: Archæological Essays Vol. 1 by Simpson James Young Stuart John Editor - Archaeology

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e Hall, near Edinburgh, and probably also at Coilsfield and Auchinlary; or on a so-called Druidical stone, as on "Long Meg" at Penrith?

Is it true that a long past era--and, if so, at what era--our predecessors in this old Caledonia had nothing but tools and implements of stone, bone, and wood? Are there no gravel-beds in Scotland in which we could probably find large deposits of the celts and other stone weapons--with bored and worked deer-horns, of that distant stone-age--such as have been discovered on the banks of the Somme and the Loire in France? And were the people of that period in Scotland Celtic or pre-Celtic?

We know that in Iona, ten or twelve centuries ago, Greek was written, though we do not know if the Iona library possessed--what Queen Mary had among the sixteen Greek volumes in her library--a copy of Herodotus; but we are particularly anxious to ascertain if the story told by Herodotus of Rhampsinitus, and the robbery of his royal treasury by that "Shifty Lad" "the Master Thief," was in vogue as a popular tale among the Scottish Gaels or Britons in the oldest times? The tale is prevalent in different guises from India to Scotland and Scandinavia among the Aryans, or alleged descendants of Japhet; Herodotus heard it about twenty-three centuries ago in Egypt, and consequently , among the alleged descendants of Shem; and could any Scottish Turanians, as alleged descendants of Ham, in the deputation, tell us whether the tale was also a favourite with them and their forefathers? For if so, then, in consonance with the usual reasoning on this and other popular tales, the story must have been known in the Ark itself, as the sons of Noah separated soon after leaving it, and yet all their descendants were acquainted with this legend. But have these and other such simple tales not originated in many different places, and among many different people, at different times; and have they not an appearance of similarity, merely because, in the course of their development, the earliest products of the human fancy, as well as of the human hand, are always more or less similar under similar circumstances?

If these, and some thousand-and-one similar questions regarding the habits, arts, government, language, etc., of our Primaeval and Mediaeval Forefathers could be at once summarily and satisfactorily answered by any power of "gramarye," then the present and the future Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland would be saved an incalculable amount of difficult investigation and hard work. But unfortunately I, for one at least, have no belief that any human power can either unsphere the spirits of the dead for a night's drawing-room amusement, or seduce the "wraiths" of our ancestors to "revisit the glimpses of the moon" even for such a loyal and patriotic object as the furtherance of Scottish Archaeology. Nevertheless I doubt not, at the same time, that many of these supposed questions on the dark points of Scottish antiquities will yet betimes be answered more or less satisfactorily. But the answers, if ever obtained, will be obtained by no kind of magic except the magic of accumulated observations, and strict stern facts;--by no necromancy except the necromancy of the cautious combination, comparison, and generalisation of these facts;--by no enchantment, in short, except that special form of enchantment for the advancement of every science which the mighty and potent wizard--Francis Bacon--taught to his fellow-men, when he taught them the spell-like powers of the inductive philosophy.

The data and facts which Scottish antiquaries require to seek out and accumulate for the future furtherance of Scottish Archaeology, lie in many a different direction, waiting and hiding for our search after them. On some few subjects the search has already been keen, and the success correspondingly great. Let me specify one or two instances in illustration of this remark.

As a memorable example, and as a perfect Baconian model for analogous investigations on other corresponding topics--in the way of the full and careful accumulation of all ascertainable premises and data before venturing to dogmatise upon them--let me point to the admirable work of Mr. Stuart on the Sculptured Stones of Scotland--an almost national work, which, according to Mr. Westwood , is "one of the most remarkable contributions to Archaeology which has ever been published in this or any other country."

"Crannoges"--those curious lake-habitations, built on piles of wood, or stockaded islands,--that Herodotus describes in lake Prasias, five or six centuries before the Christian era, constituting dwellings there which were then impregnable to all the military resources of a Persian army,--that Hippocrates tells us were also the types of habitation employed in his day by the Phasians, who sailed to them in single-tree canoes,--that in the same form of houses erected upon tall wooden piles, are still used at the present day as a favourite description of dwelling in the creeks and rivers running into the Straits of Malacca, and on the coasts of Borneo and New Guinea, etc., and the ruins of which have been found in numerous lakes in Ireland, England, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, etc.;--Crannoges, I say, have been searched for and found also in various lochs in our own country; and the many curious data ascertained with regard to them in Scotland will be given in the next volume of our Society's proceedings by Mr. Joseph Robertson, a gentleman whom we all delight to acknowledge as pre-eminently entitled to wield amongst us the pen of the teacher and master in this as in other departments of Scottish antiquities.

Most extensive architectural data, sketches, and measurements, regarding many of the remains of our oldest ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland , have been collected by the indomitable perseverance and industry of Mr. Muir; and when the work which that most able ecclesiologist has now in the press is published, a great step will doubtless be made in this neglected department of Scottish antiquities.

In addition, however, to the assiduous collection of all ascertainable facts regarding the existing remains of our sculptured stones, our crannoges, and our early ecclesiastical buildings, there are many other departments of Scottish antiquities urgently demanding, at the hands of the numerous zealous antiquaries scattered over the country, full descriptions and accurate drawings of such vestiges of them as are still left--as, for example:--

Good and trustworthy accounts of individual specimens, or groups of specimens, of most of these classes of antiquities, have been already published in our Transactions and Proceedings, and elsewhere. But Scottish Archaeology requires of its votaries as large and exhaustive a collection as possible, with accurate descriptions, and, when possible, with photographs or drawings--or mayhap with models --of all the discoverable forms of each class; as of all the varieties of ancient hill-strongholds; all the varieties of our underground weems, etc. The necessary collection of all ascertainable types, and instances of some of these classes of antiquities, will be, no doubt, a task of much labour and time, and will in most instances require the combined efforts of many and zealous workers. This Society will be ever thankful to any members who will contribute even one or two stones to the required heap. But all past experience has shown that it is useless, and generally even hurtful, to attempt to frame hypotheses upon one, or even upon a few specimens only. In Archaeology, as in other sciences, we must have full and accurate premises before we can hope to make full and accurate deductions. It is needless and hopeless for us to expect clear, correct, and philosophic views of the character and of the date and age of such archaeological objects as I have enumerated, except by following the triple process of assiduously collecting together as many instances as possible of each class of our antiquities; carefully comparing these instances with each other, so as to ascertain all their resemblances and differences; and contrasting them with similar remains in other cognate countries, where--in some instances, perhaps--there may exist, what possibly is wanting with us, the light of written history to guide us in elucidating the special subjects that may happen to be engaging our investigations--ever remembering that our Scottish Archaeology is but a small, a very small, segment of the general circle of the Archaeology of Europe and of the World.

The same remarks, which I have just ventured to make, as to the proper mode of investigating the classes of our larger archaeological subjects, hold equally true also of those other classes of antiquities of a lighter and more portable type, which we have collected in our museums; such, for instance, as the ancient domestic tools, instruments, personal ornaments, weapons, etc., of stone, flint, bone, bronze, iron, silver, and gold, which our ancestors used; the clay and bronze vessels which they employed in cooking and carrying their food; the handmills with which they ground their corn; the whorls and distaffs with which they span, and the stuff and garments spun by them, etc. etc. It is only by collecting, combining, and comparing all the individual instances of each antiquarian object of this kind--all ascertainable specimens, for example, of our Scottish stone celts and knives; all ascertainable specimens of our clay vessels; of our leaf-shaped swords; of our metallic armlets; of our grain rubbers and stone-querns, etc. etc.--and by tracing the history of similar objects in other allied countries, that we will read aright the tales which these relics--when once properly interrogated--are capable of telling us of the doings, the habits, and the thoughts of our distant predecessors.

It is on this same broad and great ground--of the indispensable necessity of a large and perfect collection of individual specimens of all kinds of antiquities for safe, sure, and successful deduction--that we plead for the accumulation of such objects in our own or in other public antiquarian collections. And in thus pleading with the Scottish public for the augmentation and enrichment of our Museum, by donations of all kinds, however slight and trivial they may seem to the donors, we plead for what is not any longer the property of this Society, but what is now the property of the nation. The Museum has been gifted over by the Society of Antiquaries to the Government--it now belongs, not to us, but to Scotland--and we unhesitatingly call upon every true-hearted Scotsman to contribute, whenever it is in his power, to the extension of this Museum, as the best record and collection of the ancient archaeological and historical memorials of our native land. We call for such a central general ingathering and repository of Scottish antiquities for another reason. Single specimens and examples of archaeological relics are, in the hands of a private individual, generally nought but mere matters of idle curiosity and wild conjecture; while all of them become of use, and sometimes of great moment, when placed in a public collection beside their fellows. Like stray single words or letters that have dropt from out the Book of Time, they themselves, individually, reveal nothing, but when placed alongside of other words and letters from the same book, they gradually form--under the fingers of the archaeologist--into lines, and sentences, and paragraphs, which reveal secret and stirring legends of the workings of the human mind, and human hand, in ages of which, perchance, we have no other existing memorials.

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