The Clyde Mystery Part 3

The structure certainly yielded habitable s.p.a.ce enough to accommodate the persons who, in the fifth to twelfth centuries, left these traces of their occupancy. Beyond that fact I do not pretend to estimate the habitable area.

Why did these people live on this structure in the fifth to twelfth centuries? Almost certainly, not for the purpose of directing the navigation of the Clyde. At that early date, which I think we may throw far back in the s.p.a.ce of the six centuries of the estimate, or may even throw further back still, the Clyde was mainly navigated by canoes of two feet or so in depth, though we ought to have statistics of remains of larger vessels discovered in the river bed. {49a} I think we may say that the finances of Glasgow, in St. Kentigern's day, about 570-600 A.D., would not be applied to the construction of Dr. Munro's "tower with its central pole and very thick walls" {49b} erected merely for the purpose of warning canoes off shoals in the Clyde.

That the purpose of the erection was to direct the navigation of Clyde by canoes, or by the long vessels of the Viking raiders, appears to me improbable. I offer, _periculo meo_, a different conjecture, of which I shall show reason to believe that Dr. Munro may not disapprove.

The number of the dwellers in the structure, and the duration of their occupancy, does not affect my argument. If two natives, in a very few years, could deposit the "veritable kitchen midden," with all the sawn horns, bone implements, and other undisputed relics, we must suppose that the term of occupancy was very brief, or not continuous, and that the stone structure "with very thick walls like the brochs" represented labours which were utilised for a few years, or seldom. My doubt is as to whether the structure was intended for the benefit of navigators of the Clyde--in shallow canoes!

IX--A GUESS AT THE POSSIBLE PURPOSE OF LANGBANK AND DUMBUCK

The Dumbuck structure, when occupied, adjoined and commanded a _ford_ across the undeepened Clyde of uncommercial times. So Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l informs us. {51a} The Langbank structure, as I understand, is opposite to that of Dumbuck on the southern side of the river. If two strongly built structures large enough for occupation exist on opposite sides of a ford, their purpose is evident: they guard the ford, like the two stone camps on each side of the narrows of the Avon at Clifton.

Dr. Munro, on the other hand, says, "the smallness of the habitable area on both "sites" puts them out of the category of military forts." {51b} My suggestion is that the structure was so far "military" as is implied in its being occupied, with Langbank on the opposite bank of Clyde by keepers of the ford. In 1901 Dr. Munro wrote, "even the keepers of the watch-tower at the ford of Dumbuck had their quern, and ground their own corn." {52a} This idea has therefore pa.s.sed through Dr. Munro's mind, though I did not know the fact till after I had come to the same hypothesis. The habitable area was therefore, adequate to the wants of these festive people. I conjecture that these "keepers of the watch-tower at the ford" were military "watchers of the ford," for that seems to me less improbable than that "a round tower with very thick walls, {52b} like the brochs and other forts of North Britain," was built in the interests of the navigation of Clyde at a very remote period.

{52c}

But really all this is of no importance to the argument. People lived in these sites, perhaps as early as 400 A.D. or earlier. Such places of safety were sadly needed during the intermittent and turbulent Roman occupation.

X--THE LAST DAY AT OLD DUMBUCK

Suppose the sites were occupied by the watchers of the ford. There they lived, no man knows how long, on their perch over the waters of Clyde.

They dwelt at top of a stone structure some eight feet above low water mark, for they could not live on the ground floor, of which the walls, fifty feet thick at the base, defied the waves of the high tides driven by the west wind.

There our friends lived, and probably tatooed themselves, and slew _Bos Longifrons_ and the deer that, in later ages, would have been forbidden game to them. If I may trust Bede, born in 672, and finis.h.i.+ng his History in 731, our friends were Picts, and spoke a now unknown language, _not_ that of the Bretonnes, or Cymri, or Welsh, who lived on the northern side of the Firth of Clyde. Or the occupants of Dumbuck, on the north side of the river, were Cymri; those of Langbank, on the south side, were Picts. I may at once say that I decline to be responsible for Bede, and his ethnology, but he lived nearer to those days than we do.

With their ladder of fifteen feet long, a slab of oak, split from the tree by wedges, and having six holes chopped out of the solid for steps, they climbed to their perch, the first floor of their abode. I never heard of a ladder made in this way, but the Zunis used simply to cut notches for the feet in the trunk of a tree, and "sich a getting up stairs" it must have been, when there was rain, and the notches were wet!

Time pa.s.sed, the kitchen midden grew, and the Cymri founded Ailcluith, "Clyde rock," now Dumbarton; "to this day," says Bede, "the strongest city of the Britons." {54} Then the Scots came, and turned the Britons out; and St. Columba came, and St. Kentigern from Wales (573-574), and began to spread the Gospel among the pagan Picts and Cymri. Stone amulets and stone idols, (if the disputed objects are idols and amulets,) "have had their day," (as Bob Acres says "d.a.m.ns have had their day,") and, with Ailcluith in Scots' hands, "'twas time for us to go" thought the Picts and Cymri of Langbank and Dumbuck.

Sadly they evacuate their old towers or cairns before the Scots who now command the Dumbuck ford from Dumbarton. They cross to land on their stone causeway at low water. They abandon the old canoe in the little dock where it was found by Mr. Bruce. They throw down the venerable ladder. They leave behind only the canoe, the deer horns, stone-polishers, sharpened bones, the lower stone of a quern, and the now obsolete, or purely folk-loreish stone "amulets," or "pendants," and the figurines, which to call "idols" is unscientific, while to call them "totems" is to display "facetious and rejoicing ignorance." Dr. Munro merely quotes this foolish use of the term totem by others.

These old things the evicted Picts and Cymri abandoned, while they carried with them their more valuable property, their Early Iron axes and knives, their treasured bits of red "Samian ware," inherited from Roman times, their amber beads, and the rest of their bibelots, down to the minutest fragment of pottery.

Or it may not have been so: the conquering Scots may have looted the cairns, and borne the Pictish cairn-dwellers into captivity.

Looking at any broch, or hill fort, or crannog, the fancy dwells on the last day of its occupation: the day when the canoe was left to subside into the mud and decaying vegetable matter of the loch. In changed times, in new conditions, the inhabitants move away to houses less damp, and better equipped with more modern appliances. I see the little troop, or perhaps only two natives, cross the causeway, while the Minstrel sings in Pictish or Welsh a version of

"The Auld Hoose, the Auld Hoose, What though the rooms were sma', Wi' six feet o' diameter, And a rung gaun through the ha'!"

The tears come to my eyes, as I think of the Last Day of Old Dumbuck, for, take it as you will, there _was_ a last day of Dumbuck, as of windy Ilios, and of "Carthage left deserted of the sea."

So ends my little idyllic interlude, and, if I am wrong, blame Venerable Bede!

XI--MY THEORY OF PROVISIONAL DATE

Provisionally, and for the sake of argument merely, may I suggest that the occupancy of these sites may be dated by me, about 300-550 A.D.? That date is well within the Iron Age: iron had long been known and used in North Britain. But to the non-archaeological reader, the terms Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, are apt to prove misleading. The early Iron Age, like the Bronze Age, was familiar with the use of implements of stone. In the Scottish crannogs, admirably described by Dr. Munro, in his _Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings_, were found implements of flint, a polished stone axe-head, an iron knife at the same lowest level, finger rings of gold, a forged English coin of the sixth or seventh century A.D., well-equipped canoes (a common attendant of crannogs), the greater part of a stone inscribed with concentric circles, a cupped stone, and a large quartz crystal of the kind which Apaches in North America, and the Euahlayi tribe in New South Wales, use in crystal gazing. In early ages, after the metals had been worked, stone, bronze, and iron were still used as occasion served, just as the Australian black will now fas.h.i.+on an implement in "palaeolithic" wise, with a few chips; now will polish a weapon in "neolithic" fas.h.i.+on; and, again, will chip a fragment of gla.s.s with wonderful delicacy; or will put as good an edge as he can on a piece of hoop iron.

I venture, then, merely for the sake of argument, to date the origin of the Clyde sites in the dark years of unrecorded turmoil which preceded and followed the Roman withdrawal. The least unpractical way of getting nearer to their purpose is the careful excavation of a structure of wood and stone near Eriska, where Prince Charles landed in 1745. Dr. Munro has seen and described this site, but is unable to explain it. Certainly it cannot be a Corporation cairn.

XII--THE DISPUTED OBJECTS

We now approach the disputed and very puzzling objects found in the three Clyde sites. My object is, not to demonstrate that they were actually fas.h.i.+oned in, say, 410-550 A.D., or that they were relics of an age far more remote, but merely to re-state the argument of Dr. Joseph Anderson, Keeper of the Scottish National Museum, and of Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l, both of them most widely experienced and sagacious archaeologists. They play the waiting game, and it may be said that they "sit upon the fence"; I am proud to occupy a railing in their company. Dr. Anderson spoke at a meeting of the Scots Society of Antiquaries, May 14, 1900, when Mr. Bruce read a paper on Dumbuck, and exhibited the finds. "With regard to the relics, he said that there was nothing exceptional in the chronological horizon of a portion of them from both sites (Dumbuck and Dunbuie), but as regards another portion, he could find no place for it in any archaeological series, as it had 'no recognisable affinity with any objects found anywhere else.'"

"For my part," said Dr. Anderson, (and he has not altered his mind,) "I do not consider it possible or necessary in the meantime that there should be a final p.r.o.nouncement on these questions. In the absence of decisive evidence, which time may supply, I prefer to suspend my judgment--merely placing the suspected objects (as they place themselves) in the list of things that must wait for further evidence, because they contradict present experience. It has often happened that new varieties of things have been regarded with suspicion on account of their lack of correspondence with things previously known, and that the lapse of time has brought corroboration of their genuineness through fresh discoveries.

If time brings no such corroboration, they still remain in their proper cla.s.sification as things whose special character has not been confirmed by archaeological experience."

Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l spoke in the same sense, advising suspension of judgment, and that we should await the results of fresh explorations both at Dumbuck and elsewhere. {61} Dr. Murray said that the disputed finds "are puzzling, but we need not condemn them because we do not understand them." Dr. Munro will not suspend _his_ judgment: the objects, he declares, are spurious.

XIII--METHOD OF INQUIRY

I remarked, early in this tract, that "with due deference, and with doubt, I think Dr. Munro's methods capable of modification." I meant that I prefer, unlike Dr. Munro in this case, to extend the archaeological gaze beyond the limits of things already known to occur in the Scottish area which--by the way--must contain many relics still unknown. I

"Let Observation with extensive view Survey mankind from China to Peru,"

to discover whether objects a.n.a.logous to those under dispute occur anywhere among early races of the past or present. This kind of wide comparison is the method of Anthropology. Thus Prof. Rhys and others find so very archaic an inst.i.tution as the reckoning of descent in the female line,--inheritance going through the Mother,--among the Picts of Scotland, and they even find traces of totemism, an inst.i.tution already outworn among several of the naked tribes of Australia, who reckon descent in the male line.

Races do not, in fact, advance on a straight and unbroken highway of progress. You find that the Kurnai of Australia are more civilised, as regards the evolution of the modern Family, than were the Picts who built crannogs and dug canoes, and cultivated the soil, and had domesticated animals, and used iron, all of them things that the Kurnai never dreamed of doing.

As to traces of Totemism in Scotland and Ireland, I am not persuaded by Professor Rhys that they occur, and are attested by Celtic legends about the connection of men and kins.h.i.+ps with animals, and by personal and kins.h.i.+p names derived from animals. The question is very obscure. {63} But as the topic of Totemism has been introduced, I may say that many of the mysterious archaic markings on rocks, and decorations of implements, in other countries, are certainly known to be a kind of shorthand design of the totem animal. Thus a circle, whence proceeds a line ending in a triple fork, represents the raven totem in North America: another design, to our eyes meaningless, stands for the wolf totem; a third design, a set of bands on a spear shaft, does duty for the gerfalcon totem, and so on.

{64a} Equivalent marks, such as spirals, and tracks of emu's feet, occur on sacred stones found round the graves of Australian blacks on the Darling River. They were a.s.sociated with rites which the oldest blacks decline to explain. The markings are understood to be totemic.

Occasionally they are linear, as in Ogam writing. {64b}

Any one who is interested in the subject of the origin, in certain places, of the patterns, may turn to Mr. Haddon's _Evolution of Art_.

{64c} Mr. Haddon shows how the Portuguese pattern of horizontal triangles is, in the art of the uncivilised natives of Brazil, meant to represent bats. {64d} A cross, dotted, within a circle, is directly derived, through several stages, from a representation of an alligator.

{64e}

We cannot say whether or not the same pattern, found at Dumbuck, in Central Australia, and in tropical America, arose in the "schematising"

of the same object in nature, in all three regions, or not. Without direct evidence, we cannot a.s.sign a meaning to the patterns.