Chapter 7

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 mass 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 space 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 illustrated 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 analogous in character or not? must be decided for each reader by himself, according to his knowledge, taste, fancy, and bias.

XXXII--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 compass 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? Nobody 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 compasses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind? Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, not have compasses, 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 Association: "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 pronounced 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}

XXXIII--DISPUTABLE AND CERTAINLY FORGED OBJECTS

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

As the public were allowed to break off and steal the prow of the Dumbuck canoe, it is plain that no guard was placed on the sites. They lay open for months to the interpolations of wags, and I think, for my own part, that one of them is likely to have introduced the famous blue points.

Dr. Munro tells us how a "large-worked stone," a grotesque head, was foisted through a horizontal hole, into the relic bed of his kitchen midden at Elie. "It lay under four inches of undisturbed black earth." But it had been "interpolated" there by some "lousy tykes of Fife," as the anti-covenanting song calls them. {139}

It was rather easier to interpolate Blue Point oyster shells at Dunbuie. On the other hand, two splinters of stone, inserted into a bone and a tyne of deer's horn, figured by Dr. Munro among Dumbuck and Dunbuie finds, seem to me rather too stupid fakes for the regular forger, and a trifle too clever for the Sunday holiday-maker. These two things I do not apologise for, or defend; my knowledge of primitive implements is that of a literary man, but for what it is worth, it does not incline me to regard these things as primitive implements.

XXXIV--CONCLUSION

_EXPLICIT_! I have tried to show cause why we should not bluntly dismiss the mass of disputed objects as forgeries, but should rest in a balance of judgment, file the objects for reference, and await the results of future excavations. If there be a faker, I hope he appreciates my sympathetic estimate of his knowledge, assiduity, and skill in _leger de main_.

I am the forger's only friend, and I ask him to come forward and make a clean breast of it, like the young men who hoaxed the Society for Psychical Research with a faked wraith, or phantasm of the living.

"Let it fully now suffice, The gambol has been shown!"

It seems to me nearly equally improbable that a forger has been at work on a large scale, and that sets of objects, unexampled in our isle, have really turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence. The strong, the very strong point against authenticity is this: _numbers_ of the disputed objects were found in sites of the early _Iron Age_. Now such objects, save for a few samples, are only known,--and that in non-British lands,--in _Neolithic_ sites. The theory of survival may be thought not to cover the _number_ of the disputed objects.

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

Footnotes

{4} _Archaeology and False Antiquities_, pp. 259-261. By Robert Munro, M.A., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.S.A.Scot. Methuen & Co., London, 1905.

{5a} Munro, p. xii.

{5b} Munro, pp. 56-80. Cf. _L'Homme Prehistorique_, No. 7, pp. 214-218. (1905.)

{6} Methuen, London, 1904, pp. 292.

{7} Munro, p. 178.

{8a} Munro, p. 55; cf. his _Lake Dwellings in Europe_, Fig. 13, Nos. 17, 18, 19. See _Arch. and False Antiquities_, pp. 21, 22, where Dr. Munro acknowledges that he had been taken in.

{8b} Munro, pp. 41, 42.

{8c} Munro, pp. 275-279.

{9} _L'Anthropologie_, 1902, pp. 348-354.

{10} Munro, pp. 175-176.

{11a} Munro, p. 152.

{11b} Munro, pp. 28, 29.

{12} Munro, p. 130.

{13a} Munro, p. 155. Letter of January 7, 1899.

{13b} Munro, p. 260.

{14a} Munro, p. 270.

{14b} Munro, p. 270.

{15} Bruce, _Proceedings of the Scots Society of Antiquaries_, vol. xxxiv. pp. 439, 448, 449.

{17} _Archaeologia Scotica_, vol. v. p. 146.

{21} See pages 133, 166.

{24} March 1899, "Cup and Ring"; cf. the same article in my _Magic and Religion_, 1901, pp. 241-256.

{25a} Munro, 133, 134, 150-151.

{25b} Munro, pp. 139, 140.

{26} See _Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow_, xxx. 268, and fig. 4.

{27} _Journal of the British Archaeological Society_, December 1898.

{28a} _Prehistoric Scotland_, p. 431.

{28b} See _Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow_, xxx. fig. 4.

{29} Vol. xxx. 270.

{30} Vol. xxxiv. p. 438.

{31} Mr. Alston describes this causeway, and shows it on the plan as "leading from the 'central well' to the burn about 120 fee to west of centre of crannog."

{34} _Proceedings Soc. Ant. Scot._ 1899-1900, p. 439.

{35} _Proc. Scot. Soc. Ant._ 1900-1901, p. 283.

{36a} _Proceedings S.A.S._ vol. xxxiv. pp. 460-461.

{36b} Munro, p. 256.

{37} Munro, p. 146. Mr. Bruce in _Trans. Glasgow Archaeol. Society_, vol. v. N.S. part 1. p. 45.

{38a} _L'Anthropologie_, xiv. pp. 416-426.

{38b} Munro, p. 196.

{38c} Munro, 147, 148.

{39} Munro, p. 218.

{40a} Munro, pp. 219-220.

{40b} Munro, p. 219.

{40c} _Transactions_, _ut supra_, p. 51.

{41} _Proc. Soc. Ant._ 1900-1901, pp. 112-148.

{43} Pp. 135, 177, 257-258, and elsewhere.

{44} Munro, pp. 177, 257, 258.

{45} Munro, p. 139.

{46a} Munro, p. 264.

{46b} These phrases are from Munro, _Arch. and False Antiquities_, pp. 138-139.

{47a} Munro, p. 139.

{47b} Munro, _Prehistoric Scotland_, p. 420.

{48} Munro, p. 130.

{49a} See page 246 of Dr. Munro's article on Raised Beaches, _Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, vol. xxv. part 3. The reference is to two Clyde canoes built of planks fastened to ribs, suggesting that the builder had seen a foreign galley, and imitated it.

{49b} Munro, pp. 138, 139.

{51a} _Proceedings Scot. Soc. Ant._ vol. xxxiv. p. 462.

{51b} Munro, p. 147.

{52a} _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._ 1900-1901, p. 296.

{52b} Munro, p. 138.

{52c} These structures, of course, were of dry stone, without lime and mortar. By what name we call them, "towers," or "cairns," is indifferent to me.

{54} Beda, book 1, chap. i.

{61} _Proceedings Soc. Scot. Ant._ 1899-1900, vol. xxxiv. pp. 456-458.

{63} See Prof. Zimmer's _Das Mutterrecht der Pickten_, Rhys's _Celtic Britain_, _Rhind Lectures_, and in _Royal Commission's Report on Wales_, with my _History of Scotland_, vol. i. pp. 12, 14.

{64a} _Bureau of Ethnology's Report_, 1896-97, p. 324. See also the essay on "Indian Pictographs," _Report of Bureau_, for 1888-89.

{64b} MSS. of Mr. Mullen, of Bourke, N.S.W., and of Mr. Charles Lang.

{64c} Scott, London, 1895.

{64d} _Op. cit._ p. 178.

{64e} _Op. cit._ p. 172.

{65} Munro, p. 246.

{66} Longmans.

{67} Munro, p. 177.

{69} Cartailhac, _Ages Prehistoriques_, p. 97.

{73a} _L'Anthropologie_, vol. xiv. p. 338.

{73b} _Proc. S.A.S._, 1878-1879.

{73c} _Op. cit._ pp. 208, 210.

{74} Bruce, _ut supra_, p. 446.

{75} _Bureau of Ethnology_, _Report of_ 1888-1889, p. 193.

{77} Munro, plate xv. p. 228, p. 249, cf. fig. 63, p. 249.

{78} Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, figs. 20, 21, 22, 133; _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, figs. 89, 92, 80, 81.

{80a} I have no concern with an object, never seen by Dr. Munro, or by me, to my knowledge, but described as a "churinga"; in _Journal of British Archaeological Association_, Sept. 1904, fig. 4, Munro, p. 246.

{80b} Munro, p. 246.

{81} See Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, fig. 21, 6; _Northern Tribes_, fig. 87.

{82a} Munro, p. 55, referring to _Ancient Lake Dwellings_, fig. 13, nos. 17, 18, 19.

{82b} _Proceedings Scot. Soc. Ant._ 1902, p. 168, fig. 4, 1903.

{82c} Lockhart, iv. 208.

{84a} Munro, p. 247.

{84b} Munro, fig. 62, p. 248.

{85a} _Debut de l'Art_, pp. 124-138.

{85b} Munro, p. 260.

{85c} Munro, p. 230.

{85d} Munro, pp. 204, 205.

{86} Munro, p. 260.

{88} _Op. cit._ p. 172.

{89} Nicholson, _Folk Lore of East Yorkshire_, p. 87, Hull, 1890.

{91} Haddon, _The Study of Man_, pp. 276, 327.

{95a} _Man_, 1904, no. 22.

{95b} For the Caithness brochs, see Dr. Joseph Anderson, _Proc. Soc. Scot. Ant._, 1900-1901, pp. 112-148.

{95c} _Native Tribes of North Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 274, 1894.

{96} _Northern Tribes_, p. 268, fig. 87, 1904.

{97a} _Glasgow Herald_, letter of October 17th, 1903.

{97b} Munro, pp. 251-253.

{100a} Vol. vii. p. 50, cf. _Proceedings Scots Society of Antiquaries_, vol. vi. p. 112, and, in Appendix to the same volume, p. 42, plate xix.

{100b} Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times_, p. 88.

{101} Munro, p. 249, fig. 63.

{102a} _Les Ages Prehistoriques_, p. 100; cf. J. L. de Vasconcellos' _Religioes da Lusitania_, vol. i. p. 69. Lisboa, 1897.