The Clyde Mystery

I return to a strange perforated pebble, an intaglio from Dumbuck.

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 débris 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 3½ 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).”

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 2¼ 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).

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. 144 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. 145

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.

1

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.

2

Munro, p. xii.

3

Munro, pp. 56-80. Cf. L’Homme Prehistorique, No. 7, pp. 214-218. (1905.)

4

Methuen, London, 1904, pp. 292.

5

Munro, p. 178.

6

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.

7

Munro, pp. 41, 42.

8

Munro, pp. 275-279.

9

L’Anthropologie, 1902, pp. 348-354.

10

Munro, pp. 175-176.

11

Munro, p. 152.

12

Munro, pp. 28, 29.

13

Munro, p. 130.

14

Munro, p. 155. Letter of January 7, 1899.

15

Munro, p. 260.

16

Munro, p. 270.

17

Munro, p. 270.

18

Bruce, Proceedings of the Scots Society of Antiquaries, vol. xxxiv. pp. 439, 448, 449.

19

Archaeologia Scotica, vol. v. p. 146.

20

See pages 133, 166.

21

March 1899, “Cup and Ring”; cf. the same article in my Magic and Religion, 1901, pp. 241-256.

22

Munro, 133, 134, 150-151.

23

Munro, pp. 139, 140.

24

See Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xxx. 268, and fig. 4.

25

Journal of the British Archaeological Society, December 1898.

26

Prehistoric Scotland, p. 431.

27

See Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xxx. fig. 4.

28

Vol. xxx. 270.

29

Vol. xxxiv. p. 438.

30

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.”

31

Proceedings Soc. Ant. Scot. 1899-1900, p. 439.

32

Proc. Scot. Soc. Ant. 1900-1901, p. 283.

33

Proceedings S.A.S. vol. xxxiv. pp. 460-461.

34

Munro, p. 256.

35

Munro, p. 146. Mr. Bruce in Trans. Glasgow Archaeol. Society, vol. v. N.S. part 1. p. 45.

36

L’Anthropologie, xiv. pp. 416-426.

37

Munro, p. 196.

38

Munro, 147, 148.

39

Munro, p. 218.

40

Munro, pp. 219-220.

41

Munro, p. 219.

42

Transactions, ut supra, p. 51.

43

Proc. Soc. Ant. 1900-1901, pp. 112-148.

44

Pp. 135, 177, 257-258, and elsewhere.

45

Munro, pp. 177, 257, 258.

46

Munro, p. 139.

47

Munro, p. 264.

48

These phrases are from Munro, Arch. and False Antiquities, pp. 138-139.

49

Munro, p. 139.

50

Munro, Prehistoric Scotland, p. 420.

51

Munro, p. 130.

52

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.

53

Munro, pp. 138, 139.

54

Proceedings Scot. Soc. Ant. vol. xxxiv. p. 462.

55

Munro, p. 147.

56

Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. 1900-1901, p. 296.

57

Munro, p. 138.

58

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.

59

Beda, book 1, chap. i.

60

Proceedings Soc. Scot. Ant. 1899-1900, vol. xxxiv. pp. 456-458.

61

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.

62

Bureau of Ethnology’s Report, 1896-97, p. 324. See also the essay on “Indian Pictographs,” Report of Bureau, for 1888-89.

63

MSS. of Mr. Mullen, of Bourke, N.S.W., and of Mr. Charles Lang.

64

Scott, London, 1895.

65

Op. cit. p. 178.

66

Op. cit. p. 172.

67

Munro, p. 246.

68

Longmans.

69

Munro, p. 177.

70

Cartailhac, Ages Préhistoriques, p. 97.

71

L’Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 338.

72

Proc. S.A.S., 1878-1879.

73

Op. cit. pp. 208, 210.

74

Bruce, ut supra, p. 446.

75

Bureau of Ethnology, Report of 1888-1889, p. 193.

76

Munro, plate xv. p. 228, p. 249, cf. fig. 63, p. 249.

77

Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, figs. 20, 21, 22, 133; Northern Tribes of Central Australia, figs. 89, 92, 80, 81.

78

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.

79

Munro, p. 246.

80

See Spencer and Gillen, Central Tribes, fig. 21, 6; Northern Tribes, fig. 87.

81

Munro, p. 55, referring to Ancient Lake Dwellings, fig. 13, nos. 17, 18, 19.

82

Proceedings Scot. Soc. Ant. 1902, p. 168, fig. 4, 1903.

83

Lockhart, iv. 208.

84

Munro, p. 247.

85

Munro, fig. 62, p. 248.

86

Début de l’Art, pp. 124-138.

87

Munro, p. 260.

88

Munro, p. 230.

89

Munro, pp. 204, 205.

90

Munro, p. 260.

91

Op. cit. p. 172.

92

Nicholson, Folk Lore of East Yorkshire, p. 87, Hull, 1890.

93

Haddon, The Study of Man, pp. 276, 327.

94

Man, 1904, no. 22.

95

For the Caithness brochs, see Dr. Joseph Anderson, Proc. Soc. Scot. Ant., 1900-1901, pp. 112-148.

96

Native Tribes of North Central Australia, Spencer and Gillen, p. 274, 1894.

97

Northern Tribes, p. 268, fig. 87, 1904.

98

Glasgow Herald, letter of October 17th, 1903.

99

Munro, pp. 251-253.

100

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.

101

Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times, p. 88.

102

Munro, p. 249, fig. 63.

103

Les Ages Préhistoriques, p. 100; cf. J. L. de Vasconcellos’ Religiões da Lusitania, vol. i. p. 69. Lisboa, 1897.

104

Antiguedades Monumentaes do Algarve, i. 298. Estacio da Veiga, Lisboa, 1886.

105

Religiões, i. 69-70.

106

Antiguedades, vol. ii. 429-481.

107

Religiões, i. 168.

108

L’Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 542.

109

By Gongora de Martinez. Madrid, 1868.

110

Munro, pp. 232, 234.

111

Munro, p. 228.

112

Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 141-145.

113

Munro, pp. 260, 261.

114

Munro, p. 158, pp. 223-227.

115

Munro, p. 261.

116

Op. cit., p. 111-114.

117

Proceedings, vol. xxiii. p. 272.

118

Munro, p. 255.

119

Ibid.

120

Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 150.

121

L’Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 362.

122

Cf. Munro, p. 57.

123

Op. cit., p. 84.

124

Munro, p. 230.

125

L’Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 548. Dr. Laloy’s review of Mr. Y. Koganei, Ueber die Urbewohner von Japan. Tokyo, 1903.

126

Munro, p. 141.

127

See Cappart, Primitive Art in Egypt, p. 154, translated by A. S. Griffiths. Grevel, London, 1905.

128

Cappart, p. 90, fig. 60, p. 92, fig. 62.

129

Ibid. p. 95, fig. 66.

130

Munro, p. 80.

131

Op. cit., p. 449.

132

Munro, p. 231.

133

Munro, p. 262.

134

Dr. Murray in Munro, pp. 257-258.

135

Munro, p. 148.

136

Munro, p. 264.

137

Munro, p. 262.

138

Munro, p. 220.

139

Munro, pp. 231-235.

140

Munro, pp. 56-73.

141

Portugalia, i. p. 646.

142

See Sr. Severo in Portugalia, vol. ii. part i., 1905.

143

All the specimens of this group were disinterred from the ruins of this fort.

144

See an interesting and well-illustrated paper in Report of Bureau on Ethnology, U.S., vol. ii.

145

Munro, Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., 1900-1901, pp. 291-292.