, and those in the North of England,” was published at London in 1727, folio. The author states, that in prosecuting his work he “made a pretty laborious progress through almost every part of Scotland for three years successively.” Gordon was a native of Aberdeenshire, and had previously spent some years in travelling abroad, probably as a tutor. He became Secretary to the London Society of Antiquaries in 1736. ”

“ A gold armilla and other ornaments of the same precious metal are also said to have been obtained along with these ancient remains, and beside them lay the fragments of an oaken chest in which the whole appeared to have been deposited. The most of these valuable relics were secured by Lord Macdonald, but one curious and probably unique implement fell into private hands, and has since been deposited in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries. In general appearance it resembles a bent spear-head ”

“ The numerous relics which illustrate the arts and manners of the Medieval Period have already furnished English and foreign antiquaries with copious materials for large and valuable treatises on single selected departments, nor is the field of Scottish medieval art greatly less productive. ”

“ Various interesting personal ornaments obtained under similar circumstances, are preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, and one set in particular, found inclosed in an urn within a rude stone cist, on the demolition of a tumulus near the Old House of Assynt, Ross-shire, in 1824, very closely correspond in appearance to the description of the Renfrewshire relics. They include a necklace of irregular oval jet beads, which appear to have been strung together like a common modern string of beads, and are sufficiently rude to correspond with the works of a very primitive era. ”

“ To you, My Lord, I have reason to believe that the following attempt to establish a consistent and comprehensive system of Scottish Archæology will not be without interest, as the zeal shewn by you in furthering the objects of the Society of which you are President, and the costly donations with which you have enriched its collections, prove the value you attach to the Science as a key to the discovery of important truths. ”

“ It is on this same broad and great ground—of the indispensable necessity of a large and perfect collection of individual specimens of all kinds of antiquities for safe, sure, and successful deduction—that we plead for the accumulation of such objects in our own or in other public antiquarian collections. And in thus pleading with the Scottish public for the augmentation and enrichment of our Museum, by donations of all kinds, however slight and trivial they may seem to the donors, we plead for what is not any longer the property of this Society, but what is now the property of the nation. ”

“ Notwithstanding the earnest zeal for the preservation of national relics which has actuated both Sir Henry Jardine and John Henderson, Esq., the late and present Crown and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancers for Scotland, and the liberal construction of the law by its administrators, as shewn in their offer of full value for all objects of the precious metals which may be delivered up to them, its operation has constantly impeded researches into the evidences of primitive art, and in many cases has occasioned the destruction of very valuable relics. ”

“ It is obvious, from the various examples already cited, that much diversity existed in the modes of interment practised in Scotland during the last heathen period. The cairn and tumulus, the cist and cinerary urn, all occur accompanied with contemporary relics. The Danish antiquaries are able to refer to a definite period when cremation was abandoned for inhumation. But if the date assigned by Mr. Worsaae for the close of the Danish Bronze Period be correct, it very nearly corresponds with that of the introduction of Christianity into Scotland, when our later Iron Period came to a close. ”

“ These are of immense value to all the nations allied to the common stock, and among them Scotland ranks more directly than any other portion of the British Isles. The promised contribution by the antiquaries of Copenhagen to the written materials of history, of the "Antiquitates Britannicæ et Hibernicæ," cannot fail to add a historic era to early Scottish annals, richer in suggestive interest even than the romantic chronicles of the long lost "Vinland," by which, in their "Antiquitates Americanæ," they have added three centuries to the history of the new world. ”

“ And certainly, one especial deficiency which we have, to deplore in Scottish Archæology is the almost total want of written documents and annals of the primæval and early mediæval portions of Scottish history. The antiquaries of England and Ireland are much more fortunate in this respect than we are; for they possess a greater abundance of early documents than we can boast of. ”

“ Notwithstanding the systematic eradication of every relic associated with the rites or dogmas of the old faith, carried on by the Scottish Reformers of the sixteenth century, ecclesiastical remains are still preserved in sufficient number to furnish out a much ampler list than the limits of this work can embrace. The recumbent effigy, for example, is to be met with in many districts of Scotland, sometimes mutilated and defaced, but not unfrequently still exhibiting evidences of refined taste and delicacy of manipulation pertaining to the best epoch of medieval art. ”

“ The immense practical value of collections to the archæologist renders their proper arrangement a matter of grave importance, and one which cannot be allowed to rest in its present extremely imperfect state. [7]
In Scotland no national collection exists, though a small body of zealous men have struggled to maintain an Archæological [Pg xix] Museum in the Scottish capital for the last seventy years, in defiance of obstacles of the most harassing nature. ”

“ In this respect the Scottish antiquary is peculiarly fortunate in the field of observation he occupies. While he possesses the legionary inscriptions, the sepulchral tablets, the sculptures, pottery, and other native products of Roman colonists or invaders, he has also an extensive and strictly defined field for the study of primitive antiquities, almost as perfectly free from the disturbing elements of foreign art as the most secluded regions of ancient Scandinavia. ”

“ The fact is of great value, as disproving the assumption of both Scottish and Irish antiquaries, prior to Dr. Petrie, that the earliest British churches were constructed of wattles. The remains of Roman buildings in Scotland suffice to shew that the Britons of the fourth century had not then to learn, for the first time, the art of masonry, though the facilities offered by a thickly wooded country frequently led the first Christian missionaries to employ its oak and plaited reeds in the construction of their chapels and cells. ”

“ The data and facts which Scottish antiquaries require to seek out and accumulate for the future furtherance of Scottish Archæology, lie in many a different direction, waiting and hiding for our search after them. ”

“ The Welsh antiquaries have obtained from the Government offices in London various important documents of this description referring to Wales. Why should the antiquaries of Scotland not imitate them in this respect?
Modern experience has shown that it is not by any means chimerical to expect, that we may yet recover, from various quarters, and from quite unexpected sources, too, writings and documents of much interest and importance in relation both to British and to Scottish Archæology. ”

“ He was one of the most active members of the Royal Scottish Society of Antiquaries, member of the council, and curator of the museum. At the meetings of the society he read numerous papers, which were generally illustrated. He died in Edinburgh on 12 Aug. ”

“ It has since been destroyed by treasure-seekers, tempted probably by the good fortune of others; for in the vicinity have been discovered, during the present century, some of the most interesting and valuable antiquities ever found in Scotland.
Of single memorial stones examples might be cited in nearly every Scottish parish; nor are they wanting even in the Lothians, and in the immediate vicinity of Edinburgh, where the presence of a busy population, and the unsparing operations of the agriculturist, have done so much to obliterate the traces of older generations. ”

“ But we necessarily reason from very imperfect data when we ascribe a specific purpose to the implements of a period the arts and habits of which must have differed so essentially from our own.
Another class of bronze implements not uncommon in Ireland, and occasionally mentioned among those discovered in Scotland, includes what are generally described as reaping or pruning-hooks. One of these, which was found at a depth of six feet in a bog in the neighbourhood of Ballygawley, county of Tyrone, now preserved in the British Museum, is figured in the Archæological Journal. ”

“ But assuredly antiquarian monuments, as the olden records of a whole realm, are infinitely more valuable than the records of any individual family in that realm. Let us fondly hope and trust that a proper spirit of patriotism—that every feeling of good, generous, and gentlemanly taste—will insure and hallow the future consecration of all such Scottish antiquities as still remain—small fragments only though they may be of the antiquarian treasures that once existed in our land. ”

“ There is a singular class of Northern relics, of the Christian Period, of which analogous types have been found in Scotland, which well deserve our attention. The relics of which we speak consist of a curious variety of vessels, presumed to have been designed for holding liquors, but invariably made in the form of some animal or monstrous hybrid. The annexed figure represents one of these, in the collection of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharp, Esq., and found by him among a hoard of long-forgotten family heirlooms, in a vault of his paternal mansion of Hoddam Castle, Dumfriesshire. ”

“ Diligent Scottish antiquaries, finding this hereditary wail over lost muniments a very profitless task, have of late years betaken themselves to the study of what remained, and have been rewarded by the recovery of chest-loads of dusty charters and deeds of all sorts, of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, containing mines of historic information. ”

“ In point of fact, the gift of this collection to the National Museum gave a new character to the collection of Scottish antiquities, and a new direction to the science of Scottish Archæology. The Museum had previously been enriched by multitudes of donations of objects illustrating the unwritten history of the country, but they were mostly objects whose associations and relations were matters of inference and speculation. This group of objects, on the other hand, was one of which it could be said— (1) that they were related to each other by their common association with a single inhabited site ”

“ It is obvious, therefore, that such opinions must be sifted to the utmost, and either established or got rid of before any efficient progress can be made in British Archæology. In Scotland this theory is much more comprehensive in its effects than in England, where the Anglo-Saxon element is recognised as the predominating source of later changes; and now that the character of genuine Roman antiquities is well ascertained, nearly the whole of our native relics have latterly been assigned to a Scandinavian origin. ”

“ Ure describes and engraves one of ribbed blue glass—bearing considerable resemblance to another in the Scottish Museum from the Isle of Skye—which was discovered in a large inclosed tumulus in Rutherglen parish, Lanarkshire, along with what appear to have been two Roman patellæ. [360] But the same relics have been found along the coasts of the Baltic and the Mediterranean; they abound equally in Ireland and the north of Scotland, where the Romans rarely or never were, and in England and Gaul, which they so long occupied and colonized. ”

“ Besides the antiquarian relics of a visible and tangible form to which I have adverted, as demanding investigation and collection on our part, there are various antiquarian relics of a non-material type in Scottish Archæology which this Society might perhaps do much to collect and preserve, through the agency of active committees, and the assistance of many of our countrymen, who, I doubt not, could be easily incited to assist us in the required work. ”