The Clyde Mystery. Lang Andrew
shell with a human face sculptured on its inner surface.
“The eyes,” writes Mr. Millar, “are represented by two holes, the nose by sharply-cut lines, and the mouth by a well-drawn waved line, the curves which we call Cupid’s bow being faithfully followed. There is nothing at all of an archaic character, however, in this example of shell-carving. We found it in the interior of the fort; it was one of the early finds – nothing like it has been found since; at the same time we have no reason for assuming that this shell was placed in the fort on purpose that we might find it. The fact that it was taken out of the fort is all that we say about it.”
Mr. Millar’s opinion of these novel handicraft remains was that they were the products of a pre-Celtic civilisation. “The articles found,” he writes, “are strongly indicative of a much earlier period than post-Roman; they point to an occupation of a tribe in their Stone Age.”
“We have no knowledge of the precise position in which the ‘queer things’ of Dunbuie were found, with the exception of the limpet shell showing the carved human face which, according to a recent statement in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association, September, 1901, “was excavated from a crevice in the living rock, over which tons of debris had rested. When taken out, the incrustations of dirt prevented any carving from being seen; it was only after being dried and cleaned that the ‘face’ appeared, as well as the suspension holes on each side.”
So, this unique piece of art was in the fort before it became a ruin and otherwise presented evidence of great antiquity; but yet it is stated in Mr. Millar’s report that there was “nothing at all of an archaic character in this example of shell-carving.” 20
I have nothing to do with statements made in The Journal of the British Archaeological Association about “a carved oyster shell.” I stick to the limpet shell of Mr. Millar, which, to my eyes looks anything but archaic.
V – HOW I CAME INTO THE CONTROVERSY
Thus far, I was so much to be sympathised with as never to have heard of the names of Dunbuie and of Mr. Donnelly. In this ignorance I remained till late in October or early in November 1898. On an afternoon of that date I was reading the proof sheets, kindly lent to me by Messrs. Macmillan, of The Native Tribes of Central Australia by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, a work, now justly celebrated, which was published early in 1899. I was much interested on finding, in this book, that certain tribes of Central Australia, – the Arunta “nation” and the Kaitish, —paint on sacred and other rocks the very same sorts of archaic designs as Mr. Donnelly found incised at Auchentorlie (of which I had not then heard). These designs are familiar in many other parts of Scotland and of the world. They play a great part in the initiations and magic of Central Australia. Designs of the same class are incised, by the same Australian tribes, on stones of various shapes and sizes, usually portable, and variously shaped which are styled churinga nanja. (Churinga merely means anything “sacred,” that is, with a superstitious sense attached to it). They also occur on wooden slats, (churinga irula,) commonly styled “Bull roarers” by Europeans. The tribes are now in a “siderolithic” stage, using steel when they can get it, stone when they cannot. If ever they come to abandon stone implements, while retaining their magic or religion, they will keep on using their stone churinga nanja.
While I was studying these novel Australian facts, in the autumn of 1898, a friend, a distinguished member of Clan Diarmaid, passing by my window, in London, saw me, and came in. He at once began to tell me that, in the estuary of the Clyde, and at Dunbuie, some one had found small stones, marked with the same archaic kinds of patterns, “cup-and-ring,” half circles, and so forth, as exist on our inscribed rocks, cists, and other large objects. I then showed him the illustrations of portable stones in Australia, with archaic patterns, not then published, but figured in the proof sheets of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen’s work. My friend told me, later, that he had seen small stone incised with concentric circles, found in the excavation of a hill fort near Tarbert, in Kintyre. He made a sketch of this object, from memory: if found in Central Australia it would have been reckoned a churinga nanja.
I was naturally much interested in my friend’s account of objects found in the Clyde estuary, which, as far as his description went, resembled in being archaically decorated the churinga nanja discovered by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia. I wrote an article on the subject of the archaic decorative designs, as found all over the world, for the Contemporary Review. 21 I had then seen only pen and ink sketches of the objects, sent to me by Mr. Donnelly, and a few casts, which I passed on to an eminent authority. One of the casts showed a round stone with concentric circles. I know not what became of the original or of the casts.
While correcting proofs of this article, I read in the Glasgow Herald (January 7, 1899) a letter by Dr. Munro, impugning the authenticity of one set of finds by Mr. Donnelly, in a pile-structure at Dumbuck, on the Clyde, near Dumbarton. I wrote to the Glasgow Herald, adducing the Australian churinga nanja as parallel to Mr. Donnelly’s inscribed stones, and thus my share in the controversy began. What Dr. Munro and I then wrote may be passed over in this place.
VI – DUMBUCK
It was in July 1898, that Mr. Donnelly, who had been prospecting during two years for antiquities in the Clyde estuary, found at low tide, certain wooden stumps, projecting out of the mud at low water. On August 16, 1898, Dr. Munro, with Mr. Donnelly, inspected these stumps, “before excavations were made.” 22 It is not easy to describe concisely the results of their inspection, and of the excavations which followed. “So far the facts” (of the site, not of the alleged relics), “though highly interesting as evidence of the hand of man in the early navigation of the Clyde basin present nothing very remarkable or important,” says Dr. Munro. 23
I shall here quote Dr. Munro’s descriptions of what he himself observed at two visits, of August 16, October 12, 1898, to Dumbuck. For the present I omit some speculative passages as to the original purpose of the structure.
“The so-called Dumbuck ‘crannog,’ that being the most convenient name under which to describe the submarine wooden structures lately discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly in the estuary of the Clyde, lies about a mile to the east of the rock of Dumbarton, and about 250 yards within high-water mark. At every tide its site is covered with water to a depth of three to eight feet, but at low tide it is left high and dry for a few hours, so that it was only during these tidal intervals that the excavations could be conducted.
On the occasion of my first visit to Dumbuck, before excavations were begun, Mr. Donnelly and I counted twenty-seven piles of oak, some 5 or 8 inches in diameter, cropping up for a few inches through the mud, in the form of a circle 56 feet in diameter. The area thus enclosed was occupied with the trunks of small trees laid horizontally close to each other and directed towards the centre, and so superficial that portions of them were exposed above the surrounding mud, but all hollows and interstices were levelled up with sand or mud. The tops of the piles which projected above the surface of the log-pavement were considerably worn by the continuous action of the muddy waters during the ebb and flow of the tides, a fact which suggested the following remarkable hypothesis: ‘Their tops are shaped in an oval, conical form, meant to make a joint in a socket to erect the superstructure on.’ These words are quoted from a ‘Report of a Conjoint Visit of the Geological and Philosophical Societies to the Dumbuck Crannog, 8th April, 1899.’ 24
The result of the excavations, so far as I can gather from observations made during my second visit to the ‘crannog,’ and the descriptions and plans published by various societies, may be briefly stated as follows.
The log-pavement within the circle of piles was the upper of three similar layers of timbers placed one above the other, the middle layer having its beams lying transversely to that immediately above and below it. One of the piles (about 4 feet long) when freshly drawn up, clearly showed that it had been pointed by a sharp metal implement, the cutting marks being like those
See pages 133, 166.
March 1899, “Cup and Ring”; cf. the same article in my
Munro, 133, 134, 150-151.
Munro, pp. 139, 140.
See