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The Clyde Mystery, a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, a non-fiction book by Andrew Lang |
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XXVI - EUROPEAN PARALLELS TO THE DISPUTED OBJECTS |
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_ XXVI - EUROPEAN PARALLELS TO THE DISPUTED OBJECTS I am not so sure as Dr. Munro is that we have not found small perforated stones, sometimes inscribed with archaic patterns, sometimes plain, even in Scotland; I shall later mention other places. For the present I leave aside the small stone, inscribed with concentric horse-shoes, and found in a hill-fort near Tarbert (Kintyre), which a friend already spoken of saw, and of which he drew for me a sketch from memory. In country houses any intrinsically valueless object of this kind is apt to fall out of sight and be lost beyond recovery. Sir John Evans, however, in his work on Ancient Stone Implements , p. 463 (1897), writes: "A pendant, consisting of a flat pear-shaped piece of shale, 2.5 inches long, and 2 inches broad, and perforated at the narrow end, was found along with querns, stones with concentric circles, and cup- shaped indentations worked in them; stone balls, spindle whorls, and an iron axe-head, in excavating an underground chamber at the Tappock, Torwood, Stirlingshire. One face of this pendant was covered with scratches in a vandyked pattern. Though of smaller size this seems to bear some analogy with the flat amulets of schist of which several have been discovered in Portugal, with one face ornamented in much the same manner." For these examples Sir John Evans refers to the Transactions of the Ethnological Society . {100a} If by "a vandyked pattern," Sir John means, as I suppose, a pattern of triangles in horizontal lines (such as the Portuguese patterns on stone plaques), then the elements of this form of decoration appear to have been not unfamiliar to the designers of "cups and rings." On the cover of a stone cist at Carnwath we see inscribed concentric rings, and two large equilateral triangles, each containing three contingent triangles, round a square space, uninscribed. {100b} The photograph of the Tappock stone (figs. 9, 10), shows that the marks are not of a regular vandyked pattern, but are rather scribbles, like those on a Portuguese perforated stone, given by Vasconcellos, and on a Canadian stone pendant, published by Mr. David Boyle (figs. 12, 13). Sir John Evans does not reject the pear-shaped object of shale, "a pendant," found in a Scottish site, and associated with querns, and an iron axe, and cup and ring stones. Sir John sees no harm in the "pendant," but Dr. Munro rejects a "pear-shaped" claystone "pendant" decorated with "cup-shaped indentations," found at Dunbuie. {101} It has a perforation near each end, as is common in North American objects of similar nature (see fig. 11). Why should the schist pendant of the Tappock chamber be all right, if the claystone pendant of Dunbuie be all wrong? One of them seems to me to have as good a claim to our respectful consideration as the other, and, like Sir John Evans, I shall now turn to Portugal in search of similar objects of undisputed authenticity.
{100b} Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times , p. 88. {101} Munro, p. 249, fig. 63. _ |
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