Archaeological Essays Part 13

See also Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, chap. xxv.]

[Footnote 194: _Histor. Eccles._, lib. i. c. 1, - 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.ses 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 coa.r.s.e 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-_Ket_an 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 c.u.mbria, or c.u.mberland; 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, pa.s.s, 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sage 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 circ.u.mstance 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 superst.i.tion 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.

a.s.suredly, 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 superst.i.tions 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 spa.r.s.e 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.s.siduously pierced by the spoon of the eater as if he had weighing upon his mind the strong superst.i.tion of the ancient Roman, that--if he omitted to perforate the empty sh.e.l.l--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 superst.i.tious 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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sertion 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 superst.i.tious 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 cla.s.s 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 superst.i.tious 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 superst.i.tions 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 a.n.a.logous medical superst.i.tions and practices of the successive Roman[221] and Teutonic [222] invaders and conquerors of our island. A careful a.n.a.lysis would yet perhaps enable the archaeologist to separate some of these cla.s.ses 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 superst.i.tions, 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 anch.o.r.ets, and dedicated to various saints throughout the country; the curative powers of holy robes, bells, bones, relics, etc.

Numerous forms of medical superst.i.tions, 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 superst.i.tions 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, c.o.c.k, 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, princ.i.p.ally 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 a.s.signed 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 100 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 princ.i.p.al 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 Ad.a.m.nan's _Life of St. Columba_. This biography of the founder of Iona was probably written in the last years of the seventh century, Ad.a.m.nan 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 Ad.a.m.nan's work is ent.i.tled, "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 Ad.a.m.nan, under this head, is as follows:--