The Clyde Mystery

No human being wears any churinga “as an ornament!” Nobody says that they do.

Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, moreover, speak of “a long stone churinga,” and of “especially large ones” made by the mythical first ancestors of the race. Churinga, over a foot in length, they tell us, are not usually perforated; many churinga are not perforated, many are: but the Arunta do notknow why some are perforated. There is a legend that, of old, men hung up the perforated churinga on the sacred Nurtunja pole: and so they still have perforated stone churinga, not usually more than a foot in length. [112 - Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 141-145.]

If Dr. Munro has studied Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, he cannot but know that churinga are not ornaments, are not all oval, but of many shapes and sizes, and that churinga larger than the 9 inch perforated stone from Dumbuck are perforated, and attached to strings. I cannot tell the reason why, any better than the Arunta can; and, of course, I cannot know why the 9 inch stone from Dumbuck (if genuine) was perforated. But what I must admire is the amazing luck or learning of Dr. Munro’s supposed impostor. Not being “a semi-detached idiot” he must have known that no mortal would sling about his person, as an ornament, a chunk of stone 9 inches long, 3½ broad, and ½ an inch thick. Dr. Munro himself insists on the absurdity of supposing that “any human being” would do such a thing. Yet the forger drilled a neat hole, as if for a string for suspension, at the apex of the chunk. If he knew, before any other human being in England, that the Arunta do this very thing to some stone churinga, though seldom to churinga over a foot in length, – and if he imitated the Arunta custom, the impostor was a very learned impostor. If he did not know, he was a very lucky rogue, for the Arunta coincide in doing the same thing to great stone churinga: without being aware of any motive for the performance as they never suspend churinga to anything, though they say that their mythical ancestors did.

The impostor was also well aware of the many perforated stones that exist in Scotland, not referred to by Dr. Munro. He perforated some which could not be worn as ornaments, just as the Arunta do. We shall find that the forger, either by dint of wide erudition, or by a startling set of chance coincidences, keeps on producing objects which are analogous to genuine relics found in many sites of early life.

This is what makes the forger so interesting.

My theory of the forger is at the opposite pole from the theory of Dr. Munro. He says that, “in applying these local designs” (the worldwide archaic patterns,) to unworked splinters of sandstone and pieces of water-worn shale and slate, “the manufacturers had evidently not sufficient archaeological knowledge to realise the significance of the fact that they were doing what prehistoric man, in this country, is never known to have done before.” [113 - Munro, pp. 260, 261.]

But, (dismissing the Kintyre and Tappock stones,) the “manufacturers” did know, apparently, that perforated and inscribed, or uninscribed tablets and plaques of shale and schist and slate and gas coal were found in America, France, Russia, and Portugal, and imitated these things or coincided in the process by sheer luck. The “manufacturers” were, perhaps, better informed than many of their critics. But, if the things are genuine, more may be found by research in the locality.

XXIX – WEAPONS

Dr. Munro is less than kind to the forger in the matter of the “weapons” found at Dunbuie and Dumbuck. They are “absolutely worthless as real weapons,” he says, with perfect truth, for they are made of slate or shale, not of hard stony slate, which many races used to employ for lack of better material. [114 - Munro, p. 158, pp. 223-227.]

The forger was obviously not thinking of dumping down serviceable sham weapons. He could easily have bought as many genuine flint celts and arrow-heads and knives as he needed, had his aim been to prove his sites to be neolithic. So I argued long ago, in a newspaper letter. Dr. Munro replies among other things, that “nothing could be easier than to detect modern imitations of Neolithic relics.” [115 - Munro, p. 261.] I said not a word about “modern imitations.” I said that a forger, anxious to fake a Neolithic site, “would, of course, drop in a few Neolithic arrow-heads, ‘celts’ and so forth,” meaning genuine objects, very easily to be procured for money.

As the forger did not adopt a device so easy, so obvious, and so difficult of detection, (if he purchased Scottish flint implements) his aim was not to fake a Neolithic site. He put in, not well-known genuine Neolithic things, but things of a character with which some of his critics were not familiar, yet which have analogues elsewhere.

Why did he do that?

As to the blunt decorated slate weapons, the forger did not mean, I think, to pass off these as practicable arms of the Neolithic period. These he could easily have bought from the dealers. What he intended to dump down were not practical weapons, but, in one case at least, armes d’apparat, as French archaeologists call them, weapons of show or ceremony.

The strange “vandyked” crozier-like stone objects of schist or shale from Portugal were possibly armes d’apparat, or heads of staves of dignity. There is a sample in the American room at the British Museum, uninscribed. I submit that the three very curious and artistic stone axe-heads, figured by M. Cartailhac, [116 - Op. cit., p. 111-114.] representing, one an uncouth animal; another, a hooded human head, the third an extremely pretty girl, could never have been used for practical purposes, but were armes d’apparat. Perhaps such stone armes d’apparat, or magical or sacred arms, were not unknown, as survivals, in Scotland in the Iron Age. A “celt” or stone axe-head of this kind, ornamented with a pattern of inter-crossing lines, is figured and described by the Rev. Mr. Mackenzie (Kenmore) in the Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries (1900-1901, p. 310 et seq.). This axe-head, found near a cairn at Balnahannait, is of five inches long by two and a quarter broad. It is of “soft micaceous stone.” The owners must have been acquainted with the use of the metals, Mr. Mackenzie thinks, for the stone exhibits “interlaced work of a late variety of this ornamentation.” Mr. Mackenzie suggests that the ornament was perhaps added “after the axe had obtained some kind of venerated or symbolical character.” This implies that a metal-working people, finding a stone axe, were puzzled by it, venerated it, and decorated it in their late style of ornament.

In that case, who, in earlier times, made an useless axe-head of soft micaceous stone, and why? It could be of no practical service. On the other hand, people who had the metals might fashion a soft stone into an arme d’apparat. “It cannot have been intended for ordinary use,” “the axe may have been a sacred or ceremonial one,” says Mr. Mackenzie, and he makes the same conjecture as to another Scottish stone axe-head. [117 - Proceedings, vol. xxiii. p. 272.]

Here, then, if Mr. Mackenzie be right, we have a soft stone axe-head, decorated with “later ornament,” the property of a people who knew the metals, and regarded the object as “a sacred or ceremonial one,” enfin, as an arme d’apparat.

Dr. Munro doubtless knows all that is known about armes d’apparat, but he unkindly forgets to credit the forger with the same amount of easily accessible information, when the forger dumps down a decorated slate spear-head, eleven inches long.

Believe me, this forger was no fool: he knew what he was about, and he must have laughed when critics said that his slate spear-heads would be useless. He expected the learned to guess what he was forging; not practicable weapons, but armes d’apparat; survivals of a ceremonial kind, like Mr. Mackenzie’s decorated axe-head of soft stone.

That, I think, was our forger’s little game; for even if he thought no more than Dr. Munro seems to do of the theory of “survivals,” he knew that the theory is fashionable. “Nothing like these spear-heads.. has hitherto been found in Scotland, so that they cannot be survivals from a previous state of things in our country,” says Dr. Munro. [118 - Munro, p. 255.] The argument implies that there is nothing in the soil of our country of a nature still undiscovered. This is a large assumption, especially if Mr. Mackenzie be right about the sacred ceremonial decorated axe-head of soft stone. The forger, however, knew that elsewhere, if not in Scotland, there exist useless armes d’apparat, and he obviously meant to fake a few samples. He was misunderstood. I knew what he was doing, for it seems that “Mr. Lang.. suggested that the spear-heads were not meant to be used as weapons, but as ‘sacred things.’” [119 - Ibid.] I knew little; but I did know the sacred boomerang-shaped decorated Arunta churinga, and later looked up other armes d’apparat. [120 - Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 150.]

Apparently I must have “coached” the forger, and told him what kinds of things to fake. But I protest solemnly that I am innocent! He got up the subject for himself, and knew more than many of his critics. I had no more to do with the forger than M. Salomon Reinach had to do with faking the golden “tiara of Saitaphernes,” bought by the Louvre for £8000. M. Reinack denies the suave suggestion that he was at the bottom of this imposture. [121 - L’Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 362.] I also am innocent of instructing the Clyde forger. He read books, English, French, German, American, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

From the Bulletino di Palaetnologia Italiana, vol. xi. p. 33, 1885, plate iv., and from Professor Pigorini’s article there, he prigged the idea of a huge stone weapon, of no use, found in a grotto near Verona. [122 - Cf. Munro, p. 57.] This object is of flint, shaped like a flint arrow-head; is ten inches and a half in length, and “weighs over 3½ pounds.” “Pigorini conjectured that it had some religious signification.”

Inspired by this arrow-head of Gargantua, the Clyde forger came in with a still longer decorated slate spear-head, weighing I know not how much. It is here photographed (figs. 17, 18). Compare the decoration of three parallel horizontal lines with that on the broken Portuguese perforated stone (figs. 9, 10). Or did the Veronese forger come to Clyde, and carry on the business at Dumbuck? The man has read widely. Sometimes, however, he may have resorted to sources which, though excellent, are accessible and cheap, like Mr. Haddon’s Evolution in Art. Here (pp. 79, 80) the faker could learn all that he needed to know about armes d’apparat in the form of stone axe-heads, “unwieldy and probably quite useless objects” found by Mr. Haddon in the chain of isles south-east of New Guinea. Mr. Romilly and Dr. Wyatt Gill attest the existence of similar axes of ceremony. “They are not intended for cleaving timber.” We see “the metamorphosis of a practical object into an unpractical one.” [123 - Op. cit., p. 84.]

The forger thus had sources for his great decorated slate spear-head; the smaller specimens may be sketches for that colossal work.

XXX – THE FIGURINES

Dr. Munro writes of “the carved figurines, ‘idols,’ or ‘totems,’ six in number,” four from Dumbuck, one from Langbank. [124 - Munro, p. 230.] Now, first, nobody knows the purpose of the rude figurines found in many sites from Japan to Troy, from Russia to the Lake Dwellings of Europe, and in West Africa, where the negroes use these figurines, when found, as “fetish,” knowing nothing of their origin (Man, No. 7, July, 1905). Like a figurine of a woman, found in the Dumbuck kitchen midden, they are discovered in old Japanese kitchen middens. [125 - L’Anthropologie, vol. xiv. p. 548. Dr. Laloy’s review of Mr. Y. Koganei, Ueber die Urbewohner von Japan. Tokyo, 1903.]

The astute forger, knowing that figurines were found in Japanese kitchen middens, knowing it before Y. Koganei published the fact in 1903, thought the Dumbuck kitchen midden an appropriate place for a figurine. Dr. Munro, possibly less well-informed, regards the bottom of a kitchen midden at Dumbuck as “a strange resting place for a goddess.” [126 - Munro, p. 141.] Now, as to “goddess” nobody knows anything. Dr. Schliemann thought that the many figurines of clay, in Troy, were meant for Hera and Athene. Nobody knows, but every one not wholly ignorant sees the absurdity of speaking of figurines as “totems”; of course the term is not Dr. Munro’s.

We know not their original meaning, but they occur “all over the place”; in amber on the Baltic coast, with grotesque faces carved in amber. In Russia and Finland, and in sites of prehistoric Egypt, on slate, and in other materials such grotesques are common. [127 - See Cappart, Primitive Art in Egypt, p. 154, translated by A. S. Griffiths. Grevel, London, 1905.] Egypt is a great centre of the Early Slate School of Art, the things ranging from slate plaques covered with disorderly scratchings “without a conscience or an aim,” to highly decorated palettes. There is even a perforated object like the slate crooks of M. Cartailhac, from Portugal, but rather more like the silhouette of a bird, [128 - Cappart, p. 90, fig. 60, p. 92, fig. 62.] and there are decorative mace-heads in soft stone. [129 - Ibid. p. 95, fig. 66.] Some of the prehistoric figurines of human beings from Egypt are studded with “cups,” cupules, écuelles, or whatever we may be permitted to name them. In short, early and rude races turn out much the same set of crude works of art almost everywhere, and the extraordinary thing is, not that a few are found in a corner of Britain, but that scarce any have been found.

As to the Russo-Finnish flint figurines, Mr. Abercromby thinks that these objects may “have served as household gods or personal amulets,” and Dr. Munro regards Mr. Abercromby’s as “the most rational explanation of their meaning and purpose.” He speaks of figurines of clay (the most usual material) in Carniola, Bosnia, and Transylvania. “Idols and amulets were indeed universally used in prehistoric times.” [130 - Munro, p. 80.] “Objects which come under the same category” occur “in various parts of America.” Mr. Bruce [131 - Op. cit., p. 449.] refers to M. Reinach’s vast collection of designs of such figurines in L’Anthropologie, vol. v., 1894. Thus rude figurines in sites of many stages are very familiar objects. The forger knew it, and dumped down a few at Dumbuck. His female figurine (photographed in fig. 19), seems to me a very “plausible” figurine in itself. It does not appear to me “unlike anything in any collection in the British Isles, or elsewhere” – I mean elsewhere. Dr. Munro admits that it discloses “the hand of one not altogether ignorant of art.” [132 - Munro, p. 231.] I add that it discloses the hand of one not at all ignorant of genuine prehistoric figurines representing women.

But I know nothing analogous from British sites. Either such things do not exist (of which we cannot be certain), or they have escaped discovery and record. Elsewhere they are, confessedly, well known to science, and therefore to the learned forger who, nobody can guess why, dumped them down with the other fraudulent results of his researches.

If the figurines be genuine, I suppose that the Clyde folk made them for the same reasons as the other peoples who did so, whatever those reasons may have been: or, like the West Africans, found them, relics of a forgotten age, and treasured them. If their reasons were religious or superstitious, how am I to know what were the theological tenets of the Clyde residents? They may have been more or less got at by Christianity, in Saint Ninian’s time, but the influence might well be slight. On the other hand, neither men nor angels can explain why the forger faked his figurines, for which he certainly had a model – at least as regards the female figure – in a widely distributed archaic feminine type of “dolly.” The forger knew a good deal!

Dr. Munro writes: “That the disputed objects are amusing playthings – the sportive productions of idle wags who inhabited the various sites – seems to be the most recent opinion which finds acceptance among local antiquaries. But this view involves the contemporaneity of occupancy of the respective sites, of which there is no evidence..” [133 - Munro, p. 262.]

There is no evidence for “contemporaneity of occupancy” if Dunbuie be of 300-900 a. d., and Dumbuck and Langbank of 1556-1758. [134 - Dr. Murray in Munro, pp. 257-258.] But we, and apparently Dr. Munro (p. 264) have rejected the “Corporation cairn” theory, the theory of the cairn erected in 1556, or 1612, and lasting till 1758. The genuine undisputed relics, according to Dr. Munro, are such as “are commonly found on crannogs, brochs, and other early inhabited sites of Scotland.” [135 - Munro, p. 148.] The sites are all, and the genuine relics in the sites are all “of some time between the fifth and twelfth centuries.” [136 - Munro, p. 264.] The sites are all close to each other, the remains are all of the same period, (unless the late Celtic comb chance to be earlier,) yet Dr. Munro says that “for contemporaneity of occupancy there is no evidence.” [137 - Munro, p. 262.] He none the less repeats the assertion that they are of “precisely the same chronological horizon.” “The chronological horizon” (of Langbank and Dumbuck) “seems to me to be precisely the same, viz. a date well on in the early Iron Age, posterior to the Roman occupation of that part of Britain” (p. 147).

Thus Dr. Munro assigns to both sites “precisely the same chronological horizon,” and also says that “there is no evidence” for the “contemporaneity of occupancy.” This is not, as it may appear, an example of lack of logical consistency. “The range of the occupancy” (of the sites) “is uncertain, probably it was different in each case,” writes Dr. Munro. [138 - Munro, p. 220.] No reason is given for this opinion, and as all the undisputed remains are confessedly of one stage of culture, the “wags” at all three sites were probably in the same stage of rudimentary humour and skill. If they made the things, the things are not modern forgeries. But the absence of the disputed objects from other sites of the same period remains as great a difficulty as ever. Early “wags” may have made them – but why are they only known in the three Clyde sites? Also, why are the painted pebbles only known in a few brochs of Caithness?

Have the graffiti on slate at St. Blane’s, in Bute, been found – I mean have graffiti on slate like those of St. Blane’s, been found elsewhere in Scotland? [139 - Munro, pp. 231-235.] The kinds of art, writing, and Celtic ornament, at St. Blane’s, are all familiar, but not their presence on scraps of slate. Some of the “art” of the Dumbuck things is also familiar, but not, in Scotland, on pieces of slate and shale. Whether they were done by early wags, or by a modern and rather erudite forger, I know not, of course; I only think that the question is open; is not settled by Dr. Munro.

XXXI – GROTESQUE HEADS. DISPUTED PORTUGUESE PARALLELS

Figurines are common enough things in ancient sites; by no means so common are the grotesque heads found at Dumbuck and Langbank. They have recently been found in Portugal. Did the forger know that? Did he forge them on Portuguese models? Or was it chance coincidence? Or was it undesigned parallelism? There is such a case according to Mortillet. M. de Mortillet flew upon poor Prof. Pigorini’s odd things, denouncing them as forgeries; he had attacked Dr. Schliemann’s finds in his violent way, and never apologised, to my knowledge.

Then a lively squabble began. Italian “archaeologists of the highest standing” backed Prof. Pigorini: Mortillet had not seen the Italian things, but he stood to his guns. Things found near Cracow were taken as corroborating the Breonio finds, also things from Volósova, in Russia. Mortillet replied by asking “why under similar conditions could not forgers” (very remote in space,) “equally fabricate objects of the same form.” [140 - Munro, pp. 56-73.] Is it likely?

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 Volósova and Breonio.

In Portugalia, a Portuguese archaeological magazine, edited by Don Ricardo Severe, appeared an article by the Rev. Father José 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 Religiões 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. [141 - Portugalia, i. p. 646.] 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.

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 Musée de St. Germain, M. Saloman Reinach, thus writes about them: ‘Jusqu’à nouvel ordre, c’est-à-dire jusqu’à preuve formelle du contraire je considère ces pierres sculptées et gravées comme le produit d’une mystification. J’aimerais connaitre, à ce sujet, l’opinion des autres savants du Portugal’ (Revue Archéologique, 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. [142 - See Sr. Severo in Portugalia, vol. ii. part i., 1905.] 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 Religiões 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.