Chapter 5

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.

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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}

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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.

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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."

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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."

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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.

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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.

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