Chapter XXII: Section V: The Bronze Age (2)

¹ _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume IX., page 396, _et seq._, Volume X. page 70; Volume
XI., page 298; Volume XII., page 13; Volume XXIII., pages
371‒373. Mr. Macdonald, of “The Farm,” Huntly, conducted
his investigations on the remains of the fort on the hill of
Noath at the instance of the Huntly Field Club; and it may
be said, with truth, that these local clubs fill a useful
place, and sometimes make important additions to prehistoric
facts and natural science collections. Mr. Macdonald’s
paper, giving an interesting account of his examination of
the walls of the fort on the Hill of Noath, has just been
published in a volume, along with other local historic
matter of great value.

Examples of partially vitrified forts occur on Craig Phadrig, a conical hill near Inverness; one at Dunnideer, in the parish of Insch, Aberdeenshire; another at Finhaven, near Aberlemno, in Forfarshire; one on the Hill of Barry, Perthshire; several in Galloway, and in other quarters of the country. But they are not peculiar to Scotland, though this has sometimes been asserted. A considerable number have been observed in France, and also in Bohemia.¹

¹ _Ibid._, Volume III., pages 451‒453; Volume VII., page 301;
Volume VIII., pages 145‒155; Volume IX., pages 397, 398;
_Sculptured Stones of Scotland_, Volume I., pages 451, 453;
_Mémoires de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France_,
Volume XXXIII., page 83, _et seq._

The Hill Fort of Dunsimane caps a conical hill, 800 feet in height, and it presents some peculiarities which have not been found in connection with any other of this class of structures. The hill on which it lies is detached from the surrounding hills by valleys, and it commands a wide prospect of the country on the south, the Sidlaw Hills, the Carse of Gowrie, the estuary of the Tay, St. Andrews, and the hills of Fife; and to the north the plain of Strathmore is seen stretching out, till terminated by the range of the Grampians. This fort had several walls originally, but the remaining rampart is mostly composed of earth, intermingled with large stones, and some parts of it is twenty feet wide at the base, and from six to eight feet in height. Some fragments of the rampart are vitrified. The enclosed space measures 150 yards in length by 70 in width. In its south-east side, two underground chambers were discovered, twenty feet in length, and from six to eight feet in width, and about six feet in height. These chambers communicated with each other, near their ends, by two narrow passages, and the floors were paved with undressed slabs. The walls of the chambers were built of undressed stones, which at the height of three feet began to converge until the roof was closed by flagstones. The floors were covered with ashes and refuse, consisting mostly of the bones of horses, and cattle, and deer horns. A quern was found in one of the passages; and in another, portions of three human skeletons.¹ So far as known, this is the only Scottish hill-fort associated with underground chambers――a peculiarity which seems to indicate that it may belong to the Stone Age.

¹ _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume II., pages 95‒97; Volume IX., pages 378‒380;
Anderson’s _The Iron Age_, page 281.

Having noticed the defensive works which the prehistoric people deemed it necessary to construct for their self-preservation and protection; and, although we have no direct evidence touching the character of their common dwellings, we know that they possessed herds of cattle, and that they made provision for the safety of their flocks in times of danger and of war. In their every-day life in times of peace, we may imagine them tending their flocks in the valleys and on the hill sides; and making in summer what preparation they could to provide a store of food for their cattle in winter. In all probability life with them was not nearly such a severe struggle as it is even with most of us at the present day; and if at times they had to endure privation, they had also times of real enjoyment and rejoicing. Let us again turn attention to the disposal of the dead, and the phenomena associated with it in the Bronze Age.

Interments in the Bronze Age are found under various external circumstances, and present many differences in their underground phenomena. Bronze Age burials have been discovered in cairns, in circular areas fenced off by standing stones, in natural knolls and gravelly hillocks; and urns and cists have often been found in places where no external signs of them appeared to the eye. A few examples of these several modes of burial, with their overground and underground appearances and associations, will now be presented.

At Collessie in Fife, a cairn consisting of a mass of stones and boulders, covering a space of one hundred and twenty feet in diameter, and rising in its centre to a height of fourteen feet, was excavated in ♦1876‒77. In its centre a cist formed of slabs was found on the natural surface of the ground. The inside of the cist was four feet six inches long, and three feet wide in the centre; and among the gravel in the bottom of it some portions of the unburnt bones of a human skeleton were found in a condition of extreme decay. In one of the ends of the cist, a clay urn was lying on its side. The urn was high and well formed of a fine paste which had been baked at an open fire; and though made without the aid of the wheel, it was nearly regular in its outline; and its ornamentation consisted of groups of parallel lines alternating with bands of zigzag and short lines. On a further examination of the subsoil underneath the cairn, two spots were discovered which indicated previous disturbance. These turned out to be deep pits; and after the loose gravel was thrown out, in the bottom of the pit fragments of an urn was found amongst ashes and charcoal. In the other pit at the depth of four feet there was a layer of burnt bones, about an inch in thickness, and spread over a space of from three to four square feet; and portions of a human skull and the vertebral column were recognised among the bones. A thin dagger blade of bronze, measuring six inches in length, was found in this pit; and thin dagger blades are a usual feature of Bronze Age interments.¹

♦ “1076‒77” replaced with “1876‒77”

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 3‒8.

The above may be taken as an example of a Bronze Age cairn burial; and I will proceed to other modes of interment. Although many casual discoveries of single urns have occurred, still it would require an exhaustive examination of each separate site to warrant the conclusion that the casually found urn interment is not one of a group. Where such investigations have been made, it has generally been found that the site of the casually discovered interment was a cemetery; thus indicating the use of the site as a family or tribal burying-ground over a long period.¹

¹ _Ibid._ page 28.

Such cemeteries have been discovered in many places throughout the kingdom. Recently at Lawpark, near St. Andrews, a cremation cemetery was discovered, in which twenty urns of a cinerary type were found, varying in size from ten to sixteen inches in height, and from eight to eleven inches in diameter; and two small bronze blades were found amongst the burnt bones. In 1845, when workmen were engaged trenching a rocky knoll in the parish of Creich, Fifeshire, they discovered twenty-one urns, of which fourteen were placed singly in a straight line about three feet apart. About six years ago, a cemetery was found in a gravelly knoll at Shanwell, in Kinross-shire, and among the burnt bones a fine specimen of a thin oval bronze blade was found. At Magdalen Bridge, between Musselburgh and Joppa, a cemetery was discovered in excavating a sandpit, which contained nine urns, and one thin bronze blade associated with them. In 1849, at Lesmurdie, Banffshire, in a sandy height five cists associated with small urns and chips of flint were found; these were unburnt interments. At Genock, in the parish of Straiton, Ayrshire, a cremation cemetery was found, and removed in levelling the ground for the foundation of a dwelling house; and about a dozen urns were there destroyed. In 1878, in making a branch railway, a group of interments were discovered at Dalmore, in Ross-shire, which consisted of ten interments in cists of flat stones set in gravel; and two of them contained bronze implements. Nine of these were burnt burials, but only one urn was found, a few beads, a flint knife, and other objects of stone and bone.¹

¹ _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume I., pages 205‒211; Volume VI., pages 217, 218,
276‒278, 388‒391, 394‒418; Volume VII., pages 24, 198,
401‒407, 475; Volume VIII., pages 166, 466; Volume IX.,
pages 158‒160, 268‒270; Volume X., pages 43, 739; Anderson’s
_Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 28‒51.

Stone circles were once exceedingly numerous in every quarter of Scotland, and though cultivation and other agencies have effaced many of them, still considerable numbers remain. Merely considered externally, these circles present a fine variety of forms and figures, and various degrees of constructive elaboration. Some of them have one ring of stones, others two or three; and while some groups are oval in form, others aim at the perfect circle. The stones which form these circles in all their variations are rough and undressed; excepting that on some of the stones traces of cup and ring cuttings have been observed. A large number of the smaller stone circles, as already indicated, have been supposed to be the foundations on which the huts of the early inhabitants were erected. But many of the areas within stone circles and standing stones, were the cities of the dead in the Bronze Age, and perhaps even later: as a series of careful excavations and recent investigation have shown that many of the stone circles were places of burial.

Many stone circles and single standing-stones still exist in the Island of Arran, though many have been removed to make way for agricultural improvements, and others have disappeared through various agencies. The late Dr. James Bryce, having obtained the permission of the Duke of Hamilton, made a series of careful excavations of a number of areas within stone circles in the Island of Arran. In 1860 he investigated six stone circles on Mauchrie Moor, in the townland of Tormore; and stone cists and interments were discovered in five of them, two urns, flint chips, twelve flint arrow-heads, a bronze pin, a skull, and other human remains. The urns were wide-mouthed, one seven-and-a-half inches high, and the other six-and-a-half inches, and their surface was ornamented in bands of oblique lines and impressed markings. This group of Arran interments is of much value as evidence of the purpose of the standing-stone circles.¹

¹ _Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
Volume IV., pages 499‒524.

Many years ago a series of very careful investigations were made by Mr. Charles E. Dalrymple, which have yielded invaluable materials for the elucidation of the original purpose of the standing-stone circles. A group of seven interments, within a circle of six upright pillar-stones, was disclosed by Mr. Dalrymple at Tuack, near Kintore, in Aberdeenshire. These were cremation burials, and associated with large urns of the bronze period type. At Crichie, in the same district, another group of interments was found within a circular area, marked off by a trench twenty feet wide; and within this trench there had been a circle of six standing-stones, and a seventh one in the centre, five of which had been removed for building purposes. In the centre of the circle, under the apparent surface of the ground, a cairn of stones was disclosed, fifteen feet in diameter; and a cist was found underneath the cairn which contained the remains of an unburnt human skeleton. Near one of the stones of the circle an urn was discovered, containing a cremation interment; and at the foot of another stone a deposit of incinerated bones was found, and near it another of a similar character. At the same spot a finely-made stone hammer-head was found. Several other interments were found in different parts of the area, one of which was in a small cist, and another in a well-formed urn. At Fullarton, also in the Kintore district, seven interments of incinerated human bones, associated with fragments of urns, and one unburnt interment, were found in a circle of twenty-eight feet in diameter; only three of the stones of the circle remained, two of which were fallen and broken. In other districts of Aberdeenshire deposits of human remains have been found in the areas of many stone circles, the most of which were cremation interments.¹

¹ The results of these investigations were briefly but ably
stated in Dr. Stuart’s two volumes of the _Sculptured Stones
of Scotland_, see Volume I., pages 19‒25, _et seq._; Volume
II., Appendix to Prefix, pages 22‒24; Leslie’s _Early Races
of Scotland_, Volume I., page 209.

In other quarters of the country similar results have been obtained in the areas of the stone circles, wherever thorough investigation has been made. And it appears, so far, that the same conclusion may be deduced with reference to another class of monumental stone-settings, consisting of groups of upright stones which are not arranged in a circular form. These are not nearly so common as the circular classes, and, so far as yet ascertained, their occurrence in Scotland is limited to the counties of Caithness and Sutherland; but there seems reason to believe that they also occur in Wales. The evidence, so far as it has yet gone, is distinct in indicating their sepulchral association.¹

¹ Anderson’s _Bronze and Stone Ages_, pages 125‒126. “From
these facts it appears that, while a certain uniformity in
the phenomena of the burials exists in smaller areas, there
is a wide diversity exhibited in more extended areas. As our
knowledge of the facts increases in its range and speciality,
as the nature of these variations is gradually ascertained,
and their limits defined with precision, the time will come
when their significance, with relation to the areas in which
they are manifested, may be determined. At present we are
unable to define, with any degree of accuracy, the limits
of the area over which stone circles are found, and equally
unable to say within what limits they are found to contain
burials assignable to the Ages of Bronze or Iron. But this
we are in a position to say, from existing evidence, that,
so far as they have yet been investigated in Scotland,
their nature and purpose has been clearly determined to be
sepulchral.” _Ibid._

Thus, by the recognition of the result of careful investigation, the stone circles of Scotland have been divested of much of their mystery, and the mass of quasi-historical relations which had so long shrouded them in a haze of misty notions.

It seems necessary to supplement the two preceding sections by a brief expository statement, and a summary of the results of our information about the people to the opening of the Christian Era. As to the length of the stone period in Scotland there is no very definite data, still we are not altogether in the dark concerning its probable duration:――1, Considering the length of time which it must have taken the people of the Stone Age to spread over Scotland after they had crossed the Tweed and the Cheviot Hills. 2, Then the evidence of a lengthened occupation implied in the great structural monuments which they erected in honour of the dead; and also the earth-houses which they built for their self-preservation and protection from the storm and frost of a northern climate. Further, it may be reasonably presumed that for a considerable length of time after they had spread over the country, they would have been fully engaged in providing the necessary means to preserve and sustain their own lives, and consequently could not have had leisure to construct elaborate monuments to the departed; for it is not when men are striving and struggling to the utmost to preserve their existence that they betake themselves to raise monuments to the dead. So it may be fairly assumed that the chambered cairns of Caithness, Argyle, Inverness-shire, and Orkney, were not erected until the people had attained a certain measure of comfort, organisation, and leisure. All this must have required a long period for its realisation, making due allowance for the natural conditions and the circumstances under which the people lived. 3, It has been indicated that probably the floor of a single chambered cairn served as the burial-ground of a family or tribe for several generations before the chamber was covered and the structure completed. Thus, when two or three chambered cairns occur near to each other, which is frequently the case, they may represent in that locality the successive interments of several centuries. 4, The evidence deducible from the traces of other remains――stone weapons and tools and the sites of their manufacture, and primitive boats discovered in positions which indicate that they were deposited in such spots at a far distant period. 5, The analogy of other Northern countries, such as Jutland and the Danish Islands, in which it has been shown on reasonable grounds that the Stone Age commenced 3000 years before the Christian era.

Taking into account these considerations and indications, it will appear highly probable that Scotland was inhabited at least 2,800 years before the Christian era, and that the southern parts of the island were inhabited several centuries earlier. Indeed, it is doubtful if this limited period will be sufficient to meet all the conditions and circumstances of the case, and it must be distinctly understood that I have advanced this statement as approximate only, and subject to revision on the attainment of more reliable data.

Touching the probable date of the introduction of the use of bronze weapons and implements into Scotland, it is impossible to speak with any approach to certainty. As already pointed out, there was no rapid introduction of metal weapons and tools; on the contrary, the change from the use of stone tools to those of bronze was a slow transitorial process, and in some districts of the country longer or shorter than in others. From such available indications as we have, it seems probable that bronze weapons and implements began to be introduced in the southern and south-western districts of Scotland between 1200 and 1000 B.C., and that at first they came from the south of the island, and from Ireland, and at a later stage they were manufactured within the country. The introduction of bronze in the southern region of the island has been placed at some 1200 or 1400 years B.C., and in Denmark about 1000 years B.C.¹ My view would give a duration of the bronze period in Scotland of eight or nine centuries, which at least is not too long when the distinctive and characteristic development of many of the bronze weapons and implements produced within the country is taken into account.

¹ Evans’ _Ancient Bronze Implements, etc., of Britain_, pages
473, 479; J. J. A. Worsaae’s _Pre-history of the North_,
page 205, _et seq._, 1886. Greenwell calculates that a
period of 700 years may be allowed during which bronze was
the metal used for making cutting tools and implements in
Britain.――_British Barrows._

It is probable that iron was known and used in the south of the island in the third or fourth century B.C., and in Scotland about the second or third century B.C. But no rapid change took place from the use of bronze to that of iron in the manufacture of weapons and tools, the transition was extremely slow and gradual. Indeed, comparatively little iron was produced in Britain till quite recent times. In all probability the first manufactured iron articles used in Scotland were imported, still there are some indications that the process of smelting iron was known in the country at a pretty early period.

Having thus briefly indicated the probable length of the period since Scotland has been continuously inhabited, and the stages which the people have passed through in prehistoric times, I will next attempt to indicate concisely the social state of the people and their religion, but this effort must be incomplete from the lack of available information and evidence.

It has already been incidentally mentioned that the Stone Age people, while alone in possession of the country, had attained a certain degree of social organisation. As they were of one race it is unlikely that there was much war amongst them. That they lived in families or tribes composed of a large number of individuals may be deduced from the monuments erected over their dead; and that the heads of tribes could command the service of a number of men to execute work is obvious. Whether they were polygamists or monogamists seems uncertain, but some writers have supposed that polyandry was practised amongst them. Whatever form of family relations prevailed among them, there can be no doubt that they were organised in pretty large communities. Besides possessing cattle and horses, it seems probable that they knew the use of some of the cereals, and had begun to sow small patches on the elevated grounds. The earliest indications of agriculture in this country occurs on some of the hilly ridges.

There seems to have been a strong element of animal worship associated with their religion. From the constant occurrence of animal remains in large quantities in the chambered cairns both in England and in Scotland, this appears to be a reasonable inference; as the slaughter of the animals at the funeral feasts merely for the purposes of eating and ceremonial does not sufficiently account for the way in which the animal remains are mingled with the human remains. It may be that some notions of a relationship between the spirits of animals and those of men existed in the minds of these people; if so, they may have reasoned thus:――Seeing that animals were exceedingly useful to man, and believing that animals had spirits or souls as well as men, the spirits of these animals might be assumed to be useful and agreeable companions for the spirits of the dead. These people simply looked at the death of an individual as the passing out of his spirit from the body, which spirit might wander about and return to the body or hover around its remains. Thus it appears that their religion would practically consist of a worship of ancestors associated with the spirits of animals. The occurrence of the remains of dogs in the chambered cairns seems to lend support to this view. That this religion, when it came into contact with that of the Celts, would leave some traces of such contact on the Celtic tribes of Scotland is more than probable.

Concerning the social state of the Bronze Age people, during which the Aryan Celts had completed their dominion over the earlier race, we have rather more reliable evidence. The Celtic tribes were monogamists in their family relations and domestic arrangements; but the sexual relations, the family customs, and organisations of the earlier race, seem to have influenced the social relations of the Celtic tribes in Scotland, more or less, for a long period. In the Bronze Period the people were living in a well organised condition, under the tribal forms of government. Owing to causes already indicated, historic conditions had arisen which had the effect of consolidating a number of the smaller units of families into one strong tribe, under a common head; and in this way the tribes had attained a considerable degree of social and political organisation. Thus within each large tribe there was a sort of federation which embraced a considerable number of the smaller tribal divisions, and such a tribe could act with decision and effect. But when it became necessary for a number of these large tribes to unite and act in concert for their mutual defence against a common enemy, they appear politically not to have been sufficiently advanced to take the full advantage of this means of united action when the day of peril and of battle came. Hence the Romans explicitly state that if the British tribes had been thoroughly united amongst themselves, the task of conquering them would have been much more difficult, if not impossible. As it was, it took the Romans, with all their combined resources and disciplined legions, forty years to fight their way from the Thames to the Firth of Forth.

Regarding their material resources, in relation to their social condition, the evidence is pretty ample. They possessed herds of domesticated animals, oxen, sheep, horses, and swine, and they cultivated grain to some extent. They manufactured some kind of woollen cloth, and made pottery. Their food consisted largely of the flesh of the domestic animals and of the milk thence derived, and to a less extent of fish, the products of grain, and wild animals. Their dress consisted partly of animals skins prepared for the purpose, and partly of the cloth above mentioned. That some at least of the people of the Bronze Period were occasionally magnificently attired, is amply proved from the numbers of massive gold ornaments, and armlets and necklaces, which have been found in every quarter of Scotland, and numerous ornaments of other materials, pins of various patterns and styles, ♦beads, and buttons. Thus far, the material and social condition of the people appears to have been well advanced, and it is quite conceivable that they may have lived in a state of comparative comfort and enjoyment.

♦ “beds” replaced with “beads”

As to the religion of the early Celtic tribes of prehistoric Scotland, no evidence of an organised priesthood has as yet been discovered. Little importance can be attached to Cæsar’s literary account of the Druids and the druidical worship, at least in their relation to the tribes of Scotland, for there is no evidence that such a class of religious teachers ever existed in any part of it. Our ground is thus at once cleared of a mass of apocryphal notions and doctrines which too long obtained currency. Such religion as the Celtic tribes actually had, differed but little from that of the other branches of the Aryan race, even from that of Rome herself, excepting that in our cold and cloudy region it was not so elaborate as at the centre of the civilised world.

Their religion was polytheistic, with a strong element of ancestor worship in it. Just as Cæsar himself was worshipped as a god in Rome, so in Scotland the Celts often worshipped the souls of their departed heroes. They sometimes worshipped many gods, which represented in more or less mythological forms the personified powers of nature; and one of the oldest and favourite epithets of the Deity in Gaelic is, “the King of the elements” of nature. They had some five or six great gods, and a number of minor ones.

The Celts had a vivid belief in the existence of the human soul after death. Ancestor worship was undoubtedly the mainspring of their creed. This was the leading characteristic of the religion of the Northern Aryan people long after it ceased to be entertained in Rome and Greece.¹ So intense and realistic was the Celts’ belief in the future existence of the human soul, that it was said money loans were sometimes granted on the understanding that they were to be repaid beyond the grave. This may be an exaggeration, still there is no doubt that the Celt’s realisation of a future life was from a very early period intensely firm, as it is to this day among the same race.

¹ “Cæsar, as supreme pontiff of Rome, declared, in his place
in the Senate, his utter disbelief in another life, and
the stern Cato but mildly replied that their ancestors, men
perhaps as wise as Cæsar, believed that the guilty after
death were sent to the noisome abodes full of horrors and
terrors. But the classical belief, even at its best――in
the poems of Homer――gives but a poor, shadowy, comfortless
existence to the spirits of the dead.... The ghost of
Achilles says to Ulysses: ‘Rather would I live on earth as a
poor man’s hireling than reign among all the dead.’ The gods
lived on the heights of Olympus, aloft in Heaven, and far
apart from the hated abode of the dead, which lay under the
earth and ocean. Mortals were all consigned to the grisly
realm of Pluto.... Among the Romans ancestor worship had
a stronger force than in Greece. Their feast of the dead
was duly celebrated in the later half of February, when
chaplets were laid on their tombs, and fruit, salt, and corn
soaked in wine, were the least costly offerings presented to
them. The deification of the Emperors was merely a farther
development of this ancestor worship.” _Celtic Mythology_,
by Alexander Macbain, M.A.

There were three Gaelic festivals of a distinctively characteristic kind:――1, Beltane, held on the first of May; 2, Lammas, on the first of August; 3, Samhnirm or “summerend,” in modern Scotch, Halloween. Originally they were all associated with fire and sun worship, sacred to the gods of fire, of light, and of earth. The great festival of Beltane on May-day was associated with rites relating to fire-worship, divination, and incantation.¹ The Lammas-day feast seems to have been connected with the rites of the sun-god; and the festival of Hallowe’en was sacred to the gods of fire, of fruits, and of death. Traces of survivals of this worship in a more or less disguised form may still be observed in Scotland, though every year they are becoming less frequent.

¹ In relation to the Beltane festival I have an experience of
my own to record. Forty-three years ago, when I was a boy in
the service of a large farmer in the Valley of the Deveron,
in Aberdeenshire, our master ordered my elder brother and
I to make a bonfire on the first of May. I asked my brother
what was the meaning of it. He smiled, and said “it was to
burn the witches.” At the same time we were ordered to cut
branches of rowan tree and to place pieces of it above every
door about the farm――“to keep out the witches.” This was
done every year in the first of May at the farm in question.
It is a good example of the survival of a rite, in the form
of an incantation, transmitted from the prehistoric period,
and the very festival of which I have spoken above.

Having touched on the social condition and the religion of the prehistoric peoples, in conclusion, I will recapitulate the leading points of the two preceding sections.

I. Opening with a detailed description of the indispensable weapons and tools of the Stone Age race, it was shown that these people manifested remarkable skill, taste, and industry in the manufacture of their weapons and implements. In some points of the manufacture of flint tools and weapons they attained to a degree of skill and perfection in the art which modern science cannot surpass with all its resources and appliances. This side of their culture presents a striking illustration of the great result which persistent human efforts can produce, even with the most imperfect means.

1, Coming to the remarkable series of chambered and horned cairns of the Stone Age, it was remarked that in the phenomena and remains disclosed in these cairns, we reached the representative of primeval man in Scotland. After presenting a concise account of the external and internal structure of the cairns, and of the deposits contained within their chambers, I then touched on the resemblances of the chambered cairns of Caithness and the Long Barrows of England, as indicating that one homogeneous race inhabited the whole island. Other groups of chambered cairns were described. Reference was then made to certain inferences drawn from the state of the human remains found in these cairns, such as that this race were addicted to cannibalism and other horrible practices; but it was shown that the evidence on which it had been attempted to prove the prevalence of these practices was totally inconclusive. Explanation of a novel character was then advanced, to account for the condition in which the remains were found in the cairns.

2, The question of whether any trace of the dwellings of the Stone Age people now existed in Scotland was discussed. It was shown that in all probability the earth-houses were originated and a number of them constructed by the Stone Age people. A description of these curious structures followed; and it was pointed out that they had probably been associated with overground huts. After noticing the primitive boats, it was observed that the monuments of the Stone Age had long survived the wreck of many empires.

II. The Bronze period was next treated. The question of the introduction of bronze was touched on, and the transitional stage from the use of stone weapons and implements to the use of those of bronze, was briefly handled.

3, A reference was made to some of the hoards of bronze weapons, tools, and articles found in Scotland. A description of the various bronze weapons, tools, and ornaments, including many gold ornaments, was presented; and in which it was indicated that many of these were manufactured in Scotland. The variety and numbers of the gold ornaments was specially noticed, and their significance as a feature of the period indicated.

4, A question was then raised touching the traces of the dwellings of the people in the Bronze period; and the sites of early settlements were indicated. The structures called crannogs were then treated; their probable origin and the period of their construction was discussed; a brief description of the method of their construction, and the articles discovered in them, was given. The several classes of hill-forts, designed like the crannogs for protection and security, were next dealt with; and their characteristics and peculiarities concisely described.

5, The burials of the Bronze period were handled, and the various modes of disposing of the dead noticed: such as cairn interments; stone cist interments; urn interments in collective groups; and the underground phenomena associated with them. Bronze Age burials within circular areas of standing stones were also treated; and it was observed that many of the stone circles were now divested of the mystery which had been so long ascribed to them.

6, Finally, a brief explanation of the social state and the religion of the prehistoric peoples was given. Reviewing the whole series of objects and subjects noticed in the preceding pages, we cannot fail to be struck by the manifestation which they present of the intelligence, the skill, the industry, and the determined and persistent efforts of these men of the Stone and Bronze periods. They have exhibited a degree of united action for common ends and mutual protection, a power of designing and a concentration of the faculties of mind steadily directed to the accomplishment of definite results, which is truly surprising. They had attained to a stage of culture and of civilisation which places them far in advance of what is often loosely termed the savage and barbarian stages of human society. And, once for all, let it be said in accordance with truth and reality, that our brave and heroic ancestors, who have struggled through so many centuries and difficulties to preserve intact their liberty and independence, were not mere barbarians at the date of the Roman Invasion.¹ Placed as they were in the last recess of liberty, they preserved it to succeeding generations.

¹ If the term barbarian means a want of humanity, then the
Romans themselves were as much barbarians as the Celtic
tribes of Britain, for witness what Cicero himself said: “It
is the greatest pleasure in life to see a brave enemy led
off to torture and to death.”