Transcribed from the 1885 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

The Clyde Mystery
A Study in Forgeries and Folklore

By
Andrew Lang, M.A. Oxford
Hon. Fellow of Merton College, LL.D. St. Andrews
D.Litt. Oxford, D.C.L. Durham

Glasgow
James MacLehose and Sons
Publishers to the University
1905

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY
ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

PREFACE

The author would scarcely have penned this little specimen of what Scott
called "antiquarian old womanries," but for the interest which he takes
in the universally diffused archaic patterns on rocks and stones, which
offer a singular proof of the identity of the working of the human mind.
Anthropology and folklore are the natural companions and aids of
prehistoric and proto-historic archaeology, and suggest remarks which may
not be valueless, whatever view we may take of the disputed objects from
the Clyde sites.

While only an open verdict on these objects is at present within the
competence of science, the author, speaking for himself, must record his
private opinion that, as a rule, they are ancient though anomalous.  He
cannot pretend to certainty as to whether the upper parts of the marine
structures were throughout built of stone, as in Dr. Munro's theory,
which is used as the fundamental assumption in this book; or whether they
were of wood, as in the hypothesis of Mr. Donnelly, illustrated by him in
the Glasgow _Evening Times_ (Sept. 11, 1905).  The point seems
unessential.  The author learns from Mr. Donnelly that experiments in
shaping piles with an ancient stone axe have been made by Mr. Joseph
Downes, of Irvine, as by Monsieur Hippolyte Muller in France, with
similar results, a fact which should have been mentioned in the book.  It
appears too, that a fragment of fallow deer horn at Dumbuck, mentioned by
Dr. Munro, turned out to be "a decayed _humerus_ of the _Bos
Longifrons_," and therefore no evidence as to date, as post-Roman.

Mr. Donnelly also protests that his records of his excavations "were
exceptionally complete," and that he "took daily notes and sketches of
all features and finds with measurements."  I must mention these facts,
as, in the book, I say that Mr. Donnelly "kept no minute and hourly dated
log book of his explorations, with full details as to the precise
positions of the objects discovered."

If in any respect I have misconceived the facts and arguments, I trust
that the fault will be ascribed to nothing worse than human fallibility.

I have to thank Mr. Donnelly for permission to photograph some objects
from Dumbuck and for much information.

To Dr. 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.  Dr. Ricardo Severe generously permitted me to reproduce a
few (by no means the most singular) of his designs and photographs of the
disputed Portuguese objects.  A serious illness has prevented him from
making a visit recently to the scene of the discoveries (see his paper in
_Portugalia_, vol. ii., part 1).  I trust that Dr. de Vasconcellos, from
whom I have not yet heard, will pardon the reproduction of three or four
figures from his _Religioes_, an important work on prehistoric Portugal.

To Dr. Joseph Anderson, of the National Museum, I owe much gratitude for
information, and for his great kindness in superintending the
photographing of some objects now in that Museum.

Dr. David Murray obliged me by much information as to the early
navigation of the Clyde, and the alterations made in the bed of the
river.  To Mr. David Boyle, Ontario, I owe the knowledge of Red Indian
magic stones parallel to the perforated and inscribed stone from Tappock.

As I have quoted from Dr. Munro the humorous tale of the palaeolithic
designs which deceived M. Lartet and Mr. Christie, I ought to observe
that, in _L'Anthropologie_, August, 1905, a reviewer of Dr. Munro's book,
Prof. Boule, expresses some doubt as to the authenticity of the
_historiette_.

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.  Inscribed Stone, Langbank.

2.  Grotesque Face on Stone, Langbank.

3.  Late Celtic Comb, Langbank.

4.  Bronze Brooch, Langbank.

5.  _Churinga Irula_, Wooden Bull-roarers, Arunta Tribe.

6.  _Churinga Nanja_, Inscribed Sacred Stone, Arunta.

7.  Sacred Stone Uninscribed, Arunta.

8.  Collection of Arunta Sacred Stones.

9, 10.  Inscribed Perforated Stone from Tappock.  Age of Iron.

11.  Perforated and Inscribed Stone from Dunbuie.

12, 13.  Perforated Inscribed Stones from Ontario, Canada.

14.  Perforated Inscribed Stones from Portugal, Neolithic.

15.  Perforated Inscribed Stones from Portugal, Neolithic.

16.  Perforated "Cup and Duct" Stone, Portugal, Neolithic.

17, 18.  Large Slate Spear-head, Dumbuck.

19.  Stone Figurine of Woman, Dumbuck.

20, 21.  Cup and Duct Stones, Portuguese, Dolmen Site, Villa d'Aguiar.

22.  Stone Figurine of Woman, Portuguese, Dolmen Site, Villa d'Aguiar.

23.  Heart-shaped Stone, Villa d'Aguiar.

24.  Cupped Stone, Villa d'Aguiar.

25.  Stone Pendant, Men in Boat, Scottish.

Figures 1-4 from _Transactions_, with permission of Glasgow
Archaeological Society.  Figures 5-8, Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes
of Central Australia_; with permission of Messrs. Macmillan and Co.  9-11.
With permission of Scottish Society of Antiquaries.  12-13. Bulletin of
Board of Education of Ontario.  14-16. _Religioes_, etc., L. de
Vasconcellos.  17-19. With permission of Mr. W. H. Donnelly.  20-24. With
permission of Sr. Ricardo Severo.  25. With permission of Scottish
Society of Antiquarians.

I--THE CLYDE MYSTERY

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.

There, as in the Morgue, lies awaiting explanation the _corpus delicti_
of the Clyde Mystery.  We stare at it and ask what are these slate spear
heads engraved with rude ornament, and certainly never meant to be used
as "lethal weapons"?  What are these many-shaped perforated plaques of
slate, shale, and schist, scratched with some of the old mysterious
patterns that, in almost every part of the world, remain inscribed on
slabs and faces of rock?  Who incised similar patterns on the
oyster-shells, some old and local, some fresh--_and American_!  Why did
any one scratch them?  What is the meaning, if meaning there be, of the
broken figurines or stone "dolls"?  They have been styled "totems" by
persons who do not know the meaning of the word "totem," which merely
denotes the _natural_ object,--usually a plant or animal,--after which
sets of kinsfolk are named among certain savage tribes.  Let us call the
little figures "figurines," for that commits us to nothing.

Then there are grotesque human heads, carved in stone; bits of sandstone,
marked with patterns, and so forth.  Mixed with these are the common rude
appliances, quern stones for grinding grain; stone hammers, stone
polishers, cut antlers of deer, pointed bones, such as rude peoples did
actually use, in early Britain, and may have retained into the early
middle ages, say 400-700 A.D.

This mixed set of objects, _plus_ the sites in which they were found, and
a huge canoe, 35 feet long, is the material part of the Clyde Mystery.
The querns and canoe and stone-polishers, and bones, and horns are
commonly found, we say, in dwellings of about 400-700 A.D.  The peculiar
and enigmatic things are _not_ elsewhere known to Scottish antiquaries.
How did the two sets of objects come to be all mixed up together, in an
old hill fort, at Dunbuie on Clyde; and among the wooden foundations of
two mysterious structures, excavated in the mud of the Clyde estuary at
Dumbuck and Langbank, near Dumbarton?  They were dug up between 1896 and
1902.

This is the question which has been debated, mainly in newspaper
controversy, for nearly ten years.  A most rambling controversy it has
been, casting its feelers as far as central Australia, in space, and as
far back as, say, 1200 B.C. in time.

Either the disputed objects at the Museum are actual relics of life lived
in the Clyde basin many centuries ago; or the discoverers and excavators
of the old sites are dogged by a forger who "dumps down" false relics of
kinds unknown to Scottish antiquaries; or some of the unfamiliar objects
are really old, while others are jocose imitations of these, or--there is
some other explanation!

The modern "Clyde artists" are credited by Dr. Robert Munro with "some
practical artistic skill," and some acquaintance with the very old and
mysterious designs on great rocks among the neighbouring hills. {4}  What
man of artistic skill, no conscience, and a knowledge of archaic patterns
is associated with the Clyde?

The "faker" is not the mere mischievous wag of the farm-house or the
country shop.  It is possible that a few "interpolations" of false
objects have been made by another and less expert hand, but the weight of
the problem rests on these alternatives,--the disputed relics which were
found are mainly genuine, though unfamiliar; or a forger not destitute of
skill and knowledge has invented and executed them--or--there is some
other explanation.

Three paths, as usual, are open to science, in the present state of our
knowledge of the question.  We may pronounce the unfamiliar relics
genuine, and prove it if we can.  We may declare them to be false
objects, manufactured within the last ten years.  We may possess our
souls in patience, and "put the objects to a suspense account," awaiting
the results of future researches and of new information.

This attitude of suspense is not without precedent in archaeology.
"Antiquarian lore," as Dr. Munro remarks by implication, _can_
"distinguish between true and false antiquities." {5a}  But time is
needed for the verdict, as we see when Dr. Munro describes "the Breonio
Controversy" about disputed stone objects, a controversy which began in
1885, and appears to be undecided in 1905. {5b}  I propose to advocate
the third course; the waiting game, and I am to analyse Dr. Munro's very
able arguments for adopting the second course, and deciding that the
unfamiliar relics are assuredly impostures of yesterday's manufacture.

II--DR. MUNRO'S BOOK ON THE MYSTERY

Dr. Munro's acute and interesting book, _Archaeology and False
Antiquities_, {6} does not cover the whole of its amusing subject.  False
gems, coins, inscriptions, statues, and pictures are scarcely touched
upon; the author is concerned chiefly with false objects of the
pre-historic and "proto-historic" periods, and with these as bearing on
the Clyde controversy of 1896-1905.  Out of 292 pages, at least 130 treat
directly of that local dispute: others bear on it indirectly.

I have taken great interest in this subject since I first heard of it by
accident, in the October or November of 1898.  As against Dr. Munro, from
whose opinions I provisionally dissent, I may be said to have no _locus
standi_.  He is an eminent and experienced archaeologist in matters of
European pre-historic and proto-historic times.  Any one is at liberty to
say of me what another celebrated archaeologist, Mr. Charles Hercules
Read, said, in a letter to Dr. Munro, on December 7, 1901, about some one
else: a person designated as "---," and described as "a merely literary
man, who cannot understand that to practised people the antiquities are
as readable as print, and a good deal more accurate." {7}  But though
"merely literary," like Mr. "---," 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.
At the British Museum I can show Mr. Read several admirable specimens of
the art of faking, standing, like the Abomination of Desolation, where
they ought not.  It was not by unpractised persons that they were
purchased at the national expense.  We are all fallible, even the oldest
of us.  I conceive Mr. Read, however, to mean the alleged and disputed
"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. {8a}  The _savants_ of the Louvre were lately caught by the
notorious "tiara of Saitaphernes," to the pecuniary loss of France; were
caught on April 1, 1896, and were made _poissons d'Avril_, to the golden
tune of 200,000 francs (8000 pounds).

Again, M. Lartet and Mr. Christy betted a friend that he could not hoax
them with a forged palaeolithic drawing.  They lost their bet, and, after
M. Lartet's death, the forged object was published, as genuine, in the
scientific journal, _Materiaux_ (1874). {8b}  As M. Reinach says of
another affair, it was "a _fumisterie_." {8c}  Every archaeologist may be
the victim of a _fumisterie_, few have wholly escaped, and we find Dr.
Furtwangler and Mr. Cecil Smith at odds as to whether a head of Zeus in
terra-cotta be of the fifth century B.C. or, quite the contrary, of the
nineteenth or twentieth century A.D.

Verily all "practised people" do not find "antiquities as readable as
print."  On the other hand, my late friend, Dr. A. S. Murray, Keeper of
Classical Antiquities in the British Museum, "read" the Mycenaean
antiquities erroneously, placing them many centuries too late.  M. de
Mortillet reckoned them forgeries, and wrote of the discoverer, Dr.
Schliemann, and even of Mrs. Schliemann, in a tone unusual in men of
science and gentlemen.

The great palaeolithic discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes, the very
bases of our study of the most ancient men, were "read" as impostures by
many "practised people."  M. Cartailhac, again, has lately, in the most
candid and honourable way, recanted his own original disbelief in certain
wall-paintings in Spanish caves, of the period called "palaeolithic," for
long suspected by him of being "clerical" impostures. {9}

Thus even the most "practised people," like General Councils, "may err
and have erred," when confronted either with forgeries, or with objects
old in fact, but new to them.  They have _not_ always found antiquities
"as readable as print."  Dr. Munro touches but faintly on these "follies
of the wise," but they are not unusual follies.  This must never be
forgotten.

Where "practised people" may be mistaken through a too confirmed
scepticism, the "merely literary man" may, once in an azure moon, happen
to be right, or not demonstrably wrong; that is my excuse for differing,
provisionally, from "practised people."  It is only provisionally that I
dissent from Dr. Munro as to some of the points at issue in the Clyde
controversy.  I entered on it with very insufficient knowledge: I remain,
we all remain, imperfectly informed: and like people rich in
practice,--Dr. Joseph Anderson, and Sir Arthur Mitchell,--I "suspend my
judgement" for the present. {10}

This appears to me the most scientific attitude.  Time is the great
revealer.  But Dr. Munro, as we saw, prefers not to suspend his judgment,
and says plainly and pluckily that the disputed objects in the Clyde
controversy are "spurious"; are what the world calls "fakes," though from
a delicate sense of the proprieties of language, he will not call them
"forgeries."  They are reckoned by him among "false antiquities," while,
for my part, I know not of what age they are, but incline I believe that
many of them are not of the nineteenth century.  This is the extent of
our difference.  On the other hand I heartily concur with Dr. Munro in
regretting that his advice,--to subject the disputed objects at the
earliest possible stage of the proceedings, to a jury of experts,--was
not accepted. {11a}

One observation must be made on Dr. Munro's logical method, as announced
by himself.  "My role, on the present occasion, is to advocate the
correctness of my own views on purely archaeological grounds, without any
special effort to refute those of my opponents." {11b}  As my view is
that the methods of Dr. Munro are perhaps,--and I say it with due
deference, and with doubt,--capable of modification, I shall defend my
opinions as best I may.  Moreover, my views, in the course of seven long
years (1898-1905) have necessarily undergone some change, partly in
deference to the arguments of Dr. Munro, partly because much new
information has come to my knowledge since 1898-99.  Moreover, on one
occasion, I misstated my own view, and, though I later made my real
opinion perfectly dear, some confusion was generated.

III--THE CLYDE CONTROVERSY

It is necessary, after these prefatory remarks, to give an account of the
rise of the Clyde controversy, and I may be pardoned for following the
example of Dr. Munro, who adds, and cannot but add, a pretty copious
narrative of his own share in the discussion.  In 1896, the hill fort of
Dunbuie, "about a mile-and-a-half to the east of Dumbarton Castle, and
three miles to the west of the Roman Wall," {12} was discovered by Mr. W.
A. Donnelly: that is to say, Mr. Donnelly suggested that the turf might
conceal something worth excavating, and the work was undertaken, under
his auspices, by the Helensburgh Antiquarian Society.

As Mr. Donnelly's name constantly occurs in the discussion, it may be as
well to state that, by profession, he is an artist,--a painter and
designer in black and white,--and that, while keenly interested in the
pre-historic or proto-historic relics of Clydesdale, he makes no claim to
be regarded as a trained archaeologist, or widely-read student.  Thus,
after Mr. Donnelly found a submarine structure at Dumbuck in the estuary
of the Clyde, Dr. Munro writes: "I sent Mr. Donnelly some literature on
crannogs." {13a}  So Mr. Donnelly, it appears, had little book lore as to
crannogs.  He is, in fact, a field worker in archaeology, rather than an
archaeologist of the study and of books.  He is a member of a local
archaeological Society at Helensburgh on the Clyde, and, before he found
the hill fort of Dunbuie, he had discovered an interesting set of "cup
and ring" marked rocks at Auchentorlie, "only a short distance from
Dunbuie." {13b}

Mr. Donnelly's position, then, as regards archaeological research, was,
in 1896-1898, very like that of Dr. Schliemann when he explored Troy.
Like Dr. Schliemann he was no erudite savant, but an enthusiast with an
eye for likely sites.  Like Dr. Schliemann he discovered certain objects
hitherto unknown to Science, (at least to Scottish science,) and, like
Dr. Schliemann, he has had to take "the consequences of being found in
such a situation."

It must be added that, again like Dr. 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.  Thus Dr. Munro mentions the case of a man who, while digging
a drain in his garden in Scotland, found an adze of jade and a
pre-historic urn.  Dr. Munro declares, with another expert, that the jade
adze is "a modern Australian implement," which is the more amazing as I
am not aware that the Australians possess any jade.  The point is that
the modern Australian adze was _not_, as falsely reported, in the pre-
historic urn. {14b}

Here I cannot but remark that while Dr. Munro justly regrets the absence
of record as to precise place of certain finds, he is not more hospitable
to other finds of which the precise locality is indicated.  Things are
found by Mr. Bruce as he clears out the interior of a canoe, or imbedded
in the dock on the removal of the canoe, {15} or in the "kitchen
midden"--the refuse heap--but Dr. Munro does not esteem the objects more
highly because we have a distinct record as to the precise place of their
finding.

IV--DUNBUIE

To return to the site first found, the hill fort of Dunbuie, excavated in
1896.  Dr. Munro writes:

   "There is no peculiarity about the position or structure of this fort
   which differentiates it from many other forts in North Britain.  Before
   excavation there were few indications that structural remains lay
   beneath the debris, but when this was accomplished there were exposed
   to view the foundations of a circular wall, 13.5 feet thick, enclosing
   a space 30 to 32 feet in diameter.  Through this wall there was one
   entrance passage on a level with its base, 3 feet 2 inches in width,
   protected by two guard chambers, one on each side, analogous to those
   so frequently met with in the Brochs.  The height of the remaining
   part of the wall varied from 18 inches to 3 feet 6 inches.  The
   interior contained no dividing walls nor any indications of secondary
   occupation."

Thus writes Dr. Munro (pp. 130, 131), repeating his remarks on p. 181
with this addition,

   "Had any remains of intra-mural chambers or of a stone stair been
   detected it would unhesitatingly be pronounced a broch; nor, in the
   absence of such evidence, can it be definitely dissociated from that
   peculiar class of Scottish buildings, because the portion of wall then
   remaining was not sufficiently high to exclude the possibility of
   these broch characteristics having been present at a higher level--a
   structural deviation which has occasionally been met with."

"All the brochs," Dr. Munro goes on, "hitherto investigated have shown
more or less precise evidence of a post-Roman civilisation, their range,
according to Dr. Joseph Anderson, being "not earlier than the fifth and
not later than the ninth century." {17}  "Although from more recent
discoveries, as, for example, the broch of Torwodlee, Selkirkshire, there
is good reason to believe that their range might legitimately be brought
nearer to Roman times, it makes no difference in the correctness of the
statement that they all belong to the Iron Age."

So far the "broch," or hill fort, was not unlike other hill forts and
brochs, of which there are hundreds in Scotland.  But many of the relics
alleged to have been found in the soil of Dunbuie were unfamiliar in
character in these islands.  There was not a shard of pottery, there was
not a trace of metal, but absence of such things is no proof that they
were unknown to the inhabitants of the fort.  I may go further, and say
that if any person were capable of interpolating false antiquities, they
were equally capable of concealing such real antiquities in metal or
pottery as they might find; to support their theories, or to serve other
private and obscure ends.

Thus, at Langbank, were found a bronze brooch, and a "Late Celtic" (200
B.C.?--A.D.) comb.  These, of course, upset the theory held by some
inquirers, that the site was Neolithic, that is, was very much earlier
than the Christian era.  If the excavators held that theory, and were
unscrupulous, was it not as easy for them to conceal the objects which
disproved the hypothesis, as to insert the disputed objects--which do not
prove it?

Of course Dr. Munro nowhere suggests that any excavator is the guilty
"faker."

I now quote Dr. Munro's account of the _unfamiliar_ objects alleged to
have been found in Dunbuie.  He begins by citing the late Mr. Adam
Millar, F.S.A.Scot., who described Dunbuie in the _Proceedings S. A.
Scot._ (vol. XXX. pp. 291-308.)

   "The fort," writes Mr. Millar, "has been examined very thoroughly by
   picking out the stones in the interior one by one, and riddling the
   fine soil and small stones.  The same treatment has been applied to
   the refuse heap which was found on the outside, and the result of the
   search is a very remarkable collection of weapons, implements,
   ornaments, and figured stones."  There is no description of the
   precise position of any of these relics in the ruins, with the
   exception of two upper stones of querns and a limpet shell having on
   its inner surface the presentation of a human face, which are stated
   to have been found in the interior of the fort.  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.

   OBJECTS OF STONE.--Nine spear-heads, like arrow-points, of slate, six
   of which have linear patterns scratched on them.  Some are perforated
   with round holes, and all were made by grinding and polishing.  One
   object of slate, shaped like a knife, was made by chipping.  "This
   knife," says Mr. Millar, "has a feature common to all these slate
   weapons--they seem to have been saturated with oil or fat, as water
   does not adhere to them, but runs off as from a greasy surface."
   Another highly ornamental piece of cannel coal is in the form of a
   short spear-head with a thickish stem.  The stem is adorned with a
   series of hollows and ridges running across it; radiating lines
   running from the stem to the margin.  Another group of these
   remarkable objects shows markings of the cup-and-ring order, circles,
   linear incisions, and perforations.  Some of these ornamentations are
   deeply cut on the naturally rough surfaces of flat pieces of
   sandstone, whilst others are on smooth stones artificially prepared
   for the purpose.  A small piece of flint was supposed to have been
   inserted into a partially burnt handle.  There are several examples of
   hammer-stones of the ordinary crannog type, rubbing-stones,
   whetstones, as well as a large number of water-worn stones which might
   have been used as hand-missiles or sling-stones.  These latter were
   not native to the hill, and must have been transported from burns in
   the neighbourhood.  There are also two upper quern stones.

   MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTS.--A number of splintered pieces of bone, without
   showing any other evidence of workmanship, have linear incisions, like
   those on some of the stones, which suggest some kind of cryptic
   writing like ogams.  There are also a few water-worn shells, like
   those seen on a sandy beach, having round holes bored through them and
   sharply-cut scratches on their pearly inner surface.  But on the whole
   the edible molluscs are but feebly represented, as only five oyster,
   one cockle, three limpet, and two mussel shells were found, nearly all
   of which bore marks of some kind of ornamentation.  But perhaps the
   most grotesque object in the whole collection is the limpet shell with
   a human face sculptured on its inner surface.

   "The eyes," writes Mr. Millar, "are represented by two holes, the nose
   by sharply-cut lines, and the mouth by a well-drawn waved line, the
   curves which we call Cupid's bow being faithfully followed.  There is
   nothing at all of an archaic character, however, in this example of
   shell-carving.  We found it in the interior of the fort; it was one of
   the early finds--nothing like it has been found since; at the same
   time we have no reason for assuming that this shell was placed in the
   fort on purpose that we might find it.  The fact that it was taken out
   of the fort is all that we say about it."

   Mr. Millar's opinion of these novel handicraft remains was that they
   were the products of a pre-Celtic civilisation.  "The articles found,"
   he writes, "are strongly indicative of a much earlier period than post-
   Roman; they point to an occupation of a tribe in their Stone Age."

   "We have no knowledge of the precise position in which the 'queer
   things' of Dunbuie were found, with the exception of the limpet shell
   showing the carved human face which, according to a recent statement
   in the _Journal of the British Archaeological Association_, September,
   1901, "was excavated from a crevice in the living rock, over which
   tons of debris had rested.  When taken out, the incrustations of dirt
   prevented any carving from being seen; it was only after being dried
   and cleaned that the 'face' appeared, as well as the suspension holes
   on each side."

   So, this unique piece of art was in the fort before it became a ruin
   and otherwise presented evidence of great antiquity; but yet it is
   stated in Mr. Millar's report that there was "nothing at all of an
   archaic character in this example of shell-carving." {21}

I have nothing to do with statements made in _The Journal of the British
Archaeological Association_ about "_a carved oyster shell_."  I stick to
the limpet shell of Mr. Millar, which, to my eyes looks anything but
archaic.

V--HOW I CAME INTO THE CONTROVERSY

Thus far, I was so much to be sympathised with as never to have heard of
the names of Dunbuie and of Mr. Donnelly.  In this ignorance I remained
till late in October or early in November 1898.  On an afternoon of that
date I was reading the proof sheets, kindly lent to me by Messrs.
Macmillan, of _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_ by Messrs. Spencer
and Gillen, a work, now justly celebrated, which was published early in
1899.  I was much interested on finding, in this book, that certain
tribes of Central Australia,--the Arunta "nation" and the
Kaitish,--_paint_ on sacred and other rocks the very same sorts of
archaic designs as Mr. Donnelly found _incised_ at Auchentorlie (of which
I had not then heard).  These designs are familiar in many other parts of
Scotland and of the world.  They play a great part in the initiations and
magic of Central Australia.  Designs of the same class are incised, by
the same Australian tribes, on stones of various shapes and sizes,
usually portable, and variously shaped which are styled _churinga nanja_.
(_Churinga_ merely means anything "sacred," that is, with a superstitious
sense attached to it).  They also occur on wooden slats, (_churinga
irula_,) commonly styled "Bull roarers" by Europeans.  The tribes are now
in a "siderolithic" stage, using steel when they can get it, stone when
they cannot.  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.  I then showed him the illustrations of portable stones in
Australia, with archaic patterns, not then published, but figured in the
proof sheets of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's work.  My friend told me,
later, that he had seen small stone incised with concentric circles,
found in the excavation of a hill fort near Tarbert, in Kintyre.  He made
a sketch of this object, from memory: if found in Central Australia it
would have been reckoned a _churinga nanja_.

I was naturally much interested in my friend's account of objects found
in the Clyde estuary, which, _as far as his description went_, resembled
in being archaically decorated the _churinga nanja_ discovered by Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia.  I wrote an article on the
subject of the archaic decorative designs, as found all over the world,
for the _Contemporary Review_. {24}  I had then seen only pen and ink
sketches of the objects, sent to me by Mr. Donnelly, and a few casts,
which I passed on to an eminent authority.  One of the casts showed a
round stone with concentric circles.  I know not what became of the
original or of the casts.

While correcting proofs of this article, I read in the _Glasgow Herald_
(January 7, 1899) a letter by Dr. Munro, impugning the authenticity of
one set of finds by Mr. Donnelly, in a pile-structure at Dumbuck, on the
Clyde, near Dumbarton.  I wrote to the _Glasgow Herald_, adducing the
Australian _churinga nanja_ as parallel to Mr. Donnelly's inscribed
stones, and thus my share in the controversy began.  What Dr. Munro and I
then wrote may be passed over in this place.

VI--DUMBUCK

It was in July 1898, that Mr. Donnelly, who had been prospecting during
two years for antiquities in the Clyde estuary, found at low tide,
certain wooden stumps, projecting out of the mud at low water.  On August
16, 1898, Dr. Munro, with Mr. Donnelly, inspected these stumps, "before
excavations were made." {25a}  It is not easy to describe concisely the
results of their inspection, and of the excavations which followed.  "So
far the facts" (of the site, not of the alleged relics), "though highly
interesting as evidence of the hand of man in the early navigation of the
Clyde basin present nothing very remarkable or important," says Dr.
Munro. {25b}

I shall here quote Dr. Munro's descriptions of what he himself observed
at two visits, of August 16, October 12, 1898, to Dumbuck.  For the
present I omit some speculative passages as to the original purpose of
the structure.

   "The so-called Dumbuck 'crannog,' that being the most convenient name
   under which to describe the submarine wooden structures lately
   discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly in the estuary of the Clyde, lies
   about a mile to the east of the rock of Dumbarton, and about 250 yards
   within high-water mark.  At every tide its site is covered with water
   to a depth of three to eight feet, but at low tide it is left high and
   dry for a few hours, so that it was only during these tidal intervals
   that the excavations could be conducted.

   On the occasion of my first visit to Dumbuck, before excavations were
   begun, Mr. Donnelly and I counted twenty-seven piles of oak, some 5 or
   8 inches in diameter, cropping up for a few inches through the mud, in
   the form of a circle 56 feet in diameter.  The area thus enclosed was
   occupied with the trunks of small trees laid horizontally close to
   each other and directed towards the centre, and so superficial that
   portions of them were exposed above the surrounding mud, but all
   hollows and interstices were levelled up with sand or mud.  The tops
   of the piles which projected above the surface of the log-pavement
   were considerably worn by the continuous action of the muddy waters
   during the ebb and flow of the tides, a fact which suggested the
   following remarkable hypothesis: 'Their tops are shaped in an oval,
   conical form, meant to make a joint in a socket to erect the
   superstructure on.'  These words are quoted from a 'Report of a
   Conjoint Visit of the Geological and Philosophical Societies to the
   Dumbuck Crannog, 8th April, 1899.' {26}

   The result of the excavations, so far as I can gather from
   observations made during my second visit to the 'crannog,' and the
   descriptions and plans published by various societies, may be briefly
   stated as follows.

   The log-pavement within the circle of piles was the upper of three
   similar layers of timbers placed one above the other, the middle layer
   having its beams lying transversely to that immediately above and
   below it.  One of the piles (about 4 feet long) when freshly drawn up,
   clearly showed that it had been pointed by a sharp metal implement,
   the cutting marks being like those produced by an ordinary axe.  The
   central portion (about 6 feet in diameter) had no woodwork, and the
   circular cavity thus formed, when cleared of fallen stones, showed
   indications of having been walled with stones and clay.  Surrounding
   this walled cavity--the so-called 'well' of the explorers, there was a
   kind of coping, in the form of five or six 'raised mounds,' arranged
   'rosette fashion,' in regard to which Mr. Donnelly thus writes:

   'One feature that strikes me very much in the configuration of the
   structure in the centre is those places marked X, fig. 20, around
   which I have discovered the presence of soft wood piles 5 inches in
   diameter driven into the ground, and bounding the raised stone
   arrangement; the stones in these rude circular pavements or cairns are
   laid slightly slanting inwards.' {27}

   From this description, and especially the 'slanting inwards' of these
   'circular pavements' or 'cairns,' it would appear that they formed the
   bases for wooden stays to support a great central pole, a suggestion
   which, on different grounds, has already been made by Dr. David
   Murray.

   The surrounding piles were also attached to the horizontal logs by
   various ingenious contrivances, such as a fork, a natural bend, an
   artificial check, or a mortised hole; and some of the beams were
   pinned together by tree-nails, the perforations of which were
   unmistakable.  This binding together of the wooden structures is a
   well-known feature in crannogs, as was demonstrated by my
   investigations at Lochlee and elsewhere. {28a}  It would be still more
   necessary in a substratum of timbers that was intended (as will be
   afterwards explained) to bear the weight of a superincumbent cairn.
   Underneath the layers of horizontal woodwork some portions of heather,
   bracken, and brushwood were detected, and below this came a succession
   of thin beds of mud, loam, sand, gravel, and finally the blue clay
   which forms the solum of the river valley. {28b}  The piles penetrated
   this latter, but not deeply, owing to its consistency; and so the blue
   clay formed an excellent foundation for a structure whose main object
   was resistance to superincumbent pressure.

   Outside the circle of piles there was, at a distance of 12 to 14 feet,
   another wooden structure in the shape of a broad ring of horizontal
   beams and piles which surrounded the central area.  The breadth of
   this outer ring was 7 feet, and it consisted of some nine rows of
   beams running circumferentially.  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 debris of human occupancy.  On the
   north, or landward side, the outer and inner basements of woodwork
   appeared to coalesce for 5 or 6 yards, leaving an open space having
   stones embedded in the mud and decayed wood, a condition of things
   which suggested a rude causeway.  When Mr. Donnelly drew my attention
   to this, I demurred to its being so characterised owing to its
   indefiniteness.  At the outer limit of this so-called causeway, and
   about 25 feet north-east of the circle of piles, a canoe was
   discovered lying in a kind of dock, rudely constructed of side stones
   and wooden piling.  The canoe measures 35.5 feet long, 4 feet broad,
   and 1.5 foot deep.  It has a square stern with a movable board, two
   grasping holes near the stem, and three round perforations (2 inches
   in diameter) in its bottom.  On the north-west border of the
   log-pavement a massive ladder of oak was found, one end resting on the
   margin of the log-pavement and the other projecting obliquely into the
   timberless zone between the former and the outer woodwork.  It is thus
   described in the _Proceedings of the Glasgow Philosophical
   Society_:{29}

   'Made of a slab of oak which has been split from the tree by wedges
   (on one side little has been done to dress the work), it is 15 feet 3
   inches long, 2 feet broad, and 3.5 inches thick.  Six holes are cut
   for steps, 12 inches by 10 inches; the bottom of each is bevelled to
   an angle of 60 degrees to make the footing level when the ladder is in
   position.  On one side those holes show signs of wear by long use.'

   An under quern stone, 19 inches in diameter, was found about halfway
   between the canoe and the margin of the circle of piles, and
   immediately to the east of the so-called causeway already described.

   I carefully examined the surface of the log-pavement with the view of
   finding evidence as to the possibility of its having been at any time
   the habitable area of this strange dwelling-place; but the result was
   absolutely negative, as not a single particle of bone or ash was
   discovered in any of its chinks.  This fact, together with the
   impossibility of living on a surface that is submerged every twelve
   hours, and the improbability of any land subsidence having taken place
   since prehistoric times, or any adequate depression from the shrinkage
   of the under-structures themselves, compels me to summarily reject the
   theory that the Dumbuck structure in its present form was an ordinary
   crannog.  The most probable hypothesis, and that which supplies a
   reasonable explanation of all the facts, is that the woodwork was the
   foundation of a superstructure of stones built sufficiently high to be
   above the action of the tides and waves, over which there had been
   some kind of dwelling-place.  The unique arrangement of the wooden
   substructures suggests that the central building was in the form of a
   round tower with very thick walls, like the brochs and other forts of
   North Britain.  The central space was probably occupied with a pole,
   firmly fixed at its base in the 'well,' and kept in position by
   suitable stays, resting partly on the stone 'cairns' already
   described, partly in wooden sockets fixed into the log-pavement, and
   partly on the inner wall of the tower.  This suggestion seems to me to
   be greatly strengthened by the following description of some holed
   tree-roots in Mr. Bruce's paper to the Scottish Antiquaries: {30}

   'Midway between the centre and the outside piles of the structure what
   looked at first to be tree-roots or snags were noticed partly imbedded
   in the sand.  On being washed of the adhering soil, holes of 12 inches
   wide by 25 inches deep were found cut in them at an angle, to all
   appearance for the insertion of struts for the support of an upper
   structure.  On the outside, 14 inches down on either side, holes of 2
   inches diameter were found intersecting the central hole, apparently
   for the insertion of a wooden key or trenail to retain the struts.
   These were found at intervals, and were held in position by stones and
   smaller jammers.'

   The outer woodwork formed the foundation of another stone structure,
   of a horseshoe shape, having the open side to the north or landside of
   the tower, which doubtless was intended as a breakwater.  By means of
   the ladder placed slantingly against the wall of the central stone
   building access could be got to the top in all states of the tides.

   The people who occupied this watch-tower ground their own corn, and
   fared abundantly on beef, mutton, pork, venison, and shell-fish.  The
   food refuse and other debris were thrown into the space between the
   central structure and the breakwater, forming in the course of time a
   veritable kitchen-midden.

   Besides the causeway on the north side, Mr. Bruce describes 'a belt of
   stones, forming a pavement about six feet wide and just awash with the
   mud,' extending westwards about twenty yards from the central cavity,
   till it intersected the breakwater. {31}  These so-called pavements
   and causeways were probably formed during the construction of the
   tower with its central pole, or perhaps at the time of its demolition,
   as it would be manifestly inconvenient to transport stones to or from
   such a place, in the midst of so much slush, without first making some
   kind of firm pathway.  Their present superficial position alone
   demonstrates the absurdity of assigning the Dumbuck structures to
   Neolithic times, as if the only change effected in the bed of the
   Clyde since then would be the deposition of a few inches of mud.  At a
   little distance to the west of these wooden structures there is the
   terminal end of a modern ditch ('the burn' of Mr. Alston), extending
   towards the shore, and having on its eastern bank a row of stepping-
   stones; a fact which, in my opinion, partly accounts for the
   demolition of the stonework, which formerly stood over them.  So far,
   the facts disclosed by the excavations of the structures at Dumbuck,
   though highly interesting as evidence of the hand of man in the early
   navigation of the Clyde basin, present nothing very remarkable or
   improbable.  It is when we come to examine the strange relics which
   the occupants of this habitation have left behind them that the real
   difficulties begin."

Dr. Munro next describes the disputed things found at Dumbuck.  They were
analogous to those alleged to have been unearthed at Dunbuie.  They were

   "A number of strange objects like spear-heads or daggers, showing more
   or less workmanship, and variously ornamented.  One great spear-head
   (figure 1), like an arrow-point, is 11 inches long and 4.75 inches
   wide at the barbs.  The stem is perforated with two holes, in one of
   which there was a portion of an oak pin.  It has a flat body and
   rounded edges, and is carefully finished by rubbing and grinding.  One
   surface is ornamented with three cup-marks from which lines radiate
   like stars or suns, and the other has only small cups and a few
   transverse lines.  There are some shaped stones, sometimes perforated
   for suspension, made of the same material; while another group of
   similar objects is made of cannel coal.  All these are highly
   ornamented by a fantastic combination of circles, dots, lines, cup-and-
   rings with or without gutters, and perforations.  A small pebble
   (plate XV. no. 10) shows, on one side, a boat with three men plying
   their oars, and on the other an incised outline of a left hand having
   a small cup-and-ring in the palm.  The most sensational objects in the
   collection are, however, four rude figures, cut out of shale (figs. 50-
   53), representing portions of the human face and person.  One,
   evidently a female (figure 2), we are informed was found at the bottom
   of the kitchen midden, a strange resting-place for a goddess; the
   other three are grotesque efforts to represent a human face.  There
   are also several oyster-shells, ornamented like some of the shale
   ornaments, and very similar to the oyster-shell ornaments of Dunbuie.
   A splinter of a hard stone is inserted into the tine of a deer-horn as
   a handle (plate xiii. no. 5); and another small blunt implement (no.
   1) has a bone handle.  A few larger stones with cup-marks and some
   portions of partially worked pieces of shale complete the art gallery
   of Dumbuck."

It seemed as if some curse were on Mr. Donnelly!  Whether he discovered
an unique old site of human existence in the water or on the land, some
viewless fiend kept sowing the soil with _bizarre_ objects unfamiliar to
Dr. Munro, and by him deemed incongruous with the normal and known
features of human life on such sites.

VII--LANGBANK

The Curse, (that is, the forger,) unwearied and relentless, next smote
Mr. John Bruce, F.S.A.Scot., merely, as it seems, because he and Mr.
Donnelly were partners in the perfectly legitimate pastime of
archaeological exploration.  Mr. Bruce's share of the trouble began at
Dumbuck.  The canoe was found, the genuine canoe.  "It was at once
cleared out by myself," writes Mr. Bruce.  In the bottom of the canoe he
found "a spear-shaped slate object," and "an ornamented oyster shell,
which has since mouldered away," and "a stone pendant object, and an
implement of bone." {34}

Such objects have no business to be found in a canoe just discovered
under the mud of Clyde, and cleared out by Mr. Bruce himself, a man or
affairs, and of undisputed probity.  In this case the precise site of the
dubious relics is given, by a man of honour, at first hand.  I confess
that my knowledge of human nature does not enable me to contest Mr.
Bruce's written attestation, while I marvel at the astuteness of the
forger.  As a finder, on this occasion, Mr. Bruce was in precisely the
same position as Dr. Munro at Elie when, as he says, "as the second piece
of pottery was disinterred by myself, I was able to locate its precise
position at six inches below the surface of the relic bed." {35}  Mr.
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.

Meanwhile Sir Arthur Mitchell, not a credulous savant, says: "The
evidence of authenticity in regard to these doubted objects from Dumbuck
is the usual evidence in such circumstances . . . it is precisely the
same evidence of authenticity which is furnished in regard to all the
classes of objects found in the Dumbuck exploration--that is, in regard
to the canoe, the quern, the bones etc.--about the authenticity of which
no doubts have been expressed, as in regard to objects about which doubts
have been expressed." {36a}

Of another object found by a workman at Dumbuck Dr. Munro writes "is it
not very remarkable that a workman, groping with his hand in the mud,
should accidentally stumble on this relic--the only one found in this
part of the site?  Is it possible that he was an unconscious
thought-reader, and was thus guided to make the discovery" of a thing
which "could as readily have been inserted there half-an-hour before?"
{36b}

This passage is "rote sarcustic."  But surely Dr. Munro will not, he
cannot, argue that Mr. Bruce was "an unconscious thought-reader" when
_he_ "cleared out" the interior of the canoe, and found three disputed
objects "in the bottom."

If we are to be "psychical," there seems less evidence for "unconscious
thought-reading," than for the presence of what are technically styled
_apports_,--things introduced by an agency of supra-normal character,
vulgarly called a "spirit."

Undeterred by an event which might have struck fear _in constantem
virum_, Mr. Bruce, in the summer of 1901, was so reckless as to discover
a fresh "submarine wooden structure" at Langbank, on the left, or south
bank of the Clyde Estuary opposite Dumbarton Castle.  The dangerous
object was cautiously excavated under the superintendence of Mr. Bruce,
and a committee of the Glasgow Archaeological Society.  To be brief, the
larger features were akin to those of Dumbuck, without the central
"well," or hole, supposed by Dr. Munro to have held the pole of a beacon-
cairn.  The wooden piles, as at Dumbuck, had been fashioned by "sharp
metal tools." {37}  This is Mr. Bruce's own opinion.  This evidence of
the use of metal tools is a great point of Dr. Munro, against such
speculative minds as deem Dumbuck and Langbank "neolithic," that is, of a
date long before the Christian era.  _They_ urged that stone tools could
have fashioned the piles, but I know not that partisans of either opinion
have made experiments in hewing trees with stone-headed axes, like the
ingenious Monsieur Hippolyte Muller in France. {38a}  I am, at present,
of opinion that all the sites are of an age in which iron was well known
to the natives, and bronze was certainly known.

The relics at Langbank were (1) of a familiar, and (2) of an unfamiliar
kind.  There was (1) a small bone comb with a "Late Celtic" (200 B.C.-?
A.D.) design of circles and segments of circles; there was a very small
penannular brooch of brass or bronze; there were a few cut fragments of
deer horn, pointed bones, stone polishers, and so forth, all familiar to
science and acceptable. {38b}

On the other hand, the Curse fell on Mr. Bruce in the shape of two
perforated shale objects: on one was cut a grotesque face, on the other
two incomplete concentric circles, "a stem line with little nicks," and
two vague incised marks, which may, or may not, represent "fragments of
deer horn." {38c}

We learn from Mr. Bruce that he first observed the Langbank circle of
stones from the window of a passing train, and that he made a few slight
excavations, apparently at the end of September, 1901.  More formal
research was made in October; and again, under the superintendence of
members of the Glasgow Archaeological Society, in September, October,
1902.  No members of the Glasgow Committee were present when either the
undisputed Late Celtic comb, or the inscribed, perforated, and disputed
pieces of cannel coal were discovered.  Illustrations of these objects
and of the bronze penannular ring are here given, (figures 1, 2, 3, 4),
(two shale objects are omitted,) by the kindness of the Glasgow
Archaeological Society (_Transactions_, vol. v. p. 1).

The brooch (allowed to be genuine) "might date from Romano-British times,
say 100-400 A.D. to any date up to late mediaeval times." {39}  Good
evidence to date, in a wide sense, would be the "osseous remains," the
bones left in the refuse at Langbank and Dumbuck.  Of the bones, I only
gather as peculiarly interesting, that Dr. Bryce has found those of _Bos
Longifrons_.  Of _Bos Longifrons_ as a proof of date, I know little.  Mr.
Ridgeway, Disney Professor of Archaeology in the University of Cambridge,
is not "a merely literary man."  In his work _The Early Age of Greece_,
vol. i., pp. 334, 335 (Cambridge University Press, 1901), Mr. Ridgeway
speaks of _Bos_ as the Celtic ox, co-eval with the Swiss Lake Dwellings,
and known as _Bos brachyceros_--"short horn"--so styled by Rutimeyer.  If
he is "Celtic" I cannot say how early _Bos_ may have existed among the
Celts of Britain, but the Romans are thought by some persons to have
brought the Celtic ox to the Celts of our island.  If this be so, the
Clyde sites are not earlier (or _Bos_ in these sites is not earlier) than
the Roman invasion.  He lasted into the seventh or eighth centuries A.D.
at least, and is found on a site discovered by Dr. Munro at Elie. {40a}
Meanwhile archaeology is so lazy, that, after seven years, Dr. Bryce's
"reports on the osseous remains" of Langbank and Dumbuck is but lately
published. {40b}

{ Figs. 1, 2: p40a.jpg}

Dr. Bryce, in his report to the Glasgow Archaeological Society, says that
"_Bos Longifrons_ has a wide range in time, from Neolithic down to
perhaps even medieval times.  It was the domestic ox in Scotland for an
unknown period, before, during, and for an unknown time after the Roman
invasion. . . .  The occurrence of extinct, probably long extinct,
breeds, and these only, make the phenomena in this respect at Langbank
exactly comparable with those observed at sites of pile buildings in
Scotland generally, and thus it becomes indirect evidence against the
thesis that the structure belongs to some different category, and to
quite recent times." {40c}

{ Fig. 3: p40b.jpg}

The evidence of the bones, then, denotes any date except a relatively
recent date, of 1556-1758; contrary to an hypothesis to be touched on
later.  It follows, from the presence of _Bos_ at Elie (700 A.D.) that
the occupants of the Clyde sites at Langbank may have lived there as late
as, say, 750 A.D.  But when they _began_ to occupy the sites is another
question.

{ Fig. 4: p40c.jpg}

If Roman objects are found, as they are, in brochs which show many relics
of bronze, it does not follow that the brochs had not existed for
centuries before the inhabitants acquired the waifs and strays of Roman
civilisation.  In the Nine Caithness Brochs described by Dr. Joseph
Anderson, {41} there was a crucible . . . with a portion of melted
bronze, a bronze ring, moulds for ingots, an ingot of bronze, bits of
Roman "Samian ware," but no iron.  We can be sure that the broch folk
were at some time in touch of Roman goods, brought by traffickers
perhaps, but how can we be sure that there were no brochs before the
arrival of the Romans?

We shall return to the question of the disputable relics of the Clyde,
after discussing what science has to say about the probable date and
original purpose of the wooden structures in the Clyde estuary.  Nobody,
it is admitted, forged _them_, but on the other hand Dr. Munro, the one
most learned authority on "Lake Dwellings," or "Crannogs," does not think
that the sites were ever occupied by regular "crannogs," or lacustrine
settlements, Lake Dwellings.

VIII--THE ORIGINAL DATE AND PURPOSE OF DUMBUCK AND LANGBANK

The actual structures of Langbank and Dumbuck, then, are confessedly
ancient remains; they are _not_ of the nineteenth century; they are
"unique" in our knowledge, and we ask, what was the purpose of their
constructors, and what is their approximate date?

Dr. Munro quotes and discusses {43} a theory, or a tentative guess of Dr.
David Murray.  That scholar writes "River cairns are commonly built on
piled platforms, _and my doubt is_ whether this is not the nature of the
structure in question" (Dumbuck).  A river cairn is a solid pile of
stonework, with, perhaps, a pole in the centre.  At Dumbuck there is the
central "well" of six feet in diameter.  Dr. Murray says that a pole
"carried down to the bottom would probably be sunk in the clay, which
would produce a hole, or well-like cavity similar to that of the Dumbuck
structure." {44}

It is not stated that the poles of river cairns usually demand
accommodation to the extent of six feet of diameter, in the centre of the
solid mass of stones, and, as the Langbank site has no central well, the
tentative conjecture that it was a river cairn is not put forward.  Dr.
Murray suggests that the Dumbuck cairn "may have been one of the works of
1556 or 1612," that is, of the modern age of Queen Mary and James VI.  The
object of such Corporation cairns "was no doubt to mark the limit of
their jurisdiction, and also to serve as a beacon to vessels coming up
the river."

Now the Corporation, with its jurisdiction and beacons, is purely modern.
In 1758 the Corporation had a "lower cairn, if it did not occupy this
very spot" (Dumbuck) "it stood upon the same line and close to it.  There
are, however, no remains of such cairn," says Dr. Murray.  He cites no
evidence for the date and expenses of the demolition of the cairn from
any municipal book of accounts.

Now we have to ask (1) Is there any evidence that men in 1556-1758 lived
on the tops of such modern cairns, dating from the reign of Mary Stuart?
(2) 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 _debris_ 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 answers to these questions are obvious.  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 of modern
cairns, as a theory "against which he sees nothing," have the air of
being an inadvertent _obiter dictum_.  For, in his conclusion and summing
up he writes, "We claim to have established that the structures of
Dunbuie, Dumbuck, and Langbank are remains of inhabited sites of the
early-Iron Age, dating to some time between the fifth and twelfth
centuries." {46a}  I accept this conclusion, and will say as little as
may be about the theory of a modern _origin_ of the sites, finally
discarded by Dr. Munro.  I say "discarded," for his theory is that the
modern corporation utilised an earlier structure as a cairn or beacon, or
boundary mark, which is perfectly possible.  But, if this occurred, it
does not affect the question, for this use of the structure has left no
traces of any kind.  There are no relics, except relics of the fifth (?)
to twelfth (?) centuries.

In an earlier work by Dr. Munro, _Prehistoric Scotland_ (p. 439),
published in 1899, he observes that we have no evidence as to the when,
or how of the removal of the stones of the hypothetical "Corporation
cairn," or "round tower with very thick walls," {46b} or "watch tower,"
which is supposed to have been erected above the wooden sub-structure at
Dumbuck.  He tentatively suggests that the stones may have been used,
perhaps, for the stone causeway now laid along the bank of the recently
made canal, from a point close to the crannog to the railway.  No record
is cited.  He now offers guesses as to the stones "in the so-called
pavements and causeways."  First, the causeways may have probably been
made "during the construction of the tower with its central pole," (here
the cairn is a habitable beacon, habitable on all hypotheses,) or, again,
"perhaps at the time of its demolition" about which demolition we know
nothing, {47a} except that the most of the stones are not now _in situ._

Several authentic stone crannogs in Scotland, as to which we have
information, possessed no central pole, but had a stone causeway, still
extant, leading, _e.g._ from the crannog to the shore of the Ashgrove
loch, "a causeway of rough blocks of sandstone slabs." {47b}  If one
stone crannog had a stone causeway, why should this ancient inhabited
cairn or round tower not possess a stone causeway?  Though useless at
high water, at low water it would afford better going.  In a note to
_Ivanhoe_, and in his Northern tour of 1814, Scott describes a stone
causeway to a broch on an artificial island in Loch Cleik-him-in, near
Lerwick.  Now this loch, says Scott, was, at the time when the broch was
inhabited, open to the flow of tide water.

As people certainly did live on these structures of Langbank and Dunbuie
during the broch and crannog age (centuries 5-12) it really matters not
to our purpose _why_ they did so, or _how_ they did so.  Let us suppose
that the circular wall of the stone superstructure slanted inwards, as is
not unusual.  In that case the habitable area at the top may be reduced
to any extent that is thought probable, with this limitation:--the
habitable space must not be too small for the accommodation of the
persons who filled up the eastern third of an area of from twelve to
fourteen feet in breadth, and in some places a foot in thickness, with a
veritable kitchen-midden, of "broken and partially burned bones of
various animals, shells of edible molluscs, and a quantity of ashes and
charcoal . . . ." {48}

But Dr. Munro assures me that the remains discovered could be deposited
in a few years of regular occupancy by two or three persons.

The structure certainly yielded habitable space enough to accommodate the
persons who, in the fifth to twelfth centuries, left these traces of
their occupancy.  Beyond that fact I do not pretend to estimate the
habitable area.

Why did these people live on this structure in the fifth to twelfth
centuries?  Almost certainly, not for the purpose of directing the
navigation of the Clyde.  At that early date, which I think we may throw
far back in the space of the six centuries of the estimate, or may even
throw further back still, the Clyde was mainly navigated by canoes of two
feet or so in depth, though we ought to have statistics of remains of
larger vessels discovered in the river bed. {49a}  I think we may say
that the finances of Glasgow, in St. Kentigern's day, about 570-600 A.D.,
would not be applied to the construction of Dr. Munro's "tower with its
central pole and very thick walls" {49b} erected merely for the purpose
of warning canoes off shoals in the Clyde.

That the purpose of the erection was to direct the navigation of Clyde by
canoes, or by the long vessels of the Viking raiders, appears to me
improbable.  I offer, _periculo meo_, a different conjecture, of which I
shall show reason to believe that Dr. Munro may not disapprove.

The number of the dwellers in the structure, and the duration of their
occupancy, does not affect my argument.  If two natives, in a very few
years, could deposit the "veritable kitchen midden," with all the sawn
horns, bone implements, and other undisputed relics, we must suppose that
the term of occupancy was very brief, or not continuous, and that the
stone structure "with very thick walls like the brochs" represented
labours which were utilised for a few years, or seldom.  My doubt is as
to whether the structure was intended for the benefit of navigators of
the Clyde--in shallow canoes!

IX--A GUESS AT THE POSSIBLE PURPOSE OF LANGBANK AND DUMBUCK

The Dumbuck structure, when occupied, adjoined and commanded a _ford_
across the undeepened Clyde of uncommercial times.  So Sir Arthur
Mitchell informs us. {51a}  The Langbank structure, as I understand, is
opposite to that of Dumbuck on the southern side of the river.  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, with Langbank on the opposite bank of Clyde by
keepers of the ford.  In 1901 Dr. Munro wrote, "even the keepers of the
watch-tower at the ford of Dumbuck had their quern, and ground their own
corn." {52a}  This idea has therefore passed through Dr. Munro's mind,
though I did not know the fact till after I had come to the same
hypothesis.  The habitable area was therefore, adequate to the wants of
these festive people.  I conjecture that these "keepers of the
watch-tower at the ford" were military "watchers of the ford," for that
seems to me less improbable than that "a round tower with very thick
walls, {52b} like the brochs and other forts of North Britain," was built
in the interests of the navigation of Clyde at a very remote period.
{52c}

But really all this is of no importance to the argument.  People lived in
these sites, perhaps as early as 400 A.D. or earlier.  Such places of
safety were sadly needed during the intermittent and turbulent Roman
occupation.

X--THE LAST DAY AT OLD DUMBUCK

Suppose the sites were occupied by the watchers of the ford.  There they
lived, no man knows how long, on their perch over the waters of Clyde.
They dwelt at top of a stone structure some eight feet above low water
mark, for they could not live on the ground floor, of which the walls,
fifty feet thick at the base, defied the waves of the high tides driven
by the west wind.

There our friends lived, and probably tatooed themselves, and slew _Bos
Longifrons_ and the deer that, in later ages, would have been forbidden
game to them.  If I may trust Bede, born in 672, and finishing his
History in 731, our friends were Picts, and spoke a now unknown language,
_not_ that of the Bretonnes, or Cymri, or Welsh, who lived on the
northern side of the Firth of Clyde.  Or the occupants of Dumbuck, on the
north side of the river, were Cymri; those of Langbank, on the south
side, were Picts.  I may at once say that I decline to be responsible for
Bede, and his ethnology, but he lived nearer to those days than we do.

With their ladder of fifteen feet long, a slab of oak, split from the
tree by wedges, and having six holes chopped out of the solid for steps,
they climbed to their perch, the first floor of their abode.  I never
heard of a ladder made in this way, but the Zunis used simply to cut
notches for the feet in the trunk of a tree, and "sich a getting up
stairs" it must have been, when there was rain, and the notches were wet!

Time passed, the kitchen midden grew, and the Cymri founded Ailcluith,
"Clyde rock," now Dumbarton; "to this day," says Bede, "the strongest
city of the Britons." {54}  Then the Scots came, and turned the Britons
out; and St. Columba came, and St. Kentigern from Wales (573-574), and
began to spread the Gospel among the pagan Picts and Cymri.  Stone
amulets and stone idols, (if the disputed objects are idols and amulets,)
"have had their day," (as Bob Acres says "Damns have had their day,")
and, with Ailcluith in Scots' hands, "'twas time for us to go" thought
the Picts and Cymri of Langbank and Dumbuck.

Sadly they evacuate their old towers or cairns before the Scots who now
command the Dumbuck ford from Dumbarton.  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.

These old things the evicted Picts and Cymri abandoned, while they
carried with them their more valuable property, their Early Iron axes and
knives, their treasured bits of red "Samian ware," inherited from Roman
times, their amber beads, and the rest of their bibelots, down to the
minutest fragment of pottery.

Or it may not have been so: the conquering Scots may have looted the
cairns, and borne the Pictish cairn-dwellers into captivity.

Looking at any broch, or hill fort, or crannog, the fancy dwells on the
last day of its occupation: the day when the canoe was left to subside
into the mud and decaying vegetable matter of the loch.  In changed
times, in new conditions, the inhabitants move away to houses less damp,
and better equipped with more modern appliances.  I see the little troop,
or perhaps only two natives, cross the causeway, while the Minstrel sings
in Pictish or Welsh a version of

   "The Auld Hoose, the Auld Hoose,
   What though the rooms were sma',
   Wi' six feet o' diameter,
   And a rung gaun through the ha'!"

The tears come to my eyes, as I think of the Last Day of Old Dumbuck,
for, take it as you will, there _was_ a last day of Dumbuck, as of windy
Ilios, and of "Carthage left deserted of the sea."

So ends my little idyllic interlude, and, if I am wrong, blame Venerable
Bede!

XI--MY THEORY OF PROVISIONAL DATE

Provisionally, and for the sake of argument merely, may I suggest that
the occupancy of these sites may be dated by me, about 300-550 A.D.?  That
date is well within the Iron Age: iron had long been known and used in
North Britain.  But to the non-archaeological reader, the terms Stone
Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, are apt to prove misleading.  The early Iron
Age, like the Bronze Age, was familiar with the use of implements of
stone.  In the Scottish crannogs, admirably described by Dr. Munro, in
his _Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings_, were found implements of flint, a
polished stone axe-head, an iron knife at the same lowest level, finger
rings of gold, a forged English coin of the sixth or seventh century
A.D., well-equipped canoes (a common attendant of crannogs), the greater
part of a stone inscribed with concentric circles, a cupped stone, and a
large quartz crystal of the kind which Apaches in North America, and the
Euahlayi tribe in New South Wales, use in crystal gazing.  In early ages,
after the metals had been worked, stone, bronze, and iron were still used
as occasion served, just as the Australian black will now fashion an
implement in "palaeolithic" wise, with a few chips; now will polish a
weapon in "neolithic" fashion; and, again, will chip a fragment of glass
with wonderful delicacy; or will put as good an edge as he can on a piece
of hoop iron.

I venture, then, merely for the sake of argument, to date the origin of
the Clyde sites in the dark years of unrecorded turmoil which preceded
and followed the Roman withdrawal.  The least unpractical way of getting
nearer to their purpose is the careful excavation of a structure of wood
and stone near Eriska, where Prince Charles landed in 1745.  Dr. Munro
has seen and described this site, but is unable to explain it.  Certainly
it cannot be a Corporation cairn.

XII--THE DISPUTED OBJECTS

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.  Dr. Anderson spoke at a
meeting of the Scots Society of Antiquaries, May 14, 1900, when Mr. Bruce
read a paper on Dumbuck, and exhibited the finds.  "With regard to the
relics, he said that there was nothing exceptional in the chronological
horizon of a portion of them from both sites (Dumbuck and Dunbuie), but
as regards another portion, he could find no place for it in any
archaeological series, as it had 'no recognisable affinity with any
objects found anywhere else.'"

"For my part," said Dr. Anderson, (and he has not altered his mind,) "I
do not consider it possible or necessary in the meantime that there
should be a final pronouncement on these questions.  In the absence of
decisive evidence, which time may supply, I prefer to suspend my
judgment--merely placing the suspected objects (as they place themselves)
in the list of things that must wait for further evidence, because they
contradict present experience.  It has often happened that new varieties
of things have been regarded with suspicion on account of their lack of
correspondence with things previously known, and that the lapse of time
has brought corroboration of their genuineness through fresh discoveries.
If time brings no such corroboration, they still remain in their proper
classification as things whose special character has not been confirmed
by archaeological experience."

Sir Arthur Mitchell spoke in the same sense, advising suspension of
judgment, and that we should await the results of fresh explorations both
at Dumbuck and elsewhere. {61}  Dr. Murray said that the disputed finds
"are puzzling, but we need not condemn them because we do not understand
them."  Dr. Munro will not suspend _his_ judgment: the objects, he
declares, are spurious.

XIII--METHOD OF INQUIRY

I remarked, early in this tract, that "with due deference, and with
doubt, I think Dr. Munro's methods capable of modification."  I meant
that I prefer, unlike Dr. Munro in this case, to extend the
archaeological gaze beyond the limits of things already known to occur in
the Scottish area which--by the way--must contain many relics still
unknown.  I

   "Let Observation with extensive view
   Survey mankind from China to Peru,"

to discover whether objects analogous to those under dispute occur
anywhere among early races of the past or present.  This kind of wide
comparison is the method of Anthropology.  Thus Prof. Rhys and others
find so very archaic an institution as the reckoning of descent in the
female line,--inheritance going through the Mother,--among the Picts of
Scotland, and they even find traces of totemism, an institution already
outworn among several of the naked tribes of Australia, who reckon
descent in the male line.

Races do not, in fact, advance on a straight and unbroken highway of
progress.  You find that the Kurnai of Australia are more civilised, as
regards the evolution of the modern Family, than were the Picts who built
crannogs and dug canoes, and cultivated the soil, and had domesticated
animals, and used iron, all of them things that the Kurnai never dreamed
of doing.

As to traces of Totemism in Scotland and Ireland, I am not persuaded by
Professor Rhys that they occur, and are attested by Celtic legends about
the connection of men and kinships with animals, and by personal and
kinship names derived from animals.  The question is very obscure. {63}
But as the topic of Totemism has been introduced, I may say that many of
the mysterious archaic markings on rocks, and decorations of implements,
in other countries, are certainly known to be a kind of shorthand design
of the totem animal.  Thus a circle, whence proceeds a line ending in a
triple fork, represents the raven totem in North America: another design,
to our eyes meaningless, stands for the wolf totem; a third design, a set
of bands on a spear shaft, does duty for the gerfalcon totem, and so on.
{64a}  Equivalent marks, such as spirals, and tracks of emu's feet, occur
on sacred stones found round the graves of Australian blacks on the
Darling River.  They were associated with rites which the oldest blacks
decline to explain.  The markings are understood to be totemic.
Occasionally they are linear, as in Ogam writing. {64b}

Any one who is interested in the subject of the origin, in certain
places, of the patterns, may turn to Mr. Haddon's _Evolution of Art_.
{64c}  Mr. Haddon shows how the Portuguese pattern of horizontal
triangles is, in the art of the uncivilised natives of Brazil, meant to
represent bats. {64d}  A cross, dotted, within a circle, is directly
derived, through several stages, from a representation of an alligator.
{64e}

We cannot say whether or not the same pattern, found at Dumbuck, in
Central Australia, and in tropical America, arose in the "schematising"
of the same object in nature, in all three regions, or not.  Without
direct evidence, we cannot assign a meaning to the patterns.

XIV--THE POSSIBLE MEANINGS OF THE MARKS AND OBJECTS

My private opinion as to the meaning of the archaic marks and the Clyde
objects which bear them, has, in part by my own fault, been misunderstood
by Dr. Munro.  He bases an argument on the idea that I suppose the
disputed "pendants" to have had, in Clydesdale, precisely the same
legendary, customary, and magical significance as the stone churinga of
the Arunta tribe in Australia.  That is not my theory.  Dr. Munro quotes
me, without indicating the source, (which, I learn, is my first letter on
the subject to the _Glasgow Herald_, Jan. 10th, 1899), as saying that the
Clyde objects "are in absolutely startling agreement" with the Arunta
_churinga_. {65}

Doubtless, before I saw the objects, I thus overstated my case, in a
letter to a newspaper, in 1899.  But in my essay originally published in
the _Contemporary Review_, (March 1899,) and reprinted in my book, _Magic
and Religion_, of 1901, {66} I stated my real opinion.  This is a
maturely considered account of my views as they were in 1899-1901, and,
unlike old newspaper correspondence, is easily accessible to the student.
It is _not_ "out of print."  I compared the Australian marks on small
stones and on rock walls, and other "fixtures in the landscape," with the
markings on Scottish boulders, rock walls, cists, and so forth, and also
with the marks on the disputed objects.  I added "the startling analogy
between Australia and old Scottish markings _saute aux yeux_," and I
spoke truth.  Down to the designs which represent footmarks, the analogy
is "startling," is of great interest, and was never before made the
subject of comment.

I said that we could not know whether or not the markings, in Scotland
and Australia, had the same meaning.

As to my opinion, then, namely that we cannot say what is the
significance of an archaic pattern in Scotland, or elsewhere, though we
may know the meaning assigned to it in Central Australia, there can no
longer be any mistake.  I take the blame of having misled Dr. Munro by an
unguarded expression in a letter to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries,
{67} saying that, if the disputed objects were genuine, they implied the
survival, on Clyde, "of a singularly archaic set of ritual and magical
ideas," namely those peculiar to the Arunta and Kaitish tribes of Central
Australia.  But that was a slip of the pen, merely.

This being the case, I need not reply to arguments of Dr. Munro (pp. 248-
250) against an hypothesis which no instructed person could entertain,
beginning with the assumption that from an unknown centre, some people
who held Arunta ideas migrated to Central Australia, and others to the
Clyde.  Nobody supposes that the use of identical or similar patterns,
and of stones of superstitious purpose, implies community of race.  These
things may anywhere be independently evolved, and in different regions
may have quite different meanings, if any; while the use of "charm
stones" or witch stones, is common among savages, and survives, in
England and Scotland, to this day.  The reader will understand that I am
merely applying Mr. E. B. Tylor's method of the study of "survivals in
culture," which all anthropologists have used since the publication of
Mr. Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, thirty-five years ago.

XV--QUESTION OF METHOD CONTINUED

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 Prehistoriques de France et d'Espagne_.
He does not hesitate, as we shall see, to compare peculiar objects found
in France or Spain, with analogous objects of doubtful purpose, found in
America or the Antilles.  M. Cartailhac writes that, to find anything
resembling certain Portuguese "thin plaques of slate in the form of a
crook, or crozier," he "sought through all ethnographic material, ancient
and modern."  He did find the parallels to his Portuguese objects, one
from Gaudeloup, the other either French, or from the Antilles. {69}

Sir John Evans, again, compares British with Australian objects; in fact
the practice is recognised.  I therefore intend to make use of this
comparative method.  On the other hand, Dr. Munro denies that any of my
analogies drawn from remote regions are analogous, and it will be
necessary to try to prove that they are,--that my Australian, American,
Portuguese, and other objects are of the same kind, apparently, as some
of the disputed relics of the Clyde.

If I succeed, one point will be made probable.  Either the Clyde objects
are old, or the modern maker knew much more of archaeology than many of
his critics and used his knowledge to direct his manufacture of spurious
things; or he kept coinciding _accidentally_ with genuine relics of which
he knew nothing.

XVI--MAGIC

Again, I must push my method beyond that of Dr. Munro, by considering the
subject of Magic, in relation to perforated and other stones, whether
inscribed with designs, or uninscribed.  Among the disputed objects are
many such stones, and it is legitimate for me to prove, not only that
they occur in many sites of ancient life, but that their magical uses are
still recognised, or were very recently recognised in the British Folk-
lore of to-day.

A superstition which has certainly endured to the nineteenth century may
obviously have existed among the Picts, or whoever they were, of the
crannog and broch period on Clyde.  The only _a priori_ objection is the
absence of such objects among finds made on British soil, but our
discoveries cannot be exhaustive: time may reveal other examples, and
already we have a few examples, apart from the objects in dispute.

XVII--DISPUTED OBJECTS CLASSIFIED

Dr. Munro classifies the disputed objects as _Weapons_, _Implements_,
"_Amulets_" _or Pendants_, _Cup-and-Ring Stones_, "_Human Figurines or
Idols_."

For reasons of convenience, and because what I heard about group 3, the
"amulets or pendants" first led me into this discussion, I shall here
first examine them.  Dr. Munro reproduces some of them in one plate (xv.
p. 228).  He does not say by what process they are reproduced; merely
naming them . . . "objects of slate and stone from Dumbuck."

Dr. Munro describes the "amulets" or "pendants" thus:

   "The largest group of objects (plate XV.) consists of the so-called
   amulets or pendants of stone, shale, and shell, some fifteen to twenty
   specimens of which have been preserved and recorded as having been
   found on the different stations, viz., three from Dunbuie (exclusive
   of a few perforated oyster shells), eleven from Dumbuck, and one from
   Langbank.  Their ornamentation is chiefly of the cup-and-ring order,
   only a few having patterns composed of straight lines.  Some of them
   are so large as to be unfit to be used as amulets or pendants, such,
   for example, as that represented by no. 14, which is 9 inches long,
   3.5 inches broad, and 0.5 inch thick.  The ornamentation consists of a
   strongly incised line running downwards from the perforation with
   small branch lines directed alternately right and left.  Any human
   being, who would wear this object, either as an ornament or religious
   emblem, would be endowed with the most archaic ideas of decorative art
   known in the history of human civilisation.  Yet we can have no doubt
   that the individual who manufactured it, if he were an inhabitant of
   any of the Clyde sites, was at the same time living in a period not
   devoid of culture, and was in possession of excellent cutting
   implements, most likely of iron, with which he manipulated wood, deer-
   horn, and other substances.  These objects are nearly all perforated,
   as if intended for suspension, but sometimes, in addition to this,
   there is a large central hole around which there is always an
   ornamentation, generally consisting of incised circles or semicircles,
   with divergent lines leading into small hollow points, the so-called
   cup-marks."

I shall return to the theory that the stones were "ornaments"; meanwhile
I proceed to the consideration of "cup-marks" on stones, large or small.

XVIII--CUP MARKS IN CRANNOGS

As to cup marks, or _cupules_, little basins styled also _ecuelles_, now
isolated, now grouped, now separate, now joined by hollowed lines, they
are familiar on rocks, funeral cists, and so forth in Asia, Europe, and
North America (and Australia), as M. Cartailhac remarks in reviewing Dr.
Magni's work on Cupped Rocks near Como. {73a}  "Their meaning escapes
us," says M. Cartailhac.

These cups, or cupules, or _ecuelles_ occur, not only at Dumbuck, but in
association with a Scottish crannog of the Iron age, admirably described
by Dr. Munro himself. {73b}  He found a polished celt, {73c} and a cupped
stone, and he found a fragmentary block of red sandstone, about a foot in
length, inscribed with concentric circles, surrounding a cup.  The
remainder of the stone, with the smaller part of the design, was not
found.

Here, then, we have these archaic patterns and marks on isolated stones,
one of them about 13 inches long, in a genuine Scottish crannog, of the
genuine Iron age, while flint celts also occur, and objects of bronze.
Therefore cup markings, and other archaic markings are not unknown or
suspicious things in a genuine pile structure in Scotland.  Why, then,
suspect them at Dumbuck?  At Dumbuck the cups occur on a triangular block
of sandstone, 14.5 inches long and 4 inches thick.  Another cupped block
is of 21.5 inches by 16.5. {74}

No forger brought these cupped stones in his waistcoat pocket.

We have thus made good the point that an isolated cupped stone, and an
isolated stone inscribed with concentric circles round a cup, do occur in
a crannog containing objects of the stone, bronze, and iron ages.  The
meaning, if any, of these inscribed stones, in the Lochlee crannog, is
unknown.  Many of the disputed objects vary from them in size, while
presenting examples of archaic patterns.  Are they to be rejected because
they vary in size?

We see that the making of this class of decorative patterns, whether they
originally had a recognised meaning; or whether, beginning as mere
decorations, perhaps "schematistic" designs of real objects, they later
had an arbitrary symbolic sense imposed upon them, is familiar to
Australians of to-day, who use, indifferently, stone implements of the
neolithic or of the palaeolithic type.  We also know that "in a remote
corner of tropical America," the rocks are inscribed with patterns
"typically identical with those engraved in the British rocks." {75}
These markings are in the country of the Chiriquis, an extinct
gold-working neolithic people, very considerable artists, especially in
the making of painted ceramics.  The Picts and Scots have left nothing at
all approaching to their pottery work.

These identical patterns, therefore, have been independently evolved in
places most remote in space and in stage of civilisation, while in
Galloway, as I shall show, I have seen some of them scrawled in chalk on
the flag stones in front of cottage doors.  The identity of many Scottish
and Australian patterns is undenied, while I disclaim the opinion that,
in each region, they had the same significance.

I have now established the coincidence between the markings of rocks in
Australia, in tropical America, and in Scotland.  I have shown that such
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.  Their meaning we know not, but probably they were either reckoned
ornamental, or magical, or both.

XIX--PARALLELISM BETWEEN THE DISPUTED OBJECTS AND OTHER OBJECTS ELSEWHERE

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. {77}  In Australia, as on Clyde, the stones bear some of the
archaic markings common on the rock faces both in Scotland and in Central
Australia: on large rocks they are _painted_, in Australia, in Scotland
they are _incised_.  I maintain that there is a singularly strong analogy
between the two sets of circumstances, Scottish and Australian; large
rocks inscribed with archaic designs; smaller stones inscribed with some
of these designs.  Is it not so?  Dr. Munro, on the other hand, asserts
that there is no such parallelism.

But I must point out that there is, to some extent, an admitted
parallelism.  "The familiar designs which served as models to the Clyde
artists"--"plain cups and rings, with or without gutter channels,
spirals, circles, concentric circles, semicircles, horseshoe and harp-
shaped figures, etc.," occur, or a selection of them occurs, both on the
disputed objects, and on the rocks of the hills.  So Dr. Munro truly says
(p. 260).

The same marks, plain cups, cups and rings, spirals, concentric circles,
horseshoes, medial lines with short slanting lines proceeding from them,
like the branches on a larch, or the spine of a fish, occur on the rocks
of the Arunta hills, and also on plaques of stone cherished and called
churinga ("sacred") by the Arunta. {78}  Here is what I call
"parallelism."

Dr. Munro denies this parallelism.

There are, indeed, other parallelisms with markings other than those of
the rocks at Auchentorlie which Dr. Munro regards as the sources of the
faker's inspiration.  Thus, on objects from Dumbuck (Munro, plate XV.
figs, 11 and 12), there are two "signs": one is a straight line,
horizontal, with three shorter lines under it at right angles, the other
a line with four lines under it.  These signs "are very frequent in
Trojan antiquities," and on almost all the "hut urns" found "below the
lava at Marino, near Albano, or on ancient tombs near Corneto."  Whatever
they mean, (and Prof. Sayce finds the former of the two "signs" "as a
Hittite hieroglyph,") I do not know them at Auchentorlie.  After "a
scamper among the surrounding hills," the faker may have passed an
evening with Dr. Schliemann's _Troja_ (1884, pp. 126, 127) and may have
taken a hint from the passages which have just been cited.  Or he may
have cribbed the idea of these archaic markings from Don Manuel de
Gongora y Martinez, his _Antiguedades Pre-historicas de Andalucia_
(Madrid, 1868, p. 65, figures 70, 71).  In these Spanish examples the
marks are, clearly, "schematised" or rudimentary designs of animals, in
origin.  Our faker is a man of reading.  But, _enfin_, the world is full
of just such markings, which may have had one meaning here, another
there, or may have been purely decorative.  "Race" has nothing to do with
the markings.  They are "universally human," though, in some cases, they
may have been transmitted by one to another people.

{ Fig. 5: p80a.jpg}

The reader must decide as to whether I have proved my parallelisms,
denied by Dr. Munro, between the Clyde, Australian, and other markings,
whether on rocks or on smaller stones. {80a}

{ Fig. 6: p80b.jpg}

It suffices me to have tried to prove the parallelism between Australian
and Clyde things, and to record Dr. Munro's denial thereof--"I
unhesitatingly maintain that there is no parallelism whatever between the
two sets of objects." {80b}

{ Fig. 7: p80c.jpg}

XX--UNMARKED CHARM STONES

It must be kept in mind that churinga, "witch stones," "charm stones," or
whatever the smaller stones may be styled, are not necessarily marked
with any pattern.  In Australia, in Portugal, in Russia, in France, in
North America, in Scotland, as we shall see, such stones may be unmarked,
may bear no inscription or pattern. {81}  These are plain magic stones,
such as survive in English peasant superstition.

In Dr. Munro's _Ancient Lake Dwellings of Europe_, plain stone discs,
perforated, do occur, but rarely, and there are few examples of pendants
with cupped marks.  Of these two, as being cupped pendants, might look
like analogues of the disputed Clyde stones, but Dr. Munro, owing to the
subsequent exposure of the "Horn Age" forgeries, now has "a strong
suspicion that he was taken in" by the things. {82a}

To return to Scottish stones.

In Mr. Graham Callander's essay on perforated stones, {82b} he publishes
an uninscribed triangular stone, with a perforation, apparently for
suspension.  This is one of several such Scottish stones, and though we
cannot prove it, may have had a superstitious purpose.  Happily Sir
Walter Scott discovered and describes the magical use to which this kind
of charm stone was put in 1814.  When a person was unwell, in the Orkney
Isles, the people, like many savages, supposed that a wizard had stolen
his heart.  "The parties' friends resort to a cunning man or woman, who
hangs about the [patient's] neck a triangular stone in the shape of a
heart." {82c}  This is a thoroughly well-known savage superstition, the
stealing of the heart, or vital spirit, and its restoration by magic.

This use of triangular or heart-shaped perforated stones was not
inconsistent with the civilisation of the nineteenth century, and, of
course, was not inconsistent with the civilisation of the Picts.  A stone
may have magical purpose, though it bears no markings.  Meanwhile most
churinga, and many of the disputed objects, have archaic markings, which
also occur on rock faces.

XXI--QUALITY OF ART ON THE STONES

Dr. Munro next reproduces two _wooden_ churinga (_churinga irula_), as
being very unlike the Clydesdale objects _in stone_ {84a} (figures 5, 6).
They are: but I was speaking of Australian _churinga nanja_, of _stone_.
A stone churinga {84b} presented, I think, by Mr. Spencer through me to
the Scottish Society of Antiquaries (also reproduced by Dr. Munro), is a
much better piece of work, as I saw when it reached me, than most of the
Clyde things.  "The Clyde amulets are," says Dr. Munro, "neither strictly
oval," (_nor are very many Australian samples_,) "nor well finished, nor
symmetrical, being generally water-worn fragments of shale or clay slate.
. . ."  They thus resemble ancient Red Indian pendants.

As to the art of the patterns, the Australians have a considerable
artistic gift; as Grosse remarks, {85a} while either the Clyde folk had
less, or the modern artists had _not_ "some practical artistic skill."
But Dr. Munro has said that any one with "some practical artistic skill"
could whittle the Clyde objects. {85b}  He also thinks that in one case
they "disclose the hand of one not altogether ignorant of art" (p. 231).

Let me put a crucial question.  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; sometimes his regularities suggest line and
compass.

Now, as to the use of compasses, a small pair were found with Late Celtic
remains, at Lough Crew, and plaques of bone decorated by aid of such
compasses, were also found, {85d} in a cairn of a set adorned with the
archaic markings, cup and ring, concentric circles, medial lines with
shorter lines sloping from them on either side, and a design
representing, apparently, an early mono-cycle!

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.  His motive is
inscrutable: the Australian parallels were unknown to European
science,--but he may have used European analogues.  On the other hand,
while Dr. Munro admits that the early Clyde people might have repeated
the rock decorations "on small objects of slate and shale," he says that
the objects "would have been, even then, as much out of place as
surviving remains of the earlier Scottish civilisation as they are at the
present day." {86}

How can we assert that magic stones, or any such stone objects,
perforated or not, were necessarily incongruous with "the earlier
Scottish civilisation?"  No civilisation, old or new, is incapable of
possessing such stones; even Scotland, as I shall show, can boast two or
three samples, such as the stone of the Keiss broch, a perfect circle,
engraved with what looks like an attempt at a Runic inscription; and
another in a kind of cursive characters.

XXII--SURVIVAL OF MAGIC OF STONES

If "incongruous with the earlier Scottish civilisation" the use of "charm
stones" is not incongruous with the British civilisation of the
nineteenth century.

In the _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries_ (Scot.) (1902-1903, p.
166 _et seq._) Mr. Graham Callander, already cited, devotes a very
careful essay to such perforated stones, circular or triangular, or
otherwise shaped, found in the Garioch.  They are of slate, or "heather
stone," and of various shapes and sizes.  Their original purpose is
unknown.  The perforation, or cup not perforated, is sometimes in the
centre, in a few cases in "near the end."  Mr. Graham Callander heard of
a recent old lady in Roxburghshire, who kept one of these stones, of
irregularly circular shape, behind the door for luck. {88}  "It was
always spoken of as a charm," though its ancient maker may have intended
it for some prosaic practical use.

{ Fig. 8: p88.jpg}

I take the next example that comes to hand.

"Thin flat oolite stones, having a natural perforation, are found in
abundance on the Yorkshire coast.  They are termed "witch stones," and
are tied to door keys, or suspended by a string behind the cottage door,
"to keep witches out." {89}  "A thin flat perforated witch stone,"
answers to an uninscribed Arunta churinga; "a magic thing," and its use
survives in Britain, as in Yorkshire and Roxburghshire.  We know no limit
to the persistence of survival of superstitious things, such as magic
stones.  This is the familiar lesson of Anthropology and of Folk Lore,
and few will now deny the truth of the lesson.

XXIII--MODERN SURVIVAL OF MAGICAL WOOD CHURINGA

I take another example of modern survival in magic.  Dr. Munro, perhaps,
would think wooden churinga, used for magical ends, "incongruous with the
earlier Scottish civilisation."  But such objects have not proved to be
incongruous with the Scottish civilisation of the nineteenth century.

The term _churinga_, "sacred," is used by the Arunta to denote not only
the stone churinga nanja, a local peculiarity of the Arunta and Kaitish,
but also the decorated and widely diffused elongated wooden slats called
"Bull Roarers" by the English.  These are swung at the end of a string,
and produce a whirring roar, supposed to be the voice of a supernormal
being, all over Australia and elsewhere.

I am speaking of _survivals_, and these wooden churinga, at least,
_survive_ in Scotland, and, in Aberdeenshire they are, or were lately
called "thunner spells" or "thunder bolts."  "It was believed that the
use of this instrument during a thunderstorm saved one from being struck
by the thunner bolt."  In North and South America the bull roarer, on the
other hand, is used, not to avert, but magically to produce thunder and
lightning. {91}  Among the Kaitish thunder is caused by the churinga of
their "sky dweller," Atnatu.

Wherever the toy is used for a superstitious purpose, it is, so far,
_churinga_, and, so far, modern Aberdeenshire had the same _churinga
irula_ as the Arunta.  The object was familiar to palaeolithic man.

XXIV--CONCLUSION OF ARGUMENT FROM SURVIVALS IN MAGIC

I have made it perfectly certain that magic stones, "witch stones,"
"charm stones," and that _churinga irula_, wooden magical slats of wood,
exist in Australia and other savage regions, and survive, as magical,
into modern British life.  The point is beyond doubt, and it is beyond
doubt that, in many regions, the stones, and the slats of wood, may be
inscribed with archaic markings, or may be uninscribed.  This will be
proved more fully later.  Thus Pictish, like modern British civilisation,
may assuredly have been familiar with charm stones.  There is no _a
priori_ objection as to the possibility.

Why should Pictish stones _not_ be inscribed with archaic patterns
familiar to the dwellers among inscribed rocks, perhaps themselves the
inscribers of the rocks?  Manifestly there is no _a priori_
improbability.  I have seen the archaic patterns of concentric circles
and fish spines, (or whatever we call the medial line with slanting side
lines,) neatly designed in white on the flag stones in front of cottage
doors in Galloway.  The cottagers dwelt near the rocks with similar
patterns on the estate of Monreith, but are not likely to have copied
them; the patterns, I presume, were mere survivals in tradition.

The Picts, or whoever they were, might assuredly use charm stones, and
the only objection to the idea that they might engrave archaic patterns
on them is the absence of record of similarly inscribed small stones in
Britain.  The custom of using magic stones was not at all incongruous
with the early Pictish civilisation, which retained a form of the Family
now long outworn by the civilisation of the Arunta.  The sole objection
is that _a silentio_, silence of archaeological records as to _inscribed_
small stones.  That is not a closer of discussion, nor is the silence
absolute, as I shall show.

Moreover, the appearance of an unique and previously unheard-of set of
inscribed stones, in a site of the usual broch and crannog period, is not
invariably ascribed to forgery, even by the most orthodox archaeologists.
Thus Sir Francis Terry found unheard-of things, not to mention "a number
of thin flat circular discs of various sizes" in his Caithness brochs.  In
Wester broch "the most remarkable things found" were three egg-shaped
quartzite pearls "having their surface painted with spots in a blackish
or blackish-brown pigment."  He also found a flattish circular disc of
sandstone, inscribed with a duck or other water-fowl, while on one side
was an attempt, apparently, to write runes, on the other an inscription
in unknown cursive characters.  There was a boulder of sandstone with
nine cup marks, and there were more painted pebbles, the ornaments now
resembling ordinary cup marks, now taking the shape of a cross, and now
of lines and other patterns, one of which, on an Arunta rock, is of
unknown meaning, among many of known totemic significance.

Dr. Joseph Anderson compares these to "similar pebbles painted with a red
pigment" which M. Piette found in the cavern of Mas d'Azil, of which the
relics are, in part at least, palaeolithic, or "mesolithic," and of
dateless antiquity.  In _L'Anthropologie_ (Nov. 1894), Mr. Arthur Bernard
Cook suggests that the pebbles of Mas d'Azil may correspond to the stone
churinga nanja of the Arunta; a few of which appear to be painted, not
incised.  I argued, on the contrary, that things of similar appearance,
at Mas d'Azil: in Central Australia: and in Caithness, need not have had
the same meaning and purpose. {95a}

It is only certain that the pebbles of the Caithness brochs are as
absolutely unfamiliar as the inscribed stones of Dumbuck.  But nobody
says that the Caithness painted pebbles are forgeries or modern
fabrications.  Sauce for the Clyde goose is not sauce for the Caithness
gander. {95b}

The use of painted pebbles and of inscribed stones, may have been merely
_local_.

In Australia the stone churinga are now, since 1904, known to be _local_,
confined to the Arunta "nation," and the Kaitish, with very few sporadic
exceptions in adjacent tribes. {95c}

The purely local range of the inscribed stones in Central Australia,
makes one more anxious for further local research in the Clyde district
and south-west coast.

XXV--MY MISADVENTURE WITH THE CHARM STONE

As Dr. Munro introduces the subject, I may draw another example of the
survival of charm stones, from an amusing misadventure of my own.  I was
once entrusted with a charm stone used in the nineteenth century for the
healing of cattle in the Highlands.  An acquaintance of mine, a Mac--- by
the mother's side, inherited this heirloom with the curious box patched
with wicker-work, which was its Ark.  It was exactly of the shape of a
"stone churinga of the Arunta tribe," later reproduced by Messrs. Spencer
and Gillen. {96}  On the surfaces of the ends were faintly traced
concentric rings, that well-known pattern.  I wrote in the _Glasgow
Herald_ that, "_if_ a Neolithic amulet, as it appears to be, it _may_
supply the missing link in my argument," as being not only a magic stone
(which it certainly was), but a magic stone with archaic markings. {97a}
At the British Museum I presently learned the real nature of the object,
to my rueful amusement.  It had been the stone pivot of an old farm-gate,
and, in turning on the upper and nether stones, had acquired the
concentric circular marks.  Not understanding what the thing was, the
Highland maternal ancestors of my friend had for generations used it in
the magical healing of cattle, a very pretty case of "survival."

{ Figs. 9, 10: p96a.jpg}

Writing on October 19th, I explained the facts in a letter to the
_Glasgow Herald_.  A pseudonymous person then averred, in the same
journal, that I had "recently told its readers that I had found the
missing link in the chain that was to bind together the magic stones of
the Arunta and the discs, images, and 'blue points' of the Clyde crannog
man."

{ Fig. 11: p96b.jpg}

I never told any mortal that I had "found the missing link!"  I said that
"_if_" the stone be Neolithic, it "_may_" be the missing link in my
argument.  Dr. Munro prints the pseudonymous letter with approval, but
does not correct the inaccurate statement of the writer. {97b}  Dr.
Munro, I need not say, argues with as much candour as courtesy, and the
omission of the necessary correction is an oversight.

{ Figs. 12, 13: p96c.jpg}

However, here was a survival of the use of charm stones, and I think
that, had the stone been uninscribed (as it was accidentally inscribed
with concentric circles by turning in its stone sockets), my friend's
Highland ancestors might have been less apt to think it a fairy thing,
and use it in cattle healing.

I trust that I have now established my parallelisms.  The archaic
patterns of countries now civilised and of savage countries are assuredly
parallel.  The use of charm stones in civilisation and savagery is
assuredly parallel.  The application to these stones of the archaic
patterns, by a rude race in Clydesdale, familiar with the patterns on
rocks in the district, has in it nothing _a priori_ improbable.

XXVI--EUROPEAN PARALLELS TO THE DISPUTED OBJECTS

I am not so sure as Dr. Munro is that we have not found small perforated
stones, sometimes inscribed with archaic patterns, sometimes plain, even
in Scotland; I shall later mention other places.  For the present I leave
aside the small stone, inscribed with concentric horse-shoes, and found
in a hill-fort near Tarbert (Kintyre), which a friend already spoken of
saw, and of which he drew for me a sketch from memory.  In country houses
any intrinsically valueless object of this kind is apt to fall out of
sight and be lost beyond recovery.

Sir John Evans, however, in his work on _Ancient Stone Implements_, p.
463 (1897), writes: "A pendant, consisting of a flat pear-shaped piece of
shale, 2.5 inches long, and 2 inches broad, and perforated at the narrow
end, was found along with querns, stones with concentric circles, and cup-
shaped indentations worked in them; stone balls, spindle whorls, and an
iron axe-head, in excavating an underground chamber at the Tappock,
Torwood, Stirlingshire.  One face of this pendant was covered with
scratches in a vandyked pattern.  Though of smaller size this seems to
bear some analogy with the flat amulets of schist of which several have
been discovered in Portugal, with one face ornamented in much the same
manner."

For these examples Sir John Evans refers to the _Transactions of the
Ethnological Society_. {100a}

If by "a vandyked pattern," Sir John means, as I suppose, a pattern of
triangles in horizontal lines (such as the Portuguese patterns on stone
plaques), then the elements of this form of decoration appear to have
been not unfamiliar to the designers of "cups and rings."  On the cover
of a stone cist at Carnwath we see inscribed concentric rings, and two
large equilateral triangles, each containing three contingent triangles,
round a square space, uninscribed. {100b}  The photograph of the Tappock
stone (figs. 9, 10), shows that the marks are not of a regular vandyked
pattern, but are rather scribbles, like those on a Portuguese perforated
stone, given by Vasconcellos, and on a Canadian stone pendant, published
by Mr. David Boyle (figs. 12, 13).

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?  One of them seems to me to
have as good a claim to our respectful consideration as the other, and,
like Sir John Evans, I shall now turn to Portugal in search of similar
objects of undisputed authenticity.

XXVII--PORTUGUESE AND OTHER STONE PENDANTS

M. Cartailhac, the very eminent French archaeologist, found not in
Portugal, but in the Cevennes, "plaques of slate, sometimes pierced with
a hole for suspension, usually smaller than those of the Casa da Moura,
not ornamented, _yet certainly analogous with these_." {102a}  These are
also analogous with "engraved plaques of schist found in prehistoric
sites of the Rio Negro," "some resembling, others identical with those
shewn at Lisbon by Carlos Ribeiro."  But the Rio Negro objects appear
doubtful. {102b}

Portugal has many such plaques, some adorned with designs, and some
plain. {102c}  The late Don Estacio da Veiga devotes a chapter to them,
as if they were things peculiar to Portugal, in Europe. {103a}  When they
are decorated the ornament is usually linear; in two cases {103b} lines
incised lead to "cups."  One plaque is certainly meant to represent the
human form.  M. Cartailhac holds that all the plaques with a "vandyked"
pattern in triangles, without faces, "are, none the less, _des
representations stylisees de silhouette humaine_." {103c}

Illustrations give an idea of them (figs. 14, 15, 16); they are more
elaborate than the perforated inscribed plaques of shale or schist from
Dumbuck.  Two perforated stone plaques from Volosova, figured by Dr.
Munro (pp. 78, 79), fall into line with other inscribed plaques from
Portugal.  Of these Russian objects referred to by Dr. Munro, one is (his
fig. 25) a roughly pear-shaped thing in flint, perforated at the thin
end; the other is a formless stone plaque, inscribed with a cross, three
circles, not concentric, and other now meaningless scratches.  It is not
perforated.  Dr. Munro does not dispute the genuine character of many
strange figurines in flint, from Volosova, though the redoubtable M. de
Mortillet denounced them as forgeries; they had the misfortune to
corroborate other Italian finds against which M. de Mortillet had a
grudge.  But Dr. Munro thinks that the two plaques of Volosova may have
been made for sale by knavish boys.  In that case the boys fortuitously
coincided, in their fake, with similar plaques, of undoubted antiquity,
and, in some prehistoric Egyptian stones, occasionally inscribed with
mere wayward scratches.

For these reasons I think the Volosova plaques as genuine as any other
objects from that site, and corroborative, so far, of similar things from
Clyde.

{ Figs. 14, 15: p104.jpg}

To return to Portugal, M. Cartailhac recognises that the _plain_ plaques
of slate from sites in the Cevennes "are certainly analogous" with the
plaques from the Casa da Moura, even when these are elaborately
ornamented with vandyked and other patterns.  I find one published case
of a Portuguese plaque with cups and ducts, as at Dumbuck (fig. 16).
Another example is in _Antiguedades Prehistoricas de Andalucia_, p. 109.
{104}  However, Dr. Munro leaves the Cevennes Andalusian, and Portuguese
plaques out of his argument.

M. Cartailhac, then, found inscribed and perforated slate tablets "very
common in Portugues neolithic sepulchres."  The perforated holes showed
signs of long wear from attachment to something or somebody.  One, from
New Jersey, with two holes, exactly as in the Dunbuie example, was much
akin in ornament to the Portuguese plaques.  One, of slate, was plain, as
plain as "a bit of gas coal with a round hole bored through it," recorded
by Dr. Munro from Ashgrove Loch crannog.  A perforated shale, or slate,
or schist or gas coal plaque, as at Ashgrove Loch, ornamented or plain,
is certainly like another shale schist or slate plaque, plain or
inscribed.  We have shown that these occur in France, Portugal, Russia,
America, and Scotland, not to speak of Central Australia.

My suggestion is that, if the Clyde objects are forged, the forger knew a
good deal of archaeology--knew that perforated inscribed plaques of soft
mineral occurred in many countries--but he did not slavishly imitate the
patterns.

By a pleasant coincidence, at the moment of writing, comes to me the
_Annual Archaeological Report_, 1904, of the Canadian Bureau of
Education, kindly sent by Mr. David Boyle.  He remarks, as to stone
pendants found in Canadian soil, "The forms of what we call pendants
varied greatly, and were probably made to adapt themselves to _the
natural shapes of water-worn stones_. . . ."  This is exactly what Dr.
Munro says about the small stone objects from the three Clyde stations.
"The pendants, amulets, and idols _appear to have been water-worn pieces
of shale or slate_, before they were perforated, decorated, and polished"
(Munro, p. 254).  The forger may have been guided by the ancient Canadian
pendants; that man knows everything!

Mr. Boyle goes on, speaking of the superstitious still surviving instinct
of treasuring such stones, "For some unknown reason, many of us exhibit a
desire to pick up pebbles so marked, and examples of the kind are often
carried as pocket pieces," obviously "for luck."  He gives one case of
such a stone being worn for fifty years as a "watch pendant."  Perforated
stones have always had a "fetishness" attached to them, adds Mr. Boyle.
He then publishes several figures of such stones.  Two of these, with
archaic markings like many in Portugal, and one with an undisputed
analogue from a Scottish site, are reproduced (figs. 12, 13).

It is vain to tell us that the uses of such fetishistic stones are out of
harmony with any civilisation.  The civilisation of the dwellers in the
Clyde sites was not so highly advanced as to reject a superstition which
still survives.  Nor is there any reason why these people should not have
scratched archaic markings on the pebbles as they certainly cut them on
stones in a Scottish crannog of the Iron age.

Dr. Munro agrees with me that rude scribings on shale or slate are found,
of a post-Christian date, at St. Blane's, in Bute. {107}  The art, if art
it can be called, is totally different, of course, from the archaic types
of decoration, but all the things have _this_ in common, that they are
rudely incised on shale or slate.

XXVIII--QUESTION AS TO THE OBJECTS AS ORNAMENTS OF THE PERSON

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,
3.5 inches broad, and 0.5 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.  Churinga, over a foot in length, they tell us, are not usually
perforated; many churinga are not perforated, many are: _but the Arunta
do not know why some are perforated_.  There is a legend that, of old,
men hung up the perforated churinga on the sacred _Nurtunja_ pole: and so
they still have _perforated_ stone churinga, not usually more than a foot
in length. {109}

If Dr. Munro has studied Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, he cannot but know
that churinga are not ornaments, are not all oval, but of many shapes and
sizes, and that churinga larger than the 9 inch perforated stone from
Dumbuck are perforated, and attached to strings.  I cannot tell the
reason why, any better than the Arunta can; and, of course, I cannot know
why the 9 inch stone from Dumbuck (if genuine) was perforated.  But what
I must admire is the amazing luck or learning of Dr. Munro's supposed
impostor.  Not being "a semi-detached idiot" he must have known that no
mortal would sling about his person, as an ornament, a chunk of stone 9
inches long, 3.5 broad, and 0.5 an inch thick.  Dr. Munro himself insists
on the absurdity of supposing that "any human being" would do such a
thing.  Yet the forger drilled a neat hole, as if for a string for
suspension, at the apex of the chunk.  If he knew, before any other human
being in England, that the Arunta do this very thing to some stone
churinga, though seldom to churinga over a foot in length,--and if he
imitated the Arunta custom, the impostor was a very learned impostor.  If
he did _not_ know, he was a very lucky rogue, for the Arunta coincide in
doing the same thing to great stone churinga: without being aware of any
motive for the performance as they never suspend churinga to anything,
though they say that their mythical ancestors did.

The impostor was also well aware of the many perforated stones that exist
in Scotland, not referred to by Dr. Munro.  He perforated some which
could not be worn as ornaments, just as the Arunta do.  We shall find
that the forger, either by dint of wide erudition, or by a startling set
of chance coincidences, keeps on producing objects which are analogous to
genuine relics found in many sites of early life.

This is what makes the forger so interesting.

My theory of the forger is at the opposite pole from the theory of Dr.
Munro.  He says that, "in applying these local designs" (the worldwide
archaic patterns,) to unworked splinters of sandstone and pieces of water-
worn shale and slate, "the manufacturers had evidently not sufficient
archaeological knowledge to realise the significance of the fact that
they were doing what prehistoric man, in this country, is never known to
have done before." {111}

But, (dismissing the Kintyre and Tappock stones,) the "manufacturers" did
know, apparently, that perforated and inscribed, or uninscribed tablets
and plaques of shale and schist and slate and gas coal were found in
America, France, Russia, and Portugal, and imitated these things or
coincided in the process by sheer luck.  The "manufacturers" were,
perhaps, better informed than many of their critics.  But, if the things
are genuine, more may be found by research in the locality.

XXIX--WEAPONS

Dr. Munro is less than kind to the forger in the matter of the "weapons"
found at Dunbuie and Dumbuck.  They are "absolutely worthless as real
weapons," he says, with perfect truth, for they are made of slate or
shale, _not_ of hard stony slate, which many races used to employ for
lack of better material. {112a}

{ Fig. 16: p113a.jpg}

The forger was obviously not thinking of dumping down _serviceable_ sham
weapons.  He could easily have bought as many genuine flint celts and
arrow-heads and knives as he needed, had his aim been to prove his sites
to be neolithic.  So I argued long ago, in a newspaper letter.  Dr. Munro
replies among other things, that "nothing could be easier than to detect
modern imitations of Neolithic relics." {112b}  I said not a word about
"modern imitations."  I said that a forger, anxious to fake a Neolithic
site, "would, of course, drop in a few Neolithic arrow-heads, 'celts' and
so forth," meaning genuine objects, very easily to be procured for money.

{ Figs. 17, 18: p113b.jpg}

As the forger did not adopt a device so easy, so obvious, and so
difficult of detection, (if he purchased Scottish flint implements) his
aim was not to fake a Neolithic site.  He put in, not well-known genuine
Neolithic things, but things of a character with which some of his
critics were not familiar, yet which have analogues elsewhere.

Why did he do that?

As to the blunt decorated slate weapons, the forger did not mean, I
think, to pass off these as practicable arms of the Neolithic period.
These he could easily have bought from the dealers.  What he intended to
dump down were not practical weapons, but, in one case at least, _armes
d'apparat_, as French archaeologists call them, weapons of show or
ceremony.

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, figured 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_.  Perhaps such stone _armes d'apparat_, or magical or sacred
arms, were not unknown, as survivals, in Scotland in the Iron Age.  A
"celt" or stone axe-head of this kind, ornamented with a pattern of inter-