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CHAPTER VI.
PERSONAL ORNAMENTS.

In nothing is the singular inequality so characteristic of archaic art more strikingly apparent than in the contrast frequently observable between the rude clay urn of the Scottish tumulus or cairn and the valuable and beautiful relics which it contains. Many of the latter, indeed, are scarcely admissible under any classification of archaic art. They differ more in characteristic peculiarities of style than in inferiority of design when compared with the relics of the Anglo-Roman period. Reference has already been made to the probable sources from whence the abundant supplies of gold were derived by the primitive Caledonian metallurgist. But whencesoever they are assumed to have been procured, the fact is unquestionable, that while silver was exceedingly rare, if not, indeed, entirely unknown, until almost the close of the Bronze Period, gold appears to have been one of the very first metals wrought, and to have been obtained in such abundance as to supply material for numerous personal ornaments of large size and great weight.

But the skill and ingenuity of the primitive artist was not solely confined to ornaments wrought in gold or bronze. The humblest materials assumed new value by the aid of his ingenuity and taste; and not a few of the personal ornaments of a comparatively late stage of progression in the Bronze Period are still formed of stone, or of the more easily wrought jet and bituminous shale. Beads and necklaces of the latter materials are of very frequent occurrence, and while some are characterized by little evidence of taste or ingenuity, many more are the manifest products of experienced mechanical skill. In these especially we detect the evidence of the use of the turning-lathe, and its ingenious adaptation to the production of a great variety of articles. This we may fairly regard as another important step in advance of the improvements already detected in the native fictile wares by the introduction of the potter's wheel. Some antiquaries, indeed, have been inclined to class those, as well as so many other evidences of native skill, either among the direct products of Roman art, or as the fruits of the civilizing influence resulting from intercourse with the Roman colonists; but if previous evidences of the priority of the early native eras are of the slightest value, the circumstances under which many jet and shale ornaments and relics have been found leave no room to doubt that they are the products of unaided native ingenuity and mechanical skill. These materials, however, continued to be used during the Anglo-Roman period, and to partake of the influences of Italian art in the forms which they assumed. It therefore becomes necessary to exercise the same care in discriminating between the products of native and foreign taste in the relics of jet or shale, as in those of the metals, or of glass and ivory. According to Solinus jet was one of the articles of export from Britain; and Bede speaks of British jet as abundant and highly valued.[338] But from these evidences of its later foreign use we may infer its early adoption for construction of personal ornaments by the native Britons, among whom its fitness for such purposes was very probably first recognised. The style of many of the relics of this class found in the primitive cists and cairns, and especially of those which are presumed to be female ornaments, totally differs from Anglo-Roman or classic remains, and abundantly confirms their native origin, already rendered so exceedingly probable from their discovery in early sepulchral mounds. An interesting discovery of such relics, made in the parish of Houstoun, Renfrewshire, during the latter part of last century, is thus described in the Old Statistical Account:

In 1841 a stone cist was discovered on the estate of Burgie, in the parish of Rafford, Elginshire, which measured internally three feet in length by two feet in breadth. It contained a skeleton, believed to be that of a female from the small size of the bones, in a sitting posture, and with the head in contact with the knees. Beside the skeleton stood an urn ten inches high, rudely decorated with incised lines; and alongside of it were found a ring of polished shale or cannel coal, two and a half inches in diameter; four rhomboidal pieces of the same material, the largest pair two inches long; two triangular pieces, and about an hundred large beads, all perforated for the purpose of being strung together for a necklace. Various other cists have been discovered on the same estate, generally containing urns; but this is believed to have been the only example of the ring and necklace of polished shale.

A necklace formed in part of similar ornaments is now in the interesting collection of Adam Arbuthnot, Esq., of Peterhead. It was found a few years since in a tumulus in the parish of Cruden, Aberdeenshire, and consists of alternate beads of jet and perforated but irregular pieces of amber. The largest beads measure about four inches in length, from which they diminish to about an inch. The only other object beside them was a flint hatchet about seven inches long; so that this curious example of primitive personal ornaments may be assumed to belong to the earliest period, or perhaps to that of the transition from stone to metallic weapons and implements.

On opening a cairn on the hill of Auchmacher, Aberdeenshire, about 1790, an urn was exposed, in the mouth of which lay a number of circular perforated beads of black shale.[340] About the same period another urn was dug up in the parish of Ceres, Fifeshire, within which a smaller one was inclosed, and in it, in addition to the incinerated remains, lay a small brass implement, probably a hair-pin, (described as resembling a shoemaker's awl,) and a small black bead cut in diamond form.[341]

Various interesting personal ornaments obtained under similar circumstances, are preserved in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, and one set in particular, found inclosed in an urn within a rude stone cist, on the demolition of a tumulus near the Old House of Assynt, Ross-shire, in 1824, very closely correspond in appearance to the description of the Renfrewshire relics. They include a necklace of irregular oval jet beads, which appear to have been strung together like a common modern string of beads, and are sufficiently rude to correspond with the works of a very primitive era. The other ornaments which are represented here, about one-fourth the size of the original, are curiously studded with gold spots, arranged in patterns similar to those with which the rude pottery of the British tumuli are most frequently decorated, and the whole are perforated with holes, passing obliquely from the back through the edge, evidently designed for attaching them to each other by means of threads.[342] Several other urns were discovered in a large cairn, a few miles distant from the tumulus which contained these interesting and tasteful relics of female adornment, as they are with great probability assumed to be; though it is well known that the modes of personal decoration which modern taste and refinement reserve for the fair sex are very differently apportioned in ruder states of society. The comparative anatomist can alone absolutely determine this question by future observations on the bones discovered along with similar remains. Meanwhile these examples are of peculiar value from the conclusion previously assumed by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, after examination of various sepulchral deposits containing similar relics, that the female barrow very rarely contains urns. Another sepulchral deposit of similar personal ornaments, including two fibulæ or discs of bituminous shale measuring one and a half inches in diameter, found in a grave at Letham, was presented to the Scottish Museum in 1820 by Sir David Brewster. It probably formed a portion of the contents of a group of cists discovered in a round gravel knoll or tumulus, near the Den of Letham, and described in the New Statistical Account of Dunnichen Parish, Forfarshire. They contained urns of red clay with rude ornaments upon them, and human bones irregularly disposed. "The neck-bones of some were adorned with strings of beads of a beautiful glossy black colour, neatly perforated longitudinally, and strung together by the fibres of animals. They were of an oval figure; large and small ones were arranged alternately, the large ones flat on the two opposite surfaces, the small ones round. They seemed to consist of ebony, or of some fine-grained wood which had been charred and then finely polished. On keeping them some time they split into plates, and the woody fibres separated. In some of these graves rusty daggers were found, which fell in pieces by handling."[343] One is almost tempted to challenge the completeness of this account, and to suspect the position of the necklaces, and perhaps the fibre-strings also, to be creations of the statist's imagination, more especially as the graves contained no perfect skeleton, but only loose bones. The woodcut represents a fibula of the same material, in the possession of James Drummond, Esq. It is drawn one-half the size of the original, which was recently found in a moss at Crawford Moor, near Carstairs, Lanarkshire. Simple as its form is it is not unfamiliar to the British antiquary. Sir R. C. Hoare describes and figures one exactly similar, found on opening a bell-shaped barrow at Blandford, and examples are referred to in the Ancient Wiltshire and other works.[344] Whether we regard this uniformity of type as evidence of the extent of intercourse anciently carried on among the most widely severed tribes, or of some system by which such relics were diffused by the wandering trader throughout the whole British islands, such comparisons cannot fail to interest the student of primitive history, trifling though they may appear, and to stimulate him to further investigation of such analogies.

English antiquaries have long been familiar with relics of this class, under the local name of ornaments of Kimmeridge Coal, and also with a more mysterious variety formed of the same material, on which the name of "Kimmeridge Coal Money" was conferred, from the idea that these symmetrical pieces of shale were used as a circulating medium before the introduction of the metals. The material of which the whole of this class of relics are composed has obviously been applied to the manufacture of personal ornaments from a very remote era, though the so-called coal money probably belongs to a comparatively late period. Some interesting examples of necklaces and other ornaments, precisely similar in style and character to those found in the Renfrew, Ross, and Fifeshire tumuli, were discovered on opening some Derbyshire barrows in 1846. These "female decorations of Kimmeridge coal," as they are styled in the account of the discovery in the Journal of the Archæological Association,[345] were deposited beside a female skeleton, in a cist formed of large stones. "The other instruments found on this occasion were all of flint, not the least fragment of metallic substance being visible. The ornament appears to have been a kind of necklace, with a central decoration, enriched by bone or ivory plates, ornamented with the chevron pattern so prevalent on articles of presumed Celtic manufacture, terminating with two laterally perforated studs of the coal; the remainder of the ornament consists of two rows of bugle-shaped beads of the same material." A few days later, two more necklaces, of similar design and material, were found in a cist under a barrow in the same county, in like manner accompanied only with implements of flint and bone. Engravings of some of these relics accompany the narrative of their discovery; and their remarkable similarity to those of the early Scottish tumuli, leaves no doubt that both belong to the same period. It is remarked of the Derbyshire relics by their discoverer,—"On the most superficial examination, it is quite evident that these articles have never received their form from the lathe, as the armlets of Kimmeridge coal are clearly proved to have done. This, coupled with the fact that the perforation through the length of the bead is in no instance carried through from one end, but is bored each way towards the centre, (as would be the case if a rude drill of flint were used for the purpose,) bespeaks a far more remote period than the one in which the use of the lathe was prevalent."[346] Both the unsymmetrical form, and the perforation of the beads found in the Ross-shire tumulus, fully correspond with these in the indications of the imperfect skill and rude instruments of their manufacturers. But the slow progress of native art was first aided, as we have seen, by the introduction of the potter's wheel; and from this, in all probability, originated the more ingenious contrivance of the turning-lathe. Whencesoever derived, its influence is abundantly apparent on the later relics of native art.

The "coal money" of the elder school of English antiquaries is found almost exclusively in two little secluded valleys at Purbeck, on the southern coast of Dorsetshire, known as Kimmeridge and Worthbarrow Bays. Similar relics, however, it will be seen, are not unknown in Scotland, though designated by other names than the local term derived from Kimmeridge Bay. They consist of flat circular pieces of shale, with bevelled and moulded edges, varying in size from 1¼ to nearly 3 inches in diameter, and frequently perforated or indented with one or more holes. The actual purpose for which this coinage of the Kimmeridge Mint was destined, long formed an antiquarian riddle, which baffled the acutest English archæologists; for the popular name was rather adopted as a convenient term, than seriously regarded as properly applicable to articles so fragile and valueless. One ingenious but somewhat fanciful theorist did, indeed, attempt to prove these relics to be the work of Phœnician artists, designed, not as an actual circulating medium, "but as representatives of coin, and of some mystical use in sacrificial or sepulchral rites!" All such ideas, however, are now entirely exploded, and it is no longer doubted that these are the waste pieces produced in the formation of rings from the shale on the turning-lathe. The fragments of pottery, and other relics discovered along with these curious exuviæ of early art, leave little room to doubt that during the Anglo-Roman period a manufacture of amulets, beads, and other personal ornaments of Kimmeridge shale, must have been carried on to a considerable extent in the Isle of Purbeck.[347]

The popular idea of the use of such circular pieces of shale as money is found attached to them in Scotland as well as in England. In the account of the parish of Portpatrick, it is remarked,—"Circular pieces, from two to three inches diameter, cut out of a black slate not found in the parish, are frequently dug up in the churchyard, along with rings out of which these pieces seem to have been cut. Both of these are supposed by the people here to have been used as money."[348]

Similar relics have been found in Kirkcudbright and other southern shires; and Mr. Joseph Train describes others, not greatly differing in character, found near the large moat or tumulus on the farm of Hallferne, parish of Crossmichael, where also a beautiful Druidical bead was discovered, nearly an inch in diameter, composed of pale-coloured glass, with a waving stripe of yellow round the circumference. In Kirkcudbrightshire, these ornaments of shale have retained nearly to our own day the same rank in popular estimation for their medicinal virtues, or supernatural powers, as we find ascribed to the ornaments and amulets of jet among the Romans.[349] Mr. Train remarks,—

Ure remarks in his History of Kilbride, "a ring of a hard black schistous, found in a cairn in the parish of Inchinan, has performed, if we believe report, many astonishing cures. It is to this day preserved in the parish as an inestimable specific."[351] Similar proofs of the superstitious reverence attached to these ancient relics are by no means rare.

From evidence already referred to, it is abundantly obvious that ornaments both of shale and jet were in use at the period of the Roman colonization of Britain, and this is further confirmed by their discovery along with Anglo-Roman sepulchral remains. Most of those, however, exhibit a degree of finish and ornamentation which distinguishes them from works in the same materials of an older date. Still it is the more needful to examine with care the circumstances under which the latter have been found, and to ascertain, if possible, whether they are contemporary works of ruder execution, or really pertain to an earlier era. Relics of this class, it is obvious, are by no means uncommon; and it is with a view to the discrimination of those of native origin from the later products of foreign art, that so many examples are here referred to.

Sir Robert Sibbald thus notices the occurrence of rings or armlets of shale in Scottish sepulchral mounds:—"Some full circles, of a black colour, very smooth, two or three inches in diameter, are found in the cairns or burroughs. They are very light, and when fire is put to them they burn and give a good smell, and seem to be made of odoriferous gums."[352] Mr. Ure appears to have tried the same costly experiment, and remarks as its result, that they burn with a clear flame. There formerly existed in the district of Logie, Forfarshire, a remarkable group of tumuli, called the Three Laws of Logie; which agricultural operations have since nearly obliterated. On opening one of these, it proved to contain four human skeletons, near to which was one of the above relics, described "as a beautiful ring, supposed to be of ebony, as black as jet, of a fine polish, and in perfect preservation. It is of a circular form, flat in the inside, and rounded without. Its circumference is about twelve inches, and its diameter four inches."[353] A large cairn, in the parish of East Kilbride, bore the name of Queen Mary's Mount, from the tradition that the unhappy Queen witnessed from its summit the Battle of Langside, and beheld the sceptre of a kingdom pass for ever from her grasp. But such touching historical associations could not suffice to rescue the venerable memorial from the hands of the destroyer. For years it supplied the whole neighbouring districts with materials for building stone fences, until some workmen employed in removing the remaining stones, in 1792, discovered a chamber containing about twenty-five urns full of earth and human bones. These urns, some of which have been engraved in Ure's History, were of the most primitive shape and character, "rudely formed, seemingly with no other instrument than the hand, and so soft as easily to be scratched with the nail. They were of different sizes, mostly about twelve inches deep, and six wide at the mouth. None of them were destitute of ornaments; but these were extremely rude, and seem to have been done in a hurry, with a sharp-pointed instrument. They were all placed with their mouths undermost upon flat stones; and a piece of white quartz was found in the centre of the mouth of each, larger and smaller, in proportion to the dimensions of the several urns."[354] A cist of about four feet square was placed exactly in the centre of the cairn, near to which was a bronze fibula of extremely rude form; another, still simpler in design, was found in one of the urns, and a bronze comb, equally characteristic of primitive arts, in a second; while alongside of them lay one of the rings of bituminous shale. The bronze relics are all engraved by Ure, so that a tolerably perfect idea can be formed of their design and workmanship. He pronounces them, according to the fashion of his time, to be Roman, but they bear no resemblance to the rudest specimens of Anglo-Roman art. Similar ornaments of shale have been discovered both in the Northern and Western Isles, furthest removed from Roman arts and influence. One example, which is here engraved one half the natural size, was found in the Isle of Skye, and presented to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries in 1782. It is supposed to be designed for the clasp of a belt. Two rings of the same material, each measuring 3½ inches in diameter, were discovered about two years later on the same island, and added to the Scottish Museum. Another, four inches in diameter, flat on the inside, and rounded without, as is most frequently the case, was obtained from a tumulus in the parish of Logie, Forfarshire, along with an urn full of ashes, and the remains of four skeletons.[355] In 1832, some labourers levelling a sandy field at Dubbs, in the parish of Stevenston, Ayrshire, came upon a paved area five feet under the surface, measuring six yards long and two broad. Across the one end lay a stone of about a ton weight, and at the other there was found a stone cist, measuring three feet in length by two in breadth. Within it were two urns, one of gray and the other of black pottery, both apparently filled only with earth, and beside them lay five studs or buttons of different sizes, formed of highly polished jet. The urns were broken, but the studs were preserved by the late Colonel Hamilton. They are convex on the one side, and concave on the other, with knobs left in the latter, seemingly for attaching them to the dress. The largest is more than an inch in diameter.[356] Two other rings of polished shale, similar to those already described, were discovered in 1786, lying beside a skeleton, on removing a large flat stone within the area of one of those circular towers in Caithness, commonly termed burghs, or Pictish Forts. Beside them lay a bone pin, and two fine oval brooches, (the Skaalformet Spande of Danish antiquaries,) such as have been frequently discovered in the Northern and Western Isles, and are now generally ascribed to the era of the Vikings.

Such examples, it is obvious, might be greatly multiplied, but enough have been cited to enable us to trace the use of those ornaments from probably the earliest years of the Bronze Period to the close of the latest Pagan era. The rings, which form the most common articles manufactured of shale, have been usually considered as armlets, but it is very doubtful if such was their real use. Many of them, indeed, are too small to admit of the hand passing through them, and rings of similar size and form are discovered of various other materials. One in the Scottish Museum, apparently of glazed earthenware, and measuring nearly three inches in diameter, was found under a large cairn at Bogheads, Kintore parish, Aberdeenshire, in 1789, and beside it lay four oblong squared pieces of polished shale, the two largest two inches in length, the other two an inch and a half, and an inch broad. Between each pair were three oval beads of the same substance, nearly an inch long. They were described, when presented to the Society, as having been suspended from the ring; but it is more probable that they formed, as in other cases, a separate necklace. A number of cairns, some of them of very large dimensions, still remain on the extensive moor which occupies a considerable area in both the parishes of Kinellar and Kintore. Another ring in the same collection, formed of a white translucent stone, was found on the Flanders Moss, Perthshire; and a third made of hard dark wood, 3½ inches in diameter, and 1¾ inches broad, was discovered near a cairn on the north side of Hatlock, in Tweeddale, on first subjecting the neighbouring heath to the plough in 1784. It has been suggested that these rings formed part of the female head gear, through which the hair was drawn; and a sculptured female head, found at Bath, is referred to, on which an ornament somewhat resembling them is represented so applied.[357] The discovery of such rings alongside of female ornaments, such as the necklaces and pendants already described, seems to justify the classification of them among objects of mere personal adornment; and where found singly, their supposed use in the arrangement of the long locks of their owners furnishes a very feasible explanation of the purpose for which they were designed. Nevertheless, the frequency of their occurrence, under a great variety of circumstances, suggests the idea that these rings may possess a higher value as the records of long obsolete rites and customs, than pertains to the mere objects of personal adornment. They have been found accompanying female ornaments, and apparently with female remains; but they have also been discovered no less certainly in the sepulchres of warriors and chiefs, and under cairns which seem to mark the last resting-place of those who fell in the grim strife of war. We shall not perhaps greatly err, if we trace in these relics of such frequent occurrence something analogous to the sacramental ring of the Scandinavians, described in the Eyrbiggia-Saga, and referred to in a former chapter in illustration of the perforated stone at Stennis, in Orkney, and the vow of Odin of which it was the seal. Dr. Hibbert has already observed on this subject,—

An illustration of the mode of administering such an oath occurs in Viga Glum's Saga. In the midst of a wedding party Glum calls upon Thorarin, his accuser, to hear his oath, and taking in his hand a silver ring, which had been dipped in sacrificial blood, he cites two witnesses to testify to his oath on the ring, and his having appealed to the gods in his denial of the charge. These customs belong to a more recent era than that to which we refer the Scottish Bronze Period. But it is impossible to say to how remote an era we must look for their origin, or how long before the time of the Vikings, the Scandinavian and Celtic races, as well as their Allophylian precursors, had been familiar in their common cradle-land in the far east, with rites and usages from which the sacredness of this sacramental ring may have sprung.

Viewed in this light the frequent occurrence of such relics in the cist, or under the memorial cairn, may be pregnant with a far higher meaning than the mere ornamental fibula or amulet. When found with the spear and sword, the ring may indicate the grave of the warrior-priest or lawgiver,—a union of offices so consistent with society in a primitive state; while, in the female barrow, amid the bracelets and necklaces which once adorned the primitive British matron, the curious relic may, with no undue indulgence of fancy, be looked upon as the spousal pledge, and the literal wedding-ring. It seems, indeed, most probable, that the little golden ring with which, in these modern centuries, we wed, is none other than the symbolic memorial of the old sacramental ring which witnessed the vows of our rude island fathers, and was made the pledge of their plighted troth. This, however, is perhaps trespassing beyond the pale of legitimate induction into the seductive regions of fancy, where antiquaries have too frequently chosen to wander at their own sweet will.

In some degree akin to the personal ornaments of jet and shale are the large beads of glass or vitreous paste, and amber, so well known among the contents of British tumuli, and associated even in our own day, with the same superstitious virtues ascribed to them in the writings of the philosophic but credulous Pliny. The very same story, in fact, is told of the Adder-stane in the popular legends of the Scottish Lowlands as Pliny records of the origin of the Ovum Anguinum. The various names by which these relics are designated all point to their estimation as amulets or superstitious charms, and the fact of their occurrence, most frequently singly, in the sepulchral cist or urn, seems to prove that it was as such, and not merely as personal ornaments, that they were deposited along with the ashes of the dead. They are variously known as Adder Beads, Serpent Stones, Druidical Beads, and among the Welsh and Irish by the synonymous terms of Gleini na Droedh, and Glaine nan Druidhe, signifying the Magician's or Druid's glass. Many of them are exceedingly beautiful, and are characterized by considerable ingenuity in the variations of style. Among those in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries there is one of red glass, spotted with white; another of dark brown glass, streaked with yellow; others of pale green and blue glass, plain and ribbed; and two of curiously figured patterns, wrought with various colours interwoven on their surface. The specimens engraved here are selected from these. Among a curious collection of antiquities discovered in a barrow on Barnham Downs, and exhibited by Lord Landesborough at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, March 7, 1850, there was a large glass bead, which had been broken and ingeniously repaired with a hoop of bronze,—a significant indication of the great value attached to it.

Beads of amber, stone, clay, and porcelain, as well as of horn and bone, are all more or less common among the early sepulchral deposits, and may be regarded with little hesitation as of native workmanship. Amber, though not indigenous to this country, is of sufficiently frequent occurrence to abundantly account for its use in the manufacture of personal ornaments, without assuming its importation from the Baltic, where it most largely abounds. Both Boece[359] and Camden notice the finding of pieces of extraordinary size at Buchanness, on the coast of Aberdeenshire. The clergyman of the parish of Peterhead, in the same county, in drawing up an account of his parish for Sir John Sinclair, mentions having in his possession "a pretty large piece of amber," recently found on the sea-beach near the manse; and in 1783, Mr. George Paton presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland two pieces found on the sea-shore in the Frith of Forth, near Queensferry. The fact, indeed, of amber being obtained in the greatest quantities on the southern coasts of the Baltic Sea, is abundantly sufficient to account for its also frequently occurring in smaller quantities on the east coast of Scotland. It appears accordingly to have formed one of the most favourite articles for adorning and setting brooches, hair-pins, and other personal ornaments, from the earliest practice of the jeweller's art, until our native tastes and customs were merged, by increasing intercourse with other nations, into the common characteristics of later medieval art.

The source from whence the "Adder Beads" were derived is more difficult of solution. The most probable means of accounting for their introduction to Britain is by the Phœnicians, or by traders in direct communication with that people, whose early skill in the manufacture of glass is familiar to us, and to whom we in all probability owe the initiative suggestions and examples which originated the most important improvements characteristic of the period now under consideration. Still it must be borne in remembrance, that after all we know extremely little, and almost nothing precise or definite, concerning Phœnician intercourse with Britain. Druids, Picts, and Danes have all been very convenient names which have too often saved Scottish antiquaries, and indeed English antiquaries also, the trouble of reasoning, and helped to conceal the fact, from themselves as well as others, that they really knew nothing about the questions they undertook to discuss. If we merely substitute for these the name of the Phœnicians little indeed will be gained by the exchange.

Sir William Hamilton has undertaken to prove the Italian workmanship of the glass beads found in Britain, on the very slender evidence of the discovery of one at Naples similar to British examples. They have undoubtedly been found both in England and Scotland accompanied with Roman relics, though much more frequently in native sepulchres apparently long prior to the Anglo-Roman era. Ure describes and engraves one of ribbed blue glass—bearing considerable resemblance to another in the Scottish Museum from the Isle of Skye—which was discovered in a large inclosed tumulus in Rutherglen parish, Lanarkshire, along with what appear to have been two Roman patellæ.[360] But the same relics have been found along the coasts of the Baltic and the Mediterranean; they abound equally in Ireland and the north of Scotland, where the Romans rarely or never were, and in England and Gaul, which they so long occupied and colonized. They have been obtained also not unfrequently in Egyptian catacombs accompanying relics long prior to the Roman era. Raspe, in his introduction to Tassie's Gems, refers to the so-called Druid's beads as belonging to the same class as the "rich coloured glass and enamels found amongst the Egyptian antiquities;" and Colonel Howard Vyse mentions them among the numerous relics found in exploring "Campbell's Tomb" at Gizeh, which appears to have been constructed during the reign of Psammetichus II., about B.C. 600. But indeed the most conclusive and altogether incontrovertible evidence of the remote antiquity to which these singular and widely-diffused relics belong, is to be found in the fact, that their origin and virtues were the subjects of the same superstitious fables in the age of Pliny, as in the British folk-lore of the eighteenth century. We shall not, I think, overstep the limits of fair induction in viewing these beads as affording another proof of the extensive, though probably indirect intercourse, by means of which the races of the north of Europe participated in the reflex of southern civilisation many centuries before we can trace any allusion to them in the world's elder literature; unless where the fond Briton seeks to include his sea-girt home amid "the isles of the Gentiles" of the Hebrew Scriptures, or dimly discerns them in the Cassiterides of Herodotus. It should be noted, in connexion with this subject, that other glass relics have occasionally been found among the contents of British tumuli, though much too rarely to afford any countenance to the idea of a primitive native manufacture of glass. One imperfect example in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, found in a cist in the island of Westray, Orkney, apparently deposited on the breast of the deceased, is described by its donor as "the only specimen hitherto discovered of glass contained in these cemeteries." It appears to have been a cup, not improbably of Roman manufacture, the bottom of which is marked with concentric circles in relief. The extreme rarity of such articles probably characterizes this as another example of the ungrudging generosity of affectionate reverence for the deceased, no less marked than the more valued sepulchral deposits of the precious metals.

Of the beautiful gold and silver relics exposed from time to time on the opening of Scottish sepulchral tumuli, or brought to light in the course of agricultural operations, only the most trifling moiety has escaped the clutches of ignorant cupidity. But even the few existing specimens are sufficient to excite the deepest sorrow that such works of early native art, frequently characterized by a style altogether unique, and exceedingly beautiful in design and ornament, should be discovered only to be destroyed. Some idea of the great variety of Scottish gold relics may be formed even from the few examples preserved or minutely described; but a much greater number might be noted which are known to have been destroyed, without any opportunity having been afforded even of accurately observing their form, or learning of the circumstances under which they were discovered. The plain gold armillæ from Banffshire, already referred to, and engraved along with the urn in which they lay, in the Archæologia Scotica,[361] furnish sufficiently rude specimens of primitive personal ornaments. Though it can hardly admit of a doubt that they have been designed as armillæ or bracelets, yet the difference in weight, and even more in apparent bulk, sufficiently illustrates the inexperience of their maker. Their respective weights are—1 oz. 5 dwts. 14 grs., and 1 oz. 14 grs. But along with them were examples of one of the simplest yet most interesting class of gold relics discovered in the British Isles. These are described in the Archæologia Scotica as nose and ear-rings, but they are simply formed of bars of gold bent in a circular form, and the extremities left disunited. Two of them are ornamented with parallel grooves along the outer side, but they are of unequal sizes, and in no degree differ from the numerous class of penannular relics now designated by most antiquaries as "ring-money"; though the idea of their use as nose-rings had been formerly advanced by Colonel Vallancey,[362] and has been more than once revived.[363] In a valuable article by Mr. Albert Way, on the ornaments of gold discovered in the British Islands, examples of British ring-money are engraved, including the simple penannular ornament, the crescent, and beaded and torquated rings.[364] It is not necessary to enter at large on the disputed question of the use of these relics as currency. Many ingenious, and as I think satisfactory arguments, have been adduced in favour of their original purpose as a circulating medium; though this was in no degree incompatible with their use as personal ornaments. That such rings passed for money among the Egyptians is proved by representations of the weighing of gold and silver ring-money on their paintings; as, for example, in one of the grottos in the hill of Shek Abd el Qoorneh, which bears the cartouche of Amunoph II. inscribed on its walls. The same metallic currency is obviously alluded to in the incident of the Hebrew patriarchs on their first visit to Egypt: "Every man's money was in the mouth of his sack, our money in full weight." It was perhaps even better suited than a regular coinage for furnishing an acceptable substitute for barter among a comparatively rude people, and may therefore be assumed with considerable probability as one of the improvements resulting from intercourse with the Phœnician traders. Such a system of exchange will also suffice to account for one foreign source of the abundant supply of gold during this primitive era; thus introduced in a form well suited to the imperfect ideas of a people whose trade probably long retained more of the original character of barter than that of sale and purchase, and who would receive the gold rings only as so much metal. There is reason to believe, however, that both in Scotland and Ireland the ring-money continued in use long after Cunobeline and other British princes had sought to rival the Roman mintage. In the Irish annals there is frequent mention of gold rings of different sizes offered at the shrines of Icolmkill, St. Patrick, &c. The inferior metals appear also to have been current in this simple form. Rings of bronze, exactly corresponding to the gold "ring-money" have been found both in the ruins of Persepolis and of Carthage, as well as in Egypt. They are well known to Irish antiquaries, and are probably more common in Scotland than is generally supposed. The imperfect bronze rings already referred to among the contents of a cinerary urn dug up in the parish of Ratho, Mid-Lothian, are of this description; and similar relics are occasionally described among the contents of the weems or subterranean dwellings. In 1835 a large tumulus, near the summit of Carmylie Hill, Forfarshire, popularly known as the "Fairy Hillock," was invaded, and among a deposit of half-burnt bones and charcoal several penannular bronze rings were discovered, varying in size from about two inches to two-thirds of an inch in diameter. They are quite plain, as if they had been formed by simply cutting and bending into shape a rod of bronze wire. This ancient and primitive form of currency which we detect along with the first elements of British civilisation, has perhaps never ceased to be used in some parts of the African continent since that remote era when it sufficed for payment of the exactions of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Mr. Way remarks,—"I am indebted to the Duke of Northumberland for the opportunity of examining specimens of African gold money, especially interesting as having been made under his own inspection at Sennaar. His Grace favoured me with the following particulars:—He chanced to notice a blacksmith occupied in forming these rings; and inquiring as to their use, the man replied, that having no work in hand for his forge he was making money. The gold wire being very flexible was bent into rings without precise conformity in regard to weight, and was thus converted into money. It passed current by weight. The gold is so flexible that the rings are readily opened, to be linked into a chain for the convenience of keeping them together, and as readily detached when a payment was to be made."[365] Manillas, as they are now generally termed, are regularly manufactured at Birmingham for the African traders. They are made of copper, or of an alloy of copper and iron, and are sold at the rate of £105 per ton for copper, and £22 for iron rings. The copper ring weighs two and a half ounces, and passes current in Africa at a value equivalent to fourpence sterling. The Banffshire gold relics furnish examples both of plain and grooved ring-money. Of the former class one of about £2 value is described in the Old Statistical Account, found at Tiree, Argyleshire, in 1792.[366] Mr. Paton of Dunfermline possesses a gold torquated ring, obtained in that neighbourhood. Another, found in one of the weems or subterranean dwellings on the island of Shapinshay, Orkney, "composed, as it were, of three cords twisted or plaited together," is minutely described in the Statistical Account of the parish;[367] and in the London Numismatic Society's Museum, African gold relics, exactly corresponding to these, are preserved among the primitive types of coinage. Plated rings of similar form have also been occasionally discovered both in Scotland and Ireland, which it is more difficult to conceive of as a substitute for current coin, unless we assume the perverse ingenuity of the forger, usually ranked among the vices of modern civilisation, to be even as ancient as the era of British ring-money. One of these composite penannular relics, in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, was found in the Isle of Skye. It is of copper, covered with a thick plating of pure gold, and when perfect must have bid defiance to detection of its internal inferiority. It is thicker than the usual ring-money, so that the gold has been forced into folds or wrinkles on the inner side in bending it into shape.[368]