The Clyde Mystery Part 8

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 s.p.a.ce,) "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 ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 a.n.a.logous in character or not? must be decided for each reader by himself, according to his knowledge, taste, fancy, and bias.

x.x.xII--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 compa.s.s 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? n.o.body 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 compa.s.ses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind? Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, not have compa.s.ses, 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 a.s.sociation: "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 p.r.o.nounced 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}

x.x.xIII--DISPUTABLE AND CERTAINLY FORGED OBJECTS

In his judicious remarks to the Society of Antiquaries, (_Proceedings_, x.x.xiv.,) Dr. Joseph Anderson observed that opinions would probably vary as to certain among the disputed objects. Among these are the inscribed oyster sh.e.l.ls. I see nothing _a priori_ improbable in the circ.u.mstance that men who incised certain patterns on schist or shale, should do so on oyster sh.e.l.ls. Palaeolithic man did his usual sporting sketches on sh.e.l.ls, and there was a vast and varied art of designing on sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ls crumbled,) these conchological drawings would not trouble us. No modern could make the designs on sh.e.l.ls that were hurrying into dust. We have Mr. Bruce's word for these mouldering sh.e.l.ls, and we have the absolute certainty that such decomposing sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ls . . . 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 sh.e.l.ls, 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 a.s.s. For Blue Points as non- existent save in America, 1 rely on Prof. Boyd Dawkins.