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The Clyde Mystery, a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, a non-fiction book by Andrew Lang |
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XXXII - DISPUTED OBJECTS FROM DUNBUIE |
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_ XXXII - DISPUTED OBJECTS FROM DUNBUIE The faker occasionally changes his style. We have seen what slovenly designs in the archaic cup and ring and incomplete circle style he dumped down at Dumbuck. I quote Dr. Munro on his doings at Dunbuie, where the faker occasionally drops a pear-shaped slate perforated stone, with a design in cupules. Dr. Munro writes: "The most meaningless group--if a degree of comparison be admissible in regard to a part when the whole is absolutely incomprehensible on archaeological principles--consists of a series of unprepared and irregularly shaped pieces of laminated sandstone (plate xvi.) similar to some of the stones of which the fort of Dunbuie was built, {132} having one of their surfaces decorated with small cup-marks, sometimes symmetrically arranged so far as to indicate parts of geometrical figures, and at other times variously combined with lines and circles. Two fragments of bones, also from Dunbuie, are similarly adorned (plate xvi. nos. 13, 14). Eleven of the twelve sandstone fragments which make up the group were fractured in such a manner as to suggest that the line of fracture had intersected the original ornamentation, and had thus detached a portion of it. If this be so, there must have been originally at least two or three other portions which, if found, would fit along the margin of each of the extant portions, just as the fragments of a broken urn come together. Yet among these decorated stones not one single bit fits another, nor is any of the designs the counterpart of another. If we suppose that these decorated stones are portions of larger tablets on which the designs were completed, then either they were broken before being introduced into the debris of the fort, or the designs were intentionally executed in an incomplete state, just as they are now to be seen on the existing natural splinters of stone. The supposition that the occupiers of the fort possessed the original tablets, and that they had been smashed on the premises, is excluded by the significant fact that only one fragment of each tablet has been discovered. For, in the breaking up of such tablets, it would be inconceivable, according to the law of chances, that one portion, and only one, of each different specimen would remain while all the others had disappeared. On the other hand, the hypothesis that the occupiers of the fort carved these designs on the rough and unprepared splinters of stone in the precise manner they now come before us, seems to me to involve premeditated deception, for it is difficult to believe that such uncompleted designs could have any other finality of purpose. Looking at these geometrical figures from the point of technique, they do not make a favourable impression in support of their genuineness. The so-called cup-marks consist of punctures of two or three different sizes, so many corresponding to one size and so many to another. The stiffness of the lines and circles reminds one more of ruler and compass than of the freehand work of prehistoric artists. The patterns are unprecedented for their strange combinations of art elements. For example, no. 9, plate xvi., looks as if it were a design for some modern machinery. The main ornament on another fragment of sandstone (no. 12), consisting of a cross and circle composed of a series of cup-marls, seems to be a completed design; but yet at the corner there are lines which are absolutely meaningless, unless we suppose that they formed part of a more enlarged tablet. Similar remarks apply to nos. 3 and 8." Is it really contrary to "the law of chances" that, in some 1200 years of unknown fortunes, no two fragments of the same plates of red sandstone (some dozen in number) should be found at Dunbuie? Think of all that may have occurred towards the scattering of fragments of unregarded sandstone before the rise of soil hid them all from sight. Where is the smaller portion of the shattered cup and ring marked sandstone block found in the Lochlee crannog? On the other hand, in the same crannog, a hammerstone broken in two was found, each half in a different place, as were two parts of a figurine at Dumbuck. Where are the arms of the Venus of Milo, vainly sought beside and around the rest of the statue? Where are the lost noses, arms, and legs of thousands of statues? Nobody can guess where they are or how they vanished. Or where are the lost fragments of countless objects in pottery found in old sites? It was as easy for the forger to work over a whole plaque of sandstone, break it, and bury the pieces, as for him to do what he has done. These designs make an unfavourable impression because some, not all of them, are stiff and regular. The others make an unfavourable impression because they are so laxly executed. For what conceivable purpose did the forger here resort to the aid of compasses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind? Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, not have compasses, like the Cairn-wight of Lough Crew? On inspecting the pieces, in the Museum, the regularity of design seems to me to be much exaggerated in Dr. Munro's figures, by whom drawn we are not informed. As to Dr. Munro's figure 12, it seems to me to aim at a Celtic cross and circle, while part of his figure 3 suggests a crozier, and there is a cross on figure 18, as on a painted pebble from a broch in Caithness. The rest I cannot profess to explain; they look like idle work on sandstone, but may have had a meaning to their fashioner. His meaning, and that of the forger who here changes his style, are equally inscrutable. I return to a strange perforated pebble, an intaglio from Dumbuck.
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