[Footnote 154: Wyntown's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland, vol. i. p. 183.]

[Footnote 155: In the Scotichronicon instead of "In Tegalere," the third of these lines commences "Inregale regens," etc.; and it is noted that in the "Liber Dumblain" the line begins "Indegale," etc.]

[Footnote 156: Buchanan, in his Rerum Scoticorum Historia, gives the locality as "ad Almonis amnis ostium." (Lib. vi. c. 81.)]

[Footnote 157: Scotorum Historiae, p. 235 of Paris edition of 1574. Bellenden and Stewart, in their translations of Boece's History both place the fight at "Crawmond."]

[Footnote 158: This document, entitled Nomina Regum Scottorum et Pictorum and published by Father Innes in his Critical Essay, p. 797, etc., is described by that esteemed and cautious author as a document the very fact of the registration of which among the records and charters of the ancient church of St. Andrews "is a full proof of its being held authentick at the time it was written, that is about A.D. 1251." (P. 607.)]

[Footnote 159: The orthography of the copy of this Chronicle, as given by Innes, is very inaccurate, and the omission of the two initial letters of "inver," not very extraordinary in the word Rathveramoen. Apparently the same word Rathinveramon occurs previously in the same Chronicle, when Donald MacAlpin, the second king of the combined Picts and Scots, is entered as having died "in Raith in Veramont" (p. 801). In another of the old Chronicles published by Innes, this king is said to have died in his palace at "Belachoir" (p. 783). If, as some historians believe, the Lothians were not annexed to Scotland before his death in A.D. 859, by Kenneth the brother of Donald, and did not become a part of the Scottish kingdom till the time of Indulf (about A.D. 954), or even later, then it is probable that the site of King Donald's death in A.D. 863, at Rathinveramon, was on the Almond in Perthshire, within his own territories.]

[Footnote 160: I am only aware of one very marked exception to this general law Malcolm Canmore is known to have been killed near Alnwick, when attacking its castle. Alnwick is situated on the Alne, about five or six miles above the village of Alnmouth, the ancient Twyford, on the Alne, of Bede, on the mount near which St. Cuthbert was installed as a bishop. But in the ancient Chronicle from the Register of St. Andrews, King Malcolm is entered (see Innes, p. 803) as "interfectus in Inneraldan." The error has more likely originated in a want of proper local knowledge on the part of the chronicler than in so unusual a use of the Celtic word "inver;" for, according to all analogies, while the term is applicable to Alnmouth, it is not at all applicable to Alnwick.]

[Footnote 161: Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. (Stevenson's Edit. p. 35.)]

[Footnote 162: De Bello Gothico, lib. iv. c. 20. See other authorities in Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 182.]

[Footnote 163: Emmii Rerum Friescarum Historia, p. 41.]

[Footnote 164: History of England, vol. i.—Anglo-Saxon Period, pp. 33, 34.]

[Footnote 165: The Ethnology of the British Islands, p. 259. At p. 240, Dr. Latham "A native tradition makes Hengist a Frisian." Dr. Bosworth cites (see his Origin of the English, etc., Language and Nation, p. 52) Maerlant in his Chronicle as doubtful whether to call Hengist a Frisian or a Saxon.]

[Footnote 166: See his Origin of the English, German, and Scandinavian Languages, p. 54. Some modern authorities have thought it philosophical to object to the whole story of Hengist and Horsa, on the alleged ground that these names are "equine" in their original meaning—"henges" and "hors" signifying stallion and horse in the old Saxon tongue. If the principles of historic criticism had no stronger reasons for clearing the story of the first Saxon settlement in Kent of its romantic and apocryphal superfluities, this argument would serve us badly. For some future American historian might, on a similar hypercritical ground, argue against the probability of Columbus, a Genoese, having discovered America, and carried thither (to use the language of his son Ferdinand) "the olive branch and oil of baptism across the ocean,"—of Drake and Hawkins having, in Queen Elizabeth's time, explored the West Indies, and sailed round the southernmost point of America,—of General Wolfe having taken Quebec,—or Lord Lyons being English ambassador to the United States in the eventful year 1860, on the ground that Colombo is actually the name of a dove in Italian, Drake and Hawkins only the appellations of birds, and Wolfe and Lyons the English names for two wild beasts.]

[Footnote 167: See Thorpe's edition of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon Poems, p. 219, line 45.]

[Footnote 168: Monumenta Historica, p. 623.]

[Footnote 169: Ib., p. 659.]

[Footnote 170: Ib., p. 544.]

[Footnote 171: Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, lib. i. cap. 15, p. 34 of Mr. Stevenson's edition. In some editions of Bede's History (as in Dr. Giles' Translation, for example) the name of Vitta is carelessly omitted, as a word apparently of no moment. Such a discussion as the present shows how wrong it is to tamper with the texts of such old authors.]

[Footnote 172: See these names in page 414 of Stevenson's edition of the Historia Ecclesiastica.]

[Footnote 173: Monumenta Historica Britt., preface, p. 82.]

[Footnote 174: "Ethelwerdi Chronicorum," lib. ii. c. 2, in Monumenta Historica, p. 505.]

[Footnote 175: Ibid. lib. i. p. 502 of Monumenta Historica.]

[Footnote 176: The historical personage and leader Woden is represented in all these genealogies as having lived four generations, or from 100 to 150 years earlier than the age of Hengist and Horsa.]

[Footnote 177: See p. 24 of Mr. Stevenson's edition of Nennii Historia Britonum, printed for the English Historical Society. In the Gaelic translation of the Historia Britonum, known as the Irish Nennius, the name Wetta or Guitta is spelled in various copies as "Guigte" and "Guite." The last form irresistibly suggests the Urbs Guidi of Bede, situated in the Firth of Forth. Might not he have thus written the Keltic or Pictish form of the name of a city or stronghold founded by Vitta or Vecta; and does this afford any clue to the fact, that the waters of the Forth are spoken of as the Sea of Guidi by Angus the Culdee, and as the Mare Fresicum by Nennius, while its shores are the Frisicum Litus of Joceline? In the text I have noted the transformation of the analogous Latin name of the Isle of Wight, "Vecta," into "Guith," by Nennius. The "urbs Guidi" of Bede is described by him as placed in the middle of the Firth of Forth, "in medio sui." Its most probable site is, as I have elsewhere (see Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 254, 255) endeavoured to show, Inch Keith; and, phonetically, the term "Keith" is certainly not a great variation from "Guith" or "Guidi." At page 7 of Stevenson's edition of Nennius, the Isle of Wight, the old "Insula Vecta" of the Roman authors, is written "Inis Gueith"—a term too evidently analogous to "Inch Keith" to require any comment.]

[Footnote 178: See Irish Nennius, p. 77; Saxon Chronicle, under year 855, etc.]

[Footnote 179: Northern Antiquities, Bohn's edition, p. 71. Sigge is generally held as the name of one of the sons of Woden.]

[Footnote 180: Gest. I. sec. 5, I. 11.]

[Footnote 181: Monumenta Historica Britannica, p. 707.]

[Footnote 182: See his "Chronicon ex Chronicis," in the Monumenta Historica, pp. 523 and 627.]

[Footnote 183: See preceding note (1), p. 168. In answer to the vague objection that the alleged leaders were two brothers, Mr. Thorpe observes that the circumstance of two brothers being joint-kings or leaders, bearing, like Hengist and Horsa, alliterative names, is far from unheard of in the annals of the north; and as instances (he adds) may be cited, Ragnar, Inver, Ulba, and two kings in Rumedal—viz. Haerlang and Hrollang.—See his Translation of Lappenberg's History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. pp. 78 and 275.]

[Footnote 184: See Mr. Stevenson's Introduction, p. xxv., to the Historical Society's edition of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica; and also Mr. Hardy in the Preface, p. 71, to the Monumenta Historica Britannica.]

[Footnote 185: The great importance attached to genealogical descent lasted much longer than the Saxon era itself. Thus the author of the latest Life (1860) of Edward I., when speaking of the birth of that monarch at London in 1239, observes (p. 8), "The kind of feeling which was excited by the birth of an English prince in the English metropolis, and by the king's evident desire to connect the young heir to the throne with his Saxon ancestors, is shown in the Worcester Chronicle of that date. The fact is thus significantly described:—

'On the 14th day of the calends of July, Eleanor, Queen of England gave birth to her eldest son Edward; whose father was Henry; whose father was John; whose father was Henry; whose mother was Matilda the Empress; whose mother was Matilda, Queen of England; whose mother was Margaret, Queen of Scotland; whose father was Edward; whose father was Edmund Ironside; who was the son of Ethelred; who was the son of Edgar; who was the son of Edmund; who was the son of Edward the elder; who was the son of Alfred.'"—(The Greatest of the Plantagenets, pp. 8 and 9.)

Here we have eleven genealogical ascents appealed to from Edward to Alfred. The thirteen or fourteen ascents again from Alfred to Cerdic, the first Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex, are as fixed and determined as the eleven from Alfred to Edward. (See them quoted by Florence, Asser, etc.) But the power of reckoning the lineage of Cerdic up through the intervening nine alleged ascents to Woden, was indispensable to form and to maintain Cerdic's claim to royalty, and was probably preserved with as great, if not greater care when written records were so defective and wanting.]

[Footnote 186: The Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 11.]

[Footnote 187: See the inscription, etc., in Whittaker's Manchester, vol. i. p. 160.]

[Footnote 188: On these Frisian cohorts, and consequently also Frisian colonists, in England, see the learned Memoir on the Roman Garrison at Manchester, by my friend Dr. Black. (Manchester, 1849.)]

[Footnote 189: Buckman and Newmarch's work on Ancient Corinium, p. 114.]

[Footnote 190: Palgrave's Anglo-Saxons, p. 24.]

[Footnote 191: For fuller evidence on this point, see the remarks by Mr. Kemble in his Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 13, etc.]

[Footnote 192: Ammiani Marcellini Historiae, lib. xxviii. c. 1. The poet Claudian, perhaps with the full liberty of a poet, sings of Theodosius' forces in this war having pursued the Saxons to the very Orkneys:—

——maduerunt Saxone fuso Orcades.]

[Footnote 193: Inquiry into the History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 116. See also Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. xxv.]

[Footnote 194: Histor. Eccles., lib. i. c. 1, Sec. 8.]

[Footnote 195: Bede's Hist. Eccles., lib. ii. cap. v. (Oisc, a quo reges Cantuariorum solent Oiscingas cognominare.)]

[Footnote 196: Ibid., lib. ii. cap. xv.]

[Footnote 197: The Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 341.]

[Footnote 198: In his account of the kings of the Picts, Mr. Pinkerton (Inquiry into History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 293) calculates that the sovereign "Wradech Vechla" of the Chronicon Pictorum reigned about A.D. 380. In support of his own philological views, Mr. Pinkerton alters the name of this Pictish king from "Wradech Vechla" to "Wradech Vechta." There is not, however, I believe, any real foundation whatever for this last reading, interesting as it might be, in our present inquiry, if true.]

[Footnote 199: The Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 149.]

[Footnote 200: Mr. Hardy, in the preface (p. 114, etc.) to the Monumenta Historica Britannica, maintains also, at much length, that the advent and reception of the Saxons by Vortigern was in A.D. 428, and not 449. He contests for an earlier Saxon invasion of Britain in A.D. 374. See also Lappenberg in his History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, vol. i. pp. 62, 63.]

[Footnote 201: Two miles higher up the river than the Cat-stane, four large monoliths still stand near Newbridge. They are much taller than the Cat-stane, but contain no marks or letters on their surfaces. Three of them are placed around a large barrow.]

[Footnote 202: History of Edinburgh, p. 509.]

[Footnote 203: Transactions of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, vol. i. p. 308. Maitland, in his History of Edinburgh, p. 307, calls these cairns the "Cat-heaps."]

[Footnote 204: Caledonia, vol. i. p. 86. The only references, however, which Mr. Chalmers gives to a "single stone" in Scotland, bearing the name of Cat-stane, all relate to this monument in Kirkliston parish:—"The tallest and most striking ancient monolith in the vicinity of Edinburgh is a massive unhewn flat obelisk, standing about ten feet high, in the parish of Colinton." Maitland (History of Edinburgh, p. 507), and Mr. Whyte (Trans. of Scottish Antiquaries, vol. i. p. 308) designate this monument the Caiy-stone. "Whether this (says Maitland) be a corruption of the Catstean I know not." The tall monolith is in the neighbourhood of the cairns called the Cat-stanes or Cat-heaps (see preceding note). Professor Walker, in an elaborate Statistical Account of the Parish of Colinton, published in 1808, in his Essays on Natural History describes the Cat-heaps or cairns as having been each found, when removed, to cover a coffin made of hewn stones. In the coffins were found mouldering human bones and fragments of old arms, including two bronze spear-heads. "When the turnpike road which passes near the above cairns was formed, for more than a mile the remains of dead bodies were everywhere thrown up." Most of them had been interred in stone coffins made of coarse slabs. To use the words of Professor Walker, "Not far from the three cairns is the so called 'Caiy-stone' of Maitland and Whyte. It has always, however (he maintains), been known among the people of the country by the name of the Ket-stane." It is of whinstone, and "appears not to have had the chisel, or any inscription upon it." "The craig (he adds) or steep rocky mountain which forms the northern extremity of the Pentland Hills, and makes a conspicuous figure at Edinburgh, hangs over this field of battle. It is called Caer-Ketan Craig. This name appears to be derived from the Ket-stane above described, and the fortified camp adjacent, which, in the old British, was termed a Caer." (P. 611.)]

[Footnote 205: See "Annales Cambriae," in the Monumenta Hist. Britannica, p. 833.]

[Footnote 206: In Maitland's time (1753), there was a farm-house termed "Catstean," standing near the monument we are describing. And up to the beginning of the present century the property or farm on the opposite side of the Almond, above Caerlowrie, was designated by a name, having apparently the Celtic "battle" noun as a prefix in its composition—viz., Cat-elbock. This fine old Celtic name has latterly been changed for the degenerate and unmeaning term Almond-hill.]

[Footnote 207: Historia Ecclesiast., lib. i. c. xii. "Sermone Pictorum Peanfahel, lingua autem Anglorum Penneltun appellatur."]

[Footnote 208: Historia Britonum, c. xix. At one time I fancied it possible that the mutilated and enigmatical remains of ancient Welsh poetry furnished us with a name for the Cat-stane older still than that appellation itself. Among the fragments of old Welsh historical poems ascribed to Taliesin, one of the best known is that on the battle of Gwen-Ystrad. In this composition the poet describes, from professedly personal observation, the feats at the above battle of the army of his friend and great patron, Urien, King of Rheged, who was subsequently killed at the siege of Medcaut, or Lindisfarne, about A.D. 572. Villemarque places the battle of Gwen-Ystrad between A.D. 547 and A.D. 560.

The British kingdom of Rheged, over which Urien ruled, is by some authorities considered as the old British or Welsh kingdom of Cumbria, or Cumberland; but, according to others, it must have been situated further northwards. In the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad (see the Myvyrian Archaeology, vol. i. p. 53), Urien defeats the enemy—apparently the Saxons or Angles—under Ida, King of Bernicia. In one line near the end of the poem, Taliesin describes Urien as attacking his foes "by the white stone of Galysten:"

"Pan amwyth ai alon yn Llech wen Galysten."

The word "Galysten," when separated into such probable original components as "Gal" and "lysten," is remarkable, from the latter part of the appellation, "lysten," corresponding with the name, "Liston," of the old barony or parish in which the Cat-stane stands; the prefix Kirk (Kirk-liston) being, as is well known, a comparatively modern addition. The word "Gal" is a common term, in compound Keltic words, for "stranger," or "foreigner." In the Gaelic branch of the Keltic, "lioston" signifies, according to Sir James Foulis, "an inclosure on the side of a river." (See Mr. Muckarsie on the origin of the name of Kirkliston, in the Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. x. p. 68.) The Highland Society's Gaelic Dictionary gives "liostean" as a lodging, tent, or booth. In the Cymric, "lystyn" signifies, according to Dr. Owen Pughe, "a recess, or lodgment." (See his Welsh Dictionary, sub voce.) The compound word Gal-lysten would perhaps not be thus overstrained, if it were held as possibly originating in the meaning, "the lodgment, inclosure, or resting-place of the foreigner;" and the line quoted would, under such an idea, not inaptly apply to the grave-stone of such a foreign leader as Vetta. Urien's forces are described in the first line of the poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, as "the men of Cattraeth, who set out with the dawn." Cattraeth is now believed by eminent archaeologists to be a locality situated at the eastern end of Antonine's wall, on the Firth of Forth—Callander, Carriden, or more probably the castle hill at Blackness, which contains various remains of ancient structures. Urien's foes at the battle of Gwen-Ystrad were apparently the Angles or Saxons of Bernicia—this last term of Bernicia, with its capital at Bamborough, including at that time the district of modern Northumberland, and probably also Berwickshire and part of the Lothians. An army marching from Cattraeth or the eastern end of Antonine's Wall, to meet such an army, would, if it took the shortest or coast line, pass, after two or three hours' march, very near the site of the Cat-stane. A ford and a fort are alluded to in the poem. The neighbouring Almond has plenty of fords; and on its banks the name of two forts or "caers" are still left—viz. Caerlowrie (Caer-l-Urien?) and Caer Almond, one directly opposite the Cat-stane, the other three miles below it. But no modern name remains near the Cat-stane to identify the name of "the fair or white strath." "Lenny"—the name of the immediately adjoining barony on the banks of the Almond, or in its "strath" or "dale"—presents insurmountable philological difficulties to its identification with Gwen; the L and G, or GW not being interchangeable. The valley of Strath-Broc (Broxburn)—the seat in the twelfth century of Freskyn of Strath-Broc, and consequently the cradle of the noble house of Sutherland—runs into the valley of the Almond about two miles above the Cat-stane. In this, as in other Welsh and Gaelic names, the word Strath is a prefix to the name of the adjoining river. In the word "Gwen-Ystrad," the word Strath is, on the contrary, in the unusual position of an affix; showing that the appellation is descriptive of the beauty or fairness of the strath which it designates. The valley or dale of the Almond, and the rich tract of fertile country stretching for miles to the south-west of the Cat-stane, certainly well merit such a designation as "fair" or "beautiful" valley—"Gwen-Ystrad;" but we have not the slightest evidence whatever that such a name was ever applied to this tract. In his learned edition of Les Bardes Bretons, Poemes du vi^e Siecle, the Viscount Villemarque, in the note which he has appended to Taliesin's poem of the battle of Gwen-Ystrad, suggests (page 412) that this term exists in a modern form under the name of Queen's-strad, or Queen's-ferry—a locality within three miles of the Cat-stane. But it is certain that the name of Queens-ferry, applied to the well-known passage across the Forth, is of the far later date of Queen Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore. Numerous manors and localities in the Lothians and around Kirkliston, end in the Saxon affix "ton," or town—a circumstance rendering it probable that Lis-ton had possibly a similar origin. And further, against the idea of the appellation of "the white stone of Galysten" being applicable to the Cat-stane, is the fact that it is, as I have already stated, a block of greenstone basalt; and the light tint which it presents, when viewed at a distance in strong sunlight—owing to its surface being covered with whitish lichen—is scarcely sufficient to have warranted a poet—indulging in the utmost poetical license—to have sung of it as "the white stone." After all, however, the adjective "wen," or "gwenn," as Villemarque writes it, may signify "fair" or "beautiful" when applied to the stone, just as it probably does when applied to the strath which was the seat of the battle—"Gwenn Ystrad."

Winchburgh, the name of the second largest village in the parish of Kirkliston, and a station on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, is perhaps worthy of note, from its being placed in the same district as the stone of Vetta, the son of Victa, and from the appellation possibly signifying originally, according to Mr. Kemble (our highest authority in such a question), the burgh of Woden, or Wodensburgh. (See his History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 346.)]

[Footnote 209: Vita Agricolae, xliv. 2.]

[Footnote 210: History of England—Anglo-Saxon Period, p. 20.]

[Footnote 211: On the probable great extent of the Teutonic or German element of population in Great Britain as early as about A.D. 400; see Mr. Wright, in his excellent and interesting work The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 385.]

[Footnote 212: Historia Ecclesiastica, lib. i. c. 1; or Dr. Giles' Translation, in Bohn's edition, p. 5.]

[Footnote 213: Dr. Giles' Translation, in Bohn's edition, p. 24.]

[Footnote 214: Historia Ecclesiastical, lib. i. c. 15.]

[Footnote 215: Perhaps it is right to point out, as exceptions to this general observation, a very few Greek inscriptions to Astarte, Hercules, Esculapius, etc., left in Britain by the Roman soldiers and colonists.]

[Footnote 216: On the supposed site, etc. of this monument to Horsa, in Kent, see Mr. Colebrook's paper in Archaeologia, vol. ii. p. 167; and Halsted's Kent, vol. ii. p. 177. In 1631, Weever, in his Ancient Funeral Monuments, p. 317, acknowledges that "stormes and time have devoured Horsa's monument." In 1659 Phillpot, when describing the cromlech called Kits Coty House—the alleged tomb of Catigern—speaks of Horsa's tomb as utterly extinguished "by storms and tempests under the conduct of time."]



ON SOME SCOTTISH MAGICAL CHARM-STONES, OR CURING-STONES.

Throughout all past time, credulity and superstition have constantly and strongly competed with the art of medicine. There is no doubt, according to Pliny, that the magical art began in Persia, that it originated in medicine, and that it insinuated itself first amongst mankind under the plausible guise of promoting health.[217] In proof of the antiquity of the belief, this great Roman encyclopaedist cites Eudoxus, Aristotle, and Hermippus, as averring that magical arts were used thousands of years before the time of the Trojan war.

Assuredly, in ancient times, faith in the effects of magical charms, amulets, talismans, etc., seems to have prevailed among all those ancient races of whom history has left any adequate account. In modern times a belief in their efficiency and power is still extensively entertained amongst most of the nations of Asia and Africa. In some European kingdoms, also, as in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, belief in them still exists to a marked extent. In our own country, the magical practices and superstitions of the older and darker ages persist only as forms and varieties, so to speak, of archaeological relics,—for they remain at the present day in comparatively a very sparse and limited degree. They are now chiefly to be found among the uneducated, and in outlying districts of the kingdom. But still, some practices, which primarily sprung up in a belief in magic, are carried on, even by the middle and higher classes of society, as diligently as they were thousands of years ago, and without their magical origin being dreamed of by those who follow them. The coral is often yet suspended as an ornament around the neck of the Scottish child, without the potent and protective magical and medicinal qualities long ago attached to it by Dioscorides and Pliny being thought of by those who place it there. Is not the egg, after being emptied of its edible contents, still, in many hands, as assiduously pierced by the spoon of the eater as if he had weighing upon his mind the strong superstition of the ancient Roman, that—if he omitted to perforate the empty shell—he incurred the risk of becoming spell-bound, etc.? Marriages seem at the present day as much dreaded in the month of May as they were in the days of Ovid, when it was a proverbial saying at Rome that

"Mense malas Maio nubere vulgus ait."

And, in the marriage ceremony itself, the finger-ring still holds among us as prominent a place as it did among the superstitious marriage-rites of the ancient pagan world. Among the endless magical and medical properties that were formerly supposed to be possessed by human saliva, one is almost universally credited by the Scottish schoolboy up to the present hour; for few of them ever assume the temporary character of pugilists without duly spitting into their hands ere they close their fists; as if they retained a full reliance on the magical power of the saliva to increase the strength of the impending blow—if not to avert any feeling of malice produced by it—as was enunciated, eighteen centuries ago, by one of the most laborious and esteemed writers of that age,[218] in a division of his work which he gravely prefaces with the assertion that in this special division he has made it his "object (as he declares) to state no facts but such as are established by nearly uniform testimony."

In a separate chapter (chap. iv.) in his 30th Book, Pliny alludes to the prevalence of magical beliefs and superstitious practices in the ancient Celtic provinces of France and Britain. "The Gaelic provinces," says he, "were pervaded by the magical art, and that even down to a period within memory; for it was the Emperor Tiberius who put down the Druids and all that tribe of wizards and physicians." We know, however, from the ancient history of France posterior to Pliny's time, that the Druids survived as a powerful class in that country for a long time afterwards. Writing towards the end of the first century, Pliny goes on to remark;—"At the present day, struck with fascination, Britannia still cultivates this art, and that with ceremonials so august, that she might almost seem to have been the first to communicate them to the people of Persia." "To such a degree," adds this old Roman philosopher, "are nations throughout the whole world, totally different as they are, and quite unknown to one another, in accord upon this one point."[219]

Some supposed vestiges of a most interesting kind, of very ancient Gallic or Celtic word-charms, have recently been brought before archaeologists by the celebrated German philologist Grimm, and by Pictet of Geneva. Marcellus, the private physician of the Roman Emperor Theodosius, was a Gaul born in Aquitane, and hence, it is believed, was intimately acquainted with the Gaulish or Celtic language of that province. He left a work on quack medicines (De Medicamentis Empiricis), written probably near the end of the fourth century. This work contains, amongst other things, a number of word-charms, or superstitious cure-formulas, that were, till lately, regarded—like Cato's word-cure for fractures of the bones—as mere unmeaning gibberish. Joseph Grimm and M. Pictet, however, think that they have found in these word-charms of Marcellus, specimens of the Gaulish or Celtic language several centuries older than any that were previously known to exist—none of the earliest glosses used by Zeuss, in his famous Grammatica Celtica, being probably earlier than the eighth or ninth centuries. If the labours of Grimm and Pictet prove successful in this curious field of labour, they will add another proof to the prevalence of magical charms among the Celtic nations of antiquity, and afford us additional confirmation of the ancient prevalence, as described by Pliny, of a belief in the magical art among the Gaelic inhabitants of France and Britain.[220]

The long catalogue of the medical superstitions and magical practices originally pertaining to our Celtic forefathers, was no doubt from time to time increased and swelled out in Britain by the addition of the analogous medical superstitions and practices of the successive Roman[221] and Teutonic [222] invaders and conquerors of our island. A careful analysis would yet perhaps enable the archaeologist to separate some of these classes of magical beliefs from each other; but many of them had, perhaps, a common and long anterior origin. We know further that, in its earlier centuries among us, the teachers of Christianity added greatly to the number of existing medical superstitions, by maintaining the efficacy, for example, of a visit to the cross of King Edwin of Northumberland, for the cure of agues, etc.,—the marvellous alleged recoveries worked by visiting the grave of St. Ninian at Whitehorn, or the cross of St. Mungo in the Cathedral churchyard at Glasgow; the sovereign virtues of the waters of wells used by various anchorets, and dedicated to various saints throughout the country; the curative powers of holy robes, bells, bones, relics, etc.

Numerous forms of medical superstitions, charms, amulets, incantations, etc., derived from the preceding channels, and possibly also from other sources, seem to have been known and practised among our forefathers, and for the cure of almost all varieties of human maladies, whether of the mind or body. Our old Scottish hagiologies, witch trials, ecclesiastical records, etc., abound with notices of them. Nor have some of the oldest and most marked medical superstitions of ancient times been very long obliterated and forgotten. I know, for example, of two localities in the Lowlands, one near Biggar in Lanarkshire, the other near Torphichen in West Lothian, where, within the memory of the present and past generation, living cows have been sacrificed for curative purposes, or under the hope of arresting the progress of the murrain in other members of the flock. In both these instances the cow was sacrificed by being buried alive. The sacrifice of other living animals,[223] as of the cat, cock, mole, etc., for the cure of disease, and especially of fits, epilepsy, and insanity, continues to be occasionally practised in some parts of the Highlands up to the present day. And in the city of Edinburgh itself, every physician knows the fact that, in the chamber of death, usually the face of the mirror is most carefully covered over, and often a plate with salt in it is placed upon the chest of the corpse.

The Museum of the Society contains a few medicinal charms and amulets, principally in the form of amber beads (which were held potent in the cure of blindness), perforated stones, and old distaff whorls, whose original use seems to have been forgotten, and new and magical properties assigned to them. But the most important medicinal relic in the collection is the famous "Barbreck's bone," a slice or tablet of ivory, about seven inches long, four broad, and half-an-inch in thickness. It was long in the possession of the ancient family of Barbreck in Argyleshire, and over the Western Highlands had the reputation of curing all forms and degrees of insanity. It was formerly reckoned so valuable that a bond of L100 was required to be deposited for the loan of it.

But the main object of the present communication is, through the kind permission of Struan Robertson, Lady Lockhart of Lee, and others, to show to the Society two or three of the principal curing-stones of Scotland.

Several of these curing-stones long retained their notoriety, but they have now almost all fallen entirely into disuse, at least for the cure of human diseases. In some districts, however, they are still employed in the treatment of the diseases of domestic animals.

A very ancient example of the use of a "curing-stone" in this country is detailed in what may be regarded as the first or oldest historical work which has been left us in reference to Scotland, namely, in Adamnan's Life of St. Columba. This biography of the founder of Iona was probably written in the last years of the seventh century, Adamnan having died in A.D. 705. He was elected to the Abbacy of Iona A.D. 679, and had there the most favourable opportunities of becoming acquainted with all the existing traditions and records regarding St. Columba. About the year 563 of the Christian era, Columba visited Brude, King of the Picts, in his royal fort on the Ness, and found the Pictish sovereign attended by a court or council, and with Brochan as his chief Druid or Magus. Brochan retained an Irish female, and consequently a countrywoman of Columba's, as a slave. The 33d chapter of the second book of Adamnan's work is entitled, "Concerning the Illness with which the Druid (Magus) Brochan was visited for refusing to liberate a Female Captive, and his Cure when he restored her to Liberty." The story told by Adamnan, under this head, is as follows:—

Curing-Stone of St. Columba.

"About the same time the venerable man, from motives of humanity, besought Brochan the Druid to liberate a certain Irish female captive, a request which Brochan harshly and obstinately refused to grant. The Saint then spoke to him as follows:—'Know, O Brochan, know, that if you refuse to set this captive free, as I desire you, you shall die before I return from this province.' Having said this in presence of Brude the king, he departed from the royal palace and proceeded to the river Nesa, from which he took a white pebble, and showing it to his companions, said to them:—'Behold this white pebble, by which God will effect the cure of many diseases.' Having thus spoken, he added, 'Brochan is punished grievously at this moment, for an angel sent from heaven, striking him severely, has broken in pieces the glass cup which he held in his hands, and from which he was in the act of drinking, and he himself is left half dead. Let us await here, for a short time, two of the king's messengers, who have been sent after us in haste, to request us to return quickly and relieve the dying Brochan, who, now that he is thus terribly punished, consents to set his captive free.'

"While the saint was yet speaking, behold, there arrived as he had predicted, two horsemen, who were sent by the king, and who related all that had occurred, according to the prediction of the saint—the breaking of the drinking goblet, the punishment of the Druid, and his willingness to set his captive at liberty. They then added:—'The king and his councillors have sent us to you to request that you would cure his foster father, Brochan, who lies in a dying state.'

"Having heard these words of the messengers, Saint Columba sent two of his companions to the king, with the pebble which he had blessed, and said to them; 'If Brochan shall first promise to free his captive, immerse this little stone in water and let him drink from it, but if he refuse to liberate her, he will that instant die.'

"The two persons sent by the saint proceeded to the palace and announced the words of the holy man to the king and to Brochan, an announcement which filled them with such fear, that he immediately liberated the captive and delivered her to the saint's messengers."

The stone was then immersed in water, and in a wonderful manner, and contrary to the laws of nature, it floated on the water like a nut or an apple, nor could it be submerged. Brochan drank from the stone as it floated on the water, and instantly recovered his perfect health and soundness of body.

"This little pebble (adds Adamnan) was afterwards preserved among the treasures of the king, retained its miraculous property of floating in water, and through the mercy of God effected the cure of sundry diseases. And, what is very wonderful, when it was sought for by those sick persons whose term of life had arrived it could not be found. An instance of this occurred the very day king Brude died, when the stone, though sought for with great diligence, could not be found in the place where it had been previously left."[224]

In the Highlands of Scotland there have been transmitted down, for many generations, various curing or charm-stones, used in the same manner as that of Columba, and reckoned capable, like his, of imparting to the water in which they were immersed[225] wondrous medicinal powers. One of the most celebrated of these curing-stones belongs to Struan Robertson, the chief of the Clan Donnachie. I am indebted to the kindness of Mrs. Robertson, for the following notes regarding the curing-stone, of which her family are the hereditary proprietors. Its local name is

Clach-na-Bratach, or Stone of the Standard.

"This stone has been in possession of the Chiefs of Clan Donnachaidh since 1315.

"It is said to have been acquired in this wise.

"The (then) chief, journeying with his clan to join Bruce's army before Bannockburn, observed, on his standard being lifted one morning, a glittering something in a clod of earth hanging to the flagstaff. It was this stone. He showed it to his followers, and told them he felt sure its brilliant lights were a good omen and foretold a victory—and victory was won on the hard-fought field of Bannockburn.



"From this time, whenever the clan was 'out,' the Clach-na-Bratach accompanied it, carried on the person of the chief, and its varying hues were consulted by him as to the fate of battle. On the eve of Sheriffmuir (13th November 1715), of sad memory, on Struan consulting the stone as to the fate of the morrow, the large internal flaw was first observed. The Stuarts were lost—and Clan Donnachaidh has been declining in influence ever since.

"The virtues of the Clach-na-Bratach are not altogether of a martial nature, for it cures all manner of diseases in cattle and horses, and formerly in human beings also, if they drink the water in which this charmed stone has been thrice dipped by the hands of Struan."

The Clach-na-Bratach is a transparent, globular mass of rock crystal, of the size of a small apple. (See accompanying woodcut, Fig. 17.) Its surface has been artificially polished. Several specimens of round rock-crystal, of the same description and size, and similarly polished, have been found deposited in ancient sepulchres, and were formerly used also in the decoration of shrines and sceptres.

Another well-known example of the Highland curing-stone is the

Clach Dearg, or Stone of Ardvoirloch.



This stone is a clear rock-crystal ball of a similar character, but somewhat smaller than the Clach-na-Bratach, and placed in a setting (see Fig. 18) of four silver bands or slips. The following account of the Ardvoirloch curing-stone is from the pen of one of the present members of that ancient family:—

"It has been in the possession of our family from time immemorial, but there is no writing about it in any of the charters, nor even a tradition as to when and how it became possessed of it. It is supposed to have been brought from the East, which supposition is corroborated by the fact of the silver setting being recognised as of Eastern workmanship. Its healing powers have always been held in great repute in our own neighbourhood, particularly in diseases of cattle. I have even known persons come for the water into which it has been dipped from a distance of forty miles. It is also believed to have other properties which you know of.

"These superstitions would have existed up to the present day, had I not myself put a stop to them; but six years ago, I took an opportunity to do away with them, by depositing the stone with some of the family plate in a chest which I sent to the bank. Thus, when applied to for it (which I have been since then), I had the excuse of not having it in my possession; and when the Laird returns from India, it is hoped the superstition may be forgotten, and "the stone" preserved only as a very precious heirloom.

"I may mention that there were various forms to be observed by those who wished to benefit by its healing powers. The person who came for it to Ardvoirloch was obliged to draw the water himself, and bring it into the house in some vessel into which this stone was to be dipped. A bottle was filled and carried away; and in its conveyance home, if carried into any house by the way, the virtue was supposed to leave the water; it was therefore necessary, if a visit had to be paid, that the bottle should be left outside."

Other charm-stones enjoyed, up to the present century, no small medical reputation among the inhabitants of the Highlands. In some districts, every ancient family of note appears to have affected the possession of a curing-stone. The Campbells of Glenlyon have long been the hereditary proprietors of a charm-stone similar to those that I have already mentioned. It consists of a roundish or ovoidal ball, apparently of rock-crystal, about an inch and a half in diameter, and protected by a silver mounting. To make the water in which it was dipped sufficiently medicinal and effective, the stone, during the process, required to be held in the hand of the Laird. The Bairds of Auchmeddan possessed another of these celebrated northern amulets. The Auchmeddan Stone is a ball of black-coloured flint, mounted with four strips of silver. A legend engraved on this silver setting—in letters probably of the last century—states that this "Amulet or charm belonged to the family of Baird of Auchmeddan from the year 1174." In the middle of the last century, this amulet passed as a family relic to the Frasers of Findrack, when an intermarriage with the Bairds occurred.

Curing-stones seem to have formerly been by no means rare in this country, to the south also of the Highland Borders. In a letter written by the distinguished Welsh archaeologist Edward Lhwyd, and dated Linlithgow, December 17, 1699, he states that betwixt Wales and the Highlands he had seen at least fifty different forms of the party-coloured glass bead or amulet known under the name of Adder-beads or Snake stones.[226] In Scotland he found various materials used as healing amulets, particularly some pebbles of remarkable shape and colour, and hollow balls and rings of coloured glass. "They have also," he says, "the Ombriae pellucidae, which are crystal balls or hemispheres, or depressed ovals, in great esteem for curing of cattle; and some on May-day put them into a tub of water, and besprinkle all their cattle with that water, to prevent being elf-struck, bewitched, etc."

In the Lowlands, the curing-stone of greatest celebrity, and the one which has longest retained its repute, is

The Lee Penny.

In the present century this ancient medical charm-stone has acquired a world-wide reputation as the original of the Talisman of Sir Walter Scott, though latterly its therapeutic reputation has greatly declined, and almost entirely ceased.[227] The enchanted stone has long been in the possession of the knightly family of the Lockharts of Lee, in Lanarkshire. According to a mythical tradition, it was, in the fourteenth century, brought by Sir Simon Lockhart from the Holy Land, where it had been used as a medical amulet, for the arrestment of haemorrhage, fever, etc. It is a small dark-red stone, of a somewhat triangular or heart shape, as represented in the adjoining woodcut (Fig. 19). It is set in the reverse of a groat of Edward IV., of the London Mint.[228]



When the Lee Penny was used for healing purposes, a vessel was filled with water, the stone was drawn once round the vessel, and then dipped three times in the water. In his Account of the Penny in the Lee, written in 1702, Hunter states, that "it being taken and put into the end of a cloven stick, and washen in a tub full of water, and given to cattell to drink, infallibly cures almost all manner of deseases. The people," he adds, "come from all airts of the kingdom with deseased beasts."

One or two points in its history prove the faith that was placed in the healing powers of the Lee Penny in human maladies of the most formidable type. About the beginning of last century, Lady Baird of Saughtonhall was attacked with the supposed symptoms of hydrophobia. But on drinking of, and bathing in, the water in which the Lee Penny had been dipped, the symptoms disappeared; and the Knight and Lady of Lee were for many days sumptuously entertained by the grateful patient. In one of the epidemics of plague which attacked Newcastle in the reign of Charles I., the inhabitants of that town obtained the loan of the Lee Penny by granting a bond of L6000 for its safe return. Such, it is averred, was their belief in its virtues, and the good that it effected, that they offered to forfeit the money, and keep the charm-stone.

About the middle of the seventeenth century the Reformed Protestant Church of Scotland zealously endeavoured, as the English Church under King Edgar had long before done, to "extinguish every heathenism, and forbid well-worshippings, and necromancies, and divinations, and enchantments, and man-worshippings, and the vain practices which are carried on with various spells, and with elders, and also with other trees, and with stones, etc."[229] They left, however, other practices, equally superstitious, quite untouched. Thus, while they threatened "the seventh son of a woman" with the "paine of Kirk censure," for "cureing the cruelles (scrofulous tumours and ulcers),"[230] by touching them, they still allowed the reigning king this power (Charles II. alone "touched" 92,000 such patients);[231] and the English Church sanctioned a liturgy to be used on these superstitious occasions. Again, the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Glasgow examined into the alleged curative gifts of the Lee Penny; but, finding that it was employed "wtout using onie words such as charmers and sorcerers use in their unlawfull practisess; and considering that in nature there are mony things seen to work strange effects, q^{r}of no human witt can give a reason, it having pleasit God to give to stones and herbes special virtues for the healing of mony infirmities in man and beast, advises the brethern to surcease their process, as q^{r}in they perceive no ground of offence: And admonishes the said Laird of Lee, in the useing of the said stone to tak heed that it be used hereafter w^t the least scandal that possiblie may be."[232]

[Footnote 217: Natural History, Book xxx. chapters i. ii.]

[Footnote 218: "What we are going to say," observes Pliny, "is marvellous, but it may easily be tested by experiment. If a person repents of a blow given to another, either by hand or with a missile, he has nothing to do but to spit at once into the palm of the hand which has inflicted the blow, and all feeling of resentment will be instantly alleviated in the person struck. This, too, is often verified in the case of a beast of burden, when brought on its haunches with blows: for, upon this remedy being adopted, the animal will immediately step out and mend its pace. Some persons, also, before making an effort, spit into the hand in the manner above stated, in order to make the blow more heavy."—Pliny's Natural History, xxviii. Sec. 7.]

[Footnote 219: Natural History, Book xxx. Sec. 4. Archaeologists are now fully aware of "the accord" of the ancient inhabitants of Britain with those of Persia and the other eastern branches of the Aryan race in many other particulars, as in their language, burial customs, etc. According to some Indian observers, stone erections, like our so-called Druidical circles, cromlechs, etc., are common in the East. Is it vain to hope that amid the great and yet unsearched remains of old Sanscrit literature, allusions may yet be found to such structures, that may throw more light upon their uses in connection with religious, sepulchral, or other services?]

[Footnote 220: Grimm thinks that the formulae of Marcellus partake more of the Celtic dialects of the Irish, and consequently of the Scotch, than of the Welsh. As one of the shortest specimens of Marcellus's charm-cures, let me cite, from Pictet, the following, as given in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, vol. iv. p. 266:—"Formula 12. He who shall labour under the disease of watery (or blood-shot) eyes, let him pluck the herb Millefolium up by the roots, and of it make a hoop, and look through it, saying three times, 'Excicumacriosos;' and let him as often move the hoop to his mouth, and spit through the middle of it, and then plant the herb again." "I divide," observes Pictet, "the formula thus: exci cuma criosos, and translate it, 'See the form of the girdle.'" After a long and learned disquisition on the component words Pictet adds—"The process of cure recommended in this formula is of a character altogether symbolical. Girdles (cris), which we shall meet with again in formula No. 27, seem to have performed an important part in Celtic medicine. By making the eye look through the circle formed by the plant, a girdle, as it were, was put round it; and it is for this reason that the formula says, see the form (or model) of the girdle. The action of spitting afterwards through the little ring expressed symbolically the expulsion of the pain." The so-called Celtic word-charms in the formulae of Marcellus are usually longer than the above; as, "Tetune resonco bregan gresso;" "Heilen prossaggeri nome sipolla na builet ododieni iden olitan," etc. etc.]

[Footnote 221: On this subject I elsewhere published, two years ago, the following remarks:—"The medical science and medical lore of the past has become, after a succession of ages, the so-called folk-lore and superstitious usages of times nearer our own. Up to the end of the last century, patients attacked with insanity were occasionally dipped in lakes and wells, and left bound in the neighbouring church for a night. Loch Maree, in Ross-shire, and St. Fillan's Pool, in Perthshire, were places in which such unfortunate patients were frequently dipped. Heron, in his Journey through Scotland in the last century, states that it was affirmed that two hundred invalids were carried annually to St. Fillan's for the cure of various diseases, but principally of insanity. The proceedings at this famous pool were in such cases an imitation of the old Greek and Roman worship of AEsculapius. Patients consulting the AEsculapian priest were purified first of all, by bathing in some sacred well; and then having been allowed to enter into and sleep in his temple, the god, or rather some priest of the god, came in the darkness of the night and told them what treatment they were to adopt. The poor lunatics brought to St. Fillan's were, in the same way, first purified by being bathed in his pool, and then laid bound in the neighbouring church during the subsequent night. If they were found loose in the morning, a full recovery was confidently looked for, but the cure remained doubtful when they were found at morning dawn still bound. I was lately informed by the Rev. Mr Stewart of Killin, that in one of the last cases so treated—and that only a few years ago—the patient was found sane in the morning, and unbound; a dead relative, according to the patient's own account, having entered the church during the night, and loosened her both from the ropes that bound her body and the delusions that warped her mind. It was a system of treatment by mystery and terrorism that might have made some sane persons insane; and hence, perhaps, conversely, some insane persons sane. Mr. Pennant tells us that at Llandegla, in Wales, where similar rites were performed for the cure of insanity, viz., purification in the sacred well, and forced detention of the patient for a night in the church, under the communion-table, the lunatics or their friends were obliged to leave a cock in the church if he were a male, and a hen if she were a female—an additional circumstance in proof of the AEsculapian type of the superstition. But perhaps, after all, the whole is a medical or mythological belief, older than Greece or Rome, and which was common to the whole Aryan or Indo-European race in Asia before they sent off, westward, over Europe, those successive waves of population that formed the nations of the Celt and Teuton, of the Goth, and Greek, and Latin. The cock is still occasionally sacrificed in the Highlands for the cure of epilepsy and convulsions. A patient of mine found one, a few years ago, deposited in a hole in the kitchen floor; the animal having been killed and laid down at the spot where a child had, two or three days previously, fallen down in a fit of convulsions."—See the Medical Times and Gazette of Dec. 8, 1860, p. 549.]

[Footnote 222: See, for example, Kemble's work on the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 528, for various Teutonic medical superstitions and cures.]

[Footnote 223: A very intelligent patient from the North Highlands, to whom I happened lately to speak on this subject, has written out the following instances that have occurred within her own knowledge:—"Twenty years or more ago, in the parish of Nigg, Ross-shire, there was a lad of fifteen ill with epilepsy. To cure him, his friends first tried the charm of mole's blood. A plate was laid on the lad's head; the living mole was held over it by the tail, the head cut off, and the blood allowed to drop into the plate. Three moles were sacrificed one after the other, but without effect. Next they tried the effect of a bit of the skull of a suicide, and sent for this treasure a distance of from sixty to one hundred miles. This bit of the skull was scraped to dust into a cup of water, which the lad had to swallow, not knowing the contents. This I heard from a sister of the lad's. There was a 'strong-minded' old woman at Strathpeffer, Ross-shire whose daughter told me that the neighbours had come to condole with the mother after she had fallen down in a fit of some kind. They strongly advised her to bury a living cock in the very place where she had fallen, to prevent a return of the ailment. A woman in Sutherlandshire told me that she knew a young man, ill of consumption, who was made to drink his own blood after it had been drawn from his arm. This same woman was ill with a pain in her chest, which she could get nothing to relieve; so her father sent off for 'a knowing man,' who, when he saw the girl, repeated some words under his breath, then touched the floor and her shoulder three times alternately, and with alleged success."]

[Footnote 224: In the first chapter of Adamnan's work, the miracle is again alluded to as follows:—"He took a white stone (lapidem candidum) from the river's bed, and blessed it for the cure of certain diseases; and that stone, contrary to the law of nature, floats like an apple when placed in the water."]

[Footnote 225: For other instances of waters rendered medicinal by being brought in contact with saint's bones—such as St. Marnan's head, with St. Conval's chariot, etc. etc., see Dalyell's Superstitions of Scotland, p. 151, etc. Sibbald's Memoirs of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, p. 39.]

[Footnote 226: See Philosophical Transactions for the year 1713, p. 98. For instances of curing-stones in the Hebrides, see Martin's Western Isles, p. 134, 166, etc.]

[Footnote 227: I was lately told by the farmer at Nemphlar, in the neighbourhood of Lee, that in his younger days no byre was considered safe which had not a bottle of water from the Lee Penny suspended from its rafters. Even this remnant of superstition seems to have died out during the present generation.]

[Footnote 228: I state this on the high numismatic authority of my friend, Mr. Sim. Sir Walter Scott describes the coin as a groat of Edward I.]

[Footnote 229: Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 527, etc.]

[Footnote 230: See a case of this prohibition in the Ecclesiastical Records of the Presbytery of St. Andrews for September 1643. "It is manifest by experience," says Upton, "that the seventh male child by just order, never a girle or wench being borne betweene, doth heall only with touching, by a natural gift, the king's evil; which is a speciall gift of God, given to kings and queens, as daily experience doth witnesse." See Upton's Notable Things (1631), p. 28. Charles I. when he visited Scotland in 1633, in Holyrood Chapel, on St. John's day, "heallit 100 persons of the cruelles, or kingis eivell, yong and olde."—Dalyell's Superstitions, p. 62.]

[Footnote 231: See the "Charisma Basilicon" (1684) of John Browne, "Chirurgion to His Majesty," for a full and charming account of the whole process and ceremonies of the royal "touch," the prayers used on the occasion, and due proofs of the alleged wondrous effects of this "sanative gift, which hath (says Dr. Browne) for above 640 years been confirmed and continued in our English Princely line, wherein is not so much of their Majesty shown as of their Divinity," and which is only doubted by "Ill affected men and Dissenters."]

[Footnote 232: See the Gentleman's Magazine for December 1787.]



IS THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZEH A METROLOGICAL MONUMENT?

The following observations form a corrected Abstract, from No. 75 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of a communication made to that Society on the 20th January 1868, and entitled Pyramidal Structures in Egypt and elsewhere; and the Objects of their Erection. Some additional points are dwelt upon in the Notes and Appendix. As stated at the time, the communication was not at all spontaneous, but enforced by the previous criticisms of Professor Smyth.

There are many proposed derivations of the word Pyramid. Perhaps the origin of the name suggested by the distinguished Egyptologist, Mr. Birch, from two Coptic words, "pouro," "ing," and "emahau," or "maha," "tomb,"—the two in combination signifying "the king's tomb,"—is the most correct. "Men," in Coptic, signifies "monument," "memorial;" and "pouro-men," or "king's monument," may possibly also be the original form of the word.[233]

Various English authors, as Pope,[234] Pownall,[235] Professor Daniel Wilson,[236] Burton,[237] had long applied the term pyramid to the larger forms of conical and round sepulchral mounds, cairns, or barrows—such as are found in Ireland, Brittany, Orkney, etc., and also in numerous districts of the New and Old World;[238] and which are all characterised by containing in their interior chambers or cells, constructed usually of large stones, and with megalithic galleries leading into them. In these chambers (small in relation to the hills of stone or earth in which they were imbedded) were found the remains of sepulture, with stone weapons, ornaments, etc. The galleries and chambers were roofed, sometimes with flags laid quite flat, or placed abutting against each other; and occasionally with large stones arranged over the internal cells in the form of a horizontal arch or dome. In his travels to Madeira and the Mediterranean (1840), Sir W. Wilde details in interesting terms his visit to the pyramids of Egypt; and in describing the roof of the interior chambers of one of the pyramids at Sakkara,[239] he remarks on the analogy of its construction to the great barrow of Dowth in Ireland; and again, when writing—in his work on the Beauties of the Boyne (1849)—an account of the great old barrows of Dowth, New Grange, etc., placed on its banks above Drogheda, he describes at some length the last of these mounds (New Grange),—stating that it "consists" of an enormous cairn or "hill of small stones, calculated at 180,000 tons weight, occupying the summit of one of the natural undulating slopes which enclose the valley of the Boyne upon the north. It is said to cover nearly two acres, and is 400 paces in circumference, and now about 80 feet higher than the adjoining natural surface. Various excavations (he adds) made into its sides and upon its summit, at different times, in order to supply materials for building and road-making, having assisted to lessen its original height, and also to destroy the beauty of its outline." Like the other analogous mounds and pyramids placed there and elsewhere, New Grange has a long megalithic gallery, of above 60 feet in length, leading inward into three dome-shaped chambers or crypts. After describing minutely, and with a master-hand, the construction of these interior parts, and the carvings of circles, spirals, etc.,[240] upon the enormous stones of which the gallery and crypts are built, Sir William Wilde goes on to observe:—"We believe with most modern investigators into such subjects, that it was a tomb, or great sepulchral Pyramid, similar in every respect to those now standing by the banks of the Nile, from Dashour to Gizeh, each consisting of a great central chamber containing one or more sarcophagi, entered by a long stone-covered passage. The external aperture was concealed, and the whole covered with a great mound of stones or earth in a conical form. The early Egyptians, and the Mexicans also, possessing greater art and better tools than the primitive Irish, carved, smoothed, and cemented their great pyramids; but the type and purpose is all the same.... How far anterior to the Christian era its date should be placed would be a matter of speculation; it may be of an age coeval, or even anterior, to its brethren on the Nile."

Other pyramidal barrows at Maeshowe, Gavr Inis, etc., were referred to and illustrated; showing that a gigantic sepulchral cairn was in its mass an unbuilt pyramid; or, in other words, that a pyramid was a built cairn.

SEPULCHRAL CHARACTER, ETC., OF THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS.

All authors, from the Father of History downwards, have generally agreed in considering the pyramids of Egypt as magnificent and regal sepulchres; and the sarcophagi, etc., of the dead have been found in them when first opened for the purposes of plunder or curiosity. The pyramidal sepulchral mounds on the banks of the Boyne were opened and rifled in the ninth century by the invading Dane, as told in different old Irish annals; and the Pyramids of Gizeh, etc., were reputedly broken into and harried in the same century by the Arabian Caliph, Al Mamoon,—the entrances and galleries blocked up by stones being forced and turned, and in some parts the solid masonry perforated. The largest of the Pyramids of Gizeh—or "the Great Pyramid," as it is generally termed—is now totally deprived of the external polished limestone coating which covered it at the time of Herodotus's visit, some twenty-two centuries ago; and "now" (writes Mr. Smyth) "is so injured as to be, in the eyes of some passing travellers, little better than a heap of stones." But all the internal built core of the magnificent structure remains, and contains in its interior (besides a rock chamber below) two higher built chambers or crypts above—the so-called King's Chamber and Queen's chamber—with galleries and apartments leading to them. The walls of these galleries and upper chambers are built with granite and limestone masonry of a highly-finished character. This, the largest and most gigantic of the many pyramids of Egypt, had been calculated by Major Forlong (Asso. Inst. C. Engrs.), as a structure which in the East would cost about L1,000,000. Over India, and the East generally, enormous sums had often been expended on royal sepulchres. The Taj Mahal of Agra, built by the Emperor Shah Jahan for his favourite queen, cost perhaps double or triple this sum; and yet it formed only a portion of an intended larger mausoleum which he expected to rear for himself. The great Pyramid contains in its interior, and directly over the King's Chamber, five entresols or "chambers of construction," as they have been termed, intended apparently to take off the enormous weight of masonry from the cross stones forming the roof of the King's Chamber itself. These entresols are chambers, small and unpolished, and never intended to be opened. But in two or three of them, broken into by Colonel H. Vyse, a most interesting discovery was made about thirty years ago. The surfaces of some of the stones were found painted over in red ochre or paint, with rudish hieroglyphics—being, as first shown by Mr. Birch, quarry marks, written on the stones 4000 years ago, and hence, perhaps, forming the oldest preserved writing in the world. These accidental hieroglyphics usually marked only the number and position of the individual stones. Among them, however, Mr. Birch discovered two royal ovals, viz., Shufu (the Cheops of Herodotus) and Nu Shufu—"a brother" (writes Professor Symth) "of Shufu, also a king and a co-regent with him." Most, if not all, of the other pyramids are believed to have been erected by individual kings during their individual or separate reigns. If these hieroglyphics proved that two kings were connected with the building of the Great Pyramid, that circumstance would perhaps account for its size and the duplicity and position of its sepulchral chambers.[241]

The pyramid standing next the Great Pyramid, and nearly of equal size, is said by Herodotus to have been raised by the brother of Cheops. The other pyramids at Gizeh are usually regarded as later in date. But the exact era of the reign or reigns of their builders has not as yet been determined, in consequence of the break made in Egyptian chronology by the invasion of the Shepherd Kings.

In their mode of building, the various pyramids of Gizeh, etc., are all similar, and the Great Pyramid does not specially differ from the others. "There is nothing" (observes Professor Smyth) "in the stone-upon-stone composition of the Great Pyramid which speaks of the mere building problem to be solved there, as being of a different character, or requiring inventions by man of absolutely higher order than elsewhere." But the Great Pyramid has been imagined to contain some hidden symbols and meanings. For "it is the manner of the Pyramid" (according to Professor Smyth) "not to wear its most vital truths in prominent outside positions."

ALLEGED METROLOGICAL OBJECT OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.

By several authorities the largest[242] of the group of pyramids at Gizeh, or "Great Pyramid," has been maintained—and particularly of late by Gabb, Jomard, Taylor, and Professor Smyth—not to be a royal mausoleum, but to be a marvellous metrological monument, built some forty centuries ago, as "a necessarily material centre," to hold and contain within it, and in its structure, material standards, "in a practicable and reliable shape," "down to the ends of the world," as measures of length, capacity, weight, etc., for men and nations for all time—"a monument" (in the language of Professor Smyth) "devoted to weights and measures, not so much as a place of frequent reference for them, but one where the original standards were to be preserved for some thousands of years, safe from the vicissitudes of empires and the decay of nations." Messrs. Taylor and Smyth further hold that this Great Pyramid was built for these purposes of mensuration under Divine inspiration—the standards being, through superhuman origination and guidance, made and protected by it till they came to be understood and interpreted in these latter times. For, observes Professor Smyth, "the Great Pyramid was a sealed book to all the world until this present day, when modern science, aided in part by the dilapidation of the building and the structural features thereby opened up—has at length been able to assign the chief interpretations." Professor Smyth has, in his remarkable devotedness and enthusiasm, lately measured most of the principal points in the Great Pyramid; and for the great zeal, labour, and ability which he has displayed in this self-imposed mission, the Society have very properly and justly bestowed upon him the Keith Medal. But the exactitude of the measures does not necessarily imply exactitude in the reasoning upon them; and on what grounds can it be possibly regarded as a metrological monument and not a sepulchre, is legitimately the subject of our present inquiry. In such an investigation springs up first this question—

Who was the Architect of the Great Pyramid?

Mr. Taylor ascribes to Noah the original idea of the metrological structure of the Great Pyramid. "To Noah" (observes Mr. Taylor) "we must ascribe the original idea, the presiding mind, and the benevolent purpose. He who built the Ark, was of all men the most competent to direct the building of the Great Pyramid. He was born 600 years before the Flood and lived 350 years after that event, dying in the year 1998 B.C. Supposing the pyramids were commenced in 2160 B.C. (that is 4000 years ago), they were founded 168 years before the death of Noah. We are told" (Mr. Taylor continues) "that Noah was a 'preacher of righteousness,' but nothing could more illustrate this character of a preacher of righteousness after the Flood than that he should be the first to publish a system of weights and measures for the use of all mankind, based upon the measure of the earth." Professor Smyth, computing by another chronology, rejects the presence of Noah, and makes a shepherd—Philition, slightly and incidentally alluded to in a single passage by Herodotus[243]—the presiding and directing genius of the structure;—holding him to be a Cushite skilled in building, and under whose inspired direction the pyramid rose, containing within it miraculous measures and standards of capacity, weight, length, heat, etc.

THE COFFER IN THE KING'S CHAMBER IN THE GREAT PYRAMID AN ALLEGED STANDARD FOR MEASURES OF CAPACITY.

A granite coffer, stone box, or sarcophagus standing in that interior cell of the pyramid, called the King's Chamber, is held by Messrs. Taylor and Smyth to have been hewn out and placed there as a measure of capacity for the world, so that the ancient Hebrew, Grecian, and Roman measures of capacity on the one hand, and our modern Anglo-Saxon on the other, are all derived, directly or indirectly, from the parent measurements of this granite vessel. "For," argues Mr. Taylor, "the porphyry coffer in the King's Chamber was intended to be a standard measure of capacity and weights for all nations; and all chief nations did originally receive their weights and measures from thence."

The works of these authors show, in numerous passages and extracts,[244] that, in their belief, the great object for which the whole pyramid was created, was the preservation of this coffer as a standard of measures, and the "whole pyramid arranged in subservience to it." The accounts of it published by Mr. Taylor, and in Mr. Smyth's first work, further aver that the coffer is, internally and externally, a rectangular figure of mathematical form, and of "exquisite geometric truth," "highly polished, and of a fine bell-metal consistency" (p. 99). "The chest or coffer in the Great Pyramid" (writes Mr. Taylor in 1859) "is so shaped as to be in every part rectangular from side to side, and from end to end, and the bottom is also cut at right angles to the sides and end, and made perfectly level." "The coffer," said Professor Smyth in 1864, "exhibits to us a standard measure of 4000 years ago, with the tenacity and hardness of its substance unimpaired, and the polish and evenness of its surface untouched by nature through all that length of time."

But later inquiries and observations upset entirely all these notions and strong averments in regard to the coffer. For—

* * * * *

(1.) The Coffer, though an alleged actual standard of capacity-measure, has yet been found difficult or impossible to measure.—In his first work, "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," Professor Smyth had cited the measurements of it, made and published by twenty-five different observers, several of whom had gone about the matter with great mathematical accuracy.[245] Though imagined to be a great standard of measure, yet all these twenty-five, as Professor Smyth owned, varied from each other in their accounts of this imaginary standard in "every element of length, breadth, and depth, both inside and outside." Professor Smyth has latterly measured it himself, and this twenty-sixth measurement varies again from all the preceding twenty-five. Surely a measure of capacity should be measureable. Its mensurability indeed ought to be its most unquestionable quality; but this imagined standard has proved virtually unmeasurable—in so far at least that its twenty-six different and skilled measurers all differ from each other in respect to its dimensions. Still, says Professor Smyth, "this affair of the coffer's precise size is the question of questions."

* * * * *

(2.) Discordance between its actual and its theoretical measure.—Professor Smyth holds that theoretically its capacity ought to be 71,250 "pyramidal" cubic inches, for that cubic size would make it the exact measure for a chaldron, or practically the vessel would then contain exactly four quarters of wheat, etc. Yet Professor Smyth himself found it some 60 cubic inches less than this; while also the measurements of Professor Greaves, one of the most accurate measurers of all, make it 250 cubic inches, and those of Dr. Whitman 14,000 below this professed standard. On the other hand, the measurements of Colonel Howard Vyse make it more than 100, those of Dr. Wilson more than 500, and those of the French academicians who accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, about 6000 cubic inches above the theoretical size which Professor Smyth has latterly fixed on.

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(3.) Its theoretical measure varied.—The actual measure of the coffer has varied in the hands of all its twenty-six measurers. But even its theoretical measure is varied also; for the size which the old coffer really ought to have as "a grand capacity standard," is, strangely enough, not a determined quantity. In his last work (1867), Professor Smyth declares, as just stated, its proper theoretical cubic capacity to be 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches. But in his first work (1864), he declared something different, for "we elect," says he, "to take 70,970.2 English cubic inches (or 70,900 pyramidal cubic inches) as the true, because the theoretically proved contents of the porphyry coffer, and therefore accept these numbers as giving the cubic size of the grand standard measure of capacity in the Great Pyramid." Again, however, Mr. Taylor, who, previously to Professor Smyth, was the great advocate of the coffer being a marvellous standard of capacity measure for all nations, ancient and modern, declares its measure to be neither of the above quantities, but 71,328 cubic inches, or a cube of the ancient cubit of Karnak.[246] A vessel cannot be a measure of capacity whose own standard theoretical size is thus declared to vary somewhat every few years by those very men who maintain that it is a standard. But whether its capacity is 71,250, or 70,970, or 71,328, it is quite equally held up by Messrs Taylor and Smyth that the Sacred Laver of the Israelites, and the Molten Sea of the Scriptures, also conform and correspond to its (yet undetermined) standard "with all conceivable practical exactness;" though the standard of capacity to which they thus conform and correspond is itself a size or standard which has not been yet fixed with any exactness. Professor Smyth, in speaking of the calculations and theoretical dimensions of this coffer—as published by Mr. Jopling, a believer in its wonderful standard character—critically and correctly observes, "Some very astonishing results were brought out in the play of arithmetical numerations."

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(4.) The dilapidation of the Coffer.—Thirty years ago this stone coffer was pointed out, and indeed delineated by Mr. Perring, as "not particularly well polished," and "chipped and broken at the edges." Professor Smyth, in his late travels to Egypt, states that he found every possible line and edge of it chipped away with large chips along the top, both inside and outside, "chip upon chip, woefully spoiling the original figure; along all the corners of the upright sides too, and even along every corner of the bottom, while the upper south-eastern corner of the whole vessel is positively broken away to a depth and breadth of nearly a third of the whole." Yet this broken and damaged stone vessel is professed to be the permanent and perfect miraculous standard of capacity-measure for the world for "present and still future times;" and, according to Mr. Taylor—that it might serve this purpose, "is formed of one block of the hardest kind of material, such as porphyry or granite, in order that it might not fall into decay;" for "in this porphyry coffer we have" (writes Professor Smyth in 1864) "the very closing end and aim of the whole pyramid."

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(5.) Alleged mathematical form of the Coffer erroneous.—But in regard to the coffer as an exquisite and marvellous standard of capacity to be revealed in these latter times, worse facts than these are divulged by the tables, etc., of measurements which Professor Smyth has recently published of this stone vessel or chest. His published measurements show that it is not at all a vessel, as was averred a few years ago, of pure mathematical form; for, externally, it is in length an inch greater on one side than another; in breadth half-an-inch broader at one point than at some other point; its bottom at one part is nearly a whole inch thicker than it is at some other parts; and in thickness its sides vary in some points about a quarter of an inch near the top. "But," Professor Smyth adds, "if calipered lower down, it is extremely probable that a notably different thickness would have been found there;"—though it does not appear why they were not thus calipered.[247] Further, externally, "all the sides" (says Professor Smyth) "were slightly hollow, excepting the east side;" and the "two external ends" also show some "concavity" in form. "The outside," (he avows) "of the vessel was found to be by no means so perfectly accurate as many would have expected, for the length was greater on one side than the other, and different also according to the height at which the measure was made." "The workmanship" (he elsewhere describes) "of the inside is in advance of the outside, but yet not perfect." For internally there is a convergence at the bottom towards the centre; both in length and in breadth the interior differs about half-an-inch at one point from another point; the "extreme points" (also) "of the corners of the bottom not being perfectly worked out to the intersection of the general planes of the entire sides;" and thus its cavity seems really of a form utterly unmeasurable in a correct way by mere linear measurement—the only measure yet attempted. If it were an object of the slightest moment, perhaps liquid measurements would be more successful in ascertaining at least as much of the mensuration of the lower part of the coffer as still remains.

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(6.) Coffer cut with ledges and catch-holes for a lid, like other sarcophagi.—More damaging details still remain in relation to the coffer as "a grand standard measure of capacity," and prove that its object or function was very different. In his first work Professor Smyth describes the coffer as showing no "symptoms" whatever of grooves, or catchpins or other fastenings or a lid. "More modern accounts," he re-observes, "have been further precise in describing the smooth and geometrical finish of the upper part of the coffer's sides, without any of those grooves, dovetails, or steady-pin-holes which have been found elsewhere in true polished sarcophagi, where the firm fastening of the lid is one of the most essential features of the whole business." Mr. Perring, however, delineated the catchpin-holes for a lid in the coffer thirty years ago.[248] On his late visit to it Professor Smyth found its western side lowered down in its whole extent to nearly an inch and three-quarters (or more exactly, 1.72 inch), and ledges cut out around the interior of the other sides at the same height. Should we measure on this western side from this actual ledge brim, or from the imaginary higher brim? If reckoned as the true brim, "this ledge" (according to Professor Smyth) would "take away near 4000 inches from the cubic capacity of the vessel." Besides, he found three holes cut on the top of the coffer's lowered western side, as in all the other Egyptian sarcophagi, where these holes are used along with the ledge and grooves to admit, and form a simple mechanism to lock the lids of such stone chests.[249] In other words, it presents the usual ledge and apparatus pertaining to Egyptian stone sarcophagi, and served as such.

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(7.) Sepulchral contents of Coffer when first discovered.—When, about a thousand years ago, the Caliph Al Mamoon tunnelled into the interior of the pyramid, he detected by the accidental falling, it is said, of a granite portcullis, the passage to the King's Chamber, shut up from the building of the pyramid to that time. "Then" (to quote the words of Professor Smyth) "the treasures of the pyramid, sealed up almost from the days of Noah, and undesecrated by mortal eye for 3000 years, lay full in their grasp before them." On this occasion, to quote the words of Ibn Abd Al Hakm or Hokm—a contemporary Arabian writer, and a historian of high authority,[250] who was born, lived, and died in Egypt—they found in the pyramid, "towards the top, a chamber [now the so-called King's Chamber] with an hollow stone [or coffer] in which there was a statue [of stone] like a man, and within it a man upon whom was a breastplate of gold set with jewels; upon this breastplate was a sword of inestimable price, and at his head a carbuncle of the bigness of an egg, shining like the light of the day; and upon him were characters writ with a pen,[251] which no man understood"[252]—a description stating, down to the so-called "statue," mummy-case, or cartonage, and the hieroglyphics upon the cere-cloth, the arrangements now well known to belong to the higher class of Egyptian mummies.