No forger brought these cupped stones in his waistcoat pocket.

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

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

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

I have now established the coincidence between the markings of rocks in Australia, in tropical America, and in Scotland. I have shown that such markings occur, in Scotland, associated with remains, in a crannog, of the Age of Iron. They also occur on stones, large (cupped) and small, in Dumbuck. My next business is, if I can, to establish, what Dr. Munro denies, a parallelism between these disputed Clyde stones, and the larger or smaller inscribed stones of the Arunta and Kaitish, in Australia, and other small stones, decorated or plain, found in many ancient European sites. Their meaning we know not, but probably they were either reckoned ornamental, or magical, or both.



XIX—PARALLELISM BETWEEN THE DISPUTED OBJECTS AND OTHER OBJECTS ELSEWHERE

On Clyde (if the disputed things be genuine) we find decorated plaques or slabs of soft stone, of very various dimensions and shapes. In Australia some of these objects are round, many oval, others elongated, others thin and pointed, like a pencil; others oblong—while on Clyde, some are round, one is coffin-shaped, others are palette-shaped, others are pear- shaped (the oval tapering to one extremity), one is triangular, one is oblong. {77} In Australia, as on Clyde, the stones bear some of the archaic markings common on the rock faces both in Scotland and in Central Australia: on large rocks they are painted, in Australia, in Scotland they are incised. I maintain that there is a singularly strong analogy between the two sets of circumstances, Scottish and Australian; large rocks inscribed with archaic designs; smaller stones inscribed with some of these designs. Is it not so? Dr. Munro, on the other hand, asserts that there is no such parallelism.

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

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

Dr. Munro denies this parallelism.

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

{ Fig. 5: p80a.jpg}

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

{ Fig. 6: p80b.jpg}

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

{ Fig. 7: p80c.jpg}



XX—UNMARKED CHARM STONES

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

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

To return to Scottish stones.

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

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



XXI—QUALITY OF ART ON THE STONES

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

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

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

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

For all that I know, a dweller in Dunbuie might have compasses, like the Lough Crew cairn artist.

If I have established the parallelism between Arunta churinga nanja and the disputed Clyde "pendants," which Dr. Munro denies, we are reduced to one of two theories. Either the Picts of Clyde, or whoever they were, repeated on stones, usually small, some of the patterns on the neighbouring rocks; or the modern faker, for unknown reasons, repeated these and other archaic patterns on smaller stones. His motive is inscrutable: the Australian parallels were unknown to European science,—but he may have used European analogues. On the other hand, while Dr. Munro admits that the early Clyde people might have repeated the rock decorations "on small objects of slate and shale," he says that the objects "would have been, even then, as much out of place as surviving remains of the earlier Scottish civilisation as they are at the present day." {86}

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



XXII—SURVIVAL OF MAGIC OF STONES

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

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

{ Fig. 8: p88.jpg}

I take the next example that comes to hand.

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



XXIII—MODERN SURVIVAL OF MAGICAL WOOD CHURINGA

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

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

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

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



XXIV—CONCLUSION OF ARGUMENT FROM SURVIVALS IN MAGIC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



XXV—MY MISADVENTURE WITH THE CHARM STONE

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

{ Figs. 9, 10: p96a.jpg}

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

{ Fig. 11: p96b.jpg}

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

{ Figs. 12, 13: p96c.jpg}

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

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



XXVI—EUROPEAN PARALLELS TO THE DISPUTED OBJECTS

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

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

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

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

Sir John Evans does not reject the pear-shaped object of shale, "a pendant," found in a Scottish site, and associated with querns, and an iron axe, and cup and ring stones. Sir John sees no harm in the "pendant," but Dr. Munro rejects a "pear-shaped" claystone "pendant" decorated with "cup-shaped indentations," found at Dunbuie. {101} It has a perforation near each end, as is common in North American objects of similar nature (see fig. 11).

Why should the schist pendant of the Tappock chamber be all right, if the claystone pendant of Dunbuie be all wrong? One of them seems to me to have as good a claim to our respectful consideration as the other, and, like Sir John Evans, I shall now turn to Portugal in search of similar objects of undisputed authenticity.



XXVII—PORTUGUESE AND OTHER STONE PENDANTS

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

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

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

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

{ Figs. 14, 15: p104.jpg}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Dr. Munro now objects that among the objects reckoned by me as analogous to churinga is a perforated stone with an incised line, and smaller slanting side lines, said to have been found at Dumbuck; "9 inches long, 3.5 inches broad, and 0.5 an inch thick." {108} I wish that he gave us the weight. He says, "that no human being would wear this as an ornament."

No human being wears any churinga "as an ornament!" Nobody says that they do.

Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, moreover, speak of "a long stone churinga," and of "especially large ones" made by the mythical first ancestors of the race. Churinga, over a foot in length, they tell us, are not usually perforated; many churinga are not perforated, many are: but the Arunta do not know why some are perforated. There is a legend that, of old, men hung up the perforated churinga on the sacred Nurtunja pole: and so they still have perforated stone churinga, not usually more than a foot in length. {109}

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

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

This is what makes the forger so interesting.

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

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



XXIX—WEAPONS

Dr. Munro is less than kind to the forger in the matter of the "weapons" found at Dunbuie and Dumbuck. They are "absolutely worthless as real weapons," he says, with perfect truth, for they are made of slate or shale, not of hard stony slate, which many races used to employ for lack of better material. {112a}

{ Fig. 16: p113a.jpg}

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

{ Figs. 17, 18: p113b.jpg}

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

Why did he do that?

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

The strange "vandyked" crozier-like stone objects of schist or shale from Portugal were possibly armes d'apparat, or heads of staves of dignity. There is a sample in the American room at the British Museum, uninscribed. I submit that the three very curious and artistic stone axe- heads, figured by M. Cartailhac, {114} representing, one an uncouth animal; another, a hooded human head, the third an extremely pretty girl, could never have been used for practical purposes, but were armes d'apparat. Perhaps such stone armes d'apparat, or magical or sacred arms, were not unknown, as survivals, in Scotland in the Iron Age. A "celt" or stone axe-head of this kind, ornamented with a pattern of inter- crossing lines, is figured and described by the Rev. Mr. Mackenzie (Kenmore) in the Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries (1900-1901, p. 310 et seq.). This axe-head, found near a cairn at Balnahannait, is of five inches long by two and a quarter broad. It is of "soft micaceous stone." The owners must have been acquainted with the use of the metals, Mr. Mackenzie thinks, for the stone exhibits "interlaced work of a late variety of this ornamentation." Mr. Mackenzie suggests that the ornament was perhaps added "after the axe had obtained some kind of venerated or symbolical character." This implies that a metal-working people, finding a stone axe, were puzzled by it, venerated it, and decorated it in their late style of ornament.

In that case, who, in earlier times, made an useless axe-head of soft micaceous stone, and why? It could be of no practical service. On the other hand, people who had the metals might fashion a soft stone into an arme d'apparat. "It cannot have been intended for ordinary use," "the axe may have been a sacred or ceremonial one," says Mr. Mackenzie, and he makes the same conjecture as to another Scottish stone axe-head. {115}

Here, then, if Mr. Mackenzie be right, we have a soft stone axe-head, decorated with "later ornament," the property of a people who knew the metals, and regarded the object as "a sacred or ceremonial one," enfin, as an arme d'apparat.

Dr. Munro doubtless knows all that is known about armes d'apparat, but he unkindly forgets to credit the forger with the same amount of easily accessible information, when the forger dumps down a decorated slate spear-head, eleven inches long.

Believe me, this forger was no fool: he knew what he was about, and he must have laughed when critics said that his slate spear-heads would be useless. He expected the learned to guess what he was forging; not practicable weapons, but armes d'apparat; survivals of a ceremonial kind, like Mr. Mackenzie's decorated axe-head of soft stone.

That, I think, was our forger's little game; for even if he thought no more than Dr. Munro seems to do of the theory of "survivals," he knew that the theory is fashionable. "Nothing like these spear-heads . . . has hitherto been found in Scotland, so that they cannot be survivals from a previous state of things in our country," says Dr. Munro. {116a} The argument implies that there is nothing in the soil of our country of a nature still undiscovered. This is a large assumption, especially if Mr. Mackenzie be right about the sacred ceremonial decorated axe-head of soft stone. The forger, however, knew that elsewhere, if not in Scotland, there exist useless armes d'apparat, and he obviously meant to fake a few samples. He was misunderstood. I knew what he was doing, for it seems that "Mr. Lang . . . suggested that the spear-heads were not meant to be used as weapons, but as 'sacred things.'" {116b} I knew little; but I did know the sacred boomerang-shaped decorated Arunta churinga, and later looked up other armes d'apparat. {116c}

Apparently I must have "coached" the forger, and told him what kinds of things to fake. But I protest solemnly that I am innocent! He got up the subject for himself, and knew more than many of his critics. I had no more to do with the forger than M. Salomon Reinach had to do with faking the golden "tiara of Saitaphernes," bought by the Louvre for 8000 pounds. M. Reinack denies the suave suggestion that he was at the bottom of this imposture. {117a} I also am innocent of instructing the Clyde forger. He read books, English, French, German, American, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

From the Bulletino di Palaetnologia Italiana, vol. xi. p. 33, 1885, plate iv., and from Professor Pigorini's article there, he prigged the idea of a huge stone weapon, of no use, found in a grotto near Verona. {117b} This object is of flint, shaped like a flint arrow-head; is ten inches and a half in length, and "weighs over 3.5 pounds." "Pigorini conjectured that it had some religious signification."

Inspired by this arrow-head of Gargantua, the Clyde forger came in with a still longer decorated slate spear-head, weighing I know not how much. It is here photographed (figs. 17, 18). Compare the decoration of three parallel horizontal lines with that on the broken Portuguese perforated stone (figs. 9, 10). Or did the Veronese forger come to Clyde, and carry on the business at Dumbuck? The man has read widely. Sometimes, however, he may have resorted to sources which, though excellent, are accessible and cheap, like Mr. Haddon's Evolution in Art. Here (pp. 79, 80) the faker could learn all that he needed to know about armes d'apparat in the form of stone axe-heads, "unwieldy and probably quite useless objects" found by Mr. Haddon in the chain of isles south-east of New Guinea. Mr. Romilly and Dr. Wyatt Gill attest the existence of similar axes of ceremony. "They are not intended for cleaving timber." We see "the metamorphosis of a practical object into an unpractical one." {118}

The forger thus had sources for his great decorated slate spear-head; the smaller specimens may be sketches for that colossal work.



XXX—THE FIGURINES

Dr. Munro writes of "the carved figurines, 'idols,' or 'totems,' six in number," four from Dumbuck, one from Langbank. {119a} Now, first, nobody knows the purpose of the rude figurines found in many sites from Japan to Troy, from Russia to the Lake Dwellings of Europe, and in West Africa, where the negroes use these figurines, when found, as "fetish," knowing nothing of their origin (Man, No. 7, July, 1905). Like a figurine of a woman, found in the Dumbuck kitchen midden, they are discovered in old Japanese kitchen middens. {119b}

The astute forger, knowing that figurines were found in Japanese kitchen middens, knowing it before Y. Koganei published the fact in 1903, thought the Dumbuck kitchen midden an appropriate place for a figurine. Dr. Munro, possibly less well-informed, regards the bottom of a kitchen midden at Dumbuck as "a strange resting place for a goddess." {120a} Now, as to "goddess" nobody knows anything. Dr. Schliemann thought that the many figurines of clay, in Troy, were meant for Hera and Athene. Nobody knows, but every one not wholly ignorant sees the absurdity of speaking of figurines as "totems"; of course the term is not Dr. Munro's.

{ Fig. 19: p120a.jpg}

We know not their original meaning, but they occur "all over the place"; in amber on the Baltic coast, with grotesque faces carved in amber. In Russia and Finland, and in sites of prehistoric Egypt, on slate, and in other materials such grotesques are common. {120b} Egypt is a great centre of the Early Slate School of Art, the things ranging from slate plaques covered with disorderly scratchings "without a conscience or an aim," to highly decorated palettes. There is even a perforated object like the slate crooks of M. Cartailhac, from Portugal, but rather more like the silhouette of a bird, {121a} and there are decorative mace-heads in soft stone. {121b} Some of the prehistoric figurines of human beings from Egypt are studded with "cups," cupules, ecuelles, or whatever we may be permitted to name them. In short, early and rude races turn out much the same set of crude works of art almost everywhere, and the extraordinary thing is, not that a few are found in a corner of Britain, but that scarce any have been found.

{ Figs. 20, 21: p120b.jpg}

As to the Russo-Finnish flint figurines, Mr. Abercromby thinks that these objects may "have served as household gods or personal amulets," and Dr. Munro regards Mr. Abercromby's as "the most rational explanation of their meaning and purpose." He speaks of figurines of clay (the most usual material) in Carniola, Bosnia, and Transylvania. "Idols and amulets were indeed universally used in prehistoric times." {121c} "Objects which come under the same category" occur "in various parts of America." Mr. Bruce {121d} refers to M. Reinach's vast collection of designs of such figurines in L'Anthropologie, vol. v., 1894. Thus rude figurines in sites of many stages are very familiar objects. The forger knew it, and dumped down a few at Dumbuck. His female figurine (photographed in fig. 19), seems to me a very "plausible" figurine in itself. It does not appear to me "unlike anything in any collection in the British Isles, or elsewhere"—I mean elsewhere. Dr. Munro admits that it discloses "the hand of one not altogether ignorant of art." {122} I add that it discloses the hand of one not at all ignorant of genuine prehistoric figurines representing women.

But I know nothing analogous from British sites. Either such things do not exist (of which we cannot be certain), or they have escaped discovery and record. Elsewhere they are, confessedly, well known to science, and therefore to the learned forger who, nobody can guess why, dumped them down with the other fraudulent results of his researches.

If the figurines be genuine, I suppose that the Clyde folk made them for the same reasons as the other peoples who did so, whatever those reasons may have been: or, like the West Africans, found them, relics of a forgotten age, and treasured them. If their reasons were religious or superstitious, how am I to know what were the theological tenets of the Clyde residents? They may have been more or less got at by Christianity, in Saint Ninian's time, but the influence might well be slight. On the other hand, neither men nor angels can explain why the forger faked his figurines, for which he certainly had a model—at least as regards the female figure—in a widely distributed archaic feminine type of "dolly." The forger knew a good deal!

Dr. Munro writes: "That the disputed objects are amusing playthings—the sportive productions of idle wags who inhabited the various sites—seems to be the most recent opinion which finds acceptance among local antiquaries. But this view involves the contemporaneity of occupancy of the respective sites, of which there is no evidence. . . ." {123a}

There is no evidence for "contemporaneity of occupancy" if Dunbuie be of 300-900 A.D., and Dumbuck and Langbank of 1556-1758. {123b} But we, and apparently Dr. Munro (p. 264) have rejected the "Corporation cairn" theory, the theory of the cairn erected in 1556, or 1612, and lasting till 1758. The genuine undisputed relics, according to Dr. Munro, are such as "are commonly found on crannogs, brochs, and other early inhabited sites of Scotland." {124a} The sites are all, and the genuine relics in the sites are all "of some time between the fifth and twelfth centuries." {124b} The sites are all close to each other, the remains are all of the same period, (unless the late Celtic comb chance to be earlier,) yet Dr. Munro says that "for contemporaneity of occupancy there is no evidence." {124c} He none the less repeats the assertion that they are of "precisely the same chronological horizon." "The chronological horizon" (of Langbank and Dumbuck) "seems to me to be precisely the same, viz. a date well on in the early Iron Age, posterior to the Roman occupation of that part of Britain" (p. 147).

Thus Dr. Munro assigns to both sites "precisely the same chronological horizon," and also says that "there is no evidence" for the "contemporaneity of occupancy." This is not, as it may appear, an example of lack of logical consistency. "The range of the occupancy" (of the sites) "is uncertain, probably it was different in each case," writes Dr. Munro. {124d} No reason is given for this opinion, and as all the undisputed remains are confessedly of one stage of culture, the "wags" at all three sites were probably in the same stage of rudimentary humour and skill. If they made the things, the things are not modern forgeries. But the absence of the disputed objects from other sites of the same period remains as great a difficulty as ever. Early "wags" may have made them—but why are they only known in the three Clyde sites? Also, why are the painted pebbles only known in a few brochs of Caithness?

Have the graffiti on slate at St. Blane's, in Bute, been found—I mean have graffiti on slate like those of St. Blane's, been found elsewhere in Scotland? {125} The kinds of art, writing, and Celtic ornament, at St. Blane's, are all familiar, but not their presence on scraps of slate. Some of the "art" of the Dumbuck things is also familiar, but not, in Scotland, on pieces of slate and shale. Whether they were done by early wags, or by a modern and rather erudite forger, I know not, of course; I only think that the question is open; is not settled by Dr. Munro.



XXXI—GROTESQUE HEADS. DISPUTED PORTUGUESE PARALLELS

Figurines are common enough things in ancient sites; by no means so common are the grotesque heads found at Dumbuck and Langbank. They have recently been found in Portugal. Did the forger know that? Did he forge them on Portuguese models? Or was it chance coincidence? Or was it undesigned parallelism? There is such a case according to Mortillet. M. de Mortillet flew upon poor Prof. Pigorini's odd things, denouncing them as forgeries; he had attacked Dr. Schliemann's finds in his violent way, and never apologised, to my knowledge.

Then a lively squabble began. Italian "archaeologists of the highest standing" backed Prof. Pigorini: Mortillet had not seen the Italian things, but he stood to his guns. Things found near Cracow were taken as corroborating the Breonio finds, also things from Volosova, in Russia. Mortillet replied by asking "why under similar conditions could not forgers" (very remote in space,) "equally fabricate objects of the same form." {127} Is it likely?

Why should they forge similar unheard-of things in Russia, Poland, and Italy? Did the same man wander about forging, or was telepathy at work, or do forging wits jump? The Breonio controversy is undecided; "practised persons" can not "read the antiquities as easily as print," to quote Mr. Read. They often read them in different ways, here as fakes, there as authentic.

M. Boulle, reviewing Dr. Munro in L'Anthropologie (August, 1905), says that M. Cartailhac recognises the genuineness of some of the strange objects from Breonio.

But, as to our Dumbuck things, the Clyde forger went to Portugal and forged there; or the Clyde forger came from Portugal; or forging wits coincided fairly well, in Portugal and in Scotland, as earlier, at Volosova and Breonio.

In Portugalia, a Portuguese archaeological magazine, edited by Don Ricardo Severe, appeared an article by the Rev. Father Jose Brenha on the dolmens of Pouco d'Aguiar. Father Raphael Rodrigues, of that place, asked Father Brenha to excavate with him in the Christmas holidays of 1894. They published some of their discoveries in magazines, and some of the finds were welcomed by Dr. Leite de Vasconcellos, in his Religioes da Lusitania (vol. i. p. 341). They dug in the remote and not very cultured Transmontane province, and, in one dolmen found objects "the most extraordinary possible," says Father Brenha. {128} There were perforated plaques with alphabetic inscriptions; stones engraved with beasts of certain or of dubious species, very fearfully and wonderfully drawn; there were stone figurines of females, as at Dumbuck; there were stones with cups and lines connecting the cups, (common in many places) and, as at Dumbuck, there were grotesque heads in stone. (See a few examples, figs. 20-24).

Figures 20, 21, 24 are cupped, or cup and duct stones; 22 is a female figurine; 23 is a heart-shaped charm stone.

{ Fig. 22: p128.jpg}

On all this weighty mass of stone objects, Dr. Munro writes thus:

"Since the MS. of this volume was placed in the hands of the publishers a new side-issue regarding some strange objects, said to have been found in Portuguese dolmens, has been imported into the Clyde controversy, in which Mr. Astley has taken a prominent part. In a communication to the Antiquary, April, 1904, he writes: 'I will merely say here, on this point, that my arguments are brought to a scientific conclusion in my paper, 'Portuguese Parallels to Clydeside Discoveries,' reported in your issue for March, which will shortly be published.

"I have seen the article in Portugalia and the published 'scientific conclusion' of Mr. Astley (Journal of B.A.A., April and August, 1904), and can only say that, even had I space to discuss the matter I would not do so for two reasons. First, because I see no parallelism whatever between the contrasted objects from the Portuguese dolmens and the Clyde ancient sites, beyond the fact that they are both 'queer things.' And, secondly, because some of the most eminent European scholars regard the objects described and illustrated in Portugalia as forgeries. The learned Director of the Musee de St. Germain, M. Saloman Reinach, thus writes about them: 'Jusqu'a nouvel ordre, c'est- a-dire jusqu'a preuve formelle du contraire je considere ces pierres sculptees et gravees comme le produit d'une mystification. J'aimerais connaitre, a ce sujet, l'opinion des autres savants du Portugal' (Revue Archeologique, 4th S., vol. ii., 1903, p. 431)."

I had brought the Portuguese things to the notice of English readers long before Mr. Astley did so, but that is not to the purpose.

The point is that Dr. Munro denies the parallelism between the Clyde and Portuguese objects. Yet I must hold that stone figurines of women, grotesque heads in stone, cupped stones, stones with cup and duct, stones with rays proceeding from a central point, and perforated stones with linear ornamentation, are rather "parallel," in Portugal and in Clydesdale.

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

Is not this common impulse rather curious? And is suspicion of forgery to fall, in Portugal, on respectable priests, or on the very uncultured wags of Traz os Montes? Mortillet, educated by priests, hated and suspected all of them. M. Cartailhac suspected "clericals," as to the Spanish cave paintings, but acknowledged his error. I can guess no motive for the ponderous bulk of Portuguese forgeries, and am a little suspicious of the tendency to shout "Forgery" in the face of everything unfamiliar.

But the Portuguese things are suspected by M. Cartailhac, (who, however, again admits that he has been credulously incredulous before,) as well as by M. Reinach. The things ought to be inspected in themselves. I still think that they are on parallel lines with the work of the Clyde forger, who may have read about them in A Vida Moderna 1895, 1896, in Archeologo Portugues, in Encyclopedia dar Familiar, in various numbers, and in Religioes da Lusitania, vol. i. pp. 341, 342, (1897), a work by the learned Director of the Ethnological Museum of Portugal. To these sources the Dumbuck forger may have gone for inspiration.

Stated without this elegant irony, my opinion is that the parallelism of the figurines and grotesque stone faces of Villa d'Aguiar and of Clyde rather tends to suggest the genuineness of both sets of objects. But this opinion, like my opinion about the Australian and other parallelisms, is no argument against Dr. Munro, for he acknowledges none of these parallelisms. That point,—a crucial point,—are the various sets of things analogous in character or not? must be decided for each reader by himself, according to his knowledge, taste, fancy, and bias.



XXXII—DISPUTED OBJECTS FROM DUNBUIE

The faker occasionally changes his style. We have seen what slovenly designs in the archaic cup and ring and incomplete circle style he dumped down at Dumbuck. I quote Dr. Munro on his doings at Dunbuie, where the faker occasionally drops a pear-shaped slate perforated stone, with a design in cupules. Dr. Munro writes:

"The most meaningless group—if a degree of comparison be admissible in regard to a part when the whole is absolutely incomprehensible on archaeological principles—consists of a series of unprepared and irregularly shaped pieces of laminated sandstone (plate xvi.) similar to some of the stones of which the fort of Dunbuie was built, {132} having one of their surfaces decorated with small cup-marks, sometimes symmetrically arranged so far as to indicate parts of geometrical figures, and at other times variously combined with lines and circles. Two fragments of bones, also from Dunbuie, are similarly adorned (plate xvi. nos. 13, 14). Eleven of the twelve sandstone fragments which make up the group were fractured in such a manner as to suggest that the line of fracture had intersected the original ornamentation, and had thus detached a portion of it. If this be so, there must have been originally at least two or three other portions which, if found, would fit along the margin of each of the extant portions, just as the fragments of a broken urn come together. Yet among these decorated stones not one single bit fits another, nor is any of the designs the counterpart of another. If we suppose that these decorated stones are portions of larger tablets on which the designs were completed, then either they were broken before being introduced into the debris of the fort, or the designs were intentionally executed in an incomplete state, just as they are now to be seen on the existing natural splinters of stone. The supposition that the occupiers of the fort possessed the original tablets, and that they had been smashed on the premises, is excluded by the significant fact that only one fragment of each tablet has been discovered. For, in the breaking up of such tablets, it would be inconceivable, according to the law of chances, that one portion, and only one, of each different specimen would remain while all the others had disappeared. On the other hand, the hypothesis that the occupiers of the fort carved these designs on the rough and unprepared splinters of stone in the precise manner they now come before us, seems to me to involve premeditated deception, for it is difficult to believe that such uncompleted designs could have any other finality of purpose.

Looking at these geometrical figures from the point of technique, they do not make a favourable impression in support of their genuineness. The so-called cup-marks consist of punctures of two or three different sizes, so many corresponding to one size and so many to another. The stiffness of the lines and circles reminds one more of ruler and compass than of the freehand work of prehistoric artists. The patterns are unprecedented for their strange combinations of art elements. For example, no. 9, plate xvi., looks as if it were a design for some modern machinery. The main ornament on another fragment of sandstone (no. 12), consisting of a cross and circle composed of a series of cup-marls, seems to be a completed design; but yet at the corner there are lines which are absolutely meaningless, unless we suppose that they formed part of a more enlarged tablet. Similar remarks apply to nos. 3 and 8."

Is it really contrary to "the law of chances" that, in some 1200 years of unknown fortunes, no two fragments of the same plates of red sandstone (some dozen in number) should be found at Dunbuie? Think of all that may have occurred towards the scattering of fragments of unregarded sandstone before the rise of soil hid them all from sight. Where is the smaller portion of the shattered cup and ring marked sandstone block found in the Lochlee crannog? On the other hand, in the same crannog, a hammerstone broken in two was found, each half in a different place, as were two parts of a figurine at Dumbuck. Where are the arms of the Venus of Milo, vainly sought beside and around the rest of the statue? Where are the lost noses, arms, and legs of thousands of statues? Nobody can guess where they are or how they vanished. Or where are the lost fragments of countless objects in pottery found in old sites?

It was as easy for the forger to work over a whole plaque of sandstone, break it, and bury the pieces, as for him to do what he has done.

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

On inspecting the pieces, in the Museum, the regularity of design seems to me to be much exaggerated in Dr. Munro's figures, by whom drawn we are not informed.

As to Dr. Munro's figure 12, it seems to me to aim at a Celtic cross and circle, while part of his figure 3 suggests a crozier, and there is a cross on figure 18, as on a painted pebble from a broch in Caithness. The rest I cannot profess to explain; they look like idle work on sandstone, but may have had a meaning to their fashioner. His meaning, and that of the forger who here changes his style, are equally inscrutable.

I return to a strange perforated pebble, an intaglio from Dumbuck.

{ Fig. 23: p136a.jpg}

Dr. Munro quotes, as to this pebble, the Journal of the British Archaeological Association: "In the September number of the Journal (p. 282) we are informed that a slaty spear-head, an arrow-head of bone, and a sinker stone were found in the debris inside the canoe. 'In the cavity of a large bone,' says the writer, 'was also got an ornament of a peculiar stone. The digger unearthed it from the deposit at the bottom of the canoe, about 14 feet from the bow and near to a circular hole cut in the bottom about 3.5 inches in diameter.' What a funny place to hide a precious ornament, for I take this peculiar stone to be that with the human hand incised on one side and three men rowing in a boat on the other! (see plate xv. no. 10)."

{ Fig. 24: p136b.jpg}

Here the place of discovery in the canoe is given with precision, and its place within the cavity of the bone is pronounced by Dr. Munro to be "funny." As to the three men in a boat, the Rev. Geo. Wilson of Glenluce, on Feb. 14, 1887, presented to the Scots Antiquaries a bugle- shaped pendant of black shale or cannel-coal 2.25 inches long, with a central groove for suspension. On one side of the pendant was incised a sketch of two figures standing up in a boat or canoe with a high prow. The pendant is undisputed, the pebble is disputed, and we know nothing more about the matter (see fig. 25).

{ Fig. 25: p136c.jpg}



XXXIII—DISPUTABLE AND CERTAINLY FORGED OBJECTS

In his judicious remarks to the Society of Antiquaries, (Proceedings, xxxiv.,) Dr. Joseph Anderson observed that opinions would probably vary as to certain among the disputed objects. Among these are the inscribed oyster shells. I see nothing a priori improbable in the circumstance that men who incised certain patterns on schist or shale, should do so on oyster shells. Palaeolithic man did his usual sporting sketches on shells, and there was a vast and varied art of designing on shells among the pre-Columbian natives of North America. {137} We here see the most primitive scratches developing into full-blown Aztec art.

If the markings were only on such inscribed shells as mouldered away—so Mr. Bruce tells us—when exposed to light and air, (I do not know whether the designs were copied before the shells crumbled,) these conchological drawings would not trouble us. No modern could make the designs on shells that were hurrying into dust. We have Mr. Bruce's word for these mouldering shells, and we have the absolute certainty that such decomposing shells could not be incised by a hand of to-day, as shale, slate, schist, and sandstone can now be engraved upon, fraudulently.

But when, as Professor Boyd Dawkins writes, the finds include "two fresh shells . . . unmistakable Blue Points," drilled with perforations, or inscribed, from Dunbuie, then there are only two possible alternatives.

1. They were made by the faker, or

2. They were "interpolated" into the Dunbuie site by somebody.

The forger himself is, I think, far too knowing a man to fake inscriptions on fresh shells, even if, not being a conchologist, he did not know that the oysters were American blue points.

I have written in vain if the reader, while believing in the hypothesis of a forger, thinks him such an egregious ass. For Blue Points as non- existent save in America, 1 rely on Prof. Boyd Dawkins.

As the public were allowed to break off and steal the prow of the Dumbuck canoe, it is plain that no guard was placed on the sites. They lay open for months to the interpolations of wags, and I think, for my own part, that one of them is likely to have introduced the famous blue points.

Dr. Munro tells us how a "large-worked stone," a grotesque head, was foisted through a horizontal hole, into the relic bed of his kitchen midden at Elie. "It lay under four inches of undisturbed black earth." But it had been "interpolated" there by some "lousy tykes of Fife," as the anti-covenanting song calls them. {139}

It was rather easier to interpolate Blue Point oyster shells at Dunbuie. On the other hand, two splinters of stone, inserted into a bone and a tyne of deer's horn, figured by Dr. Munro among Dumbuck and Dunbuie finds, seem to me rather too stupid fakes for the regular forger, and a trifle too clever for the Sunday holiday-maker. These two things I do not apologise for, or defend; my knowledge of primitive implements is that of a literary man, but for what it is worth, it does not incline me to regard these things as primitive implements.



XXXIV—CONCLUSION

EXPLICIT! I have tried to show cause why we should not bluntly dismiss the mass of disputed objects as forgeries, but should rest in a balance of judgment, file the objects for reference, and await the results of future excavations. If there be a faker, I hope he appreciates my sympathetic estimate of his knowledge, assiduity, and skill in leger de main.

I am the forger's only friend, and I ask him to come forward and make a clean breast of it, like the young men who hoaxed the Society for Psychical Research with a faked wraith, or phantasm of the living.

"Let it fully now suffice, The gambol has been shown!"

It seems to me nearly equally improbable that a forger has been at work on a large scale, and that sets of objects, unexampled in our isle, have really turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence. The strong, the very strong point against authenticity is this: numbers of the disputed objects were found in sites of the early Iron Age. Now such objects, save for a few samples, are only known,—and that in non-British lands,—in Neolithic sites. The theory of survival may be thought not to cover the number of the disputed objects.

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



Footnotes

{4} Archaeology and False Antiquities, pp. 259-261. By Robert Munro, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.S.A.Scot. Methuen & Co., London, 1905.

{5a} Munro, p. xii.

{5b} Munro, pp. 56-80. Cf. L'Homme Prehistorique, No. 7, pp. 214-218. (1905.)

{6} Methuen, London, 1904, pp. 292.

{7} Munro, p. 178.

{8a} Munro, p. 55; cf. his Lake Dwellings in Europe, Fig. 13, Nos. 17, 18, 19. See Arch. and False Antiquities, pp. 21, 22, where Dr. Munro acknowledges that he had been taken in.

{8b} Munro, pp. 41, 42.

{8c} Munro, pp. 275-279.

{9} L'Anthropologie, 1902, pp. 348-354.

{10} Munro, pp. 175-176.

{11a} Munro, p. 152.

{11b} Munro, pp. 28, 29.

{12} Munro, p. 130.

{13a} Munro, p. 155. Letter of January 7, 1899.

{13b} Munro, p. 260.

{14a} Munro, p. 270.

{14b} Munro, p. 270.

{15} Bruce, Proceedings of the Scots Society of Antiquaries, vol. xxxiv. pp. 439, 448, 449.

{17} Archaeologia Scotica, vol. v. p. 146.

{21} See pages 133, 166.

{24} March 1899, "Cup and Ring"; cf. the same article in my Magic and Religion, 1901, pp. 241-256.

{25a} Munro, 133, 134, 150-151.

{25b} Munro, pp. 139, 140.

{26} See Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xxx. 268, and fig. 4.

{27} Journal of the British Archaeological Society, December 1898.

{28a} Prehistoric Scotland, p. 431.

{28b} See Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xxx. fig. 4.

{29} Vol. xxx. 270.

{30} Vol. xxxiv. p. 438.

{31} Mr. Alston describes this causeway, and shows it on the plan as "leading from the 'central well' to the burn about 120 fee to west of centre of crannog."

{34} Proceedings Soc. Ant. Scot. 1899-1900, p. 439.

{35} Proc. Scot. Soc. Ant. 1900-1901, p. 283.

{36a} Proceedings S.A.S. vol. xxxiv. pp. 460-461.

{36b} Munro, p. 256.

{37} Munro, p. 146. Mr. Bruce in Trans. Glasgow Archaeol. Society, vol. v. N.S. part 1. p. 45.

{38a} L'Anthropologie, xiv. pp. 416-426.

{38b} Munro, p. 196.

{38c} Munro, 147, 148.

{39} Munro, p. 218.

{40a} Munro, pp. 219-220.

{40b} Munro, p. 219.

{40c} Transactions, ut supra, p. 51.

{41} Proc. Soc. Ant. 1900-1901, pp. 112-148.

{43} Pp. 135, 177, 257-258, and elsewhere.

{44} Munro, pp. 177, 257, 258.

{45} Munro, p. 139.

{46a} Munro, p. 264.

{46b} These phrases are from Munro, Arch. and False Antiquities, pp. 138-139.

{47a} Munro, p. 139.

{47b} Munro, Prehistoric Scotland, p. 420.

{48} Munro, p. 130.

{49a} See page 246 of Dr. Munro's article on Raised Beaches, Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, vol. xxv. part 3. The reference is to two Clyde canoes built of planks fastened to ribs, suggesting that the builder had seen a foreign galley, and imitated it.

{49b} Munro, pp. 138, 139.

{51a} Proceedings Scot. Soc. Ant. vol. xxxiv. p. 462.

{51b} Munro, p. 147.

{52a} Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. 1900-1901, p. 296.

{52b} Munro, p. 138.

{52c} These structures, of course, were of dry stone, without lime and mortar. By what name we call them, "towers," or "cairns," is indifferent to me.

{54} Beda, book 1, chap. i.

{61} Proceedings Soc. Scot. Ant. 1899-1900, vol. xxxiv. pp. 456-458.

{63} See Prof. Zimmer's Das Mutterrecht der Pickten, Rhys's Celtic Britain, Rhind Lectures, and in Royal Commission's Report on Wales, with my History of Scotland, vol. i. pp. 12, 14.

{64a} Bureau of Ethnology's Report, 1896-97, p. 324. See also the essay on "Indian Pictographs," Report of Bureau, for 1888-89.

{64b} MSS. of Mr. Mullen, of Bourke, N.S.W., and of Mr. Charles Lang.

{64c} Scott, London, 1895.

{64d} Op. cit. p. 178.

{64e} Op. cit. p. 172.

{65} Munro, p. 246.

{66} Longmans.

{67} Munro, p. 177.

{69} Cartailhac, Ages Prehistoriques, p. 97.

{73a} L'Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 338.

{73b} Proc. S.A.S., 1878-1879.

{73c} Op. cit. pp. 208, 210.

{74} Bruce, ut supra, p. 446.

{75} Bureau of Ethnology, Report of 1888-1889, p. 193.

{77} Munro, plate xv. p. 228, p. 249, cf. fig. 63, p. 249.

{78} Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, figs. 20, 21, 22, 133; Northern Tribes of Central Australia, figs. 89, 92, 80, 81.

{80a} I have no concern with an object, never seen by Dr. Munro, or by me, to my knowledge, but described as a "churinga"; in Journal of British Archaeological Association, Sept. 1904, fig. 4, Munro, p. 246.

{80b} Munro, p. 246.

{81} See Spencer and Gillen, Central Tribes, fig. 21, 6; Northern Tribes, fig. 87.

{82a} Munro, p. 55, referring to Ancient Lake Dwellings, fig. 13, nos. 17, 18, 19.

{82b} Proceedings Scot. Soc. Ant. 1902, p. 168, fig. 4, 1903.

{82c} Lockhart, iv. 208.

{84a} Munro, p. 247.

{84b} Munro, fig. 62, p. 248.

{85a} Debut de l'Art, pp. 124-138.

{85b} Munro, p. 260.

{85c} Munro, p. 230.

{85d} Munro, pp. 204, 205.

{86} Munro, p. 260.

{88} Op. cit. p. 172.

{89} Nicholson, Folk Lore of East Yorkshire, p. 87, Hull, 1890.

{91} Haddon, The Study of Man, pp. 276, 327.

{95a} Man, 1904, no. 22.

{95b} For the Caithness brochs, see Dr. Joseph Anderson, Proc. Soc. Scot. Ant., 1900-1901, pp. 112-148.

{95c} Native Tribes of North Central Australia, Spencer and Gillen, p. 274, 1894.

{96} Northern Tribes, p. 268, fig. 87, 1904.

{97a} Glasgow Herald, letter of October 17th, 1903.

{97b} Munro, pp. 251-253.

{100a} Vol. vii. p. 50, cf. Proceedings Scots Society of Antiquaries, vol. vi. p. 112, and, in Appendix to the same volume, p. 42, plate xix.

{100b} Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times, p. 88.

{101} Munro, p. 249, fig. 63.

{102a} Les Ages Prehistoriques, p. 100; cf. J. L. de Vasconcellos' Religioes da Lusitania, vol. i. p. 69. Lisboa, 1897.

{102b} Antiguedades Monumentaes do Algarve, i. 298. Estacio da Veiga, Lisboa, 1886.

{102c} Religioes, i. 69-70.

{103a} Antiguedades, vol. ii. 429-481.

{103b} Religioes, i. 168.

{103c} L'Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 542.

{104} By Gongora de Martinez. Madrid, 1868.

{107} Munro, pp. 232, 234.

{108} Munro, p. 228.

{109} Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 141-145.

{111} Munro, pp. 260, 261.

{112a} Munro, p. 158, pp. 223-227.

{112b} Munro, p. 261.

{114} Op. cit., p. 111-114.

{115} Proceedings, vol. xxiii. p. 272.

{116a} Munro, p. 255.

{116b} Ibid.

{116c} Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 150.

{117a} L'Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 362.

{117b} Cf. Munro, p. 57.

{118} Op. cit., p. 84.

{119a} Munro, p. 230.

{119b} L'Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 548. Dr. Laloy's review of Mr. Y. Koganei, Ueber die Urbewohner von Japan. Tokyo, 1903.

{120a} Munro, p. 141.

{120b} See Cappart, Primitive Art in Egypt, p. 154, translated by A. S. Griffiths. Grevel, London, 1905.

{121a} Cappart, p. 90, fig. 60, p. 92, fig. 62.

{121b} Ibid. p. 95, fig. 66.

{121c} Munro, p. 80.

{121d} Op. cit., p. 449.

{122} Munro, p. 231.

{123a} Munro, p. 262.

{123b} Dr. Murray in Munro, pp. 257-258.

{124a} Munro, p. 148.

{124b} Munro, p. 264.

{124c} Munro, p. 262.

{124d} Munro, p. 220.

{125} Munro, pp. 231-235.

{127} Munro, pp. 56-73.

{128} Portugalia, i. p. 646.

{130} See Sr. Severo in Portugalia, vol. ii. part i., 1905.

{132} All the specimens of this group were disinterred from the ruins of this fort.

{137} See an interesting and well-illustrated paper in Report of Bureau on Ethnology, U.S., vol. ii.

{139} Munro, Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., 1900-1901, pp. 291-292.

THE END