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The Clyde Mystery, a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, a non-fiction book by Andrew Lang |
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XXXIII - DISPUTABLE AND CERTAINLY FORGED OBJECTS |
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_ XXXIII - DISPUTABLE AND CERTAINLY FORGED OBJECTS In his judicious remarks to the Society of Antiquaries, ( Proceedings , xxxiv.,) Dr. Joseph Anderson observed that opinions would probably vary as to certain among the disputed objects. Among these are the inscribed oyster shells. I see nothing a priori improbable in the circumstance that men who incised certain patterns on schist or shale, should do so on oyster shells. Palaeolithic man did his usual sporting sketches on shells, and there was a vast and varied art of designing on shells among the pre-Columbian natives of North America. {137} We here see the most primitive scratches developing into full-blown Aztec art. If the markings were only on such inscribed shells as mouldered away--so Mr. Bruce tells us--when exposed to light and air, (I do not know whether the designs were copied before the shells crumbled,) these conchological drawings would not trouble us. No modern could make the designs on shells that were hurrying into dust. We have Mr. Bruce's word for these mouldering shells, and we have the absolute certainty that such decomposing shells could not be incised by a hand of to-day, as shale, slate, schist, and sandstone can now be engraved upon, fraudulently. But when, as Professor Boyd Dawkins writes, the finds include "two fresh shells . . . unmistakable Blue Points," drilled with perforations, or inscribed, from Dunbuie, then there are only two possible alternatives. 1. They were made by the faker, or 2. They were "interpolated" into the Dunbuie site by somebody. The forger himself is, I think, far too knowing a man to fake inscriptions on fresh shells, even if, not being a conchologist, he did not know that the oysters were American blue points. I have written in vain if the reader, while believing in the hypothesis of a forger, thinks him such an egregious ass. For Blue Points as non- existent save in America, 1 rely on Prof. Boyd Dawkins. As the public were allowed to break off and steal the prow of the Dumbuck canoe, it is plain that no guard was placed on the sites. They lay open for months to the interpolations of wags, and I think, for my own part, that one of them is likely to have introduced the famous blue points. Dr. Munro tells us how a "large-worked stone," a grotesque head, was foisted through a horizontal hole, into the relic bed of his kitchen midden at Elie. "It lay under four inches of undisturbed black earth." But it had been "interpolated" there by some "lousy tykes of Fife," as the anti-covenanting song calls them. {139} It was rather easier to interpolate Blue Point oyster shells at Dunbuie. On the other hand, two splinters of stone, inserted into a bone and a tyne of deer's horn, figured by Dr. Munro among Dumbuck and Dunbuie finds, seem to me rather too stupid fakes for the regular forger, and a trifle too clever for the Sunday holiday-maker. These two things I do not apologise for, or defend; my knowledge of primitive implements is that of a literary man, but for what it is worth, it does not incline me to regard these things as primitive implements.
{137} See an interesting and well-illustrated paper in Report of Bureau on Ethnology , U.S., vol. ii. {139} Munro, Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. , 1900-1901, pp. 291-292. _ |
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