The Clyde Mystery Part 6

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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 a.s.suredly parallel. The use of charm stones in civilisation and savagery is a.s.suredly 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 vand.y.k.ed pattern. Though of smaller size this seems to bear some a.n.a.logy 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 vand.y.k.ed 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 s.p.a.ce, uninscribed. {100b} The photograph of the Tappock stone (figs. 9, 10), shows that the marks are not of a regular vand.y.k.ed 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.n.a.logous with these_." {102a} These are also a.n.a.logous 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 "vand.y.k.ed"

pattern in triangles, without faces, "are, none the less, _des representations stylisees de silhouette humaine_." {103c}

Ill.u.s.trations 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 a.n.a.logous" with the plaques from the Casa da Moura, even when these are elaborately ornamented with vand.y.k.ed 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 superst.i.tious 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 a.n.a.logue 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 superst.i.tion 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 a.n.a.logous 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!" n.o.body 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}