Part 1

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AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE ORIGIN AND MEANING OF THE EARLY INTERLACED ORNAMENTATION

FOUND ON THE

Ancient Sculptured Stones

OF

SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AND THE ISLE OF MAN.

BY GILBERT J. FRENCH, OF BOLTON.

PRINTED FOR PRESENTATION ONLY.

MANCHESTER: PRINTED BY CHARLES SIMMS AND CO. 1858.

AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN, &c.

Any reasonable and honest attempt to explain the origin of the singularly elegant interlaced ornamentation, familiar to archæologists as the very earliest style of artistic decoration known in the British islands, must be entitled to, and I feel assured will receive, favourable consideration. Even should the attempted explanation fail to obtain entire sanction, it will at least lead to attentive and accurate observations upon an interesting subject, which may at some future time refute or establish the theory which I venture to propound.

The style of interlaced ornament to which I refer is found in an infinite variety of devices on the earliest sculpture, whether of stone or metal, and in the oldest manuscripts and illuminations of Britain and Ireland. It retained its peculiar distinctive character throughout the Roman occupation of Britain, slightly modified by, and often mixed with, classical ornaments. These, however, in a great measure disappeared during the Saxon period, a circumstance which induces the belief that, whatever its origin and purpose, interlaced ornamentation was equally familiar to the Saxon invaders and to the British aborigines. It entered largely into Norman architecture; but from the time of the Conquest it gradually became less used, though traces of it are to be met with at nearly every period in the history of British art. Thus it was revived with the introduction of printing, when many beautiful capital letters, copied from ancient manuscripts, were reproduced as wood-cuts. It reappeared in the strap-work peculiar to the architecture and ornamentation of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. It is found in the bone-lace patterns of this country and of Northern Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was retained in almost its original purity for the decoration of the dirks, targets, brooches and powder horns of the Scottish Highlanders within the last hundred years.[1]

Very striking examples of interlaced ornament are met with on the ancient sculptured stones and crosses so plentifully scattered over our islands. They have been of late brought into prominent notice by three invaluable publications which graphically represent and accurately describe these interesting relics of ancient art as they are now found in Scotland[2], Ireland[3] and the Isle of Man[4]. It is to be regretted that those of England and Wales—though many of them have been separately engraved—have not yet been collected in a well-edited volume, since a careful comparison of their details would prove an immense assistance to antiquaries, bringing before them a new and delightful chapter, richly full of pre-historic suggestions.

My remarks are confined to sculptured stones only, though the subject would be greatly elucidated and my argument enforced by references to manuscripts and metal ornamentation. This ground, however, is so well occupied by gentlemen who have made palæography and metallic art their peculiar study that I decline intruding upon it, even had it been possible to treat it satisfactorily within the limits of this paper.

The aborigines of this or any other country of corresponding climate, after discovering some natural cave, or making for themselves a rude hut, would probably take their next step in constructive art by attempting to form such utensils as might contain, and enable them to preserve, the fruits and seeds necessary for food. Assuming that they were then unprovided with even the rudest tools,—for we refer to a time before our far-off ancestors knew the use of bronze or iron,—they would form these utensils by twisting together the long, pliant osiers with which the land abounded, and of which, by the unaided action of the fingers, they could form baskets excellently adapted for the required purpose.

No other branch of art is even now so independent of tools, and none has been so universally diffused or so long and uninterruptedly practised as basket making. It is the humble parent of all textile art, the most elaborate tissues produced by the loom or the needle being but progressive developements proceeding from the rude wattle-work of unclothed savages. Basket making is the first natural step in the path of civilization. To this day the earliest effort of infantile ingenuity among the rural population is directed to making (as it were by intuitive instinct) personal ornaments of plaited rushes, and that, too, in patterns, some of which are identical with the devices engraved by our pre-historic ancestors on their old sculptured stones.

The earliest authentic records of Britain refer to its inhabitants as expert basket makers; their houses were made of willows and reeds; their fences and fortifications were living trees, with intertwisted branches; their boats were baskets, covered with skins; their domestic furniture, defensive armour, even the images employed in their erroneous religion, were each of wicker-work; and though we have no absolute proof that such was the case, it is at least probable that those famous chariots so formidable to the Roman invaders were similarly constructed, for it appears altogether impossible that the feats recorded of these celebrated charioteers could have been performed with carriages of wood and iron; though if we can suppose them to have been of small size, constructed of elastic wicker-work, and placed upon low wheels, the accounts of their marvellous movements become reasonable, and within the bounds of credibility.

The monastic historians of the succeeding ages continue to mention wicker-work as the principal architectural material used in Britain and Ireland, not only for the rude dwellings of the inhabitants, but also for their more important public edifices and churches. Thus we find that so late as the sixth century Dermot MacKervel assisted “the Abbot St. Keyran to make a house to dwell in” by “thrusting down the peirs or wattles” of which it was made.[5] The monastery founded by St. Columba in the same century, though of much theological repute, must have had little material grandeur, as it is known that the great apostle of the Scots “sent forth his monks to gather twigs to build their hospice,” and the abode of St. Woloc, a bishop of the same age, was “a simple hut of wattles.” Glastonbury, supposed to have been the earliest Christian church in England, was, on the authority of William of Malmesbury,[6] “a mean structure of wattle-work;” and there are numerous other references to churches and monasteries constructed altogether or in part of the same material. Vestiges of such structures are now occasionally met with, which verify the records of the Roman and Mediæval historians. Recently, on the Etive in Argyleshire, the progress of agricultural improvement has uncovered rough pavements of stone, bearing marks of fire strewed with charred ashes, surrounded with the remains of hazel stakes, the relics of the frame-work of ancient Caledonian hearths, which have been concealed for centuries under a cover of eight or ten feet of moss.[7]

Many of the purposes to which the ancient Briton applied his manufacture of baskets were singularly useful, and so well were they adapted to their peculiar purposes that they are employed almost unchanged even to the present day. The coracle of basket and hide is still used by sportsmen and poachers on the waters of North Wales.[8] The bothies of the Scottish Highlanders are yet constructed of wattles; and even in the cottages of a better kind the doors and sleeping cribs are frequently of the same fabric: so also are their rude little sledges and carts; and until of late their horse harness also.[9] Modern civilization does not now disdain to use for drags, dog-carts, and German waggons the same strong yet light and elastic materials which the ancient Briton probably employed for his formidable war-chariot; and our ancestors of the last century knew well the value of the stage-coach “_basket_” as a convenient means of conveyance over their rough roads.

“Hanapers (or hampers) of twyggys” were long the official receptacles for certain documents connected with the Court of Chancery, and the name is still, or was recently, applied to an officer of that court.

The firm hold with which long-established customs, combined with convenience, fix themselves upon the reason of men, and the pertinacity with which nations cling to their old habits, refusing, for the sake of old associations, alterations of the most obvious utility, is altogether marvellous. Speaking of this power and permanency of custom, Lord Bacon curiously illustrates this subject by an anecdote pertinent to the matter before us. “I remember, in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s time, of England, an Irish rebel condemned, put up a petition to the Deputy that he should be hanged in a withe, and not in an halter, because it had been so used with former rebels.”[10] Another author, in his version of the same story, says that this “favour of being hanged in gads (twisted withes, so called after the manner of the country), was not refused.”[11] This, though probably an extreme, is by no means an unique prejudice in favour of ancient modes of execution, a prejudice which extends beyond life, influencing nations in their adherence to old-established sepulchral customs.

A manufacture which was probably progressing for many centuries before the Romans invaded Britain, must necessarily have acquired a certain amount of refined ornament as a result of so much experience and practice. We have, indeed, direct evidence that the Romans greatly admired the ornamental baskets of the British, which were exported in large quantities to Rome, and became fashionable appendages among the extravagantly luxurious furniture of the imperial city. Juvenal, writing about A.D. 120, mentions the popularity of these baskets;[12] and that they were productions of the British islanders is distinctly stated by the epigrammatist Martial,[13] who wrote about the end of the first century. It is not improbable that these British baskets were enriched with colour, and even gilding. The former we know was profusely and permanently applied to the persons of the aborigines; the latter—probably one of the earliest discovered metals—was used in the middle of the fifth century for so common a purpose as decorating the roofs of important buildings.[14] It is not, therefore, likely that they were denied as additional means of ornament to these highly valued baskets.

When the aboriginal Briton had made his first step in domestic civilization by constructing useful baskets, he would still be subjected to a great inconvenience from the absence of any suitable vessel of sufficient size to convey or store a supply of water. Nature in this country did little to assist him, denying even the slight aid of the gourd and calabash common in warmer climates. To invent a water vessel would thus become to him a necessity; without it he must have been compelled to reside on the bank of some river or brook, in which he and his family could quench their thirst in the same manner and as frequently as the wild animals of the surrounding forests. Nor is it improbable that many generations of people were restricted to such localities for this reason.

There appears at first sight to be no possible analogy between baskets and water vessels; yet I apprehend that they are in reality almost twin inventions. The same reasoning which induced the naked Briton to line the wicker walls of his hut with clay for the purpose of excluding cold, would, after some experience, lead to an application of the same material as a coating to the inside of his baskets, which, when dried in the sun or hardened by fire applied to the inside, would then be enabled to retain liquids at least for a time, and consequently permit the desired migration from the immediate margin of a river. This is of course a gratuitous assertion, of no value without proof; but it is also a reasonable induction, and one which is, I venture to think, worthy the considerate attention of archæologists.

Fortunately vessels of this description have been preserved in the ancient burial places of the Britons, and are occasionally exhumed in a state of tolerable preservation. They are for the most part not turned on the potter’s wheel, but moulded by the hand, and marked on the exterior by ornaments, not in relief, but always depressed or incised, having the appearance of indentations made in the soft clay by plaited osiers, rushes, or strips of hide, more or less distinct, but, so far as I know, all referrible to such an origin.[15] In some the coating of clay appears not to be carried to the mouth of the basket, but the plaited rushes seem to have been folded inside, and thus the interior of the urn is on its upper portions indented with the same pattern of basket-work as that on the outer side. All British urns are, comparatively with Roman or with Saxon examples, wide-mouthed, a condition essential to their being made by hand on an exterior frame-work of plaited rushes or willows; and some appear to have been constructed on two separate baskets, one inverted over the other. There is rarely any attempt at _ansation_, the nearest approach to handles being heavy perforated knobs placed a little beneath the mouth, for the evident purpose of attaching to them the twigs, withes, or thongs, which served both to protect and to suspend these fragile vessels.

I must not be supposed to assert that the ornaments found on British, occasionally on Anglo-Roman, and abundantly on Anglo-Saxon urns, were in all cases real impressions of basket-work; but merely that the use of that style of ornament probably originated in the manner I have described, and that it was continued after the introduction of the potter’s wheel by force of habit and long-continued custom. This induced the potter to stamp or incise on the surface of the vessels he made ornamental devices similar to those on the honoured urns of an earlier people; for that they were honoured and held in high estimation is apparent from the sacred purposes to which they were applied as receptacles for the ashes of the dead. In absence of all direct proof of this assumed origin of urn ornamentation, I have thought it right to test the possibility of the process;—with a result entirely satisfactory. Taking such small baskets as I found used by my family for ordinary domestic purposes, I have roughly coated them inside with different clays, subjecting some to the action of fire in the kiln, while others I have left exposed to the sun, and to a few I have applied heat inside only. On all the indentations of the basket-work are sufficiently marked; but they are best defined on the sun-dried specimens, since the shrinking of the clay under the action of fire in the kiln obliterates some of the more salient ridges. A comparison of these jars with ancient British urns will, I apprehend, be more satisfactory and convincing than any elaborate argument, leaving little doubt that both have been produced by similar processes, and that the British urn is, in truth, a secondary application of the British basket.

Mr. Birch, in his learned and most valuable _History of Ancient Pottery_, applies the term “_bascaudæ_,” employed by Juvenal and Martial, not to baskets but to sepulchral urns with basket-like ornamentation.[16] Though most unwilling to hazard a contrary opinion, I still cannot avoid suggesting that such urns, judging from the specimens which have been preserved for our inspection, were not likely to be acceptable ornaments on the tables of the luxurious Romans, accustomed as they must have been to elegant products of high art in the plastic manufactures of Etruria, Greece, and Egypt. It is, I think, greatly more probable that ornamental baskets to contain fruit or flowers were indicated by that name.

Though there is good proof that the Britons had acquired much skill in the art of basket making at the time of the occupation of this island by the Romans, it is equally certain that they were ignorant of the art of constructive masonry; for when the legions left the British to their own resources, they advised them to build a wall between the two seas across the island, to keep off their northern enemies. They, indeed, “raised the wall as they had been directed,” but “not of stone _as having no artist capable of such work_, but of sods [which] made it of no use.”[17] From this it is apparent that the British people at that time, and probably for some centuries afterwards, were unaccustomed to the use of building materials of a kind more permanent than wood, wattle-work and clay. Such an arrangement quite accords with the manners of the people and the state of the country at that period, covered as it was with extensive forests, and swamps abounding with osiers. A people of migratory habits, occupied in perpetual warfare, and depending in a great measure on the chase for their food, must have had little inducement to build residences of great durability; and this would happily lead to the more rapid clearing of the country, and consequently to its earlier civilization.

Such was the condition of art in Britain and Ireland at the time that the first Christian missionaries commenced their labours in these countries. So signal was their success that Tertullian, writing of his own time (the third century), tells us that “some countries of the Britains that proved impregnable to the Romans are yet subjected to Christ.” It was the custom of those earnest and indefatigable men (so pious in their lives that after their death they were usually honoured with the title of Saint) to place crosses in every place where they succeeded in making converts, or in which they planted a church, chapel, or monastery; and it becomes a question of some interest to ascertain the materials of these early symbols of the Christian faith, which must have been extensively spread over the land.

Clearly they were not of stone, since we know that even after the Romans left England the natives had not sufficient skill to build a wall of that material; nor have we any reason to believe that they had the ability or the tools requisite for the construction of a cross of timber, which would demand the use of cutting instruments with finer edges than those necessary for stone. Under these circumstances it is only natural that the British convert would dedicate to the glory of God the products of that talent which had acquired for him a continental celebrity. The basket-work, so prized at Rome, was the most valuable oblation that the pious ancient Briton could offer to the services of his new religion, and thus it was that the first emblems of Christianity erected in England were (almost necessarily) constructed of basket-work.

The perishable nature of the materials forbids us to expect almost any other than inferential evidence that crosses of basket-work ever existed, but happily this is not denied to us. A careful examination of the admirable engravings of the sculptured stones of Scotland, the ancient Irish crosses, and the curious monumental remains of the Isle of Man, together with many existing carved crosses in England and Wales, cannot fail to convince any unprejudiced observer that the beautiful interlaced ornamentation so lavishly employed on these sculptures derived its origin from the earlier decorations of that British basket-work which the Romans had learned to value and admire.

Before attempting to describe the method by which such crosses may be, and probably were constructed, I beg to call attention to the fact that basket-work and the earlier Pagan or Druidical religion were closely connected.

Cæsar, writing of the Druids, states that “they have images of enormous size, the limbs of which, formed of wicker-work, they fill with living men, which being set on fire, the men perish enveloped in flames[18];” and Strabo says, “having prepared a Colossus of hay and thrown wood upon it, they burn together oxen, all sorts of wild beasts, and men.[19]” It has been assumed that these wicker-work images were in the human form, but I apprehend that there is nothing in either text to warrant this conclusion. The word colossus implies a figure of large size, which may quite as probably have been that of some enormous animal.

On the Shandwick stone,[20] one of the most interesting of the Scottish series, figures of men, horses, stags, birds, and other animals are carved with much spirit, and with more than usual attention to their relative proportions. The animals are represented in life-like attitudes, as if moving about. But there is one remarkable exception,[21] a colossal four-legged creature, of a form peculiar to these Scottish stones, differs from the others as much in figure as in size. Compared with two sheep and a dog which occur on the same panel,[21] its height, if erect, would be about thirteen feet, its length about eighteen feet, while its ungainly leaning posture is singularly suggestive of its being a sculptured representation of some huge beast built up of wicker-work. Certain marks on its surface warrant this supposition, which is strengthened by the fact that other representations of a similar animal, which occur on the same series, have the most distinct indications of a basket-work origin. Well marked examples are to be found on the stones at Brodie and at Glenferness.[22] Resembling no known animal, these curious figures—which are represented above twenty times on the Scottish stones and are nowhere else to be met with—have a general likeness to each other; they are all in postures by no means indicating life or motion, and all distinguished by the striking peculiarity of having no feet; the limbs terminate in long wands rolled up after the manner of volutes, obviously suggesting the idea that if opened out they would serve, on being thrust deeply into the ground, to keep the colossus in a standing attitude. Similar volutes are represented terminating the base of the well-known cross at the gate of St. Michael’s church yard in the Isle of Man. They were probably used in the same way to fix to the ground an earlier cross of wicker-work, of which the existing monument is a copy engraved on stone.