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The Clyde Mystery, a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, a non-fiction book by Andrew Lang |
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XIV - THE POSSIBLE MEANINGS OF THE MARKS AND OBJECTS |
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_ XIV - THE POSSIBLE MEANINGS OF THE MARKS AND OBJECTS My private opinion as to the meaning of the archaic marks and the Clyde objects which bear them, has, in part by my own fault, been misunderstood by Dr. Munro. He bases an argument on the idea that I suppose the disputed "pendants" to have had, in Clydesdale, precisely the same legendary, customary, and magical significance as the stone churinga of the Arunta tribe in Australia. That is not my theory. Dr. Munro quotes me, without indicating the source, (which, I learn, is my first letter on the subject to the Glasgow Herald , Jan. 10th, 1899), as saying that the Clyde objects "are in absolutely startling agreement" with the Arunta churinga . {65} Doubtless, before I saw the objects, I thus overstated my case, in a letter to a newspaper, in 1899. But in my essay originally published in the Contemporary Review , (March 1899,) and reprinted in my book, Magic and Religion , of 1901, {66} I stated my real opinion. This is a maturely considered account of my views as they were in 1899-1901, and, unlike old newspaper correspondence, is easily accessible to the student. It is not "out of print." I compared the Australian marks on small stones and on rock walls, and other "fixtures in the landscape," with the markings on Scottish boulders, rock walls, cists, and so forth, and also with the marks on the disputed objects. I added "the startling analogy between Australia and old Scottish markings saute aux yeux ," and I spoke truth. Down to the designs which represent footmarks, the analogy is "startling," is of great interest, and was never before made the subject of comment. I said that we could not know whether or not the markings, in Scotland and Australia, had the same meaning. As to my opinion, then, namely that we cannot say what is the significance of an archaic pattern in Scotland, or elsewhere, though we may know the meaning assigned to it in Central Australia, there can no longer be any mistake. I take the blame of having misled Dr. Munro by an unguarded expression in a letter to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, {67} saying that, if the disputed objects were genuine, they implied the survival, on Clyde, "of a singularly archaic set of ritual and magical ideas," namely those peculiar to the Arunta and Kaitish tribes of Central Australia. But that was a slip of the pen, merely. This being the case, I need not reply to arguments of Dr. Munro (pp. 248- 250) against an hypothesis which no instructed person could entertain, beginning with the assumption that from an unknown centre, some people who held Arunta ideas migrated to Central Australia, and others to the Clyde. Nobody supposes that the use of identical or similar patterns, and of stones of superstitious purpose, implies community of race. These things may anywhere be independently evolved, and in different regions may have quite different meanings, if any; while the use of "charm stones" or witch stones, is common among savages, and survives, in England and Scotland, to this day. The reader will understand that I am merely applying Mr. E. B. Tylor's method of the study of "survivals in culture," which all anthropologists have used since the publication of Mr. Tylor's Primitive Culture , thirty-five years ago.
{66} Longmans. {67} Munro, p. 177. _ |
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