The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

PLATE V.

Frontispiece.

Daniel Wilson, Del^t.

William Douglas, Sculp^t.

THE HUNTERSTON RUNIC BROOCH

Published by Sutherland & Knox Edin^r.

THE ARCHÆOLOGY
AND
PREHISTORIC ANNALS OF SCOTLAND.

BY

DANIEL WILSON

HONORARY SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND.

"There is in the world no kind of knowledge whereby any part of Truth is seen, but we justly account it precious; yea, that principal Truth, in comparison of which all other knowledge is vile, may receive from it some kind of light."—Hooker.

EDINBURGH
SUTHERLAND AND KNOX, GEORGE STREET.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.
AND J. H. PARKER.

MDCCCLI.

EDINBURGH: T. CONSTABLE, PRINTER TO HER MAJESTY.

TO THE MOST HONOURABLE
THE MARQUESS OF BREADALBANE, Kt.,
PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF SCOTLAND.

My Lord Marquess,

In presenting to my fellow-countrymen a Work devoted to the elucidation of their National Antiquities, and to the recovery of the earliest traces of Scottish arts and civilisation, I esteem it a high gratification to be permitted to dedicate it to a Scotsman, not more noble by hereditary rank and social position, than by the virtues with which he adorns his high station.

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

I have the honour to be,

My Lord Marquess,

Your Lordship's most obedient Servant,

DANIEL WILSON.

Edinburgh, January 1851.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PREFACE.

The zeal for Archæological investigation which has recently manifested itself in nearly every country of Europe, has been traced, not without reason, to the impulse which proceeded from Abbotsford. Though such is not exactly the source which we might expect to give birth to the transition from profitless dilettantism to the intelligent spirit of scientific investigation, yet it is unquestionable that Sir Walter Scott was the first of modern writers "to teach all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and others, till so taught,—that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled by living men."[1] If, however, the impulse to the pursuit of Archæology as a science be thus traceable to our own country, neither Scotland nor England can lay claim to the merit of having been the first to recognise its true character, or to develop its fruits. The spirit of antiquarianism has not, indeed, slumbered among us. It has taken form in Roxburgh, Bannatyne, Abbotsford, and other literary Clubs, producing valuable results for the use of the historian, but limiting its range within the Medieval era, and abandoning to isolated labourers that ampler field of research which embraces the prehistoric period of nations, and belongs not to literature but to the science of Nature. It was not till continental Archæologists had shewn what legitimate induction is capable of, that those of Britain were content to forsake laborious trifling, and associate themselves with renewed energy of purpose to establish the study on its true footing as an indispensable link in the circle of the sciences.

Amid the increasing zeal for the advancement of knowledge, the time appears to have at length come for the thorough elucidation of Primeval Archæology as an element in the history of man. The British Association, expressly constituted for the purpose of giving a stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific inquiry, embraced within its original scheme no provision for the encouragement of those investigations which most directly tend to throw light on the origin and progress of the human race. Physical archæology was indeed admissible, in so far as it dealt with the extinct fauna of the palæontologist; but it was practically pronounced to be without the scientific pale whenever it touched on that portion of the archæology of the globe which comprehends the history of the race of human beings to which we ourselves belong. A delusive hope was indeed raised by the publication in the first volume of the Transactions of the Association, of one memoir on the contributions afforded by physical and philological researches to the history of the human species,—but the ethnologist was doomed to disappointment. During several annual meetings, elaborate and valuable memoirs, prepared on various questions relating to this important branch of knowledge, and to the primeval population of the British Isles, were returned to their authors without being read. This pregnant fact has excited little notice hitherto; but when the scientific history of the first half of the nineteenth century shall come to be reviewed by those who succeed us, and reap the fruits of such advancement as we now aim at, it will not be overlooked as an evidence of the exoteric character of much of the overestimated science of the age. Through the persevering zeal of a few resolute men of distinguished ability, ethnology was at length afforded a partial footing among the recognised sciences, and at the meeting of the Association to be held at Ipswich in 1851, it will for the first time take its place as a distinct section of British Science.

It has fared otherwise with Archæology. Rejected in its first appeal for a place among the sister sciences, its promoters felt themselves under no necessity to court a share in popular favour which they could readily command, and we have accordingly its annual congresses altogether apart from those of the associated sciences. Archæology, however, has suffered from the isolation; while it cannot but be sooner or later felt to be an inconsistency at once anomalous and pregnant with evil, which recognises as a legitimate branch of British science, the study of the human species, by means both of physiological and philological investigation, but altogether excludes the equally direct evidence which Archæology supplies. It rests, however, with the archæologist to assert for his own study its just place among the essential elements of scientific induction, and to shew that it not only furnishes valuable auxiliary truth in aid of physiological and philological comparisons, but that it adds distinct psychological indices by no other means attainable, and yields the most trustworthy, if not the sole evidence in relation to extinct branches of the human family, the history of which possesses a peculiar national and personal interest for us.

Meanwhile the close relations which subsist between the researches of the ethnologist and the archæologist, and the perfect unity of their aims, have been recognised by Nillson, Eschricht, and other distinguished men in various countries; and while the two sciences have advanced together, in harmony and with mutual advantage, Scandinavian archæologists have given an impetus to the study of Primitive Antiquities, which has already done much to establish its value as the indispensable basis of all written history. The facilities afforded to the Scandinavian archæologist by the purity of his primitive remains, and the freedom of his ethnographic chronicles from those violent intercalations of foreign elements which render both the ethnology and the historical antiquities of Central Europe so complicated and difficult of solution, peculiarly fitted him for originating a comprehensive yet well-defined system. The comparatively recent close of the Scandinavian primitive periods has preserved in a more complete form those evidences by which we recover the knowledge of the first rude colonists of Europe, whose records are distorted and nearly effaced within the wide pale of Roman sway. The isolation, moreover, of these northern kingdoms preserved them from being the mere highway of the first Asiatic nomades. Whatever traces of early wanderers they retain are well-defined, so that to them we may look for clear and satisfactory evidence in illustration of one portion at least of the primal north-western tide of migration from which the origin of all European history dates. It chances, however, from various accidental causes, that the revival of archæological research in Britain, influenced by canons directly supplied from Scandinavian sources, has a tendency to authenticate some of the most favourite errors of older British antiquaries. Based, as nearly all antiquarian pursuits in this country have heretofore been, on classical learning, it has been accepted as an almost indisputable truth, that, with the exception of the mysteriously learned Druid priests, the Britons prior to the Roman Period were mere painted savages. Hence, while the artless relics of our primeval Stone Period were generally assigned to native workmanship, whatever evinced any remarkable traces of skill distinct from the well-defined Roman art, was assumed of necessity to have a foreign origin, and was usually ascribed to the Danes. The invariable adoption of the latter term in preference to that of Norwegians or Norsemen, shews how completely Scottish and Irish antiquaries have abandoned themselves to the influence of English literature, even where the appropriation of its dogmas was opposed to well-known historical facts. The name of Dane has in fact for centuries been one of those convenient words which so often take the place of ideas and save the trouble and inconvenience of reasoning. Yet this theory of a Danish origin for nearly all native arts, though adopted without investigation, and fostered in defiance of evidence, has long ceased to be a mere popular error. It pervades both the Scottish and English Archæologiæ, and the great majority of works on every department of British antiquities, and has till recently proved a perpetual stumblingblock to the Irish antiquary. It is, moreover, a cumulative error,—certain Scottish relics, for example, found in Argyleshire, as well as others in the Isle of Man, being assumed in the Archæologia Scotica to be Scandinavian,[2] an able writer in the Transactions of the Cambridge Camden Society, taking these assumptions as indisputable facts, employs them in proving that other equally undoubted native works of art are also Scandinavian.[3] So, too, a writer in the Archæologia Scotica, ascribing a similar origin to the monolithic structures of the Orkney and Shetland Islands,[4] is quoted by Danish antiquaries[5] as referring to an established truth, and as proving, accordingly, that similar structures in the Hebrides are also the work of the Northmen! Pennant, Chalmers, Barry, Macculloch, Scott, Hibbert, and a host of other writers might be quoted to shew how this theory, like a snow-ball, gathers as it rolls, taking up indiscriminately whatever chances to lie in its erratic course. Even the poets have lent their aid to propagate the same prevalent error. Cowper, for example,—no uneducated or superficial writer,—thus strangely postdates Britain's birth-time:—

"Now borne upon the wings of truth sublime,
Review thy dim original and prime,—
This island, spot of unreclaimed rude earth,
The cradle that received thee at thy birth,
Was rocked by many a rough Norwegian blast,
And Danish howlings scared thee as they past."[6]

Similar examples of the influence of this predominant theory might be multiplied from the most diverse sources; nor are even the recently established archæological periodicals free from it. It is obvious, therefore, that such opinions must be sifted to the utmost, and either established or got rid of before any efficient progress can be made in British Archæology. In Scotland this theory is much more comprehensive in its effects than in England, where the Anglo-Saxon element is recognised as the predominating source of later changes; and now that the character of genuine Roman antiquities is well ascertained, nearly the whole of our native relics have latterly been assigned to a Scandinavian origin. It is altogether unnecessary, I trust, to disclaim any petty spirit of national jealousy in the rigorous investigation of such theories which will be found pursued in the following pages. The error is for the most part of native growth; but whencesoever it be derived, truth is the end which the archæologist has in view; and the enlightened spirit in which the researches of the Northern antiquaries have already been pursued, is the best guarantee that they will not be less ready to co-operate in overturning error than in establishing truth. It is not a mere question between Northman or Dane and Celt or Saxon. It involves the entire chronology of the prehistoric British periods, and so long as it remains unsettled any consistent arrangement of our archæological data into a historical sequence is impossible.

The following work, embracing within its plan such a comprehensive scheme of Scottish Archæology as has not been hitherto attempted, has been undertaken under the conviction that this science is the key to great truths which have yet to be reached, and that its importance will hereafter be recognised in a way little dreamt of by those students of kindred sciences, who, while busied in investigating the traces of older but inferior orders of being, can discern only the objects of an aimless curiosity in relics pertaining to the human species. That such, however, should still be the case, is far more the fault of the antiquary than of the student of other sciences. It is his misfortune that his most recondite pursuits are peculiarly exposed to the laborious idling of the mere dabblers in science, so that they alternately assume to the uninterested observer the aspect of frivolous pastime and of solemn trifling. I cannot but think that a direct union with the associated sciences, and an incorporation especially with the kindred researches of the ethnologist, while it might, perchance, give some of its present admirers a distaste for the severer and more restricted study, would largely contribute to its real advancement, and free its truly zealous students from many popular trammels which at present cumber its progress. Meanwhile the archæologist may derive some hope from the remembrance that astronomy was once astrology; that chemistry was long mere alchemy; that geology has only in our own day ceased to be a branch of unreasoning antiquarianism; and that ethnology has scarcely yet passed the jealously guarded porch, as the youngest of all the recognised band of sister sciences.

In nothing is the want of the intelligent cooperation of the kindred sciences which bear on the study of antiquities more apparent than in the present state of our public collections. The British Museum contains the elements of a collection which, if arranged ethnographically and chronologically, would form the most valuable school of popular instruction that Government could establish; and no other country rests under the same manifest duty to form a complete ethnological museum as Britain: with her hundred colonies, and her tribes of subject aborigines in every quarter of the globe, losing their individuality where they escape extinction, by absorption and assimilation to their European masters. Were an entire quadrangular range of apartments in the British Museum devoted to a continuous systematic arrangement, the visitor should pass from the ethnographic rooms, shewing man as he is still found in the primitive savage state, and destitute of the metallurgic arts; thence to the relics of the Stone Period, not of Britain or Europe only; but also of Asia, Africa, and America, including the remarkable primitive traces which even Egypt discloses. To this would then fitly succeed the old monuments of Egyptian civilisation, the Nimrud marbles, the sculptures of India, and all the other evidences of early Asiatic arts. The Archaic Greek and Colonial works should come after these, followed by the master-pieces of the age of Pericles, and these again by the monuments of imperial Rome. Thus by a natural sequence we return to British remains: the Anglo-Roman relics piecing on like a new chapter of European history, at the point where our island first appears as a part of the old Roman world, and followed in succession by our native Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Norman, and Medieval antiquities. The materials for all this, if we except the primitive British relics, are already acquired; and while to the thousands who annually throng the Museum, in idle and profitless wonder, this would at once convert into intelligible history, what must now be to the vast majority of visitors a confused assortment of nearly meaningless relics, even the most profound scholar might derive from it information and pleasure, such as would amply repay the labour of re-arrangement. The immense practical value of collections to the archæologist renders their proper arrangement a matter of grave importance, and one which cannot be allowed to rest in its present extremely imperfect state.[7]

In Scotland no national collection exists, though a small body of zealous men have struggled to maintain an Archæological Museum in the Scottish capital for the last seventy years, in defiance of obstacles of the most harassing nature. Not the least of these is the enforcement of the law of treasure-trove, by which all objects of the precious metals are held to be the property of the Crown. Notwithstanding the earnest zeal for the preservation of national relics which has actuated both Sir Henry Jardine and John Henderson, Esq., the late and present Crown and Lord Treasurer's Remembrancers for Scotland, and the liberal construction of the law by its administrators, as shewn in their offer of full value for all objects of the precious metals which may be delivered up to them, its operation has constantly impeded researches into the evidences of primitive art, and in many cases has occasioned the destruction of very valuable relics.

In a letter on this subject with which I have been favoured by the distinguished Danish antiquary, Mr. J. J. A. Worsaae, he remarks: "In Denmark, in former times, all hidden treasures, when found, belonged to the king. They were called Danefa. The finder had to give them up to the Crown without any remuneration. The effect of this was that very few or no antiquities of gold or silver were preserved for the Museum, [of Northern Antiquities at Copenhagen,] as the finders secretly sold the antiquities. For the purpose of putting an end to this, a law was passed in the middle of last century, in which the king declared himself willing to give the full value to the finders, and in some cases still more than the value; but, at the same time, he ordered all such things to be given up to the public museums, and in case of concealment the finders were to be tried and punished.

"This law is still in operation. It is the rule that the finder, in the strictest sense of the word, gets the remuneration, as the king—the real owner—has renounced his rights to him. The owner of the soil only gets the value if he has ordered a servant expressly to dig for any such thing, or, of course, if he is the finder himself. This has proved most effective. Another measure which has secured a good many objects for the Museum is the payment of the finder as soon as possible. Poor people, as the finders generally are, do not like to wait for money. They get easily anxious, and prefer to sell the things for a smaller price, if they only get the money without delay. It has now come to this here, that very few antiquities of gold or silver are lost. The peasants and workmen are perfectly well aware that they get more for the things dug up, at the Museum in Copenhagen, than in the shop of a goldsmith. This has been effected by publication in the almanacs, newspapers, &c., of the payments given to finders of valuable antiquities."

Some of the wretched fruits of the different system still pursued in this country are referred to in the following pages;[8] yet with the earnest desire of the officers of the Scottish Exchequer, to whom the enforcement of the present law is committed, to avert, if possible, the destructive consequences which it has heretofore operated to produce, it is manifest that nothing more is needed than to adopt the essential practical feature in the Danish plan, which gives the actual finder the sole claim to reward, and also holds him responsible and liable to punishment. Until this indispensable change is effected, the Scottish archæologist must continue to deplore the annual destruction of national treasures, not less valuable to the historian than the chartularies which are being rescued with so much labour and cost from their long-neglected repositories.

In attempting to arrange the elements of a system of Scottish Archæology, as a means towards the elucidation of prehistoric annals, I have had frequently to regret the want of any national collection adequate to the object in view. That the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland is one of considerable value must I think be apparent, even from the materials it has furnished for this volume. Some private collections, it will be seen, add a few more to the rescued waifs of Scottish national antiquities; but the result of an extensive correspondence carried on with a view to obtain the necessary facts which no books at present supply, has forced on me the conviction that, even within the last dozen years, such a number of valuable objects have been destroyed as would alone have formed an important nucleus for a complete Archæological Museum. The new Statistical Accounts, along with some periodicals and other recently published works, contain references to discoveries made within that period in nearly every district of Scotland. From these I selected upwards of two hundred of the most interesting and valuable examples, and the result of a laborious correspondence is, the establishment of the fact that scarcely five per cent. of the whole can now be ascertained to be in existence. Some have been lost or broken; some thrown away, sold, or stolen,—which in the case of objects of the precious metals involves their absolute destruction; in other cases, the proprietors themselves have disappeared—gone to India, America, Australia, or no one knows where. Of the few that remain, the jealous fear which the operation of the present law of treasure-trove excites has rendered a portion inaccessible, so that a sufficiently meagre handful of so prominent a harvest was left to be reaped.

When it is considered that in Scotland we have no such treasuries of the facts on which an archæological system must be built, as the Archæologia, the Vetusta Monumenta, the Nenia Britannica, the Ancient Wiltshire, and a host of other works supply to the English antiquary, I have a right to expect that some forbearance be shewn in contrasting this first attempt at a comprehensive treatment of the subject, with the works which other countries possess. I do not desire to offer it to the reader with an apology, or to seek to deprecate criticism by setting forth in array a host of difficulties surmounted or succumbed to. It has been the work of such leisure time as could be snatched from less congenial but engrossing pursuits, and will probably be found to contain some recurrence to the same ideas, to which a writer is liable when only able to take up his theme at intervals, and to pursue it amid repeated interruptions. Nevertheless, I have aimed at treating the subject as one which I esteem a worthy one ought to be treated, and if unsuccessful, it is not for want of the zeal which earnest enthusiasm commands. Some new ground I believe has been broken in the search after truth, and as a pioneer I am fully prepared to see my footsteps erased by those who follow me. It will be found, however, that truth is the goal which has been aimed at; and if it be but as a glimmering that light appears, it is well, so that its streaks are in the east, and the clouds which begin to break make way before the dawn.

It only remains for me to acknowledge some of the many favours received in the progress of the Work; though it is impossible to mention all to whose liberality I have been indebted during the extensive correspondence into which I was led while collecting needful materials for substantiating the positions assumed in the following argument. The want of such resources as in other countries supply to the Archæologist the means of constructing a system based on trustworthy evidence, has compelled me to draw largely on the courtesy of private collectors; and with very few exceptions, the cordial response returned to my applications has rendered the otherwise irksome task a source of pleasure, and even in some cases the beginning of valued friendships.

The Council of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland have afforded the utmost facilities in regard to their important national collection, and have accorded to me an equal freedom in the use of the extensive correspondence preserved in their Library, from which it will be found that some curious information has been recovered, not otherwise attainable. From my fellow Associates in the Society I have also received the most hearty sympathy and cooperation. To the kind services of Sir James Ramsay, Bart., I am indebted for obtaining from Lady Menzies one of the beautiful gold relics figured in the work. To my friend Professor J. Y. Simpson, M.D., I owe the contribution of one of the illustrations, and to Albert Way, Esq., and George Seton, Esq., others of the woodcuts, presented to me as the expression of their interest in my labours; while I have to thank my friend James Drummond, Esq., A.R.S.A., for drawings from his faithful pencil of several of the examples of ancient Scottish arms, as well as of other relics figured in the work. The many obligations I owe to the freedom with which Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., has long permitted me to avail myself of the treasures of his extensive collection, will appear in some degree from the use made of them in the following pages; while John Bell, Esq. of Dungannon, has obviated the difficulties which would have prevented my turning his no less valuable archæological treasures to account, by forwarding to me drawings and descriptions, from which some portions of this work derive their chief interest. Others of the objects selected for illustration are from the collection of W. B. Johnstone, Esq., R.S.A., the whole rare and costly contents of which have been placed completely at my disposal.

Nor must I omit to acknowledge the kind assistance I have received in various ways from David Laing, Esq., William B. D. D. Turnbull, Esq., W. H. Fotheringham, Esq., the Rev., James Mather, J. M. Mitchell, Esq., William Marshall, Esq., as well as from other Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

The Council of the Archæological Institute, with a liberality altogether spontaneous, offered, in the most gratifying and flattering terms of cordial sympathy with the object of my work, the beautiful series of engravings of the Norrie's Law silver relics, which illustrate the account of that remarkable discovery.

The Council of the British Archæological Association have placed me under similar obligations in regard to the woodcuts which illustrate the sepulchral discoveries at Pier-o-waal in Orkney.

To Sir George Clerk, Bart., I owe the privilege of access to the valuable and highly interesting collection of British and Roman antiquities at Penicuick House, formed by the eminent Scottish antiquary Sir John Clerk.

The very great obligations I am under to Lieutenant F. W. L. Thomas, R.N., are repeatedly noticed in the following pages, though in no degree adequately to the generosity with which the knowledge acquired by him during his professional exploration of the Orkney Islands, while engaged in the Admiralty Survey, has been placed at my disposal.

I have also to acknowledge the contribution of valuable information from my friend Professor Munch of Christiania, and from George Petrie, Esq. of Kirkwall; as well as kind services rendered me in various ways by Charles Roach Smith, Esq., J. C. Brown, Esq., William Nelson, Esq., by my indefatigable friend and correspondent, John Buchanan, Esq. of Glasgow, and others referred to in the course of the work.

My special thanks are due to Robert Hunter, of Hunterston, Esq., for his courteous liberality in forwarding to me the valuable Scottish relic found on his estate—engraved as the frontispiece to this volume—after I had despaired of making anything of its remarkable Runic inscription from various copies obligingly furnished. Whatever opinion may be formed as to the value of the interpretation of its inscription offered here, the archæologist and philologist may both place the utmost reliance on the fidelity of the engraved fac-simile of this interesting monument of the palæography, and, as I believe also, of the language of our ancestors. Besides putting into the engraver's hands a carefully executed drawing, he had the advantage of having the brooch itself before him while engraving it; after which I went over the copy in his presence, comparing it letter by letter, and checking the minutest deviations from the original. It is justly remarked in the "Guide to Northern Archæology," that "in copying Runic inscriptions great accuracy is required; for a point, a small, scarcely perceptible line, changes the value of the letter, or occasionally adds a letter, which may easily escape notice." When, however, it is added that "one of the best helps in copying Runic, and indeed all other inscriptions, is a knowledge of the language in which they are written," I am inclined to question its strict justice. Most authors, I believe, who have had any experience of the matter, would much prefer a compositor entirely ignorant of the language for setting up Latin, or any foreign tongue, at least to one short of being a perfect master of it. Where there is the total absence of knowledge of it, the imagination is entirely at rest; and the patient copying of letter after letter ensures the accuracy which often surprises the young author when revising his first proofs. Even so I would, in most cases, place more faith in the version of an inscription by an engraver accustomed to accurate copying, though entirely ignorant of the language, than in that of the ablest philologist, with his head full of speculations as to its meaning. A direct example in point is found in the Cardonell or "Thorkelin" print of the Ruthwell inscriptions, where the Scottish antiquary has given a more faithful version of the Runic than of the Latin legends. Notwithstanding the extravagant flights which Professor Finn Magnusen permitted his imagination to take relative to the supposed personages named on the Hunterston brooch, little blame can attach to him for having missed its true meaning with nothing but imperfect copies to guide him; but the fact that this inscription should have been copied from the original brooch by two Scandinavian scholars familiar with the Runic alphabet, without either of them detecting the name Maolfridi, so palpably engraved on it, proves how completely, though unconsciously, they were blinded by their knowledge of the old Norse language, and their belief that it must contain the word Dalkr, a brooch. The recognition, indeed, of this proper name proved to me the key to the whole inscription, as it immediately suggested the probability of the ᛚᚴ of former translators in the first line being also an ᛉ, and so led to a new and intelligible reading of the remainder. The word dìol, which I have rendered according to its significance as a substantive, is also employed as the verb to avenge. One Gaelic scholar to whom I shewed the inscription, accordingly suggested as a more characteristic old Celtic interpretation of the Runes: O Malbritha, thou friend, avenge Malfridi! "The difference," he adds, "between the ancient and modern orthography is not greater than frequently exists between the present spelling of familiar terms, as written or pronounced in two contiguous Highland districts."

It is a customary conclusion to a preface to crave the forbearance of the reader for all faults and shortcomings: the which, as readers and critics make an equally general custom of paying no attention to it, may as well be omitted. I can only say, that while writing this work with an honest and earnest desire for the discovery of truth, I have done it no less under the conviction that anything I could now set forth on the subject must be modified by more extended observations, and superseded, ere long, by works of a more complete character.

Edinburgh, January 1851.

Lightward aspire: nor think the utmost height
Of an attainable success is won;
Nor even that the mighty spirits, gone
With the bright past, in their enduring flight
So won their passage toward the infinite,
That they may stand on their far heights alone,
A distant glory, dazzling to the sight,
In which all hope of mastery is o'erthrown.
No height of daring is so high, but higher
The earnest soul may yet find grace to climb;
Truth springeth out of truth; the loftiest flyer,
That soareth on the sweep of thought sublime,
Resteth at length; and still beyond doth guess
Truth infinite as God toward which to press.

SCOTTISH ARCHÆOLOGY.

INTRODUCTION.

"Large are the treasures of oblivion. Much more is buried in silence than recorded; and the largest volumes are but epitomes of what hath been. The account of Time began with night, and darkness still attendeth it."—Sir Thomas Browne.

History which is derived from written materials must necessarily begin only where civilisation has advanced to so ripe a state, that the songs of the bard, and the traditions of the priest, have ceased to satisfy the cravings of the human mind for mastery over the past and the future. It has been too generally assumed that history is an inconceivable thing independent of written materials. Historians have accordingly, with a transient and incredulous glance at the fabulous infancy of nations, been too frequently content to leave their annals imperfect and maimed of those chapters that should record the deeply interesting story of their origin and rise. This mode of dealing with history is happily no longer sanctioned by the example of the ablest of its modern investigators. They are at length learning to analyze the myths which their predecessors rejected; and the results have already rewarded their toil, though much still remains obscure, or utterly unknown.

Gifted with an inspired pen, Moses has recorded in briefest words the story of the world's infancy: that, therefore, is rendered independent of myth or fable. But quitting that single illuminated spot, how shall the investigator recover the annals of our race during the dubious interval between the era of the dispersion of the human family and the earliest contribution of written materials? Job, we know, was no Hebrew, but a man of Uz, in the land to which Edom succeeded. Could we fix his era, it would be of interest; for we know that he lived in a literate age; and his desire against his adversary was, that he had written a Book! But Biblical students are disagreed as to this epoch. A recent German critic brings it down to the period of the Exodus, while the great majority of commentators have heretofore placed it some 700 years nearer Creation. We must, meanwhile, be content to receive this as one pregnant scene of primitive social life incorporated into the Book of Books, while all the rest are swallowed up with the old centuries to which they belonged. It has to be intercalated as best may be, into its place in the first chapters of human history, ere we grope our way onward or backward, seeking amid the darkness for that historic oasis—the first establishment of the human race on the banks of the Nile.

Wilkinson places the era of Menes, the founder of Egyptian monarchy, and probably one of the earliest wanderers from the eastern cradle of our race, some 2200 years B.C. Bunsen, aiming, in his "Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte," at fixing the exact year, assigns that of 3643 B.C., or, in other words, 1295 years before the commonly accepted era of the Deluge. Yet even this has not satisfied all the requisites of newly discovered data. Fleury, in his "L'Egypte Pharaonique," carries back the Menean age some 1600 years farther into the past; and Böckh, following out an independent series of investigations, fixes the same era, in his "Manetho und die Hundssternperiode," for the year B.C. 5702. The world's early historic chronology, it is now universally admitted, has been misinterpreted. The last date is just 1698 years before the creation of the world, if we are still implicitly to accept Archbishop Usher for our guide. But even this it is possible may yet be revised, as too scanty for the events which it must comprehend; unless, following the example of one distinguished archæologist, Mr. S. Sharpe, we consign all Egyptian history prior to the era of Osirtesen I. to the same order of fabulous or mythic inventions as the crude traditions of our own chroniclers, and esteem Menes as no more than the classic Saturnus, or the Scandinavian Odin. It is not our province here to do more than indicate the fact, that all early chronology is liable to correction by the contributions of new truths, its most accredited data being at best only approximations to the desired end. "Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been: to be found in the register of God, not in the records of men. Twenty-seven names make up the first story before the Flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day; and who knows when was the Equinox?"[9]

Similar necessities and difficulties meet us when we would investigate the beginnings of younger nations. The oldest intelligible inscription known in Scotland is that graven in Anglo-Saxon Runes on the Ruthwell Cross, Dumfriesshire, and dating not earlier than the ninth century. The oldest written historic documents are probably the charters of Duncan, engrossed about the year 1035, and still preserved among the muniments of Durham Cathedral. Prior to these the Romans furnish some few scanty notes concerning the barbarian Picti. The Irish annalists contribute brief but valuable additions. The northern sagas, it is now certain, contain a still richer store of early historic notes, which the antiquaries of Copenhagen are busily digesting for us into available materials. Yet, after all these are ransacked, what shall we make of the long era which intervenes between the dispersion of the human family and the peopling of the British Isles? When did the first rude prow touch our shores?—who were its daring crew? Whence did language, manners, nationality, civilisation, and letters spring? All these are questions of the deepest interest; but on nearly all of them history is as silent as on the annals of Chaos. With reverential piety, or with restless inquisitiveness, we seek to know somewhat of the rude forefathers of our island race. Nor need we despair of unveiling somewhat of the mystery of their remote era, though no undeciphered hieroglyphics, nor written materials, preserve one solitary record of the Menes of the British Isles.

Human intelligence and research have already accomplished so much, that ignorance alone can presume to resign any past event to utter oblivion. Between "the Beginning," spoken of in the first verse of the Book called Genesis, and the creation of man, the most humble and devout of Biblical students now acknowledge the intervention of ages, compared to which the whole era of our race is but as the progression of the shadow one degree on the dial of time. Our whole written materials concerning all these ages are comprehended in the few introductory words of the Mosaic narrative, and for well-nigh 6000 years no more was known. But all the while their history lay in legible characters around these generations who heeded them not, or read them wrong. At length this history is being deciphered. The geologist has mastered the characters, and page after page of the old interleaved annals of preadamite existence are being reduced to our enchorial text—to the writing of the people. The dislocated strata are being paged, as it were, and re-arranged in their primary order. The palimpsests are being noted, and their double readings transferred to their correct places in the revised history. The whole accumulations of these ages between Chaos and man are, in fact, being dealt with by modern science much in the same way as the bibliographer treats some monkish or collegiate library suddenly rescued from the dust and confusion of centuries.

Returning to the same book of Moses, called Genesis, we find in it another record of things since the Beginning, thus noted in a passing parenthesis of the sacred narrative: "And God made the stars also." Very brief words; yet these are all our written materials about worlds and suns so filling the azure vault, that the astronomer, scarcely conscious of using figurative language, speaks of nebulous spaces as powdered with stars. Science has added somewhat to our knowledge of these also, without written annals. The Chaldean shepherds, who had never travelled beyond the central plain of Asia, where we recognise the cradle-land of the human race, began the work of unriddling these mysterious records. Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler, added largely, with unassisted vision, to the accumulated observations of astronomy. Galileo supplied a new key that unlocked many secret stores. Huygens, Newton, Herschel, Dollond, Lord Rosse, have each given us others wherewith many more are being opened. Astronomy and geology have both accomplished much, and have yet to accomplish far more ere their scattered leaves can be bound up, or their thousand lacunæ filled in. Nevertheless, histories, it seems, may be based on other than written materials—may, indeed, be all the more sure and incontrovertible because their evidence is traceable to no such doubtful records.

It is in curious consistency with human nature that we find the order of its investigations in the inverse ratio of their relation to itself. In the infancy of our race men studied the stars, bringing to the aid of their human sympathies the fancies of the astrologer to fill the void which Astronomy could not satisfy. The earth had grown older, and its patriarchal age was long past, when Cosmogony and Geology had their rise. Now at length when the studies of many generations have furnished materials for Astronomy, and the history of the earth's crust is being patiently unravelled by numerous independent labourers, some students of the past have inquired if the annals of our own race may not also be recoverable. Men with zeal no less earnest than that which has done so much for Astronomy and Geology, have found that this also lay around the older generations, recorded in characters no less intelligible, and containing the history of beings no less interesting to us than the Saurians or Mammoths, to whose inheritance we have succeeded. Bacon has remarked, in treating of the vicissitudes of things,[10] "The great winding-sheets that bury all things in oblivion, are two—deluges and earthquakes." But the weft of our historic winding-sheet is of a feebler texture, and its unnoted folds envelop an ampler oblivion, which also will yield secrets worth the knowing. Not a day passes that some fact is not stored in that strange treasury, some of them wittingly, but far more unwittingly, as the chronicles of man. To decipher these and to apply them as the elements of a new historic chronometry, are the legitimate ends of Archæology.

Slowly and grudgingly is its true position conceded to the study of the archæologist. The world has had its laugh at him, not always without reason. The antiquary, indeed, in our own day, has taken the first of the laugh himself, feeling that it was not unmerited, so long as he was the mere gatherer of shreds from the tattered and waste leaves of the past. Now, however, when these same shreds are being pieced together and read anew, it is found that they well repay the labours both of collector and decipherer. But Archæology is yet in its infancy. Little more has been done for it than to accumulate and classify a few isolated facts. We are indeed only learning the meaning of the several characters in which its records are engrossed.

The history of one of the oldest and most faithfully studied branches of the science, may afford an example, as well as encouraging assurance, for the whole. In 1636 the learned Jesuit, Father Kirchner, published his "Œdipus Ægyptiacus," a ponderous treatise on Egyptian hieroglyphics, completed in six folios, containing abundance of learning, and no lack of confident assurance, but never a word of truth in the whole. It is a fair specimen of the labours of hieroglyphic students down to the year 1799, when M. Bouchard, a French officer of Engineers, in digging the foundation of Fort St. Julien, on the western bank of the Nile, between Rosetta and the sea, discovered a mutilated block of black basalt, containing three versions of one inscription graven in the year B.C. 196, or 1995 years prior to its discovery. Inscribed in this late era of hieroglyphic literature, Epiphanes, whose accession it records, had decreed it to be graven not only in the hieroglyphic or sacred characters, but also in the enchorial or popular Egyptian writing, and in the Greek character and language. Here then seemed to be the long-coveted key to the mysterious records of Egypt. Casts of it were taken, fac-similes engraved and distributed throughout Europe; and expectation, roused to the utmost pitch of excitement, paused for a reply. But eighteen years elapsed before Dr. Thomas Young, one of the greatest scholars of his age, mastered the riddle of the key, established beyond doubt the alphabetic use of hieroglyphics, and demonstrated the phonetic value of five of its characters. It seems, perhaps, a small result for so long a period of study, during which the attention of many of the first scholars of Europe had been directed to the critical investigation of the inscriptions of the Rosetta stone, and the comparison of their diverse characters. Nevertheless it was the insertion of the point of the wedge. All that followed was easy in comparison with it. What has since been accomplished by the scholars of Europe in this old field of archæological investigation, where they dealt with written though unread materials, is now being attempted for the whole compass of its legitimate operations by a similar union of learning and zeal, and Archæology at length claims its just rank among the inductive sciences.

The visitor to the British Museum passes through galleries containing fossil relics of the secondary and tertiary geological periods—the gigantic evidences of former life, the tropical fauna of the carboniferous system, and all the organic and inorganic proofs by which we are guided in investigating the physical changes, and classifying the extinct beings, that pertained to the older world of which they speak. Thence he proceeds to galleries filled with the inscribed sarcophagi and obelisks, the votive tablets, the sculptured altars, deities, or historic decorations of Assyria, Egypt, India, Greece, and Rome, relics which belong no less to extinct, though newer systems and orders of being. "The antiquities," says an eminent geologist, when instituting a nearly similar comparison, "piece on in natural sequence to the geology; and it seems but rational to indulge in the same sort of reasonings regarding them. They are the fossils of an extinct order of things newer than the tertiary; of an extinct race, of an extinct religion, of a state of society and a class of enterprises which the world saw once, but which it will never see again; and with but little assistance from the direct testimony of history, one has to grope one's way along this comparatively modern formation, guided chiefly, as in the more ancient deposits, by the clue of circumstantial evidence."[11] Such are the reflections of an intelligent geologist, suggested by a similar combination of geological and historic relics to that which offers itself to the visitor of our great National Museum. But it is even in a more absolute sense than the geologist dreams of that the antiquities piece on to the geology, and show the researches of the archæologist to follow up the closing data of the older systems without a pause. He labours to build up that most important of all the branches of palæontology which pertains to ethnological investigations, and which when brought to maturity will be found not less valuable as an element in the elucidation of the history of nations and of mankind, than the grammatical construction and the affiliations of languages, which the ethnologist now chiefly favours. The archæologist applies to the accumulated facts of his own science the same process of inductive reasoning which the geologist has already employed with such success in investigating still earlier states of being. Both deal with unwritten history, and aim at the recovery of annals long deemed irretrievably erased. Nor is it merely in a parallelism of process, or a continuity of subject, that the affinity is traceable between them. It will be found that they meet on common ground, and dispute the heirship of some of old Time's bequests. The detritus records archæological as well as geological facts. The more recent alluvial strata are the legitimate property of both; while above these lie the evidences of still later changes on the earth's surface—the debris of successive ages, the buried ruins, the entombed works of art, and "the heaps of reedy clay, into which chambered cities melt in their mortality"[12]—the undisputed heirlooms of the archæologist. The younger science treats, it is true, of recent periods, when compared with the eras of geological computation, and of a race newer than any of those whose organic remains are classified in the systems into which the strata of the earth's crust have been grouped. But this race which last of all has peopled the globe, once teeming with living beings so strangely diverse from all that now inhabit it, is the race of man, whose history embraces nobler records, and has claims to a deeper interest for us than the most wonderful of all the extinct monsters that once

"Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood."

Among the recent contributors to archæological science, the Danish antiquaries have surpassed all others in the value and extent of their researches. Occupying as they do a comparatively isolated seat of early northern civilisation, where the relics of the primeval and secondary archæological periods escaped to a great extent the disturbing influences of Roman invasion, they possess many facilities for its study. Notwithstanding this, however, the mute but eloquent relics of antiquity which abound there, excited, until a very recent period, even less notice than they have done among the archæologists of Ireland and Scotland, where also aboriginal traces have been little modified by the invading legions, whose memorials nearly superseded all others in the southern part of the British Isle. The Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, held the chief power among the races of the remote north in early times. Rome scarcely interfered with their growing strength, and left their wild mythology and poetic traditions and myths untinctured by the artificial creed which grew up amid the luxurious scepticism of the conquerors of the world. When the flood-tide of the legionary invaders had given back, and left the scenes of their brief occupation like the waste lands of a forsaken shore, the Scandinavians were the first to step into their deserted conquests. Fearlessly navigating seas where no Roman galley dared to have sailed, the Scandinavian warriors conquered the coasts of the Baltic and the German Ocean, occupied many parts of the British Isles, and especially established permanent settlements in the north of Scotland, and the isles on its northern and western coasts. Their power was felt on the shores of France and Spain, and they retaliated even on Italy the unavenged wrongs of the north. America was visited and partially occupied by them fully three centuries before Columbus steered his venturous course across the Atlantic. Greenland was colonized by them, and Iceland became the central point in their system of maritime operations. In that remote island the old northern language still lives, dialects of which were anciently spoken among the Scandinavian races, including the Anglo-Saxons of the south, and the Norsemen of the Scottish mainland and the Northern Isles.

Enduring traces of these hardy colonists still remain to furnish evidence of the source of much of our national character and hereditary customs. The religion of the Angles, the Saxons, the Scottish Norsemen, the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Scandinavians, was similar. Christianity, which supplanted so much else, could not root out the memorials of their wild creed, which preserve in the names of the days of the week those of Tyr, Woden, Thur, and Frea, favourite deities of the Scandinavian mythology. In Iceland a large portion of the literature of this northern race still survives, in the form of mythic songs, sagas, laws, and other historic treasures. To this the attention of Danish and Norwegian antiquaries is now devoted with untiring enthusiasm, and already we are possessed of some of its fruits. These are of immense value to all the nations allied to the common stock, and among them Scotland ranks more directly than any other portion of the British Isles. The promised contribution by the antiquaries of Copenhagen to the written materials of history, of the "Antiquitates Britannicæ et Hibernicæ," cannot fail to add a historic era to early Scottish annals, richer in suggestive interest even than the romantic chronicles of the long lost "Vinland," by which, in their "Antiquitates Americanæ," they have added three centuries to the history of the new world.

A mingled race now occupies Britain, diverse in name, and still distinct in blood. The names of England and Scotland, however, contradict the character of the races. While the natives of the South retain the name of Angul, the father of the Scandinavian colonists, long since nearly superseded by Germano-Teutonic races, the Celtic Highlanders, and the Lowlanders of the North, alike take that of the Irish Scoti, the conquerors of the older Celtæ; though there is not wanting evidence to show, that the peculiar characteristics of the hardy Lowland race, including those of the whole north-eastern mainland, and the Northern Isles, are chiefly derived from the mingled Norse and Saxon blood of a Teutonic ancestry. But older races than the Scandinavian Vikings were colonists of the British Isles. Christianity has failed to obliterate the traces of the creed of Woden. Still less influential have been the modifications of Teutonic and Scandinavian dialects in supplanting the older Celtic names which cling to every hill, valley, and stream, though the Celtic race has, for nearly eight centuries, ceased to occupy aught but the north-western Highlands of Wales and Scotland. The ethnologist has yet to solve the problem as to whether there exist not among these traces of still older tongues, pertaining to races who have left other but no less certain memorials of their former presence. From the remotest era to which historical tradition points, the Celtæ are found in possession of the north-west of Europe, whither they appear to have been gradually driven, by successive migrations of younger races from the same eastern centre, to which we refer the origin of the whole human family. We can trace, by unmistakable indications, the gradual western migration of this people, until we find them hemmed in between the younger races and the sea, on the north-west coasts of France, and along the mountainous regions of the west in the British Isles, where the invaders of the more fertile regions of the low countries have not cared to follow them. Modern philologists discover a clear affinity between the Celtic dialects and the languages known by the general title of Indo-European, affording confirmation of that eastern origin assigned to them, both by tradition and history, but which is no less true of the newer races which supplanted them. The essential differences between these remain markedly distinguishable after centuries of peaceful intercourse, and a common interchange of rights and privileges. The Scottish Gael, though by no means to be now regarded as sprung from a pure Celtic stock, scarcely differs more widely in language than in moral and intellectual characteristics from the race that peoples the fertile Lowlands. Yet the names of the most remarkable Lowland localities prove their possession by a Celtic race, whom therefore we cannot doubt to have been the prior, if not the aboriginal, occupants of the soil.

Of late years the direct evidence of the character of the primitive races of Europe, furnished by their sepulchral remains, has been made the subject of careful investigation by distinguished ethnologists, both of Denmark and Sweden. Eschricht, Nillson, and Retzius, have all aimed by this means to recover the traces of the colonists of the north of Europe, and have discovered different physical types, apparently corresponding to the successive stages of advancement in civilisation, which the more direct archæological evidence establishes. Arguing from these results, Professor Nillson arrives at the conclusion that the northern relics of the Stone Period are not the memorials of the Celtæ, but of a much older and unknown race, which in the course of time has disappeared before the immigration of more powerful nations. Similar ideas are now generally gaining ground among ethnologists. "Within their own pale," Dr. Latham remarks, "the Celts were the encroaching family of the oldest, the Romans of the next oldest, and the Anglo-Saxons and Slavonians of the recent periods of history."[13] On like grounds to those by which Professor Nillson arrives at the conclusion that the Celtæ were preceded in the north by other races, Danish and Swedish ethnologists concur in rejecting the idea of the Fins having been the aboriginal race of Scandinavia. The earliest people, whose remains are found accompanied with the primitive class of implements, prior to the introduction of metals, appear to have belonged to a family of different physical character from those of any of the Arian races, and have been supposed to present features of greater affinity to the nations of Northern Asia. Professor Nillson, who has carefully examined the skeletons of the aboriginal Swedish colonists, and especially noted the conformation of their crania, states that they are readily distinguished from all the subsequent inhabitants of Scandinavia. They present the same peculiar form of cranium which has been recognised as existing among several ancient peoples, such as the Iberians or Basques of the Pyrenees, the Lapps and Samoyedes, and the Pelasgi, some traces of whom are still found in Greece.[14] The last noted coincidence is of considerable interest, both from the ancient prevalence there of cyclopean architecture, and other traces of primitive arts of unknown antiquity, and also from its vicinity to the Asiatic centre of aboriginal emigration. Dr. Latham remarks, in reply to the question, "Is there reason to believe that any definite stock or division of our species has become either wholly extinct, or so incorporated as to be virtually beyond the recognition and analysis of the investigator? With the vast majority of the so-called extinct stocks, this is not the case; e.g., it is not the case with the old Gauls of Gallia, who, though no longer extant, have extant congeners—the Welsh and Gaels. To an extinction of this kind among the better known historic nations of Europe and Asia, the nearest approach is to be found in the history of the Pelasgi."[15] It will be of no slight interest if we can trace the congeners of this ancient people among the extinct aborigines of the north of Europe.

Two later races are supposed to have succeeded each other in Scandinavia prior to its colonization by the true Swea race, the first settlement of which in Scandinavia Professor Nillson assigns to a much more recent date than has been commonly supposed—probably some time in the sixth century. Mr. Worsaae justly remarks, in his "Primeval Antiquities of Denmark,"—"It is a vain error to assume that certain races must incontestably be the most ancient, because they are the first which are mentioned in the few and uncertain written records which we possess."[16] Unfortunately extremely little attention has been hitherto paid to the size and form of the crania found in British tumuli. Some few examples, however, have been preserved, and will furnish the elements of a brief inquiry into this interesting department of Physical Archæology, in a subsequent chapter. To this branch of evidence it is probable that much greater importance will be attached when it has been thoroughly investigated, since to it we may look, with considerable confidence, for a distinct reply to the inquiry, which other departments of archæological evidence suggest as to the existence of primitive races in Britain prior to the Celtæ. So far as our present limited data admit of general conclusions being drawn, we find traces of more than one race, differing greatly in physical characteristics from any of the successive colonists of Britain within the era of authentic history. Professor Nillson is of opinion that the type of the old Celtic cranium is intermediate to the true dolicho-kephalic and brachy-kephalic forms, a conclusion in which Dr. Thurnam and others concur. Such is not the form of cranium of either of the races of the Scottish tumuli, and in so far, therefore, as such forms may be assumed to be permanent, we are necessarily led to the conclusion, that in these we recover traces of the Allophylian pioneers of the human family in Britain.

The infancy of all written history is necessarily involved in fable. Long ere the scattered families have conjoined their patriarchal unions into tribes and clans, acknowledging some common chief, and submitting their differences to the rude legislation of the arch-priest or civil head of the commonwealth, treacherous tradition has converted the story of their birth into the wildest admixture of myth and legendary fable. To unravel the complicated skein, and recover the pure thread divested of all its extraneous acquisitions, is the impossible task of the historian. This period past—so momentous in the influence it exercises on all the years that follow—the historian finds himself among materials more manageable in some respects, though not always more trustworthy. He reaches the era of chronicles, records, and, still better, of diplomas, charters, deeds of gift, and the like honest documents, which being written with no thought of posterity by their compilers, are the only really trustworthy chronicles that posterity has inherited. This historic epoch of Scotland is involved in even more obscurity than that which clouds the dim and fabulous morning of most nations. We have indeed the few but invaluable allusions of Roman authors supplying important and generally trustworthy data. But it is only a momentary glimpse of sunshine. For the era succeeding we have little better than the perplexing admixture of traditions, facts, and pious legends of monkish chroniclers, furnished with a copiousness sufficiently characteristic of the contrast between the literary legionary of imperial Rome, and the cloistered soldier of her papal successor. Amid these dusty acres of parchment must we glean for older dynasties and monarchical pedigrees—not seldom tempted to abandon the weedy furrows in disgust or despair. It is with no lack of zeal or courage, however, that these soldiers of the Church have encountered the oblivious past into which we still peer with no less resolute inquisitiveness. Bede, Fordun, Wyntoun, Boece, and the other penmen of the cloisters who, more or less accurately, chronicled contemporary history, all contributed their quota to the thick mists of fable which obscure the earlier annals of the country. Wyntoun, the best of our Scottish chroniclers, following the example of other monkish historians, begins his work as near the beginning as may be, with a treatise on angels, before proceeding to "manny's fyrst creatoune!" In the sixth chapter he gets the length of "Ye Arke of Noe, and of the Spate," and after treating of Ynde, Egype, Afryk, and many other lands with an enviable and leisurely composure, he at length reaches the threshold of his legitimate subject, and glances, in the thirteenth chapter of his Scottish Chronicles, at "how Bretanne and Irlande lyis." This, however, is a mere passing notice; nor is it till after the dedication of many more successive chapters of his first five books to the general history of the world, that the author of the "Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland" quits his ample theme, and devotes himself exclusively to the professed object of his investigation, with only such occasional deviations as might be expected from an ecclesiastical historian.

With such laborious chroniclers peering into the past, which lay fully five centuries nearer them than it does to us, there might seem little left for the men of this older generation to do. But unhappily the very best of monkish chroniclers must be consulted with caution even as contemporary historians, and scarcely at all as the recorders of what passed any length of time prior to their own day; their information being nearly as trustworthy in regard to Noah and his spate, as to the traditions of generations immediately preceding their own. Lord Hailes begins his annals with the accession of Malcolm Canmore, "because the history of Scotland previous to that period is involved in obscurity and fable." Tytler, with even less courage than Lord Hailes, commences only at the accession of Alexander the Third, "because it is at this period that our national annals become particularly interesting to the general reader."

Till recently, the never-failing apology for all obscurities and deficiencies in Scottish history, has been the rape of our muniments by Edward and Cromwell. The former spoliation supplied for some centuries an excuse for all degrees of ignorance, inconsistencies, or palpable blunders; and the latter came most conveniently to hand for more recent dalliers in the same pleasant field of historic rambling. Edward and Cromwell both contributed a helping hand to the obscurity of Scottish history, in so far as they carried off and destroyed national records which could ill be spared. The apology, however, has been worth far more to maundering manufacturers of history than the lost muniments were ever likely to have proved. Not a few of these irrecoverable national records, so long deplored, it begins to be shrewdly suspected, never had any existence. Many more of them, it is found, were not sought for, or they might have been discovered to have never left their old repositories. Diligent Scottish antiquaries, finding this hereditary wail over lost muniments a very profitless task, have of late years betaken themselves to the study of what remained, and have been rewarded by the recovery of chest-loads of dusty charters and deeds of all sorts, of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, containing mines of historic information. The Scottish chartularies, now printed by various Clubs of literary antiquaries, disclose to us information scarcely open to a doubt, concerning old laws, feudal customs, servitude, tenure of property, ecclesiastical corporate rights, the collision of lay and clerical interests, and the final transference of monastic lands to lay proprietors. The old apology, therefore, of muniments lost or destroyed, will no longer serve the Scottish historian. Imperfectly as these treasures have yet been turned to account, medieval history is no longer obscure. Many fallacies are already exploded, and many more must speedily follow. The legends of the old chroniclers must be tried by the tests of documents written sometimes by the same authors, but with no thought that history would ever question them for the truth.

Yet ample as is the field thus open to the literary antiquary, these will only partially satisfy earnest longings after a knowledge of the past, and a clue to the old ancestral chain whereof they are but the middle links. Ritson has already carried back the supposed limits of authentic Caledonian history fully a thousand years before the obscurity that daunted Lord Hailes. Chalmers, Gregory, Skene, and other zealous investigators, have followed or emulated him in the same bold inquiry. But neither do they reach the BEGINNING which we still desiderate. Much obscurity indeed vanishes. We begin to discover that the Northern and Southern Picts, so long the subject of mystery and fable, were no other than the aboriginal Celtæ; while the Scots who founded the kingdom of Dalriada, in Argyleshire, and ultimately conferred their name on the whole races occupying ancient Caledonia, were probably, if not indeed certainly, only another branch of the same Celtic race, who so readily amalgamated with the older occupants of Caledonia, that the change which is known as the "Scottish Conquest" long puzzled the historian, from the absence of any defined traces of a progress at all commensurate with its results. This is somewhat gained on the medieval beginning which could alone be previously held tenable. But this also begins in the wake of much progression, and glances at a period which likewise had its old history full of no less interest to us, could its annals be recovered.

In one of the few records of Sir Isaac Newton's reflections which he has left for the help of others, the following comprehensive thought occurs:—"It is clearly apparent that the inhabitants of this world are of a short date, seeing that all arts, as letters, ships, printing, needle, &c., were discovered within the memory of history." The reflection is surely a very pregnant one. The data it suggests to us as the landmarks of time are well worth extending and turning to account, if so be that with their aid we can arrive at some trustworthy system of chronology, whereby to travel back towards that date which we reckon to be the beginning of things.

In this inquiry the labours of the literary antiquary, however zealously pursued, will but little avail us in reaching the desired point. The antiquary, nevertheless, has been long familiar with the elements of this older history, though turning them to very much the same profitable account as, till a very recent period, he did the hieroglyphic records graven on the granite tablets along the Nile. The first of arts mentioned by Newton is letters; justly first in point of dignity and universal value. Far homelier arts, however, sufficed the primitive races of mankind. Humble were their wants, and limited their desires; and if we are justified by the records of creation preserved to us in the Mosaic narrative, in assuming that man, beginning with the woven garment of fig-leaves and the coat of skins, has slowly progressed through successive stages to the knowledge of nobler arts, and the higher wants of an intelligent being, then we have only to establish evidence of the most primitive arts, pertaining to the primeval race, in order to be assured that we have reached the true beginning at which we aim. In the general investigation, indeed, allowance must be made for the speedy loss of antediluvian metallurgic arts which would follow almost of necessity on the exodus of the primitive nomades from their Eastern birthland, though preserved perhaps by the founders of the first Asiatic kingdoms, and probably practised by the earliest colonists of the Nile valley. Such at least we shall find to have been the case with the primeval colonists of Britain.

This point it is at which the modern archæologist now directs his inquiries, not altogether without the anticipation that these same primitive arts, the product of the beginning of things, may also prove to contain a decipherable alphabet, which may be resolved into definite phonetics, and furnish the key to many inscriptions no less curious and valuable than the parchments of medieval charter-chests, or even the tablet of Abydos and the Rosetta Stone.

It is long since the evidences of a primitive state of society, still abounding in the midst of modern civilisation, attracted the attention of the antiquary. It was indeed almost a necessary consequence of the accumulation of large collections of antiquities. The private hoards of "nick nackets,"—including in general a miscellaneous assortment of relics of all ages, only sufficient to produce a confused notion of useless or obsolete arts, without creating a definite idea of any single era of the past,—may be aptly compared to the disjecta membra of some beautifully-proportioned and decorated vase. Hoarded apart, the pieces are nearly without value, and to new possessors become even meaningless. But should the whole, by some fortunate chance, be re-assembled in a single collection, it becomes possible for a skilful manipulator to piece the fragments together, and replace them with an elegant and valuable work of art. Thus it has proved with more than one archæological museum. In 1780 the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was established, and its collection of national antiquities begun. A brief but most suggestive paper, read at one of its meetings in 1782, and published in the first volume of its Transactions, shews the speedy results of such valuable reconstructions, by means of an intelligent comparison of the primitive relics of Scotland.[17] But the resources of private zeal proved inadequate to the effective pursuit of these researches into Scottish Archæology, and the national funds found other, though not always more valuable objects for their expenditure. The hint was lost, but the accumulation of materials for future students was happily not altogether abandoned.

"About forty years ago," says J. J. A. Worsaae, the eminent Danish antiquary, writing in 1846, "the general character of scientific pursuits was in our country (Denmark) much the same as in most other parts of Europe. Great pains were spent in collecting all sorts of objects illustrating the changes of the globe upon which we live, and the distribution and habits of animals and plants—in short, all the departments of Natural History; whilst, strange to say, people for the most part neglected traces of men, the remains not only of their own ancestors, but also of all the different races who have been spread over the world. The antiquities, with the exception of those of Roman and Greek origin, were regarded as mere curiosities, without any scientific value."[18] Notwithstanding all the zeal of British archæologists of late years, so much of this spirit still remains among us, that it would be easier, perhaps, even now, to secure the purchase by the Trustees of the British Museum, of a Roman statue or an Egyptian tablet, than of valuable relics of British antiquity.

One man has within the last thirty years accomplished, not for Denmark only, but for Europe, what the whole united labours of earlier archæologists failed to do. About the year 1815, the present Danish Councillor of State, C. J. Thomsen, the son of a merchant of Copenhagen, was appointed Secretary of a Royal Commission for the preservation and collection of national antiquities. It had then been in existence some seven or eight years, and the whole result of its labours was a few miscellaneous articles, unclassified and uncared for, lying in a small room of the University Library. His enthusiasm in the study of the antiquities of his country surmounted all obstacles. He had to contend alike with the theories of the scholar and the prejudices of the unlearned. But he had succeeded to a position of the utmost value to a man of energy and enthusiasm. From the first he had grants (though exceedingly small ones) of public money at his disposal. He soon enlisted the more important element of public sympathy, and nationality of feeling, in his pursuits. His little room became too small for accumulating purchases and donations. A suite of apartments was yielded, at his intercession, in the Royal Palace of Christiansborg; and as the varied collection increased in his hands, he found himself possessed at once of the space and the elements for systematic classification.

The Royal Museum of Northern Antiquities of Copenhagen now numbers between three and four thousand specimens of stone weapons and implements, some hundreds of bronze swords, celts, spear-heads, armillæ, torcs, &c., and a collection of native gold and silver relics unequalled in all the museums of Europe. To it we owe the valuable suggestion of the system of classification now universally adopted in the nomenclature of archæological science—the Stone, Bronze, and Iron periods, which, simple as it may appear, was first suggested by Mr. Thomsen, and is justly esteemed the foundation of Archæology as a science. By means of it the whole materials of antiquarian study at once arrange themselves according to an intelligible chronology of universal acceptance, and adapted in an especial degree to Northern antiquities. This, therefore, is the system on which the following data are arranged, subject only to such modifications as seem naturally to arise from national or local peculiarities.

It is not necessary here to enter on the question, of curious interest and value, as to whether the primeval state of man was essentially one of barbarism, from whence he progressed by slow degrees to social union, arts, civilisation, and political organisation into communities and nations. The investigations of chronologists the further they are pursued, seem only the more certainly to confer on primitive civilisation a more remote antiquity. At the same time, they confirm the idea, that the long accepted chronology of Archbishop Usher, still attached to our English Bibles, cheats the world, at the lowest computation, of fully 1400 years of its existence—a trifle perhaps in the age of worlds, but no unimportant element in the history of human civilisation, when we remember that between the era of the Mosaic deluge and the accession of the Egyptian Menes, we must account for the peopling of Egypt, the establishment of its social and political constitution, and the founding of a civilisation, the monuments of which are still among the most wonderful that human intellect and labour have produced. Not the least important branch of this inquiry relates to the primeval inhabitants of our own quarter of the globe; of whom as yet we know only with any degree of certainty of the Celtæ, occupying a transitional place in the history of the human family—at once the earliest known intruders and the latest nomades of Europe. It seems probable, from all the traces we can recover of the original condition of this race, that it was more their deficiency than their excess in the energy which we expect to find in the colonists of new regions, that drove them onward in their north-western pilgrimage, until their course was arrested by the Atlantic barriers. They seem to have fled ever forward, like night before the dawn, carrying with them knowledge sufficient to cope with the savage occupants of the wilds they invaded, yet bearing into these few arts but such as still pertain to the primitive races of mankind. In older literary notices of this people, whose language, manners, and arts are still traceable in our own land, we have only a secondary interest, believing that some records of them are recoverable, noted for us long before they had excited foreign interest. But, still more, we doubt not that similar records also preserve the history of older British tribes, in comparison with which the ancient Celtæ must be regarded as of recent origin. "The antiquities of the earlier periods," says a distinguished English antiquary, "including all remains which bear no evident stamp of Roman origin or influence, claim our most careful investigation. Exceedingly limited in variety of types, these vestiges of the ancient inhabitants of Great Britain are not more interesting to the antiquarian collector on account of their rarity, than valuable to the historian. They supply the only positive evidence in those obscure ages, regarding customs, warfare, foreign invasions, or the influence of commerce, and the advance of civilisation amongst the earliest races by which these islands were peopled."[19] Perhaps when we have bestowed on these primitive remains the degree of careful investigation which they merit, we shall find the variety of types less limited than is now conceived to be the case. The archæologists of Denmark justly value the absence of all relics of Roman art and civilisation, from the confidence it has given to their researches into the true eras to which their own primeval antiquities belong. Such gratulations, however, can only be of temporary avail. The influence of Roman arts and arms furnishes an element in the civilisation of modern Europe too important not to be worthy of the most careful study. When the distinctive characteristics of Roman and primitive art have been so satisfactorily established as to admit of their separate classification without risk of error or confusion, the British collections, with their ample store of Anglo-Roman relics, will furnish a far more comprehensive demonstration of national history than those northern galleries, which must remain destitute of any native examples of an influence no less abundantly visible in their literature and arts, than in that of nations which received it directly from the source. In this respect the Scottish antiquary is peculiarly fortunate in the field of observation he occupies. While he possesses the legionary inscriptions, the sepulchral tablets, the sculptures, pottery, and other native products of Roman colonists or invaders, he has also an extensive and strictly defined field for the study of primitive antiquities, almost as perfectly free from the disturbing elements of foreign art as the most secluded regions of ancient Scandinavia.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Carlyle's Miscellanies, second edition, vol. v. p. 301.

[2] Archæol. Scot., vol. ii. p. 506; vol. iv. p. 119.

[3] Trans. Camb. Camden Soc., vol. i. pp. 76, 91, 176.

[4] Archæol. Scot, vol. iii. p. 103.

[5] Report by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen, 1836, p. 61.

[6] Expostulation.

[7] I should regret if I were thought, by the above remarks, to reflect on the present official staff of the British Museum, including as it does men no less distinguished for their learning than for their intelligent zeal for archæological investigation. One evil attendant on the present defective system of management of the Museum by a body of Trustees, composed, for the most part, of irresponsible ex officio members, is, that the Keepers are converted into mere custodiers, responsible for the safety of the collection, but altogether destitute of the powers of an efficient curatorship, such as in the hands of Councillor C. J. Thomsen of Copenhagen led to the development of the entire system which has given to Archæology the character of a science. Wherever the fault lies, however, it is indisputable that the departments of ethnography and antiquities, in the British Museum, are arranged almost without an attempt at systematic classification: one consequence of which is, that in nearly every town of any importance throughout the kingdom we see local museums established, containing a confused jumble of antiquities, natural history, and foreign curiosities, but without any single characteristic of a scientific collection. The present popular idea of a museum, in this country, differs, indeed, in no degree, from the estimate of an exhibition of giants and dwarfs, or any other vulgar show; nor is this grave error likely to be discarded till the great model museum in London sets the example of a systematic arrangement, devised on some other principle than that of merely pleasing the eye.

[8] One instance, though by no means a solitary one in my own experience, will suffice to shew the pernicious effects of this antiquated relic of feudal claims, even in impeding research. Some considerable space is devoted, in the last section of this volume, to Runic relics; but one of considerable interest is omitted to be noticed,—a bronze finger ring inscribed in Anglo-Saxon Runes with the word Æikhi, probably the name of the original owner. It was found in the Abbey Park, St. Andrews. But its possessor, a gentleman of considerable antiquarian zeal, refused to permit of its being engraved or more distinctly referred to here, on the sole ground of his apprehension of exposing himself thereby to the claims of the Crown.

[9] Sir Thomas Browne. Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial.

[10] Bacon's Essays, LVIII.

[11] Hugh Miller's First Impressions of England and its People.

[12] Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, p. 66.

[13] Natural History of the Varieties of Man, by Robert Gordon Latham, M.D., p. 528.

[14] British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report for 1837, p. 31.

[15] Natural History of Varieties of Man, by R. G. Latham, M.D., p. 553.

[16] Primeval Antiquities of Denmark, by J. J. A. Worsaae, translated, and applied to the illustration of similar remains in England, by W. J. Thoms, F.S.A., &c., p. 133.

[17] "An Inquiry into the Expedients used by the Scots before the Discovery of Metals," by W. C. Little, of Libberton, Esq. Archæologia Scotica, vol i. p. 389.

[18] "The Antiquities of Ireland and Denmark; being the substance of two communications made to the Royal Irish Academy at its Meetings, Nov. 30, and Dec. 7, 1846."

[19] Albert Way, on "Ancient Armillæ of Gold."—Archæological Journal, vol. vi. p. 55.

PART I.
THE PRIMEVAL OR STONE PERIOD.

"Cum prorepserunt primis animalia terris,
Mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter,
Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro
Pugnabant armis, quæ post fabricaverat usus;
Donec verba, quibus voces sensusque notarent,
Nominaque invenere."

Horace, Sat. I. 3.

CHAPTER I.—THE PRIMEVAL TRANSITION.

The closing epoch of geology, which embraces the diluvial formations, is that in which archæology has its beginning. In a zoological point of view, it includes man and the existing races of animals, as well as the extinct races which appear to have been contemporaneous with indigenous species. Archæology also lays claim to the still more recent alluvium, with all its included relics pertaining to the historic period. Within the legitimate scope of this department of investigation are comprehended the entire evidence of changes on the geographical features of the country, on its coasts and harbours, its estuaries, rivers, and plains: all properly coming within the limits of Archæology, though too extensive to be embraced in the present review of its elements. This much, however, we learn from an examination of the detritus and its included fossils, that at the period immediately preceding the occupation of the British Islands by their first colonists the country must have been almost entirely covered with forests, and overrun by numerous races of animals long since extinct. Much has been done in recent years to complete the history of British fossil mammalia; and though less attention has been paid to the question in which we are here most deeply interested, as to what portion of them are to be considered as having been contemporaneous with man, yet on this also some interesting light has been thrown. The most extensive discoveries of mammalian remains and recent shells generally occur along the valleys by which the present drainage of the country takes place, and hence we infer that little change has taken place in its physical conformation since their deposition. These, however, include the mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, cave tiger, with other extinct species, and are referrible to the earlier portion of an epoch, with the close of which we have alone to deal. They belong to that period in which our planet was passing through its very latest stage of preparation prior to its occupation by man; a period on which the geologist, who deals with phenomena of the most gigantic character, and with epochs of vast duration, is apt to dwell with diminished interest, but which excites in the thoughtful mind a keener sympathy than all that preceded it. The general geographical disposition of the globe was then nearly as it still remains. Our own island was, during a great portion of it, insulated, as it is now. Yet it is of this familiar locality that the palæontologist remarks:—"In this island, anterior to the deposition of the drift, there was associated with the great extinct tiger, bear, and hyæna of the caves, in the destructive task of controlling the numbers of the richly developed order of the herbivorous mammalia, a feline animal, (the Machairodus Latidens,) as large as the tiger, and, to judge by its instruments of destruction, of greater ferocity."[20] It was within the epoch to which these strange mammals belong, and while some of them, and many other contemporaneous forms of being, still animated the scene, that man was introduced upon this stage of existence, and received dominion over every living thing.

It has been supposed by more than one intelligent naturalist, that the gigantic fossil elk (Megaceros Hibernicus) co-existed with the human race. Dr. Hart has produced what he conceived to be conclusive evidence on this subject, derived from the appearance of a rib, pierced with an oval opening near its lower edge, "with the margin depressed on the outer and raised on the inner surface, round which there is an irregular effusion of callus; in fact, such an effect as would be produced by the head of an arrow remaining in a wound after the shaft was broken off." This conclusion Professor Owen has disputed, apparently on satisfactory grounds.[21] By a similar line of argument, however, to which he has yielded his assent,[22] it has been shewn that the north of Europe was occupied by the human race at a time when the Bos primigenius, the Bison priscus, and the Ursus spelæus, existed.[23] Of the Ursus spelæus, or great cave bear, a skeleton is preserved in the museum of Lund, found in a peat-bog in Scania, under a gravel or stone deposit, and alongside of primitive implements of the chase. Though no such direct evidence has yet been observed here, similar conclusions have been arrived at. Mr. Owen, after referring the period of existence of the great cave bear to earlier geological epochs, adds, as the conclusion from present evidence, "that the genus surviving, or under a new specific form reappearing, after the epoch of the deposition and dispersion of those enormous, unstratified, superficial accumulations of marine and fresh-water shingle and gravel, called drift and diluvium, has been continued during the formation of vast fens and turbaries upon the present surface of the island, and until the multiplication and advancement of the human race introduced a new cause of extermination, under the powerful influence of which the Bear was finally swept away from the indigenous fauna of Great Britain."[24] To these native mammals may be added the horse, the roebuck, the red deer, the wild boar, the brown bear, the wolf, and the beaver, all of which have undoubtedly existed as wild animals in this country, and been gradually domesticated or extirpated by man.[25]

The most interesting of all the species for our present inquiry are those adapted for domestication, among which the Bovidæ occupy a prominent place. Of these, the great fossil ox (Bos primigenius) is very frequently found in Scotland. Dr. Fleming describes a skull of one in his possession measuring 27½ inches in length,[26] and a still larger one from Roxburghshire, now in the Scottish Antiquarian Museum, measures 28 inches in length. No evidence leads us to conclude that any attempt was made by the native Britons to domesticate either of the two kinds of gigantic oxen, the bison or great urus, which the Romans discovered on first penetrating into the north of Europe. But besides these there was also a smaller primitive wild species, the Bos Longifrons, of the domestication of which in Britain we have abundant proof, at least at the period of the Roman invasion. Soon after this it appears to have become extinct, so that we are rather led to assume that it may have been the domesticated ox of the native population prior to the intrusion of the Romans. Mr. Woods refers to the discovery of the skull and horns of the great urus in a tumulus on the Wiltshire Downs, along with bones of deer and boars, and fragments of native pottery, in proof of the existence in this country originally of a "very large race of taurine oxen, although most probably entirely destroyed by the aboriginal inhabitants before the invasion of Britain by Cæsar." Professor Owen has discussed the probable influence of Roman occupation on the wild herds and the breeds of domesticated oxen, with much sagacity, though somewhat too much influenced by the views so generally entertained of the barbarian state of the native Britons prior to the intrusion of Roman colonists.[27] Scarcely less interesting is the evidence which British fossil mammalia furnish of the existence of the horse among the native wild animals of the country, since we find proof, both in the early tumuli and the subterranean dwellings, not only of its domestication, but also of its being used for food.

This very slight glance at the most prominent indications of the primeval state of the country, will suffice to convey some idea of the circumstances under which the aboriginal colonists entered on the possession of the British Isles. Other portions of the same line of argument, derived from the fossil mammalia, and the circumstances under which they are discovered, will come under review in the course of our inquiries. The fossil Cetacea, especially, furnish most interesting and conclusive evidence of the very remote period at which the presence of a human population is discoverable in Scotland, while the beaver, (Castor Europæus,) which is frequently found in a fossil state, is also proved to have existed as a living species, both in Scotland and Wales, down to the twelfth century, and is even referred to so late as the fifteenth century. To the abundance of wild animals which continued to occupy the moors and forests of Scotland, long after the primitive states of society had entirely passed away, we shall also have occasion hereafter to refer. The same causes which exterminated the huge urus, the cave bear, and others of the largest and most intractable of the wild denizens of the British forests, ultimately led to the extinction of the greater number of those which either supplied objects of the chase, or were inimical to the social progress of man. Thus we observe, in the economy of nature, that one species after another disappears, to make way for newer occupants, until at length the last of those huge preadamite races of being give place, before the gradual advancement of man to assume possession of terrestrial dominion. Yet on this point also those questions in historic chronology, which tend to determine more precisely the lapse of centuries intervening between the Adamic creation and the earliest era of authentic history, exercise an important influence. Geology leaves no room for questioning the fact, that man did not enter upon this earth after some tremendous cosmical revolution, which made way for an entirely new race of beings, but that he was introduced as the lord of an inheritance already in possession of many inferior orders of creation. Contemporary with the most remarkable cave fossils are found the remains of many historic, or still existing species, and the precise line has yet to be drawn which shall determine how many of these were extinct, at the period when the Creator, at length satisfied with his inferior works, said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." The remains, both of the large cave hyæna, (Hyæna spelæa,) and of the great cave tiger, (Felis spelæa,) occur not only in ossiferous caverns, but have also been found in superficial unstratified deposits. Considerable portions of the skeleton of the latter were discovered in 1829, along with remains of the mammoth, rhinoceros, ox, stag, and horse, in a marl-pit near North Cliff, Yorkshire. Under precisely similar geological circumstances the Bos primigenius has very frequently been brought to light in Scotland. It is of this animal that Sir R. I. Murchison remarks, in a letter to Professor Owen, descriptive of an example already referred to, found in a bog in Scania: "This urus is most remarkable in exhibiting a wound of the apophysis of the second dorsal vertebra, apparently inflicted by a javelin of one of the aborigines, the hole left by which was exactly fitted by Nillson with one of the ancient stone javelins.... This instrument fractured the bone, and penetrated to the apophysis of the third dorsal vertebra, which is also injured. The fractured portions are so well cemented, that Nillson thinks the animal probably lived two or three years after. The wound must have been inflicted over the horns, and the javelin must have been hurled with prodigious force." Of the existence, therefore, of the Bos primigenius within the historic epoch, we can entertain no doubt, and it is accordingly requisite to give full weight to the influence which its presence must have exercised on the general condition of our island. Professor Owen remarks, after showing the erroneous nature of the usually received opinion, that the lion, the tiger, and the jaguar, are peculiarly adapted to a tropical climate:—"A more influential, and, indeed, the chief cause or condition of the prevalence of the larger feline animals, in any given locality, is the abundance of the vegetable feeding animals in a state of nature, with the accompanying thickets or deserts unfrequented by man. The Indian tiger follows the herds of antelope and deer, in the lofty Himalayan chain, to the verge of perpetual snow. The same species also passes that great mountain barrier, and extends its ravages with the leopard, the panther, and the cheetah, into Bocharia, to the Altaic chain, and into Siberia, as far as the fiftieth degree of latitude; preying principally, according to Pallas, on the wild horses and asses."[28] No change, therefore, of climate, nor any remarkable geological revolution is needful to account for the disappearance of the huge British carnivora, the remains of which abound in the ossiferous caves. They pertain to the closing transition-period of the preadamite earth, and, as in other transition-periods which we shall have to consider, some traces of them survived among the inheritors of the new era. It is therefore a legitimate source of interest to the archæologist, to observe the mingling of extinct and familiar species among the fossil mammals found in the superficial deposits, wherein so much of the evidence of his own science must be sought. It discovers to him the precise link by which his pursuits take hold of the great chain of truth, and in a new sense shews man, not as an isolated creation, but as the last and best of an order of animated beings, whose line sweeps back into the far removed shadow of an unmeasured past. "Phenomena like these," says Professor Sedgwick, when referring to the discoveries at the North Cliff, Yorkshire, in 1829, "have a tenfold interest, binding the present order of things to that of older periods, in which the existing forms of animated nature seem one after another to disappear."[29]

Thus much is apparent from the most superficial glance at the geological evidence of the primeval state of Britain within the historic era, that though corresponding in its great geographical outlines to its present condition, it differed, in nearly every other respect, as widely as it is possible for us to conceive of a country capable of human occupation. A continuous range of enormous forests covered nearly the whole face of the country. Vast herds of wild cattle, of gigantic proportions and fierce aspect, roamed through the chase, while its thickets and caves were occupied by carnivora, preying on the herbivorous animals, and little likely to hold in dread the armed savage who intruded on their lair. The whole of these have existed since the formation of the peat began, and therefore furnish some evidence of the very remote antiquity to which we must refer the origin of some of the wastes that supply, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, an important element in the elucidation of primitive chronology. Upon this singular arena Archæology informs us that the primeval Briton entered, unprovided with any of those appliances with which the arts of civilisation arm man against such obstacles. Intellectually, he appears to have been in nearly the lowest stage to which an intelligent being can sink; morally, he was the slave of a superstition, the grovelling character of which will be traced in reviewing his sepulchral rites; physically, he differed little in stature from the modern inheritors of the same soil, but his cerebral development was poor, his head small in proportion to his body, his hands, and probably his feet, also small; while the weapons with which he provided himself for the chase, and the few implements that ministered to his limited necessities, indicate only the crude development of that inventive ingenuity which first distinguishes the reason of man from the instincts of the brutes. The evidence from which such conclusions are deduced, forms the subject of the following chapters.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 179.

[21] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 462.

[22] Ibid. Introd. p. xxxiii.

[23] British Association for Advancement of Science, Report for 1847, p. 31; and Owen, Introd. p. xxxiii.

[24] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 107. An interesting account of the discovery of antiquities of human remains in Kent's Hole, one of the most remarkable British ossiferous caves, is given in a subsequent chapter from the narrative of the Rev. J. M'Enery, F.G.S.

[25] Ibid. p. 197.

[26] History of British Animals, p. 24.

[27] British Fossil Mammals, p. 500.

[28] British Fossil Mammals, p. 162.

[29] Anniversary Address to the Zoological Society, 1830.

CHAPTER II.
ABORIGINAL TRACES.

Though we are assured, and cannot doubt, that man was created an intelligent being, capable of enjoying the high faculties with which he alone of all the denizens of earth was endowed, we have no reason to assume that he had any conception of the practical arts by which we are enabled to satisfy wants of which he was equally unconscious. We know on the same authority that there existed a period in the history of our race, ere Zillah, the wife of Lamech, had borne to him Tubal-cain, "the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron," when men tilled the ground, pursued the chase, made garments of its spoils, and constructed tents to dwell in, without any knowledge of the working in metals, on which the simplest of all our known arts depend. Through such a stage of primitive arts most, perhaps all, nations have passed. We detect evidences of it among the Egyptians, old as the date of their civilisation appears, in the stone knives of the embalmers, still frequently found in the catacombs. By such only could the incision be made in the side of the dead, through which to extract the intestines; and when they had been cleansed and replaced, the eye of Osiris, the judge of the dead, was placed as a mysterious seal over the sacred incision. The feeling in which such a custom originated, arising from the veneration which appears to be universally attached to whatever is ancient, is easily understood. While the knife of bronze or iron was freely employed for all ordinary purposes, the primitive stone implement was retained unchanged for the sacred incision in the dead. So also, probably from a like idea directly borrowed from the Egyptians, the stone or flint knife appears to have been used by the early Hebrews in circumcision. Zipporah, Moses' wife, took a sharp stone, or stone knife, and cut off the foreskin of her son. The like was done when Joshua renewed the same rite at Gilgal in the east border of Jericho; while a still more remarkable community of feeling with the veneration of the ancient Egyptians for the otherwise obsolete implement of stone, is discernible in its retention by the priests of Montezuma as the instrument of human sacrifice.

The substitution of flint, stone, horn, and wood, in the absence of metal weapons and implements, must be abundantly familiar to all, in the customs of society when met with in a rude and primitive condition. The Fins and Esquimaux, the African bushmen, and the natives of such of the Polynesian Islands as are rarely visited by Europeans, still construct knives and arrow-heads of flint or fish-bone, and supply themselves with wooden clubs and stone adzes and hammers, with little consciousness of imperfection or deficiency in such appliances. Examples of such a state of arts and human skill might be multiplied from the most dissimilar sources. It seems, as has been already remarked, to be a stage through which all nations have passed, not without each developing a sufficient individuality to render their arts well worthy of investigation by their descendants. To this primitive era of history we refer under the name of The Stone Period.

In this state were the Scottish, and indeed the whole British aborigines, at an era much more remote than chronologists have been willing to assign for the occupation of the island by a human population, and for a period the duration of which we are also able in some degree to test.

There is one certain point in this inquiry into primitive arts which the British antiquary possesses over all others, and from whence he can start without fear of error, though I am not aware that its importance in this view has heretofore been noted. From our insular position it is unquestionable that the first colonist of the British Isles must have been able to construct some kind of boat, and have possessed sufficient knowledge of navigation to steer his course through the open sea. Contrasting the aboriginal arts to which we have referred with the appliances of later navigators, it seems only reasonable to conclude that the bark of the primeval Columbus, who led the way from the continent of Europe to the untrodden wilds of Britain, differed no less from the caravel of the bold Genoese, than that did from the British ship that now follows in its course. Can we recover the history of such primitive caravel? It seems not improbable that we may. Time has dealt kindly with the frail fleets of the aboriginal Britons, and kept in store some curious records of them, not doubting but these would at length be inquired for.

It is by no means to be presumed as certain that the early navigators chose the Straits of Dover as the readiest passage to the new world they were to people. Both Welsh and Danish traditions point to a migration from Jutland. Whencesoever the first emigrants came, Providence alone could pilot their frail barks. Successive migrations, the chances of shipwreck, or the like independent causes, may have landed the fathers of the British race on widely different parts of our island coast. It is a well established fact, that at later periods many distinct and rival centres of population were thus established throughout the British Isle.

Lochar Moss, a well-known tract in Dumfriesshire, occupies an area of fully twelve miles in length, by between two and three miles in breadth, extending to the Solway Frith. Its history is summed up in an old popular rhyme, still repeated in the surrounding districts:—

"First a wood, and next a sea,
Now a moss, and ever will be!"

Lying as it does on the southern outskirts of the Scottish kingdom, the track of many successive generations has lain along its margin or across its treacherous surface, beneath which their records have been from time to time engulfed, to be restored in after ages to the light of day. To these we shall have occasion again to refer; but among them our chief attention is meanwhile attracted by its ancient canoes, repeatedly found along with huge trunks of trees, hazel-nuts, acorns, and other traces of the forest, and also, according to the old statist of Torthorwald parish, "anchors, cables, and oars," the no less obvious heirlooms of the sea. During the last century the peats cut from this moss formed almost the sole supply of fuel to the inhabitants of Dumfries and its neighbourhood, nor have they yet ceased to avail themselves of its ready stores.

In 1782 Pennant examined one of these rude barks formed from the trunk of an oak, which he thus describes: "Near a place called Kilblain, I met with one of the ancient canoes of the primeval inhabitants of the country, when it was probably in the same state of nature as Virginia when first discovered by Captain Philip Amidas. The length of this little vessel was eight feet eight inches, of the cavity six feet seven inches, the breadth two feet, depth eleven inches, and at one end were the remains of three pegs for the paddle. The hollow was made with fire in the very manner that the Indians of America formed their canoes. Another was found in 1736, with its paddle, in the same morass. The last was seven feet long, and dilated to a considerable breadth at one end, so that in early ages necessity dictated the same inventions to the most remote regions."[30] In 1791 the minister of the parish describes another found by a farmer while digging for peats, at a depth of between four and five feet from the surface, and four miles from the highest reach of the tide, resting apparently on the alluvial soil which is there found beneath the moss. Near to the same spot a vessel of mixed metal, and apparently of great antiquity, was recovered, and numerous relics of various kinds, including what are described as anchors, oars, and other naval implements, have been found even at a distance of twelve miles from the present flood-mark—attesting at once the former populousness of the district, and the very remote period to which these evidences of its occupation belong.[31] At a depth of seven or eight feet in the Moss of Barnkirk, in the immediate neighbourhood of Newton-Stewart, Wigtonshire, another canoe of the same character as those already described, was dug up in 1814, and has been preserved, owing to its being converted by the farmer into the lintel of one of his cart-sheds. Mr. Joseph Train mentions having seen "a ball of fat or bannock of tallow, weighing twenty-seven pounds,"[32] found in the moss immediately above the canoe; and which no doubt was a mass of adipocere, indicating the spot where some large animal had perished in the moss: possibly sinking along with the rude British vessel that lay below. On the draining of Carlinwark Loch, Kirkcudbright, in 1765, a stone dam, an ancient causeway constructed on piles of oak, the vestiges of an iron forge, and other remarkable evidences of human industry and skill, were brought to light, including various canoes, described, like those of Lochar Moss and others found in Merton Mere, as apparently hollowed by fire.[33]

The Loch of Doon in Ayrshire, has at different periods furnished similar relics of ancient naval art. The fall of its waters in 1832, owing to an unusually protracted drought, permitted the recovery of two of these in a perfect state, one of them measuring about twenty-three feet in length, formed of a single oak tree, with the insertion of an upright plank into a broad groove for the stern. Numerous other relics of canoes were found to be imbedded in the same place; and the head of an ancient battle axe, a rude oak club, with other remains, gave further clue to the character of their builders.[34]

Lochwinnoch in Renfrewshire, has furnished similar canoes, accompanied by other relics of various eras—a brass ladle or patera, with an elegant handle terminating with a ram's head, probably Roman; and a very fine brass cannon, marked J. R. S. (5?) an antiquity of comparatively modern date.[35]

Five fathoms deep in the Carse of Falkirk, a complete boat was discovered, not far from the town, and therefore remote from any navigable water.[36] Sir John Clerk, well known as an enthusiastic Scottish antiquary of last century, describes with great minuteness another vessel found in the same locality, more remarkable from its size and construction than any of those yet described, and which he pronounces, from the series of superincumbent strata, to have been an antediluvian boat! In the month of May 1726 a sudden rise of the river Carron undermined a portion of its banks, and exposed to view the side of this ancient boat lying imbedded in the alluvial soil, at a depth of fifteen feet from the surface, and covered by successive strata of clay, shells, moss, sand, and gravel. The proprietor immediately ordered it to be dug out. It proved to be a canoe of primitive form, but of larger dimensions than any other discovered to the north of the Tweed. It measured thirty-six feet long by four feet in extreme breadth, and is described in a contemporary newspaper as finely polished and perfectly smooth both inside and outside, formed from a single oak tree, with the usual pointed stem and square stern.[37] Mingling with such indisputable traces of human art, are deposited the memorials of many successive changes. Among older relics of the same Carse, in the Edinburgh Museum, are the remains of a fossil elephant found in excavating the Union Canal in 1821, at a depth of some twenty feet in the alluvial soil, with the ivory in such perfect preservation that it was purchased and cut up by a turner, and only rescued in fragments from his lathe.[38]

But at higher levels in the valley of the Forth, and further from the sea, still more remarkable evidences of the primitive occupants of the country have been found. The ingenious operations by which the Blair Drummond moss has been converted into fertile fields have rendered it famous in the annals of modern engineering and agriculture. In the Carse lands, of which it forms a part, there was discovered in the year 1819, at a distance of a mile from the river, and in an alluvial soil, covered with a thin moss, the surface of which stood some twenty-five feet above the full tide of the Forth, the skeleton of a whale, with a perforated lance or harpoon of deer's horn beside it. A few years later another whale was found, and in 1824 a third was disclosed on the Blair Drummond estate seven miles further inland, and overlaid with a thick bed of moss. Beside it also lay the rude harpoon of the hardy Caledonian whaler; in this instance retaining, owing to the preservative nature of the moss, some remains of the wooden handle by which the pointed lance of deer's horn was wielded.[39] This primitive relic is now deposited, along with the fossil remains of the whale, whose death-wound it may have given, in the Natural History Museum of the Edinburgh University. Professor Owen remarks, in referring to this class of fossils,—"Although these depositories belong to very recent periods in geology, the situations of the cetaceous fossils generally indicate a gain of dry land from the sea. Thus the skeleton of a balænoptera, seventy-two feet in length, found imbedded in clay on the banks of the Forth, was more than twenty feet above the reach of the highest tide. Several bones of a whale discovered at Dunmore rock, Stirlingshire, in brick-earth, were nearly forty feet above the present level of the sea.... I might add other instances of the discovery of cetaceous remains in positions to which, in the present condition of the dry land of England, the sea cannot reach; yet the soil in which these remains are imbedded is alluvial or amongst the most recent formation. In most cases the situation indicates the former existence there of an estuary that has been filled up by deposits of the present sea, or the bottom of which has been upheaved."[40] Other relics besides those of the whale and the implement of its hardy assailant, were recovered in the course of removing the Blair Drummond moss. In the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, a rude querne or hand-mill for pounding grain is preserved, fashioned from the section of an oak tree, which was found in 1831, at a depth of nearly five feet, in this moss. A wooden wheel of ingenious construction is also in the collection, which was dug up at more than double the depth of the querne, in the same locality, accompanied with several well-formed arrow-heads of flint. It measured when complete about two feet in diameter; but it is greatly decayed, having shrunk and cracked since its removal from the moss.[41]

Other relics, though belonging apparently to a later period, may be noticed along with these. In the progress of improvements on the Kincardine moss, the remains of a singular roadway were discovered, after the peat moss had been removed to a depth of eight feet. Seventy yards of the ancient viaduct were exposed to view, formed of trees about twelve inches in diameter, having other trees of half this thickness crossing them, and brushwood covering the whole. This road crossed the moss of Kincardine northward, from a narrow part of the Forth, towards a well-known line of Roman road which has been traced from a ford on the river Teith to Camelon, on the Antonine wall. This singular structure, though so unlike anything usually found on the line of the legionary iters, has been assigned, with great probability, to Roman workmanship, as it appears to be designed to keep up a communication with the well-known station at Ardoch. But if so, we have here evidence of the fact that in the second century of our era the Kincardine moss was an unstable and boggy waste, which the Roman engineer could only pass by abandoning his favourite and durable causeway, for such a road as modern ingenuity has revived in the backwood swamps of America.

Such are some of the ancient chronicles of Scotland garnered for us in the eastern valley of the Forth. The banks of the Clyde have been scarcely less liberal in their disclosures. In 1780, the first recorded discovery of one of the primitive canoes of the Clyde was made by workmen engaged in digging the foundation of Old St. Enoch's Church. It was found at a depth of twenty-five feet from the surface, and within it there lay a no less interesting and eloquent memorial of the simple arts of the remote era when the navies of the Clyde were hewn out of the oaks of the Caledonian forests. This is a beautifully-finished stone celt, represented in the woodcut—doubtless one of the simple implements of its owner, if not, indeed, one of the tools with which such vessels were fashioned into shape; though it is undoubtedly more adapted for war than for any peaceful art. It measures 5½ inches in length, by 3⅗ inches in greatest breadth; and is apparently formed of dark greenstone. It is now in the possession of Charles Wilsone Brown, Esq., of Wemyss, Renfrewshire, having descended to him from a maternal relative who chanced to be passing at the time of the discovery, and secured the curious relic.[42] The excavations of the following year brought a second canoe to light, at a higher level, and still further removed from the modern river's bed. Close to the site of Glasgow's ancient City Cross, and immediately adjoining what was once the Tolbooth of the burgh—more memorable from the fancied associations with which genius has endowed it, than for the stern realities of human misery which were its true attributes—there stands a quaint, but not inelegant building, adorned with an arcade curiously decorated with grim or grotesque masks on the keystone of each arch. It was erected on the site of older and less substantial tenements, in the year 1781; and in digging for a foundation for it, in a stratum of laminated clay that lies beneath a thick bed of sand, another primitive British canoe was discovered, hollowed as usual out of a single trunk of oak.[43] Another is noted to have been found about 1824, in Stockwell, near Jackson Street, while cutting the common sewer; and a fourth, at a much higher level, on the slope of Drygate Street, immediately behind the prison.[44] In 1825 a fifth canoe was discovered, scarcely an hundred yards from the site of the former at the City Cross, when digging the sewer of London Street—a new thoroughfare opened up by the demolition of ancient buildings long fallen to decay. This boat, which measured about eighteen feet in length, exhibited unusual evidences of labour and ingenuity. It was built of several pieces of oak, though without ribs. It lay, moreover, in a singular position, nearly vertical, and with its prow uppermost, as if it had foundered in a storm.

To these older instances recent and large additions have been made. The earlier discoveries seem to point to a period when the whole lower level on the north side of the river, where the chief trade and manufactures of Scotland are now transacted, was submerged beneath the sea. What follows affords similar evidence in relation to the southern bank of the Clyde. Extensive operations have been carrying on there for some years for the purpose of enlarging the harbour of Glasgow, and providing a range of quays on the grounds of Springfield, corresponding to those on the older Broomielaw. There, at a depth of seventeen feet below the surface, and about 130 feet from the river's original brink, the workmen uncovered an ancient canoe, hewn out of the trunk of an oak, with pointed stem, and the upright groove remaining which had formerly held in its place the straight stern. The discovery was made in the autumn of 1847; and the citizens of Glasgow having for the most part a reasonable conviction that boats lose their value in proportion to their age, the venerable relic lay for some months unheeded, until at length the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland made application for it to the Trustees of the River Clyde, and the rude precursor of the fleets that now crowd that noble river is safely deposited in their museum. Meanwhile the excavators proceeded with their labours, and in the following year another, and then a third canoe of primitive form, were disclosed on the southern bank of the Clyde. One of these, which has been since removed to the Hunterian Museum, measures 19⅓ feet long, by 3½ feet wide at the stern, 2 feet 9½ inches wide midway, and 30 inches deep. The prow is rather neatly formed with a small cut-water, near to which is an oblong hole, apparently for running a rope through to anchor or secure the vessel. There had been an outrigger, which was described by the workmen as adhering to it when first discovered, and the holes remain for receiving the pins by which it was fastened. About the centre are small rests inside the gunwale for the ends of a cross seat, and others for a broader seat are at the stern, both being projections formed by leaving the wood when the trunk was originally hollowed out into a boat. In this example the stern remains nearly in a perfect state. It consists of a board inserted in vertical grooves cut in each side, and received into a horizontal groove across, beyond which the bottom and sides project about eight inches. The other of these two canoes was chiefly remarkable for a circular hole in the bottom, stopped by a plug imbedded in very tenacious clay, evidently designed to admit of water shipped being run off when it was on shore. But the most curious, and indeed puzzling fact in regard to it, is that this plug is not of oak but of cork—a discovery suggestive of inquiries not easily answered satisfactorily.[45]

In the month of September 1849 a fourth canoe was found at Springfield, at a depth of about 20 feet from the surface, and in the same bed of finely laminated clay as those already described. This, too, is hollowed out of the single trunk of an oak, only thirteen feet in length, but on either side of it lay two additional planks of curious construction, each of them pierced with an elongated hole, which appeared to have been made with some sharp tool. They indicate some ingenious contrivance of the ancient seaman, not improbably designed for use when the bold navigator ventured with his tiny barque into the open sea, to be applied somewhat in the way a Dutch lugger fends off the dashing waves from her lee. This boat differs from those previously discovered, in having a rounded bow both fore and aft. In some respects it might seem to be the most ancient of the whole, and could hardly accommodate more than one man. Its workmanship is extremely rude, and it bears obvious marks of having been hollowed by fire. Yet the wooden appendages found alongside of it suffice to prove that its maker was not unprovided with some efficient tools. Thus, within a comparatively brief period, nine ancient canoes have been found within this limited area, affording singular evidence that in the earliest ages in which the presence of a human population is discoverable, we also find abundant proofs of the art of navigation, where now space fails to accommodate the merchant fleets of the Clyde. To these notices may be added the discovery of the remains of an ancient boat of more artificial construction, which was dug up, about the year 1830, at Castlemilk, Lanarkshire. It measured ten feet long, by two broad, and was built of oak, secured by large wooden pins.[46]

Nearly at the same time as the latest disclosures in the valley of the Clyde, workmen cutting a drain on the farm of Kinaven, Aberdeenshire, discovered another ancient boat of the same form as most of those previously described, and measuring eleven feet long, by nearly four broad. It is hewn out of the solid oak, with pointed stem, and at the stern a projection formed in the piece, and pierced with an eye, as if to attach a mooring cable. Like the Glasgow canoes, it is rudely finished, and exhibits the rough marks of the instrument with which it was reduced to shape. It lay imbedded in the moss, at a depth of five feet, at the head of a small ravine; and near it were found the stumps and roots of several large oaks. The nearest stream, the Ythan, is several miles off, and the sea is distant many more. A few years previous to this discovery, a similar canoe, of still smaller dimensions, was dug up in the moss of Drumduan, in the same county. It is described as quite entire, and neatly formed out of a single block of oak; but being left exposed, it was broken by the rude handling of some idle herd-boys.[47]

Such are a few examples of the aboriginal fleets of ancient Caledonia, found at different dates, and in various localities, yet agreeing wonderfully in every essential element of comparison. With them might also be noted the frequent discovery in bogs, or in alluvial strata, of trees felled by artificial means, and accompanied with relics of the most primitive arts. In 1830, for example, workmen engaged in constructing a sewer in Church Street, Inverness, found at a depth of fourteen feet below the surface, in a stratum of stiff blue clay, numerous large trunks of fossil oak; and along with these several deer's horns, one of which, bearing unmistakable marks of artificial cutting, is now deposited in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.[48] Here surely is common ground for the antiquary and the geologist. The rude harpoon left beside the bones of the stranded whale, far up in the alluvial valley of the Forth: the oaken querne, the wheel and the arrow-heads: the boats beneath the City Cross of Glasgow, the centre of a busy population for the last thousand years: the primitive ship, as we may almost term the huge canoe on the banks of the Carron: and the tiny craft just found near the waters of the Ythan—all speak, in no doubtful language, of the presence of a human population, at a period when the geographical features of the country, and the relative levels of land and sea, must have differed very remarkably from what we know of them at the earliest ascertained epoch of definite history. They point to a time within the historic era, when the ocean tides ebbed and flowed over the carse of Stirling, at a depth sufficient to admit of the gambols of the whale, where now a child might ford the brawling stream; and when the broad estuary of the Clyde flung its waves to the shore, not far from the high ground where the first cathedral of St. Mungo was founded, A.D. 560. These evidences of population, prior to the latest geological changes which have affected the surface of the country, are indeed all found on old historic ground, according to the reckonings of written chronicles. The first of them, in the south country, have been met with in localities where the traces of Roman invasion in the second century remain uneffaced. The carse of Falkirk is still indented with the vallum of the Antonine wall. Its modern church preserves the old tablet, which assigned to the ancient structure on its site a date coeval with the founding of Scottish monarchy under Malcolm Canmore; and the broad level ground, which has disclosed evidence of such remarkable changes, alike in natural features and in national arts and manners, was the battle-field of Wallace in the thirteenth century, as of Prince Charles Edward and the Highland clansmen in the eighteenth century. Trivet thus refers to the carse of Falkirk, in describing the invasion of Edward I., thereby affording curious evidence of its state at the former period,—"Causantibus majoribus loca palustria, propter brumalem intemperiem, immeabilia esse;" on which Lord Hailes remarks—"The meaning seems to be, that the English could not arrive at Stirling without passing through some of the carse grounds, and that they were impracticable for cavalry at that season of the year."[49] Nor are the historic associations of the broad carse which the Forth has intertwined with its silver links a whit behind those of the vale of Carron. There, in all probability, Agricola marshalled the Roman legions for his sixth campaign, and watched the mustering of the army of Galgacus on the heights beyond. The ever memorable field of Bannockburn adds a sacred interest to the same soil. There, too, are the scenes of James III.'s mysterious death on the field of Stirling, and of successive operations of Montrose, Cromwell, Mar, and Prince Charles. But the oldest of these events, long regarded as the beginnings of history, are modern occurrences, when placed alongside of such as we now refer to. Guiding his team across the "bloody field," as the scene of English slaughter is still termed, the ploughman turns up the craw-foot, the small Scottish horse-shoe, and the like tokens of the memorable day when Edward's chivalry was foiled by the Scottish host. Penetrating some few feet lower with his spade, he finds the evidences of former changes in the level of land and sea, but with them stumbles also on the relics of coeval population. Lower down he will reach the stratified rocks, including the carboniferous formation, stored no less abundantly with relics of former life and change, but no longer within the historic period, or pertaining to the legitimate investigations of archæological science, unless in so far as they confirm its previous inductions, and prove the slow but well defined progress of the more recent geological changes on the earth's surface. Such reflections are not suggested for the first time in our own day, nor will a shallow part satisfy those who have gone thus far. "Nature hath furnished one part of the earth, and man another. The treasures of time lie high, in urns, coins, and monuments, scarce below the roots of some vegetables. Time hath endless rarities, and shows of all varieties, which reveals old things in heaven, makes new discoveries in earth, and even earth itself a discovery. That great antiquity, America, lay buried for thousands of years, and a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us."[50]

Some of these historic phenomena which are indicated above required only time to produce them. The beds of sand and loam at Springfield, in which the ancient fleets of the Clyde have lain entombed for ages, are such as the slow depositions of winter floods will for the most part account for, if the chronologist can only spare for them the requisite centuries. Others seem to point to geological changes within the historic era, of a more remarkable and extensive character. These it is not our province to explain. Whether the geologist find it most consistent with the established laws of his science to assume the standing of the whole ocean at higher levels within so recent a period, or adopt the more probable theory of local upheaval and denudation to account for these phenomena, this at least must be conceded, that the lapse of many ages is required for the changes which they indicate, and we can hardly err in inferring that civilisation had advanced but a little way on the plain of Nimroud, or the banks of the Nile, when the tiny fleets of the Clyde were navigating its estuary, and the hardy fishermen were following the whale in the winding creeks of the Forth.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Pennant's Tour, vol. ii. p. 107.

[31] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. i. p. 160.

[32] New Stat. Acc. vol. iv. Wigtonshire, p. 179.

[33] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. viii. p. 305. New Stat. Acc. vol. iv., Kirkcudbrightshire, p. 155.

[34] Archæologia Scotica, vol. iv. p. 299.

[35] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. vol. xv. p. 68.

[36] Beauties of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 419.

[37] Bibliotheca Topog. Britan., No. II. Part III. p. 242.

[38] Wernerian Trans. vol. iv. p. 58.

[39] Wernerian Trans. vol. v. p. 44.

[40] Brit. Fossil Mammals, p. 542.

[41] Vide Wern. Trans. vol. iii. p. 125, for the characteristic remains included in the recent alluvial formation of the valley of the Forth.

[42] For access to this interesting relic, as well as for much other valuable information, I am indebted to John Buchanan, Esq., of Glasgow.

[43] Chapman's Picture of Glasgow, 1818, p. 152.

[44] Chambers's Ancient Sea Margins, pp. 203-209.

[45] MS. Letters of J. Buchanan, Esq.

[46] New Statist. Acc. vol. vi. p. 601.

[47] New Statistical Account, vol. xii. p. 1059.

[48] MS. Letter of Lieut. Claudius Shaw, R.N. Lib. Soc. Antiq. Scot., April 19, 1833.

[49] Annals, vol. i. p. 266.

[50] Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia.

CHAPTER III.
SEPULCHRAL MEMORIALS.

The raising of sepulchral mounds of earth or stone to mark the last resting-place of the loved or honoured dead may be traced in all countries to the remotest periods. Their origin is to be sought for in the little heap of earth displaced by interment, which still to thousands suffices as the most touching memorial of the dead. In a rude and primitive age, when the tomb of the great warrior or patriarchal chief was to be indicated by some more remarkable token, the increase of the little earth-mound, by the united labours of the community, into the form of a gigantic barrow, would naturally suggest itself as the readiest and fittest mark of distinction. In its later circular forms we see the rude type of the great Pyramids of Egypt, no less than of the lesser British moat-hills and other native-earth-works, until at length, when the aspiring builders were rearing the gigantic monoliths of Avebury, they constructed, amid the tumuli of the neighbouring downs, the earth-pyramid of Silbury Hill, measuring 170 feet in perpendicular height, and covering an area of five acres and thirty-four perches of land.

Priority has been given to the primitive relics of naval skill, which the later alluvial strata of Scotland supply, for reasons sufficiently obvious, and pertaining exclusively to the antiquities of our insular home. But for the surest traces of primitive arts and a defined progress in civilisation, the archæologist will generally turn with greater propriety to the grave-mounds of the ancient race whose history he seeks to recover; for, however true be "the words of the preacher," in the sense in which he uttered them, there is both device, and knowledge, and instruction in the grave, for those who seek there the records of the dead. This fact is in itself an eloquent one in the evidence it furnishes, that in that dim and long forgotten past, of which we are seeking to recover the records, man was still the same, "of like passions with ourselves," vehement in his anger, and no less passionate in unavailing sorrow.

No people, however rude or debased be their state, have yet been met with so degraded to the level of the brutes as to entertain no notion of a Supreme Being, or no anticipation of a future state. Some more or less defined idea of a retributive future is found in the wildest savage creed, developing itself in accordance with the rude virtues to which the barbarian aspires. While the luxurious Asiatic dreams of the sensual joys of his Mohammedan elysium, the Red Indian warrior looks forward to the range of ampler hunting-grounds, and the enjoyment of unfailing victory on the war-path. All, however, anticipate a corporeal participation in tangible joys, and, to the simpler mind of the untutored savage, affection dictates the provision of means to supply the first requisites of this new state of being. Hence the bow and spear, the sword, shield, and other implements of war and the chase, laid beside the rude cinerary urn, or deposited in the cist with the buried chief. Refinement, which added to the wants and acquirements of the warrior, in like manner furnished new means for affection to lavish on the loved or honoured dead. Personal ornaments were added to the indispensable weapons, that the hero might not only stand at no disadvantage amid the novel scenes into which he had passed, but that he might also assume the insignia of rank and distinction which were his right. The feelings prompting to such tributes of affectionate sorrow are innate and indestructible. They manifest themselves under varied forms in every state of social being, and may be readily traced amid the struggle for decorous and costly sepulchral honours, no less universal now than in the long forgotten era of the tumulus and cinerary urn.

From the contents of the tumuli we are able partially to apply to them a relative system of chronology, the accuracy of which appears to be satisfactorily borne out. No archæologist has yet done for any district of Scotland what the intelligent research of Sir Richard Colt Hoare effected for Wiltshire. No other single district, indeed, offers the same tempting field for the study, and few archæologists possess his ample means for carrying out such investigations. He has adopted a subdivision, which distinguishes fourteen different kinds of barrows, classified according to their shape, and furnishes a systematic nomenclature, which is of general avail. Observations since carried out over a more extensive field enable us in some degree to modify this system, and reduce the number of true barrows, while even of these some are probably only the result of accident, or of the caprice of individual taste. The following are the best defined among the varieties noted by Sir R. C. Hoare:—1. The long barrow, resembling a gigantic grave; 2. The bowl barrow, from its similarity to an inverted bowl; 3. The bell barrow; 4. The twin barrow, consisting of two adjacent tumuli, one of them generally larger than the other, and both inclosed in one fosse or vallum; 5. The Druid barrow, generally a broad and low tumulus, surrounded by a vallum. The last name was given on insufficient evidence by Dr. Stukely, Sir R. C. Hoare's predecessor in investigating the antiquities of Wiltshire. The latter has subdivided the class into three varieties, and there seems some reason to think that such indicate the place of interment of females; but more extensive observation is required to establish so interesting an inference. The remaining distinctions appear to be either accidental, or referring to earth-works, certainly not sepulchral. Among this last are the "pond barrows," hereafter referred to as the remains of primitive dwellings, and the conical mounds or moat-hills, of which Silbury Hill is probably the largest in the world, designed as the lofty tribunal where the arch-priest or chief administered, and frequently executed, the rude common law of the northern races. The laborious excavations carried out under the direction of the Archæological Institute during the Salisbury Congress in 1849, have at least put an end to any ideas of Silbury Hill being a sepulchral mound.

Much similarity is naturally to be expected between the primitive antiquities of England and Scotland, where the imaginary border land that so long formed the marches between rival nations presents no real barrier calculated to interpose an impediment to the free interchange of knowledge or arts. Nevertheless there are many of those distinctive peculiarities observable in Scotland which are well calculated to encourage further investigation, though, for the purposes of a just and logical distinction, the Scottish archæologist ought to include the ancient kingdom of Northumbria within the region of his researches, and draw his comparisons between the antiquities found to the north and the south of the great wall of Severus.

The barrows of Scotland, in so far as they have yet been carefully observed, may be described as consisting of the Long Barrow; the Bowl Barrow; the Bell Barrow; the Conoid Barrow; the Crowned Barrow—such as that of Stoneranda in Birsa—with one or more standing stones set upon it; the Inclosed Barrow, a circular tumulus of the usual proportions, and most frequently also conoid in form, but environed by an earthen vallum; and the Encircled Barrow, generally of large proportions, and surrounded by a circle of standing stones. The two latter are of frequent occurrence in Scotland. The evidence of their contents indicates that they belong to a comparatively late era, and their correspondence to some of the most common sepulchral memorials of Norway and Sweden suggests the probability of a Scandinavian origin. The twin barrow, with its enclosing vallum, as described by Sir R. C. Hoare, and still to be seen in Wiltshire, does not, I think, occur in Scotland. But it is not uncommon to find a large and smaller tumulus placed near together, and these pairs occur so frequently, especially in Orkney, that I incline to apply to them meanwhile the term of twin barrows, believing them to have more than an accidental relation to each other. This is a point, however, which can only be satisfactorily settled by the most careful examination of their contents. In the parish of Holm in Orkney, there is a cluster of eight tumuli of different sizes, all inclosed within one earthen vallum. Another group consists of one large and three smaller tumuli, surrounded by a double ditch, with the remains of a third on one side; and occasionally clusters of tumuli, though without any inclosing work, suggest the probability of their vicinity being the result of design. Another arrangement is also deserving of note, where a group of eight or nine of these earth-mounds occur forming a continuous chain, in a nearly straight line, and separated from one another by regular intervening spaces. Whatever appears to indicate design in these primitive structures is worthy of study. Wherever we can trace the motives of their constructors, we recover some clue to the character and history of the race.

The remarkable cluster of monolithic groups and earth-works at Stennis in Orkney, includes a variety of sepulchral mounds, probably belonging to very different periods. Scattered around the great circle, or Ring of Broidgar, as it is commonly called, there are many tumuli differing considerably in size and form, but all known to the peasants under the general title of the Knowes of Broidgar. The dimensions of some of the largest of these were taken, during the recent Admiralty Survey, by Lieutenant F. W. L. Thomas, R.N., the intelligent officer in command, to whom I am indebted for the use of valuable notes of observations on the antiquities of Orkney:—

"The most remarkable tumulus, which is of elliptical shape, stands at the shore of the north or fresh-water loch. It measures one hundred and twelve feet long by sixty-six feet broad. The level ridge on the top measures twenty-two feet in length, and its height is nearly the same. It has been greatly destroyed by excavators at some former period. Near to it is a small standing stone. No other tumulus of this shape exists in Orkney. A large conoid tumulus, fifty feet in radius and twenty-eight feet in height, stands to the westward of the great circle, also pillaged at some former time; and in the same neighbourhood are ten smaller tumuli of various dimensions. Five of these are of equal size: radius six feet, height three feet, and only from two to three feet apart; four of them in a line."

Besides these, there stands, at a short distance to the northward of the elliptical tumulus, and near the shore, another large earth-work of peculiar form, which can hardly be more definitely described than by comparing it to a colossal plum-cake. It rises perpendicularly five feet, and is nearly flat on the top, assuming the form of a greatly depressed cone, the apex of which is nine feet high. The radius of the whole measures thirty-one feet. This mound, however, is most probably not sepulchral, but rather the platform on which a building of wood had been reared, though its present symmetrical form may render this doubtful. The Ring of Bookan, in the same neighbourhood, appears to be a similar platform, but it is inclosed with an earthen vallum, and exhibits abundant traces of ruined works on its irregular area. Various other, though less regular mounds, of this character, occur in Orkney. The burgh of Culswick is represented as having stood on such a platform, the shape of which nearly corresponded with that of Stennis when drawn in 1774, but the materials of this venerable ruin have since furnished a quarry for the neighbouring cottars.[51] It is exceedingly doubtful if the larger tumuli in the neighbourhood of the great circle of Stennis would now repay the labour of exploring them. They exhibit, as has been observed, abundant traces of former investigation; and there is good reason to believe that most, if not all of them, have already been spoiled of their historic contents.

Wallace remarks, in his Description of Orkney:—"In one of these hillocks, near the circle of high stones at the north end of the Bridge of Stennis, there were found nine fibulæ of silver, of the shape of a horse-shoe, but round."[52] Unfortunately the dimensions of these silver relics are not given; but from the engraving of one of them, it seems more likely that they consisted chiefly of gorgets, though, in all probability, including a variety of objects of great interest. But the view of the great circle of Stennis, which accompanies that of the fibula found in its neighbourhood, is sufficient to satisfy the most credulous how little faith can be put in the engravings.

The most numerous and remarkable of all the Scottish sepulchral mounds, both for number and size, are the stone tumuli or CAIRNS, many of which are works of great labour and considerable skill. These singular monumental pyramids are by no means to be accounted for from any local peculiarities furnishing a ready supply of loose stones. They abound in almost every district of the country, and are frequently of much larger dimensions than the earthen tumuli, though the nature of their materials has led to the destruction of many of them in the progress of inclosing lands for agricultural purposes. We learn from the Book of Joshua of the practice of raising heaps of stone over the dead as a mark of indignity or abhorrence. The contents of the Scottish sepulchral cairns, however, prove for them an altogether different origin, as will appear when we come to review them in detail. They are generally designed on a larger scale than the earthen tumuli, and must have ranked at a remote period among the most distinguished honours awarded to the illustrious dead.

Another remarkable, though much rarer sepulchral monument, is the Cromlech, or "Druidical altar," as it was long erroneously termed, until archæologists, abandoning theory for observation, discovered that these huge monolithic structures invariably marked the sites of ancient sepulture. Similar primitive colossal structures are found, not only throughout the whole British Isles, but in many parts of the continent of Europe, and are occasionally discovered, like the slighter cist, entombed beneath the earth-pyramid or tumulus, affording thereby singular evidence of the unostentatious liberality with which the honours of the dead were rendered in the olden time to which they belong.

The Wiltshire of Scotland, in so far as the mere number of sepulchral mounds, along with monolithic groups and other aboriginal structures, can constitute this distinction, is the mainland of Orkney, with one or two of the neighbouring isles. Few of their contents, however, have proved of the same valuable character as those which have been discovered not only in Aberdeenshire, Fifeshire, and some of the southern Lowland counties, but also in the Western Isles. We are therefore led to infer that the population of Orkney has been little more distinguished for wealth, or great advancement in the arts, during its earlier history than in more recent times. Abundant evidence, however, testifies to the occupation of these islands by a human population at a very remote era, and no Scottish locality ever furnished a greater variety of interesting relics of the primeval period. In the single parish of Sandwick, near Stromness, upwards of an hundred tumuli of different sizes have been observed, many of which have been recently opened, and their contents described. In the parish of Orphir, in like manner, considerable research has been made into the character and contents of these ancient memorials; while throughout nearly the whole of the neighbouring islands, the mosses and moors which have escaped the obliterating inroads of the ploughshare, are covered with similar monumental heaps.

It is not to be doubted that such relics of ancient population were once no less common throughout the whole mainland of Scotland, and especially in the fertile districts of the low country, where the earliest traces of a numerous population may reasonably be sought for. A sufficient number still remain in Fife and the Lothians, as well as in the southern counties, to afford means of comparison with other localities; while numerous discoveries of cists, urns, and ancient implements, leave no room to doubt that the same race once occupied the whole island, and practised similar arts and rites in the long cultivated districts of the low country, as in the remotest of the northern or western isles.

It is not improbable that extended observation may justify a more minute classification of the primitive sepulchral monuments of Scotland than has been attempted above, and may establish a relative chronological arrangement of them on a satisfactory basis. With our present imperfect knowledge, any theoretic system would only embarrass future inquiry. But meanwhile it may assist in forming a basis for further operations, to note the following attempts at systematic arrangement from such data as are available.

1. The Scottish long barrow, which is generally somewhat depressed in the centre, and more elevated towards one end than the other, may be assumed with little hesitation as one of the earliest forms of sepulchral earth-works. It is now comparatively rare. As the work of a thinly scattered population, it is probable that examples of it were never very numerous, and of these we may perhaps assume that the greater number have been gradually obliterated by structures of more recent date. So far as I am aware, no metallic implements have ever been found in the Scottish long barrow. Examples of pottery are also of very rare occurrence, and it is doubtful if any of these have furnished instances of the presence of the cinerary urn and its imperfectly burned contents in the primeval sepulchres. It is rather indeed from the absence of traces of art or ingenuity that we may most satisfactorily assign to this class of mounds the priority in point of antiquity. The form of the long barrow seems in itself to suggest the probability of an earlier origin than the circular tumulus, since it is only an enlargement of the ordinary grave-mound which naturally results from the displacement of the little space of earth occupied by the body, and in this respect strikingly corresponds with the most primitive ideas of a distinctive sepulchral memorial—a larger mound to mark that of the chief or priest, from the encircling heaps of common graves. In a long barrow opened in the neighbourhood of Port Seaton, East-Lothian, in 1833, a skeleton was found laid at full length within a rude cist. It indicated the remains of a man nearly seven feet high, but the bones crumbled to dust soon after their exposure to the air.[53] One of the largest Scottish earth-works of this primitive form is that already referred to, situated on the margin of the loch of Stennis, in the vicinity of the celebrated Orcadian Stonehenge. It is the only long barrow on the mainland of Orkney, but its form and proportions differ considerably from those commonly met with. It seems probable that this belongs to a late era, and owes its origin to the same Norwegian source as the neighbouring conoid earth pyramids that tower above the bowl barrows of the aboriginal Orcadians.

At a very early date, undoubtedly within the primitive era to which we give the name of the Stone Period, but apparently only towards its close, the practice of cremation was introduced. This, however, is one of the many points that must be left for final determination when a greater number of accurate and trustworthy observations have been accumulated. Meanwhile it may be assumed as unquestionable, that simple inhumation is the most ancient of all modes of disposing of the dead, and we possess abundant evidence of its use in this country, apparently by the earliest colonists of whom any definite traces now exist. We are not without proof that there was a long transition-period after the remarkable change consequent on the acquisition of metals, before the stone implements and arts were completely superseded by those of bronze; and it is to this era we shall most probably have to assign the first practice of cremation. Both the introduction of the metallurgic arts and the change of sepulchral rites may indeed be equally supposed to mark the influence, if not the advent, of a new race. In nearly every state of society the burial of the dead is associated with the most sacred tenets of religion, and its wonted rites are among the very last to be affected by change. It accords therefore with all analogy that the source of so remarkable a change should come from without, and accompany other equally important social revolutions. It will be seen in a succeeding chapter, that some of the very rudest and apparently most primitive of cinerary urns yet found in Scotland have been associated with undoubted proofs of their connexion with the bronze period. But it has not hitherto been the prevailing fault of British antiquaries to assign too remote an era to the introduction of the funeral pile. It has rather been one of the endless blunders springing from the too exclusively classical nature of modern education, to assume for it a Roman origin, and to accept the urn as an evidence of Roman influence and example, even where it was owned to be the product of native art. If, however, we make sufficient allowance for the poetical preference of the funeral fire and the inurned ashes, rather than the simple and more common rite, and so decline to receive some of the allusions of Virgil and Ovid as historic evidence of the ancient usage of the former by the Romans, we shall find good reason for inferring that the funeral pile should rank among the later introductions of Roman luxury, derived in all probability from the Greeks, by whom it was used at a very early period. The oldest accounts indeed which we possess of the sepulchral honours of the funeral pile, the urn, and the monumental tumulus, are the descriptions of the funeral rites of Patroclus and Hector in the Iliad. The whole circumstances are characterized by much simple grace and beauty:—the burning of the body during the night, the libations of wine with which the embers were quenched at the dawn, the inurning of the ashes of the deceased, and the methodic construction of the pyramid of earth which covered the sacred deposit, and preserved the memory of the honoured dead.[54] The testimony of Pliny, on the contrary, is most distinct as to the introduction of a similar practice among the Romans at a comparatively late period.[55]

Independent of the consideration of Roman usage, it is unquestionable that the funeral pile must have been in use in the British Isles for many generations before the era of the Roman Invasion, if not indeed before that of Rome's mythic founder. But the evidence of the Scottish tumuli, while it proves the ancient practice of cremation, shows also the contemporaneous custom of inhumation; nor is it possible, so far as I can see, to determine from the amount of evidence yet obtained, that one of these was esteemed more honourable than the other.[56] It is not, indeed, uncommon for the larger tumuli to contain a single cist, with the inhumed remains untouched by fire, and around it, at irregular intervals, several cinerary urns, sometimes varying in size and style, but all containing the half-burned bones and ashes of the dead. The inference which such an arrangement suggests would seem to point to inhumation as the more honourable rite; but even where either inhumation or cremation has been the sole mode of disposing of the bodies, we still detect obvious marks of distinction, and of superior honours conferred on one or more of the occupants of the tumulus. In one of the largest of a numerous group of tumuli near Stromness, in Orkney, which was opened by the Rev. Charles Clouster, minister of Sandwick, in 1835, evidences of six separate interments were found, all so disposed on the original soil, and in contact with each other, as scarcely to admit of doubt that the whole had taken place prior to the formation of the earthen mound beneath which they lay. Two large and carefully constructed cists occupied the centre, and contained burnt bones, but without urns; while around these were four other cists, extremely rude, and greatly inferior both in construction and dimensions. In such we probably should recognise the family cemetery,—the two larger and more important cists containing, it may be, the chief and his wife, and the surrounding ones their children, or favourite dependents, or perhaps their slaves.

One of the most interesting examples which have been accurately observed of simple interment accompanied with urns and relics entirely belonging to the primitive period, was discovered on the opening of a small tumulus in the parish of Cruden, Aberdeenshire. Within it was found a cist containing two skeletons nearly entire. One of these was that of an adult, while the other appeared to have been a youth of twelve or thirteen years of age, in addition to which there were also portions of the skeleton of a dog. Beside them stood two rude clay urns, slightly ornamented with encircling lines, but containing no incinerated remains; and within the cist were found seven flint arrow-heads, two flint knives, and a polished stone, similar to one now in the Scottish Museum, which is described in a succeeding chapter. It is slightly convex on one side, and concave on the other, with small holes drilled at the four corners, by which it would seem to have been attached, most probably, to the dress, as an article of personal adornment. These curious relics are now in the collection of Adam Arbuthnot, Esq., of Peterhead.

Cæsar relates of the Gauls that they burned their honoured dead, consuming along with them not only the things they most esteemed when alive, but also their dogs and horses, and their favourite servants and retainers.[57] Without any reference to this remarkable passage, it is scarcely possible to overlook the evidence which suggests the idea of some such Suttee system having prevailed among the aboriginal Britons, when observing the opening of a large tumulus, as it discloses its group of cists or urns, or of both combined. It seems hardly reconcilable with the general customs or ideas of a primitive community, to suppose that the earthen pyramid was systematically husbanded by its ancient builders like a modern family vault, or disturbed anew for repeated interments, unless by those who had lost all remembrance of its original object. Towards the close of the Pagan era, and in that transition-period which extends in Scotland from the fifth to about the ninth century, during which the rites of the new faith were still blended with older Pagan customs, it was no doubt different, and regular cemeterial tumuli are found, which must have accumulated during a considerable period. These, however, differ essentially from the earlier tumuli; and if we are to suppose the whole group of urns or cists in the latter to have been deposited at once, it is difficult to conceive of any other mode of accounting for this than the one already suggested, which is so congenial to the ideas of barbarian rank, and of earthly distinctions perpetuated beyond the grave. Instances do indeed occur both of cists and urns found in large tumuli near the surface, and so far apart from the main sepulchral deposit as to induce the belief that they may have been inserted at a subsequent period; while the large chambered tumuli and cairns must be supposed to have been the burial-places of a tribe or sept. It must not be overlooked that the tumuli are not, in general, to be regarded as common graves, but as special monumental structures reserved alone for the illustrious dead; among whom, no doubt, were reckoned those who fell in battle, and over whom we may therefore conceive the surviving victors to have erected those gigantic cairns which are occasionally found to cover a multitude of the dead. But some of the Scottish cairns which have been found only to inclose a solitary cist, must have occupied the labour of months, and required the united exertions of a numerous corps of workmen, to gather the materials, and pile them up into such durable and imposing monuments.

The remembrance of how greatly the dead of a few generations outnumber the living, would alone suffice to show that the tumuli could not be common sepulchral mounds. Such a custom universally adopted for a few generations in a populous district, would surpass the effects of deluges and earthquakes, in the changes wrought by it on the natural surface of the ground. The laws of Solon interdicted the raising of tumuli on account of the extent of land they occupied; and the Romans enacted the same prohibitory restrictions prior to the time of Cicero. We are familiar with the common modes of British sepulture, contemporaneous with the monumental tumulus; both the cist and the urn being very frequently found without any artificial increase of the superincumbent soil to mark the spot where they are deposited. Their inhumation beneath the soil, as well as the frequent occurrence of numbers together, point them out as the common and undistinguished graves of the builders of the tumuli. Where the tumulus was to be superimposed no such interment took place. The cist was constructed on the natural surface of the soil, and over this, earth brought from a distance—or occasionally cut away from the surface immediately surrounding the chosen site, so as thereby to add to its height—was heaped up and moulded into the accustomed form. In its progress the accompanying urns were disposed, frequently with little attention to regularity, in the inclosed area; nor is it uncommon to find along with these the bones of domestic animals. In the later tumuli are occasionally found the bronze bridle-bit and other horse furniture, and sometimes teeth and bones, and even the entire skeleton of the horse. The skeleton of the dog is still more frequently met with: and it is to be regretted that in Scotland the fact has hitherto been recorded without any minute observations being attempted on the skeleton, from which to ascertain its species, and perhaps thereby trace the older birthland of its master.[58] The Rev. Alexander Low, in a communication laid before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1815, refers to the entire skeleton of a horse discovered interred between two cists, where a large cairn had been demolished in the parish of Cairnie, Aberdeenshire. Other examples will come under our notice, all indicating the prevalence of the custom above referred to, so consonant with barbarian ideas of rank, and with the rude conceptions of a future state which still linger in parts of the Asiatic continent, where the philologist has traced the evidences of a common origin with the wandering tribes that found their way across the continent of Europe and peopled the British Isles. This, however, in passing: the reader will find no difficulty in separating fact from fancy when judging for himself.

The Long Barrow has been stated to belong apparently to the rude primeval period; but the number of examples which have been carefully examined are still too few to admit of very positive conclusions being assumed. A remarkable group of Scottish long barrows occurs in the immediate neighbourhood of the Pass of Keltnie, Perthshire. One of them was opened in 1837, and found to contain unburnt bones, along with which were discovered several rude horn lance-heads and pieces of bone artificially cut. The state of preservation in which these were, when compared with the rapid decay of the human remains almost immediately on their exposure to the air, opens up an interesting inquiry in relation to these primitive sepulchral deposits. The very different conditions in which the contiguous bones are found seem at first sight incompatible with the idea of their having been deposited along with the original occupants of the barrow. But the fragile texture of the human skeleton, when compared with that of the lower animals, is well known. Professor Goodsir informs me that his investigations have led him to the direct conclusion that the bones of the lower animals decay much less rapidly than those of man. The state of the skeletons of dogs and horses found in the tumuli confirms this conclusion, which is probably sufficiently accounted for by the greater delicacy of structure characterizing the human osteology. But independently of this, bone implements finished and deposited in a cist or tumulus in a perfect state, would be much less directly exposed to the influences affecting the skeleton amid the decomposition of the vascular tissues. It may be noted along with these observations on early tumuli, that a large conical cairn in the vicinity of the long barrows of Keltnie was demolished in 1836. It contained eleven cists, several of which inclosed cinerary urns, but no metallic relics were found in them.

The change to the circular tumulus is not accompanied with any indications of alteration in the arts of its constructors. Stone weapons and implements are of frequent occurrence in the latter, and particularly in the bowl barrow, though no distinctive evidence has yet been noted in relation to the most common forms of tumuli, sufficiently marked to be resolved into any general rule, save the very natural and obvious one, that the larger ones appear from their contents to be the more important. It is manifest, however, that some art was always exercised in giving to the tumulus an artificial form. Neither the bowl nor the bell shape is that which earth naturally assumes when thrown up into a heap. The form is therefore a matter worthy of further observation, and may yet prove a legitimate basis of stricter classification in reference to the era or race, than that now attempted. The bell-shaped tumuli are not very common in Scotland, but where they do occur they are generally of the larger class, though not always distinguished by any marked peculiarity in their contents. Such was found to be the case on opening the Black Knowe, which appears from a drawing of it to be a bell-shaped tumulus, and is one of the most remarkable for size in the parish of Rendale, Orkney. It was explored in February 1849 by Mr. George Petrie, a zealous Orkney antiquary, in company with Lieutenant Thomas, R.N., while engaged in the Admiralty Survey. I am informed, however, by the latter, that its shape was by no means uniform, and viewed from some points it differed little from the common bowl barrow, of which it is computed that above two thousand are still to be found scattered over the Orkney Islands alone. In the centre and on a level with the natural surface of the soil, there was found a small chamber or cist of undressed stones, measuring eighteen by twelve inches, and containing only an extremely rude cinerary urn, filled with bones and ashes mixed with clay.

Both the Enclosed and the Encircled Barrows are frequently of large dimensions, and indicate by their contents that they belong to the later era, when the metallurgic arts had been introduced. In various instances the contents of the enclosed barrow, or tumulus surrounded with an earthen vallum, clearly prove it to belong to the Roman era. In one, for example, in the neighbourhood of Rutherglen, Lanarkshire, which measured 260 feet in circumference, a gallery or long chamber was discovered, constructed of unhewn stones, and containing, among other relics, two brass vessels, which from the description appear to have been Roman patellæ. On the handle of each of them was engraved the name Congallus or Convallus. With these were deposited various native relics, including a perforated stone and three large glass beads, such as are frequently found in earlier British tumuli.[59] Examples, however, are not wanting of the enclosed barrow with contents belonging to an earlier period. One of such formed the largest of a group which occupied the summit of one of the Cathkin hills in the parish of Kilbride. It measured eighteen feet in height, and one hundred and twenty feet in diameter, and bore the name of Queen Mary's Law, from a popular tradition that the hapless Mary watched from its summit the ebbing tide of her fortunes on the fatal field of Langside. This interesting memorial, thus associated with two widely severed periods of Scottish history, afforded building materials to the district for many years, until in 1792 some workmen while employed in removing stones from it, exposed to view a vault or chamber situated towards the west side of the mound, and containing twenty-five rude cinerary urns. They were placed, as is most usual in the earlier sepulchres, with their mouths downward, and underneath each urn lay a piece of white quartz. Exactly in the centre of the cairn a rude cist was discovered measuring nearly four feet square, and among a quantity of human bones which surrounded it were two rude fibulæ of mixed metal, and an armilla or ring of cannel coal. Another fibula and an equally rude metal comb were found in one of the urns.[60]

The Crowned and the Encircled Barrows closely resemble a class of monuments which abound in Sweden and Denmark, while they are of rare occurrence in England. In the "Samlingar för Nordens Fornälskare,"[61] a variety of examples of both have been engraved; some of which have a second circle of stones placed about half-way up the mound, and a large standing stone on the summit. Such correspondence, however, is not necessarily a proof of Scandinavian origin, nor do they occur most frequently in districts of Scotland where the long residence or frequent incursions of the Norwegians would lead us to expect Scandinavian remains. In a large encircled barrow called Huly Hill, opened in 1830, at Old Liston, a few miles to the west of Edinburgh, a bronze spear-head was found along with a heap of animal charcoal and small fragments of bones, but neither cist nor urn. A solitary standing stone, measuring about nine and a half feet in height, occupies a neighbouring field, a little to the east of it. Another barrow which stood near the Abbey of Newbattle, East-Lothian, was of a conical form, measuring thirty feet in height, and ninety feet in circumference at the base. It formed a prominent and beautiful object in that noble demesne, surrounded at its base with a circle of standing stones, and crowned on the summit with a large fir-tree. On its removal to make way for some additions to the Abbey, it was found to contain a cist nearly seven feet long, enclosing a human skeleton. A remarkable skull preserved in the Edinburgh Phrenological Museum, and described as found in a stone coffin in a tumulus opened at Newbattle in 1782, appears to belong to this memorial mound.

One other remarkable form of barrow occasionally, though very rarely, found in Scotland, in all probability owes its origin to the Vikings who invaded and colonized our coasts at the close of the Pagan period. This consists of an oblong mound of larger size than the primitive long barrow, and terminating in a point at both ends. Some examples are also inclosed with stones, having one of considerable size at each end; and from their rarity and their remarkable resemblance to the Skibssœtninger, or ship barrow of Sweden, there can be little hesitation in assigning to them a Scandinavian origin. One of these encircled ship barrows was only demolished a few years since, on the farm of Graitney Mains, Dumfriesshire, but no record of its contents has been preserved. A much more celebrated one, and, according to venerable traditions, of undoubted native origin, is the Mound of St. Columba, at Port a Churaich, or the Bay of the Boat, which is believed to mark the spot where the Saint first landed on Iona. It measures about fifty feet in length, and is supposed to be a model of St. Columba's currach, or boat made of wicker and hides, built by him in commemoration of his landing on the sacred isle. An upright stone formerly stood at each end, and near to it is a smaller mound, representing, as is said, the little boat towed astern. In all probability an investigation of the contents of this traditional memorial would prove its sepulchral character, as has been found to be the case in other Scottish ship barrows.[62] These singular tumuli are described by Chalmers as "oblong ridges, like the hulk of a ship, with its bottom upwards." But it appears from the investigations of northern antiquaries, that this sepulchral monument was not only the mimic representation of the Vikings' ship, but that the contents of the Scandinavian Skibssœtninger seem to confirm the assertion of their sagas, that these warriors of the deep were sometimes literally burnt in their ships, and the form of the favourite scene of their triumphs renewed in the earth-work that covered their ashes.[63]

To this class probably belongs a very large earth-work, styled the Hill of Rattray, Perthshire, and perhaps also another of still larger dimensions, called Terrnavie, in the parish of Dunning, in the same county. It is a mound of earth, resembling a ship with the keel uppermost, and occupying several acres of ground. The name appears to be a corruption of terræ navis, or earth-ship, given to it on account of its form. Superstition has conferred a sacredness on it, by the association of legends evidently of primitive character. It is told that a profane hind, having proceeded to cut turfs on the side of the Terrnavie, was suddenly appalled by the vision of an old man, who appeared in the opening he had made, and after demanding, with an angry countenance and voice, why he was tirring (unroofing) his house over his head, as suddenly vanished.[64] Remains of ancient armour were dug up a few years ago, on the farm of Rossie, a little to the east of Terrnavie; of these "two helmets, a small hatchet of yellow metal, and a finger ring, are preserved in Duncruib House."[65]

The barrow was not, in all probability, entirely superseded until some time after the introduction of Christianity into Scotland. Several examples seem to indicate that the Anglo-Saxons were wont to convert an accumulating barrow into the general place of sepulture of a locality, interring the body apparently in its ordinary robes, but without any cist. Such appears to have been the tumular cemetery at Lamel Hill, near York, of which a minute account is given by Dr. Thurnam, in the Archæological Journal; and such also was a large sepulchral mound, levelled near the beach at North Berwick, East-Lothian, in 1847, in preparing a site for new gas-works. The latter was in the immediate vicinity of what appears to have been used as a general burial ground probably till a late medieval era, but its contents were clearly referrible to the Anglo-Saxon period; while in the same neighbourhood many cists and other relics of still older races have been found. This last adaptation of the primitive memorial mound as the cemetery of a whole race, ere it was abandoned along with the creed to which it had been allied, is thus beautifully referred to in the description by Dorban, an ancient Irish poet, of the Relec na Riogh, the place of interment of the kings of the Scotic race, of which the last Pagan monarch was killed in the year 406.

"Fifty mounds, I certify,
Are at Oenach na Cruachna,
There are under each mound of them
Fifty fine warlike men.
Every hill which is at Oenach
Has under it heroes and queens,
And poets and distributers,
And fair fierce women.

"The host of Connaught that was energetic,
A truly warlike host,
Beautiful the valiant tribe,
Buried in Cathair Cruachna.
There is not at this place
A hill at Oenach na Cruachna,
Which is not the grave of a king or royal prince,
Or of a woman or warlike poet."[66]

The Cruachna, or Cruithne, are the older Pictish or Celtic race particularly referred to hereafter. They are numbered among the Pagans in the same poetic description of the great regal cemetery of Ireland,—

"The three cemeteries of idolaters are
The cemetery of Tailten, the select;
The cemetery of the ever-fair Cruachan,
And the cemetery of Brugh."

Of all the more remarkable Scottish sepulchral memorials, the Cairn is most frequently found, scattered through many districts, and corresponding in form to nearly every class of the earthen tumuli. So common, indeed, are cairns in many parts of the country, that they give names to the farms on which they stand, the prefix or termination, cairn, being of very frequent occurrence in such designations of property, particularly in Aberdeenshire. The cairn appears to have been completely incorporated with the ideas of the people, from the remotest period of the rude stone implements, to the close of Pagan customs and sepulchral rites, and is justly described as a Celtic monument. Its name, kærn, is a primitive term, literally signifying heaps of stones.[67] Dr. Jamieson traces it back to the Hebrew kern, a horn, also applied to a hill. In the agreement between Jacob and Laban, we see an example of the standing stone and cairn, the "pillar and heap," employed as the memorials of a covenant by the Hebrew patriarch. In the sepulture of Achan and of Absalom we have examples of the cairn as a mark of obloquy and contempt; but no traces of such associations are discoverable in Scotland, unless in very recent times. Occasionally we meet with examples of the pillar and heap united in a memorial cairn, as in one of large dimensions, situated at the junction of two roads, near the village of Fowlis, Perthshire, which is surmounted by a large standing stone, corresponding to the barrows, for which the distinctive appellation of crowned tumuli is suggested. The estimation of the cairn as an honourable memorial of the dead, is proved not only by the valuable contents, more frequently discovered in cairns than in any other Scottish sepulchral mounds, but also by the associations which popular tradition has preserved. A proverbial expression, still in use among the Scottish Highlanders, is Curri mi clach er do cuirn, I will add a stone to your cairn: i.e., I will honour your memory when you are gone. The conical cairn must have been in use in Scotland during a longer period than any other sepulchral memorial. It undoubtedly belongs to the Stone Period, during which it was frequently constructed of proportions no less gigantic than in later eras, and much greater than any contemporary earthen tumulus. But it appears to have been the favourite and most distinguished sepulchral memorial of the aboriginal races, throughout the whole three periods into which archæologists divide the long era prior to the revolutions effected by Roman civilisation and the introduction of Christianity. Cairns are either still found, or are known to have existed, in nearly every parish of Scotland. Many of these have been works of great labour, being regularly built of stones of considerable size, and approaching more to the character of a constructive pyramid, than of a mere stone tumulus or heap. Their form is most frequently conical, but several varieties occur, including occasionally, though rarely, the primitive shape of the long barrow. Ure describes two of this form, which were situated in the parish of Baldernoch, Stirlingshire, near a large cromlech, which still exists, styled, The auld wives' lift. The largest of these cairns measured sixty yards in length, and only ten yards in breadth. On its demolition it was found to cover a sepulchral chamber of about four feet in breadth, constructed of rows of broad stones set on edge, covered with large flat stones, and containing numerous human remains. In the other long cairn, which was opened in 1792, a similar chamber enclosed both urns and human bones. Various other cairns still remain unopened in the same district; and many of equal magnitude are to be met with in different parts of the country. The well-known antiquary, Mr. Joseph Train, furnishes an interesting account of several remarkable cairns in the parish of Minniegaff, Kirkcudbrightshire. One of these, called Drumlawhinnie, on the moor of Barcly, measures 891 feet in circumference. Another of equal dimensions, called the Boss Cairns, on the moor of Dranandow, which has been partially demolished to construct the neighbouring field inclosures, contains a sepulchral inclosure, similar to the cruciform chambers found in several of the most celebrated gigantic Irish cairns. It measures internally eighty feet in length, from the corresponding limbs of the cross each way, while it is only four feet wide and about three feet high. The stones in the middle of the cairn are very large, and are laid in regular courses, from the bottom to a considerable height, and become gradually smaller as they recede from the centre. The chamber of the Grey Cairn, on the neighbouring Drum of Knockman, closely resembles this in form and dimensions, and various others occur in the district. In one of them, called the White Cairn—which furnished a safe concealment to the Laird of Glencaird and his two sons, when pursued by Claverhouse for harbouring some of the persecuted Covenanters—some of the stones used in constructing the internal chamber are upwards of a ton weight each.[68] Pennant has preserved a variety of interesting details of the contents of cairns opened towards the close of last century. In one described by him on the hill of Down, near Banff, a chamber was found containing a large ornamented Celtic urn, with three smaller plain ones disposed around it. The whole were filled with ashes and burnt bones, in addition to which were flint arrow-heads, and two bone implements. Thirteen of the arrow-heads, and one of the implements, were found in the large central urn.[69] In two cairns in the parish of Tynron, Dumfriesshire, more recently opened, there were found cists, each of which contained fragments of bone, and a stone hammer.[70] Similar relics have been found in the cairns of Wigtonshire, where these sepulchral monuments are so numerous, that forty-nine have been counted in the small valley of Barnair. There is, indeed, no lack of abundant testimony to prove the erection of some of the largest Scottish cairns during the Stone Period. Others of later eras are equally common.

Sir John Clerk of Pennycuick communicated to Roger Gale, Esq., in 1726, a very interesting account of five cairns, opened and examined by himself or his friends, in different parts of Scotland. One at Bruntone, in the parish of Pennycuick, Mid-Lothian, contained only two cists, each about two feet in length, but without urns or relics. Another in Ayrshire contained human bones, apparently of a number of men, which had been partially subjected to fire, and beside them lay a flint adze, or axe-head. The contents of the third, which was also in the west of Scotland, are thus described:—"Some urns, placed on the top and about the sides of it, as well as some principal urns at the bottom, over which it had been raised. Large bones of horses and oxen, confusedly scattered among the stones and rubbish. The head of a spear, half melted by fire, and several other brass instruments, which had likewise suffered in the fire, and could not be well known."[71] The others, which were situated, one at Pennycuick, Mid-Lothian, and the other in Galloway, appear to have been native cairns, contemporary with the Roman invasion,—thus furnishing a series of examples of the Scottish cairn pertaining to each of the Pagan eras of our national history.

In the year 1828 a remarkable cairn was opened on Airswood Moss, Dumfriesshire, by a party of labourers, when seeking for stones with which to build a "march dyke," or boundary wall. The cairn consisted, as usual, of a heap of loose stones, surrounded by a ring of larger stones, closely set together. These formed a regular circle, measuring fifty-four feet in diameter. Its form, however, was singular. For about fourteen feet from the inner side of the encircling stones it rose gradually, but above this the angle of elevation abruptly changed, and the centre was formed into a steep cone. Directly underneath this a cist was found, lying north and south, composed of six large unhewn stones, and measuring in the interior four feet two inches in greatest length, with a depth of two feet. It contained only human bones, indicating a person of large stature, laid with the head towards the north. The further demolition of the cairn disclosed a curious example of regular internal construction on a systematic plan. From the four corners of the central cist there extended, in the form of a saltire, or St. Andrew's cross, rows of stones overlapping each other like the slating of a house. At the extremity of one of these, distant about fourteen feet from the central cist, another was found of corresponding structure and dimensions, but laid at right angles to the radiating row of stones. Another is said to have been found at the extremity of one of the opposite limbs of the cross; and it seems most probable that the whole four were originally conjoined to corresponding cists, but a considerable portion of one side of the cairn had been removed before attention was directed to the subject. Between the limbs of the cross a quantity of bones, in a fragmentary state, were strewn about.[72] Such a disposition of a group of cists, under a large cairn, though rare, is not without a parallel, and may perhaps be found characteristic of a class. The Rev. Harry Robertson of Kiltearn describes one in that parish, about thirty paces in diameter, which contained a central cist three and a half feet long, and at the circumference on the east, south, and west sides, three others of similar dimensions. As the cairn was in this case also imperfect, and partly demolished, it is not improbable that a fourth, on the north side, may have been previously destroyed.[73] Here, as in the tumuli with cinerary urns surrounding the central cist, the group of urns in the cairn on the hill of Down, and in numerous other instances, we find a singular arrangement, apparently designed as subservient to the honours lavished on some distinguished chief.

One of the most remarkable groups of cairns in Scotland associated with other primitive monuments, occurs on a small plain washed by the River Nairn, about a mile to the east of the field of Culloden. The whole plain, for upwards of a mile in extent, is covered over with large cairns, encircled by standing stones surrounding them at uniform intervals. Numerous circular groups or "Druidical Temples" occur in the same neighbourhood, with single monoliths and detached circles of small stones, scarcely visible amid the thick covering of grass and heath, but indicating, in all probability, the sites of ancient dwellings of the cairn-builders. An interesting natural chronometer is of frequent occurrence in connexion with these rude memorials of primitive habits, furnishing unmistakable evidence of the remoteness of the era to which they belong, and supplying data which may hereafter prove to be reducible to definite computation. The accumulation, not only of alluvium, but of peat-moss over the structures of early art, has already been referred to in describing the ancient boats, harpoons, &c., discovered in various localities. It will repeatedly recur in the course of our inquiry in relation to various classes of memorials of the past. The traveller, in passing from Bunaw Ferry, on Loch Etive, to Beregonium, Argyleshire, passes over an extensive moor, known by the name of the "Black Moss." On this, or rather rising up through it, are several large cairns, with here and there the remains of others which have been demolished for the purpose of inclosing fields or building cottages. In various parts considerable portions of the moss have been cleared away, exposing, at a depth of from eight to ten feet, the original soil upon which these sepulchral mounds have been reared, and bringing to light other interesting memorials of their builders, hereafter referred to. With such evidence of the slow growth of centuries obliterating the traces of primitive occupation, and effecting such changes on the natural features of the country, it is no vague conjecture which refers to an early era the period when this wild and barren moor was the scene of life and intelligence, and, it may be, of many useful arts. Along with these may be mentioned another group of cairns, including one of unusually large dimensions, not inclosed by the gathered moss of ages, but surrounded by the encroaching tide, on the north shore of the Frith of Beauly, Ross-shire, affording no less striking, though diverse evidence of the remote era to which they belong. In one of these sepulchral urns have been found, leaving no room to doubt of their monumental character. The largest stands about 400 yards within flood-mark; and an ingenious writer in the Philosophical Transactions arrives at the conclusion that an area of fully ten miles square, now flooded by the advancing tide, has once been the site of the dwellings of the ancient cairn-builders. Thus is it, while Time is sweeping away the hoar relics of the past, the traces of his footprints enable us occasionally to return upon his track, and learn how great is the interval that separates our present from the era of their birth-time.

Ure, in his History of Rutherglen and Kilbride, furnishes interesting notices of various large cairns demolished during last century, some of which have already been referred to. One of these, which long served as a quarry for an extensive district of the latter parish, was termed Knocklegoil Cairn,—Knoc-kill-goill, the hill of the cell, or grave, of the strangers. Some thousands of cart-loads of stones were taken from it, in the course of which various cinerary urns were removed or destroyed.

Another, called Herlaw, (the memorial mound,) was of still larger dimensions. "Some thousand cart-loads of stones have, at different times, been taken from it; and some thousands yet remain. Many urns with fragments of human bones were found in one corner of it. It is still about twelve feet in height, and covers a base of seventy feet in diameter; but this must have been far short of its dimensions when entire."[74] The name of this gigantic cairn is still attached to the farm of Harelaw, on which it stood, but the last remains of the pile were removed about the year 1808, and a small group of trees now occupies its site. Such details might be multiplied to almost any amount, but one other remarkable cairn may be noted:—"On the hill above the moor of Ardoch," says Gordon, "are two great heaps of stones, the one called Cairnwochel, the other Cairnlee. The former of these is the greatest curiosity of the kind that I ever met with; the quantity of great rough stones, lying above one another, almost surpasses belief, which made me have the curiosity to measure it; and I found the whole heap to be about 182 feet in length, thirty in sloping height, and forty-five in breadth at the bottom."[75] Since these measurements were made the cairn has been opened, and within it was found a cist, containing, according to the account of the parish minister, the skeleton of a man seven feet long.[76]

As we are reasonably led to conclude that the tumuli and cairns were mostly constructed at one time, as monuments, and not gradually completed as they were filled on the death of successive members of a family or tribe, the large chambered cairns must be considered as a separate class from those first described. It is possible that they may have been designed as the catacombs of a whole tribe; though it is difficult to reconcile such an idea with the improvident habits of a rude people, and with the monumental character usually traceable in these structures. We should rather, perhaps, look upon the chambered cairn as the memorial of the victors on some bloody battle-field. On this supposition the Knoc-kill-goill, or hill of the strangers' graves, would indicate the scene where triumphant invaders had paid the last honours to their dead ere they bore off with them the spoils of victory. Such suppositions, however, are altogether apart from the facts with which we have chiefly to deal. The cromlech, which is now almost universally recognised as a sepulchral monument,[77] formed by far the most laborious and costly memorial which the veneration or gratitude of primitive ages dedicated to the honour of their illustrious dead. It consists of three or four large unhewn columns, supporting a huge table or block of stone, and forming together a rectangular chamber, which is frequently further inclosed by smaller stones built into the intervening spaces. Within this area there is generally found the skeleton, disposed in a contracted position, and accompanied with urns and relics of an early period. As the sepulchral tumulus is justly regarded as only a gigantic grave-mound, so the origin of the cromlech may be traced to the desire of providing a cist for the last resting-place of the chief or warrior, equally distinguished from that which sufficed for common dust—

"A little urn—a little dust inside,
Which once outbalanced the large earth, albeit,
To-day a four-years' child might carry it!"[78]

This class of sepulchral monuments is rare in Scotland when compared with other monolithic structures that abound in almost every district of the country. Some few interesting examples, however, are still found perfect, while partial traces of a greater number remain to show that the cromlech was familiar to the builders of the Scottish monolithic era. One of the most celebrated Scottish cromlechs is a group styled, The Auld Wives' Lift, near Craigmadden Castle, Stirlingshire. It is remarkable as an example of a trilith, or complete cromlech, consisting only of three stones. Two of nearly equal length support the huge capstone, a block of basalt measuring fully eighteen feet in length, by eleven in breadth, and seven in depth. A narrow triangular space remains open between the three stones, and through this every stranger is required to pass on first visiting the spot, if, according to the rustic creed, he would escape the calamity of dying childless. It is not unworthy of being noted, that though the site of this singular cromlech is at no great elevation, a spectator standing on it can see across the island from sea to sea; and may almost at the same moment observe the smoke from a steamer entering the Frith of Clyde, and from another below Grangemouth, in the Forth.

From the traces of ruined cromlechs which are still visible in various parts of the country, some of them appear to have been encircled, like a class of barrows described above, with a ring of standing stones; and it is exceedingly probable that many of the smaller groups throughout the country, designated temples, or Druidical circles, belong to the class of sepulchral memorials. Such is the case with a monolithic group in the parish of Sandwick, Orkney, and it is still more noticeable in the ring of Stennis, where the cromlech lies overthrown beside the gigantic ruins of the circle which once inclosed it. Various other cromlechs still remain in Orkney. One called the Stones of Vea, situated on the moor about half a mile south of the manse of Sandwick, though overthrown, is otherwise uninjured. The capstone measures five feet ten inches, by four feet nine inches, and still rests against two of its supporters. A group, which stands on the brow of Vestrafiold, appears to have included two if not three cromlechs. There is another remarkable assemblage, in a similarly ruined state, near Lamlash Bay, in the island of Arran; and a single cromlech stood—if it does not still stand—in the centre of a stone circle in the same island.[79] A fine one also remains, in perfect preservation, on the southern declivity of the hill of Sidla, Forfarshire; another good example has been preserved on the farm of Ardnadam, in the parish of Dunoon, Argyleshire; and others, more or less complete, are to be seen at Achnacreebeg, Ardchattan, and in various districts of the West Highlands, as well as in other parts of Scotland. Some at least of these gigantic structures were buried under a tumular mound, precisely in the same manner as the smaller cists. In 1825 a cromlech was discovered on the removal of a tumulus of unusual size, situated near the west coast of the peninsula of Cantyre. It contained only the greatly decayed remains of a human skeleton, but in the superincumbent soil were found many bones, and the teeth of the horse and cow, also in a state of decay. The capstone of this cromlech measured five by four feet, and its four supporters were each about three feet high.[80] A somewhat larger cromlech was disclosed, under nearly similar circumstances, in the year 1838, on the levelling of a large mound or tumulus, in the Phœnix Park, Dublin.

The whole of these examples are constructed of rough and entirely unhewn blocks. The annexed figure represents a partially ruined cromlech, at Bonnington Mains, near Ratho, Mid-Lothian, which is interesting from some traces which it retains of artificial tooling. Along the centre of the large capstone a series of shallow perforations have been made at nearly regular intervals, and possibly indicate a design of splitting it in two. Such is the idea formed by Mr. F. C. Lukis in a somewhat parallel case, though any indication of artificial formation in such primitive structures is of the very rarest occurrence. Mr. Lukis remarks in a communication to the Archæological Association:—"I send a sketch of the cromlech on L'Ancresse Common, Guernsey, on which we have discovered a string of indentations, probably made with a view to trim the side prop to the required size of the capstone. These are the first appearances of art in any of the primeval monuments, and nowhere have we found anything of the kind excepting on a menhir in the parish of the Forest.... The use of these indents we can only guess at; but as they follow the fracture of the stone, (granite,) the early method of breaking stones would be explained."[81] The Bonnington Mains Cromlech is of large size. The capstone, which now rests on only two of its supporters, measures 11½ feet in length, and 10½ feet in greatest breadth. It bears the name of The Witch's Stone,[82] in accordance with the rustic legend which ascribes its origin to an emissary of the famed old Scottish wizard, Michael Scot. The term cromlech is probably derived from cromadh (Gaelic) or cromen (Welsh), signifying a roof or vault, and clach or lech, a stone. But the compound word is of ancient use in Scotland. An extensive district in the neighbourhood of Dunblane, Perthshire, which still bears the name of the Cromlix, is remarkable for various large transported blocks scattered over its surface. One of these, which has been supposed to have formed the capstone of a large cromlech, measures 15½ by 10 feet; but it is very doubtful if it owes either its form or position to human hands. According to the proposed derivation the name may be rendered the suspended stone; and its application to a district covered with transported rocks from the neighbouring Ochils, of a date long prior to the historic era, is in no way inconsistent with its more usual application to the primitive monolithic structures. We have no satisfactory evidence that these are Celtic monuments. The tendency of our present researches leads to the conclusion that they are not, but that they are the work of an elder race, of whose language we have little reason to believe any relic has survived to our day. On this supposition the old name of Cromlech is of recent origin compared with the structures to which it is applied; and of this its derivation affords the strongest confirmation. It is just such a term as strangers would adopt, being simply descriptive of the actual appearance of the monument, but conveying no idea of its true character as a sepulchral memorial.

The Witch's Stone, Bonnington Mains, Mid-Lothian

Such are the monumental structures belonging to the primitive periods; but examples of the cist and cinerary urn, deposited without any superincumbent mound, are of extremely frequent occurrence. They are most commonly grouped in considerable numbers, indicating the ordinary rites of sepulture contemporary with the monumental tumulus or cairn. In the first of these, as in cists found underneath ancient cairns and tumuli, the body appears to have been generally interred in a contracted posture, with the knees drawn up to the breast; and some examples would even seem to indicate that the limb bones were broken when the body could not otherwise be disposed within the straitened dimensions which custom prescribed for the primitive tomb. The custom may be traced to the idea prevalent long after the Christian era, that it was unworthy of a warrior to die in his bed. The rude Briton was accordingly interred seated, and with his weapons of stone or bronze at his side, ready to spring up when the sound of the war-cry should summon him to renew the strife. It seems probable that some few cists of full proportions belong to a period prior to this custom, but it undoubtedly prevailed for ages, and probably did not disappear till after the introduction of Christianity. The short stone cist has been discovered of late years in the immediate vicinity of some of the most ancient Christian churches in the Orkneys, while examples of a full-sized cist, with the inclosed skeleton extended at length, are met with under circumstances, and with accompanying relics, which leave no doubt that they belong to both of the primitive periods. One singular variation from the custom of burial in the sitting posture has been noted, in which the body has been interred with the knees bent, but laid on the right side. It must, however, be at all times extremely difficult to ascertain the exact position in which the body has been originally laid, from the little crumbling heap of decayed bones lying in the contracted cist; and there is no failing to which antiquarian observers seem at present more liable than that of seeing too much. An intelligent correspondent writes from Orkney,—

"Graves are frequently found in which the skeletons lie in various positions; in some cases as if the bodies had been huddled into the grave without any care; in others the knees are considerably bent, and the skeletons lie on the right side. Several such examples have been discovered in Sandwick; and in a grave which I recently opened in Westray, the skeleton was found on its right side in a similar posture. I examined it carefully, and it conveyed the impression to my mind that the individual had been slain in battle, and the body had been laid in the grave in the posture it was found on the field of conflict. A similar posture has been observed in skeletons found in different islands. The rude figure of a Calvary cross carved on the stone which formed a side of one of the graves in Sanday, seems to indicate that they were made subsequent to the introduction of Christianity, in the same way that a mallet-head of gneiss, beautifully polished, found at the right hand of a skeleton buried in a sitting posture in a grave in Sandwick, denoted a date prior to that era."[83] It is possible that the body laid on its right side with contracted limbs, may be found to indicate the transition-period prior to its interment at full length. The latter mode of burial appears, in England at least, to have been restored in Anglo-Saxon times, and before the introduction of Christianity.

A very general impression prevails that the primitive cists are invariably found lying north and south. But this is a hasty conclusion, which has been the more readily adopted from the distinction it seems to furnish in contrast to the medieval custom of laying the head towards the west, that the Christian might look to the point from whence he expected his Saviour at his second coming. Abundant evidence exists to disprove the universal use of any particular direction in laying the cists or interring the dead in the primitive period. A few examples will suffice to show this. In 1824 a number of cists were discovered in making a new approach to Blair Drummond House, near the river Teith, Stirlingshire. They were of the usual character, varying in size, but none of them large enough to hold a full-grown body laid at length. Some contained urns of various dimensions, with burnt bones and ashes, while in others the bones had no appearance of having been exposed to fire. The urns were extremely rude and simple in form, and no metallic relics were discovered among them. Here, therefore, we have a primitive place of sepulture, in a locality already noted for some remarkable evidences of very remote population. But the cists lay irregularly in various directions, giving no indication of any chosen mode or prevailing custom.[84] In 1814 several cists were discovered in the parish of Borthwick, Mid-Lothian, of the ordinary character and proportions, and in some cases containing urns, one of which is now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Others have since been discovered in the same neighbourhood at various times, but like those on the banks of the Teith, "they were placed without any regard to order."[85] In constructing the new road to Leith, leading from the centre of Bellevue Crescent, Edinburgh, in 1823, several stone cists were found, of the usual circumscribed dimensions and rude construction of the primitive period, but being disposed nearly due east and west, were assumed without further evidence to be "of course since the introduction of Christianity."[86] Another similar relic of the aboriginal occupants of the site of the modern Scottish capital was found in 1822, in digging the foundation of a house on the west side of the Royal Circus. In this case the cist lay north and south, but the head was laid at the south end. The whole skeleton, with the exception of a few of the teeth, crumbled to dust on being touched.[87] In a cist discovered in 1790, under a large cairn in the parish of Kilbride, the skeleton lay with its head to the east. Such was its great age, that it also speedily crumbled to dust.[88] Within the district of Argyleshire, now occupied by the villages of Dunoon and Kilmun, many primitive cists have been exposed, rudely constructed of unhewn slabs of the native schistose slate, and some of them containing lance and arrow-heads of flint, and other equally characteristic relics, but the irregularity of their disposition proved that convenience alone dictated the direction in which the bodies were laid. Other examples of irregular though methodic arrangement of the cists found in cairns have already been noted, and it would be easy to multiply similar instances. One more will suffice. In the neighbourhood of the parish church of Cairnie, Aberdeenshire, various cists have been exhumed of late years, lying in different and apparently quite irregular directions. One found in 1836, by a farm-servant while digging for sand, lay at a depth of about 2½ feet below the surface. Its interior dimensions were four feet by three feet, and it contained a human skeleton with the head laid towards the east end. At the right side was a rude hand-made urn 5¾ inches in height, which is now preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries.

It is obvious, from these examples, that the mere direction in which the body is laid is not in itself conclusive proof either of Pagan or Christian sepulture. But there does also occur a numerous class of instances, which seem to indicate that at some early period importance was attached to the direction in which the body was laid, and then the cist was placed north and south, or rather north-east and south-west, with the head towards the north, and designed, it may be, to look towards the meridian sun. So many instances of this are familiar to archæologists, that it seems hardly necessary to produce examples: but two of a peculiar character may be deserving of special notice. In March 1826, a farmer on the estate of Wormeston, near Fifeness, in levelling a piece of ground, discovered, at a depth of ten feet from the surface, thirty cists, disposed in two regular rows, at equal distances apart, and with the heads towards the north-east. Their arrangement was peculiar, and obviously the result of some special design. A line drawn along their ends was nearly due east and west, and from this they declined obliquely, in the direction of north-east and south-west. The whole lay parallel, and equidistant from each other, and in the centre of each of the intervening spaces an oblong stone was placed so as to abut against the sides of the adjacent cists.[89] Another group, disposed nearly similarly to this, was brought to light on the levelling of a long barrow of unusually large dimensions, in the parish of Strathblane, Dumbartonshire. Urns were found within the cists full of earth and burnt bones; and alongside of each was a column of about three feet in height, selected from basaltic rocks in the neighbourhood, many of which assume the form of regular quadrangular crystals. The position of the bodies appears to have been north and south, as the barrow, which measured sixty yards in length, lay east and west.[90]

The discovery of any important deviation from the customary rites of sepulture has already been referred to as probable evidence of some unwonted change in the social condition of a people; marking, it may be, the introduction of a new element into the national creed, or the violent intrusion of some foreign race of conquerors, displacing older customs by the law of the sword. In the introduction of the funeral pile and the cinerary urn, we have one important evidence of the adoption of novel rites. In the systematic disposition of the body in a fixed direction, it is probable that we may trace another and still earlier change. Both practices are deserving of more careful investigation than they have yet received, in the relation they bear to the progressive advances of the primitive races of Scotland. Without the opportunity of comparing more extensive and trustworthy observations than we yet possess, it would be premature to insist upon the inferences suggested by them. But it accords with many other indications that we should find less method or design in the rude sepulchres of the earliest aborigines, than of those who had long located themselves in the glades of the old Caledonian forests, and abandoned nomadic habits for the cares and duties of a pastoral life. The establishment of such a distinction would furnish a valuable chronological guide to the archæologist in the arrangement of his materials for primitive history; meanwhile, it is only suggested for further observation. The early Christian adapted the position of his grave to the aspirations of his faith; and a similar practice among older races, in all probability, bore a kindred relation to some lesson of their Pagan creed, the nature of which is not yet perhaps utterly beyond recall. The question of divers races is, at least, one of comparatively easy solution. On this the investigations of the practical ethnologist may throw much light, by establishing proofs of distinct craniological characteristics pertaining to the remains interred north and south, from those belonging, as I conceive, to a still earlier period,—before the rude Caledonian had learned to attach a meaning to the direction in which he was laid to rest in the arms of death, or to dispose himself for his long sleep with thoughts which anticipated a future resurrection.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Hibbert's Shetland, p. 452.

[52] Account of the Islands of Orkney, by James Wallace, M.D., 1700, p. 58.

[53] Notices of remains found in tumuli and cists, of gigantic stature, frequently occur in the Statistical Accounts and other local records, but the statements are generally too vague to be of any value. Erroneous opinions, I believe, most frequently arise from comparing the femur or thigh-bone with the apparent length of the thigh, by persons ignorant of anatomy. Nothing, however, more readily secures distinction among a rude warlike people than the personal strength accompanying superior stature, if combined with corresponding courage; it need not therefore excite surprise if the larger tumuli should occasionally be found to cover the remains of some primitive chief of gigantic stature.

[54] The account which Tacitus gives of the simpler rites of the ancient Germans probably more nearly accords with those of the primitive Britons: "Funerum nulla ambitio; id solum observatur, ut corpora clarorum virorum certis lignis crementur. Struem rogi nec vestibus, nec odoribus cumulant; sua cuique arma, quorundam igni et equus adjicitur."—Tacit. de Morib. Germ. cap. 27.

[55] Ipsum cremare apud Romanos non fuit veteris instituti, terra condebantur.—Hist. Nat. lib. vii. c. 54.

[56] Cases occur where the original tumulus has been adopted as a place of sepulture long subsequent to its original construction. Care is therefore required to discriminate between superficial interments of late date, and the original cist or urns; but it is rarely difficult to detect the evidences of intrusion. The slight depth at which they are generally interred affords in itself a striking contrast to the labour exercised by the constructors of the sepulchral mound. It is also to be borne in remembrance, that all the urns found in tumuli are not sepulchral, or proofs of cremation.

[57] De Bell. Gall. lib. vi. chap. 19.

[58] Dr. Hodgkin read a paper at the meeting of the British Association, held at York in 1844, on the dog as the associate of man, chiefly with a view to shew how much the study of the inferior animals which, by accident or design, have accompanied man in his diffusion over the globe, is calculated to throw light on the affinities of races.

[59] Ure's History of Rutherglen, p. 124.

[60] Ure's History of Kilbride, pp. 216-219.

[61] By N. K. Sjöborg. Two vols. quarto. Stockholm, 1822.

[62] Graham's Antiquities of Iona, Plate III.

[63] Worsaae's Primeval Antiquities, p. 109.

[64] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xix. p. 441.

[65] New Statist. Acc. vol. x. p. 717.

[66] Petrie's Eccles. Architect. of Ireland, pp. 103-5.

[67] Add. to Camd. Brit. in Radnorshire.

[68] New Statist. Acc. vol. iv., Kirkcudbright, pp. 132, 133.

[69] Pennant's Tour, vol. i. p. 156.

[70] New Statist. Acc., Dumfriesshire, vol. iv. p. 475.

[71] Itiner. Septen. Append. pp. 171-177.

[72] Dumfries Journal, June 24, 1828. MS. Communication, Soc. Antiq. Scot., Andrew Brown, Esq., read March 9, 1829.

[73] Sinclair's Statistical Account, vol. i. p. 292.

[74] Ure's Kilbride, p. 213.

[75] Itin. Septen. p. 42.

[76] Sinclair's Statistical Account, vol. viii. p. 497.

[77] This point has been conclusively established in the valuable communications of Mr. F. C. Lukis to the Archæological Journal, on the Primeval Antiquities of the Channel Islands, vol. i. pp. 142, 222. The original merit, however, of showing that cromlechs are "sepulchral chambers," and not "Druidical altars," is, I believe, due to a well-known and zealous antiquary, Mr. John Bell, of Dungannon, who published his views in the Newry Magazine, 1816, vol. ii. p. 234, from whence they were copied into various other journals.

[78] E. B. Barrett.

[79] Martin's Western Isles, p. 220.

[80] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 43.

[81] Journal of Brit. Archæol. Association, vol. iii. p. 342.

[82] While this sheet is passing through the press, I have had an opportunity of exploring this cromlech. The natural rock was laid bare at a very little depth without meeting with the slightest traces of sepulchral remains, and were it not for the remarkable line of perforations along the centre of the capstone, the whole might have been ascribed to a natural origin. It was found impossible, however, to get directly under the great stone, without the risk of overthrowing the whole.

[83] MS. Letter, George Petrie, Kirkwall.

[84] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 42.

[85] Archæol. Scot. vol. ii. pp. 77, 100.

[86] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 48.

[87] Archæol. Scot. vol. iii. p. 49.

[88] Ure's Kilbride, p. 213.

[89] MS. Letter, G. W. Knight, Libr. Soc. Antiq. Scot. 1829.

[90] Ure's Rutherglen, p. 223.

CHAPTER IV.
DWELLINGS.

Before proceeding to examine in detail the varied contents of the Scottish tumuli, it may be well to glance at the evidence we possess of the nature of the habitations reared and occupied by the constructors of such enduring memorials of their dead as have been described in the preceding chapter. Scattered over the uncultivated downs both of England and Scotland, there still remain numerous relics of the dwellings of our barbarian ancestry, which have escaped the wasting tooth of centuries, or the more destructive inroads of modern cultivation. Sir Richard Colt Hoare remarks, in his "Ancient Wiltshire,"—"We have undoubted proofs from history, and from existing remains, that the earlier habitations were pits, or slight excavations in the ground, covered and protected from the inclemency of the weather by boughs of trees and sods of turf." Of these primitive pit-dwellings numerous traces are discernible on Leuchar Moss, in the parish of Skene, and in other localities of Aberdeenshire; on the banks of Loch Fine, Argyleshire; in the counties of Inverness and Caithness; and in various other districts of Scotland still uninvaded by the plough. They are almost invariably found in groups, affording evidence of the gregarious and social habits of man in the simplest state of society. The rudest of them consist simply of shallow excavations in the soil, of a circular or oblong form, and rarely exceeding seven or eight feet in diameter. Considerable numbers of these may be observed in several districts both of Aberdeenshire and Inverness-shire, each surrounded with a raised rim of earth, in which a slight break generally indicates the door, and not improbably also the window and chimney of the aboriginal dwelling. To this class belong the "pond barrow," already referred to as erroneously ranked among sepulchral constructions. Within a few miles of Aberdeen are still visible what seem to be the remains of a large group, or township, of such rude relics of domestic architecture. These, Professor Stuart suggests, may mark the site of the capital of the Taixali, when the Roman legions passed the river Dee in the second century.[91] They consist of some hundreds of circular walls scattered over more than a mile in extent, of two or three feet high, and from twelve to twenty feet in diameter. Their varying sizes may be presumed to indicate the gradations of rank which, we know, were established among the northern Britons, who were undoubtedly, at the period of the Roman invasion, a race far in advance of the first constructors of the rude pit-dwelling or "pond barrow" previously referred to. Nothing, however, has yet been discovered on this site to indicate any traces of Roman influence. On digging within the area of the pit-dwellings, a mass of charred wood or ashes, mingled with fragments of decayed bones and vegetable matter, are generally found; and their site is frequently discernible on the brown heath, or the grey slope of the hill-side, from the richer growth and brighter green of the grass, within the circle sacred of old to the hospitable rites of our barbarian ancestry, and where the accumulated refuse of their culinary operations have thus sufficed to enrich the soil.