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"Do gluaisedar rompa go
daingen Mhac n' Uisneach acas go Loch n' Eitche an Albain."
"They went to the fort of the sons of Uisnach, which is at Loch
Etive in Alban."
Loudoun.—I
think I shall stand on the fort, and give you quite a lecture on the
subject. It may be dry, but it will serve for conversation
afterwards.
I have ventured to
adopt, or at least to hold provisionally, the opinion that the
vitrified fort of Dun Mac Uisneachan was inhabited in the early
centuries of our era. We need not be desirous to define particularly
the date to a century or two. Traditions and the dawnings of
history, like the fancies of childhood, are mixtures of the real and
the ideal, whilst time and place are not very distinctly bounded.
All fancies about
earthquakes, volcanoes, and lightning, go also from the site—fancies
which I would not mention had they not been entertained by men whose
opinions are to be respected on other subjects.
The hill on which is
the Fort is long in proportion to its breadth. The top is pretty
well defined, as the sides are almost everywhere either very steep
or actually precipitous. The length is from 250 to 300 yards,
according to the point of starting; its breadth at the most 5o. The
broader part is near the west, and looks on the Bay of Ardnamuic,
with a magnificent view around. This part is most fitted for
habitation, and has been most inhabited; it is also farther from the
side where the rise is more gradual and an attack easier. Here about
the highest part were the houses built, or at least the more
important, and here were the meals, as sufficient remains show. On
the north of this part are natural walls, One may say, as well as on
the south, and between these, well defended from the storms, the
principal dwellings were built. On the west there is a space of
nearly 40 yards before reaching the precipice that formed the
boundary on the shore. The central living place, was 30 yards broad
by about 45 long.
The debris was not
rich, except in bones of common animals; but here were found the
iron brooch which I shall show, also the mica and bronze wire. The
mound on the land side seemed to be natural, and only an accident
led me to doubt this. It was found to be the remains of a strong
wall regularly built, and defending the inner part of the fort even
after the rest of the enclosure, or top of the hill to the east,
might be taken. About 6 feet high of the debris still remains, but
it slopes down gradually, and is covered with grass. The inside was
not so high as the outside of the wall. There was an inner wall,
apparently more carefully built than the outer, and more fitted for
a house than a fort. This inner wall followed the slope of the
ground, and did not form rectangular apartments. The enclosure,
however, is not all dug up. There was an entrance to it from the
western court, as we may call it, through a narrow passage.
Vitrified walls are
found along the outer edge of the hill in most places, and on the
western part an inner wall runs along them, the breadth and space
between being about 9 feet. The vitrifaction is never carried
inside, where a more refined work was required. The vitrified wall
is not built on absolute precipices, but on those parts less
difficult to scale. The cross walls, even those defending the
central or high enclosure from the camp, are not vitrified.
At a point of the
northern wall there was dug up a piece of enamelled bronze, 13 inch
in diameter. It seems to have served as a cap or cover, as there is
a hollow on one side into which something may have fitted. On the
other are concentric circles, the hollows being filled with enamel,
and that of a red colour, whilst the centre piece is of a slight
yellow. It belongs to the class called champleve.. Ornaments
of concentric circles are by no means uncommon in the drawings of
Stockholm bronze objects by Professor Montelius of Stockholm, and
there are many in Mycenae, but the enamel points rather to Celtic
art, without determining the century. I should be glad to have some
indication of the origin. Concentric circles are ornaments on many
works of art; they are found on the ancient sculptures of this and
neighbouring countries, as well as on the remains in Schliemann's
Trojan Collection. Schliemann gives figures of them in his volume,
p. 137, and on plate xlvii., English edition, where also circles of
depressions are seen, although on a small scale, not unlike northern
cups and circles as on p. 235. The red oxide of copper gives the
colour to the circles on the ornament found here. The yellow central
piece is very like that used a good deal by the Japanese, and said
to contain silver. This centre piece is so small that I am unwilling
to destroy any for examination ; besides, it is entire, whilst the
enamel of the circles round it has come out to a large extent.
These points are made
out:-
(1.) The weaker parts
of the dun were walled, the outer wall, or part of wall, being
vitrified.
(2.) The wall of the
western part is double; the outer being vitrified, the inner built
in layers of flat stone, 9 feet being the distance from surface to
surface.
(3.) The interior
walls were built without mortar, whether they were cross walls or
formed a lining to the outer wall.
(4.) The eastern wall
of the inhabited part had been rebuilt in a ruder way, partly at
least, by using some of the waste of a vitrified but broken down
portion.
(5.) The occupation
was continued after the ruin of the chief structure, perhaps by
stragglers, or as poorer cottages now linger about ruins.
(6.) The occupants of
a vitrified fort were not necessarily the builders. This fort may
have been built for the Uisnachs, and as more than one of this kind
is connected with their name, this may possibly be a style which
they preferred, although they had other dwellings not vitrified.
(7.) Vitrified forts
are not common in Ireland, and the improbability of the Uisnachs
bringing the plan or custom over is great; indeed, we may say that
they certainly did not. It is probable that the forts were built for
them by the people of Alba, and that this was the fashionable mode
of building at the time for important persons. I am not inclined to
see anything mythical in the name when more than one is called after
Deirdre. The word myth is not a very definite one as used by
antiquarians, and often denotes merely a fact which has lost its
original clearness.
(8.) The vitrified
fort was introduced by men who quite understood the mode of putting
dry stones together in layers. A part, of the vitrified mass in situ
was overlying a built portion of a wall.
Here is a plan of the
surface, and a drawing from a photograph of the isolated hill
itself.
The surface is so
unequal that I cannot give a good idea of it without a number of
contour lines and such care in survey, that I do not think I can
give it that time or attention necessary, even if I were accustomed
to that class of work; probably enough will be shown on the Ordnance
Survey map, which is not yet published.
Vitrified walls take
us far back, but not necessarily beyond the early centuries of the
Christian era, since one existing near St. Brieuc, in Brittany, was
evidently built after the Romans had shown their skill there. To the
earliest possible date we have no clue further than this, that it
would appear as if it were when both iron and bronze were used. Of
the latest date we have a probable negative indication. Such forts
would cease to be built when the country was laid bare of wood, and
that certainly would be after the Roman occupation of the east of
Scotland; in the west the habit would last longer. It is probable
that they would cease in the east of Scotland before the west,
because new ideas came there to break up the life of the earlier
times; the habits in the west remained longer allied to those of
Ireland. The forts themselves were a fashion brought from the east
of Scotland to the west. The later influx of people from the west,
or Ireland, was accompanied by no such mode of building, although
previously the east, perhaps by way of the north, had inoculated the
Western Highlands with the habit, and slightly touched the opposite
coast of Ireland.
The vitrified forts
are the work of a rude people learning to emerge from the ruder
state indicated by building loose stone walls, if we may judge from
this of the Usnachs [I purposely spell the name a little differently
here, so that it may be seen that there are various methods.] When I
say the work of a rude people, men without much external
civilization are meant. I have continued to disconnect more and
more, as already said, the style of the dwelling and the character
of the inmate, except in some particulars, and one of these is that
there is often not energy enough to improve the dwelling even when
there is knowledge. We see also frequently that there is energy
enough to make an imposing house, and not character enough to live
up to it. However, the builders of vitrified forts have not shown
themselves far advanced in architecture. They had no mortar for the
flat stones; still the vitrified method was by no means the only one
known, since vitrified parts are found over the built portion. We do
not know how much of the fort under notice was covered with
dwellings, but the eastern part had many loose stones; these were
taken down and used for building the houses now standing below. The
most important portion of the fort was that on the highest point, BB
(see Plate I.) Nature had provided a hollow between rocks to the
north and south of this spot and partly to the west, whilst a thick
wall of loose stones was made to the east. A good deal of this wall
remains, and has been cut through. This had fallen partly down, and
was raised up by using the material around, some of it consisting of
vitrified masses which had broken down. It shows a second
occupation.
Near the middle of
this were apartments with loose stone walls about two feet thick.
The drawing scarcely tells how broken down they are, and how
difficult it is at times to follow them. Four, however, were fully
made out, each rectangular; they are not vitrified, but follow the
rule in all these cases—a rule I mentioned before—not to vitrify
internal walls. The stones chosen are flattish, and no mortar was
used. South of these chambers are broken down walls with vitrified
pieces lying irregularly as if some walls had early fallen; a less
careful class of men had made their habitations there for a time,
living roughly, and leaving abundant evidence of their food in the
bones of sheep, pigs, and cattle.
There is a long
passage from the western side of this enclosure shown at a a,
and various confused evidences of other buildings are also found.
The passage is very narrow, and leads out to a fine open space at A
looking out to the sea, well protected by precipitous sides and by
vitrified walls in most parts, probably at all parts originally.
We may imagine the
central rooms to have been the apartments of the chief. Near the
surface were found querns very rude, and on the north wall at b,
the bronze ornament which I have already described. At the
north-west was found part of an iron sword, at c.
A sloping road exists
up the so-called Queen's entrance (Bealach-na-Bhan-Righ). I suppose
the whole to have been surrounded with a vitrified wall, or one
extending along the edge of the less precipitous part. The outer
walls have to a large extent fallen down the hill.
G is a large
vitrified mass, not connected apparently with any building, and I
have supposed it therefore to have been a tower. It is midway
between the two elevations into which the summit is divided by a
natural depression, although it does not itself stand in the most
depressed part; in reality it stands on a prominent part, by no
means the highest, although the most central.
C is a varied green
slope, on the edge of which near the precipice is a well, concerning
which romantic stories have been told, which stories I was
unfortunately compelled to prove to be founded on fancies.
D is varied, and
gives a variety also of small knoll and dale with rock. At E there
are indications of enclosures less formal than at B, BB. At one spot
there seems to have been a stone circle. F is a steep green slope
before the precipitous part begins.
It will be seen that
the digging was not continued all round, but in places sufficiently
numerous, I believe.
Here are a few
photographs, taken from different points, in order to show the style
of building. The view is put by the side of the plan to show the
relation of the parts, but is not so exact as the photograph from
the same point.
After all, the best
general observations regarding these forts are found in the small
volume by the discoverer of the first, John Williams, Esq.,
Edinburgh, 1777, and in the letter of the celebrated chemist, Dr.
Joseph Black, then Professor in Edinburgh University. The difficulty
of cementation by heat I have never seen, and I believe it need not
be much considered. Where basalt is abundant, and where so many
mixtures of silica with bases are readily found and made, abundance
of fuel will do the rest.
So far my task has
been to illustrate one fort only. I believe this is the first time
that a regular dwelling has been found in a vitrified fort, or
vitrified walls over "dry stone" ones. Of course we can always
distort every kind of evidence and speak of previous occupation as
being wonderfully far back, and no man can give a reply; but I
certainly find no evidence of anything existing in this fort to
prove that it belongs to very remote antiquity. Every trifle that
has been found points to times that need not have preceded European
history, so far as the skill is concerned, and it is unscientific to
imagine an age that is not demanded by the evidence. It would be
equally unwise to feel certain that the objects and the walls are of
the same date, but, taking the whole evidence together, I rather
think that a similarity of date is most probable; and when I read of
Mr. Anderson's searchings in the Picts' towers, and of the
introduction of strong thick walls of stone built without mortar, I
naturally think of them as made by people accustomed to thick walls,
and, either by imported advice or skill, beginning a new system,
seeing that wood was failing, and the old reckless use of it for
vitrifying purposes was impossible. That, of course, is a
conjecture, and as such it must be left for the present. It is a
reason for the Pictish towers following closely on the vitrified.
Since I examined
these remains I have looked at those in Rome, and it has surprised
me much to find how much that great city in imperial times was built
of rubble. Great buildings that astonish us, baths of Caracalla,
palaces of the emperors, great arches high and wide, were of
concrete and broken masses, and the half spans still hang with the
mixture hardened into one stone, almost like natural conglomerate;
remains of former houses broken up, with remains of statues, and
pieces of bricks, stones, marble, or otherwise, are all smashed
together, and the older Rome forms the material for the newer. The
buildings, to the very centre of the walls, are a type of the empire
itself, where nations were crushed, annihilated, or converted into
Romans, to all external appearance, until the outer form broke down,
and the real material showed itself. We may thus make these walls a
good lesson for the ethnologist.
The vitrified walls,
like the Roman walls spoken of, are a kind of rubble work, and this
way of building has a dignity which seems not to have been
considered sufficiently. Now, in modern times, it is coming again
into use, and we seem to be learning, as the Romans learned, that it
is extremely expensive to build with quarry stone, or even with
burnt clay or bricks, and some of our largest engineering, works are
being done with rubble and cement, or concrete. Some may think the
use of rubble to have arisen from the primeval habit of making a
mound of earth as a protection, a habit common among the Zingari of
Hungary at the present day, and seen abundantly in the raths of
Ireland. These form walls of enclosure, as common, probably, as the
walls to our farmsteads and gardens, and, as a culminating point,
ending in the earthworks or walls of the latest fortifications. We
can see here the natural growth of ideas, and it needs no
communication among nations to cause ideas to grow when the
materials and the wants, as well as the machinery, are the same in
each to an obvious extent. To determine to what extent they are the
same is not easy, but we cannot doubt that the use of earthworks
would occur readily to many. The use of cement, however, implies
invention; the early Romans did not use it; it became common only
when the greatest amount of building was required ; we have not used
it until lately, when the demands upon us for building material had
put us in a position similar to that into which the Romans were
driven when building increased so rapidly under the emperors.
If people were
accustomed to build with loose stones, it would be a very natural
wish to make them keep together; and if ever a beacon fire raged
unusually and burned a part of the wall into one mass by melting,
the discovery would be made. Still it requires invention, or at
least good observation, to see the value of such an accident; and
who can say if some wise stranger did not first find it out and show
the example,—some wise man coming from the East, and who had
lingered with his tribe in Bohemia, where also a vitrified fort has
been found? or shall we account for that Bohemian fort by imagining
some soldiers from Caledonia sent by the Romans over the Rhine, and
driven farther than was agreeable to them, making use there of their
old habits learned at home?
I throw together a
number of ideas, but cannot give yet a full examination. I am more
inclined to attribute the influx from time to time of the new ideas
to the immigration of strangers, whether wanderers or conquerors,
than to invention. Marauding has always been a favourite pursuit,
and it comes before merchandising. Some one probably came and showed
that the Caterthun system of building with loose stones was a bad
one, and showed how to build firmly, as on the Tap-o-Noth, and the
invention seems to have spread from near that part. Had these new
men come as great conquerors, they would have brought many people,
and we should probably have had some indication of them; but if they
came as wanderers, either marauding or selling, there might be few.
I am more disposed to think of a few dropping in at a time when
there would be little to steal; besides, at a later time, we have
new ideas coming into the east of Scotland, and resulting in the
peculiar Scottish sculptures. It is too much to suppose all to have
originated on the spot. It was most natural for people from
Continental Europe to .come to the cast of Britain first, because of
the distance of the western coast, and even from the Mediterranean,
it was more natural for navigators who kept near to the land to find
Kent than Cornwall. It was probably not until after a long
familiarity with the seas that the inhabitants of the Iberian
peninsula found out that it was really shorter to go to Ireland than
to the north of Britain, and probably, almost certainly, this would
apply to Cornwall and \Vales. Ireland, in the time of Tacitus, was
apparently pretty well known, although that historian has not taken
much trouble to describe it.
It is to be remarked
that the decided advances in the north of Scotland came after the
time of Pytheas, who leaves us an idea of great desolation and
poverty; whereas in Tacitus we have iron chariots, which indicate
many great strides in civilisation. It is quite possible to believe
an immigration to have taken place abundantly in those very early
times without our historic knowledge being affected, but it could in
that case be of only two races, Celtic or Scandinavian, if language
is to he our only guide. Small numbers would account for new ideas
and habits without change of tongue.
I did at one time
imagine that considerable numbers might have come and brought the
face so peculiarly Scottish, which is seen in considerable
perfection in the north-cast, or rather from Aberdeenshire to
Ayrshire; but now I am more inclined to look at the great extent to
which that face is spread in Scotland, and especially to see it
prominently in the Pictish districts. It may be an ancient
Caledonian peculiarity; where obtained is another question.
There is, of course,
a certain amount of fancy in these discussions ; but there are a few
more reasons which I hope to be able to make clearer for some of the
opinions. New ideas and habits seem to have come in along with the
peculiar physiognomy which characterizes so much of Scotland that it
may be called the Scottish. If the features referred to are
Caledonian, they separate that tribe from the Irish Scot and the
Kymry very distinctly. I hope I may be excused for giving this in
such hurried sentences; it is a subject that deserves much more
minute treatment, but one must only feel the way.
Numerous photographs
are very much wanted to illustrate Scottish ethnography. Many
varieties of face are seen in our country villages, but there is one
which a photograph only can explain, more frequently found in
Scotland than elsewhere, and perhaps nowhere else distinctly. |
