Archæological Essays, Vol. 1

A copy of this paper on Inchcolm having been sent to his friend Dr. Petrie of Dublin, author of the well-known essay on the "Early Ecclesiastical Architecture and Round Towers of Ireland," it was returned after a time, enriched with many notes and illustrations. In now reprinting the paper these have been added, and are distinguished from the author's notes by having the letter P annexed to them. The subject of the Inchcolm oratory was one about which this great man felt much interest, and on which he could speak from the abundance of his knowledge and experience. The notes are therefore of special value, as furnishing the latest views of the author on mooted points of Celtic Ecclesiology, while they are conspicuous for the modesty and candour which were combined with Dr. Petrie's vast learning on the subject.

Thus, in his work on the Round Towers, Dr. Petrie assigned "about the year 1020" as the date of the round tower of Brechin, but in one of the notes he corrects himself, and explains the origin of his mistake:--"The recollection of the error which I made, by a carelessness not in such matters usual with me, in assigning this date 1020, instead of between the years 971 and 994, as I ought to have done, has long given me annoyance, and a lesson never to trust to memory in dates; for it was thus I fell into the mistake. I had the year 1020 on my mind, which is the year assigned by Pinkerton for the writing of the Chron. Pictorum, and, without stopping to remember or to refer, I took it for granted that it was the year of Kenneth's death, or rather of his gift."

In writing of the Early Churches or Oratories of Ireland, Dr. Petrie stated in his Essay--"they had a single doorway always placed in the centre of the west wall." In one of his notes, now printed, he thus qualifies the statement:--"I should perhaps have written almost always. The very few exceptions did not at the moment occur to me." Again, Sir James Simpson having quoted a passage from Dr. Petrie's work, in which the writer ascribes the old small stone-roofed church at Killaloe to the seventh century, Dr. Petrie, in his relative note, adds--"but now considers as of the tenth, or perhaps eleventh."

To the paper on "Leprosy and Leper Hospitals in Scotland and England" is now added a series of additional "Historical Notices," prepared by Dr. Joseph Robertson, with the accuracy and research for which, as is well known, my early friend was conspicuous.

The origin of the tract on "Medical Officers in the Roman Army" is explained in the following note, prefixed to the first edition:--"A few years ago my late colleague, Sir George Ballingall, asked me--'Was the Roman Army provided with Medical Officers?' He was interested in the subject as Professor of Military Surgery, and told me that he had made, quite unsuccessfully, inquiries on the matter in various quarters, and at various persons. I drew up for him a few remarks, which were privately printed and circulated among his class at the time. The present essay consists of an extension of these remarks."

The essay on the monument called "THE CATSTANE" suggested an explanation, which naturally elicited divergent criticisms. Some of these appear to have occasionally engaged Sir James Simpson's attention; and from some unfinished notes among his papers, it seems plain that he meant to notice them in an additional communication to the Society of Antiquaries.

In these notes, after recapitulating at the outset the facts adduced in his first paper, Sir James proceeds:--"These points of evidence, I ventured to conclude, '_tend at least to render it probable_' that the Catstane is a monument to Vetta, the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa. But I did not consider the question as a settled question. I began and ended my paper by discussing this early Saxon origin of the monument as problematical and probable, but not fixed. At the same time, I may perhaps take the liberty of remarking, that both in archaeology and history we look upon some questions as sufficiently fixed and settled, regarding which we have less inferential and direct proof than we have respecting this solution of the enigma respecting the Catstane. The idea, however, that it was possible for a monument to a historic Saxon leader to be found in Scotland of a date antecedent to the advent of Hengist and Horsa to the shores of Kent, was a notion so repugnant to many minds, that, very naturally, various arguments have been adduced against it, while some high authorities have declared in favour of it. In this communication I propose to notice briefly some of the leading arguments that have been latterly brought forward both against and for the belief that the Catstane commemorates the ancestor of the Saxon conquerors of Kent.

"1. One anonymous writer has maintained, that if the Catstane was a monument to the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, the inscription upon it should not have read 'In hoc tumulo jacet Vetta f(ilius) Victi,' but, on the contrary, 'Victus filius Vettae.' In other words, he holds that the inscription reverses the order of paternity as given by Bede, Nennius, etc.[1] But all this is simply and altogether a mistake on the part of the writer. All the ancient genealogies describe Hengist and Horsa as the sons of Victgils, Victgils as the son of Vetta, and Vetta as the son of Victus. The Catstane inscriptions give Vetta and Victus in exactly the same order. When I pointed out to the writer the mistake into which he had, perhaps inadvertently, fallen, he turned round, and argued that in such names the vowels e and i were more trustworthy as permanent elements than the consonants c and t.[2] He argued, in other words, that Vecta as a proper name would not be found spelled with an i. If it were never so spelled with an i, that circumstance was no argument in favour of the strange error of criticism into which the writer had fallen; but the fact is, that in the famous chapter of Bede's history, in which the names Hengist and Horsa, and their genealogies, first occur, there is an instance given, showing that, contrary to the opinion of this writer, a proper name having, like Vetta, the letter e as a component, may change it to i. For Bede, in telling us that the men of Kent and of the Isle of Wight (Cantuarii et Victuarii) were sprung from the Jutes, spells the Isle of Wight (Vecta) with an e, and the inhabitants of it (Victuarii) with an i.

"The same writer states it as his opinion that the lettering in the Catstane inscription is not so old as I should wish to make it. 'It is,' says he, 'in our opinion, of later date even than Hengist himself, both in the formula of the inscription and in the character of the writing.' Perhaps the writer's opinion upon such a point is not worth alluding to, as it is maintained by no proof. But Edward Lhuyd--one of the very best judges in such questions in former days--stated the lettering to be of the fourth or fifth century, without having any hypothesis to support or subvert by this opinion. And the best palaeographer of our own times--Professor Westwood--is quite of the same idea as to the mere age of the inscription, as drawn from its palaeography and formula, an idea in which he is joined by an antiquary who has worked much with ancient lettering--viz. Professor Stephens of Copenhagen."

Although it is to be regretted that the contemplated remarks were not completed, it may be doubted if the question admitted of much further illustration; and, however unlikely the conclusion may be that the inscription on the Catstane, VETTA F[ILIUS] VICTI, is a contemporary commemoration of the grandfather of Hengist and Horsa, it may not be easy to suggest a solution of the question free from difficulties as puzzling. At all events the palaeographic features of the inscription seem plainly to associate it with a class of rude post-Roman monuments, of which we have a good many examples in different parts of the kingdom; and it may be remarked that Mr. Skene, who has made this period of our history a special study, after investigating, with his usual acumen, the evidence which exists to show that the Frisians had formed settlements in Scotland at a period anterior to that usually assigned for the arrival of the Saxons in England, has established the fact of the early settlement on our northern coasts of a people called by the general name of Saxons, but in reality an offshoot from the Frisians, whose principal seat was on the shores of the Firth of Forth, and on the whole thinks it not impossible that the Catstane may be the tomb of their first leader Vitta, son of Vecta, the traditionary grandfather of Hengist and Horsa.[3]

Besides the papers now printed, Sir James Simpson contributed many shorter essays and reviews of books to magazines and newspapers. He also prepared a memorandum, printed in the second volume of the "Sculptured Stones of Scotland," of a reading of the inscription on a sculptured cross at St. Vigeans in Forfarshire.[4] At the time of the final adjustment of this paper Sir James was an invalid, and confined to his bed, and I well remember the extreme, almost fastidious, care bestowed by him on the proof-sheet, in the course of my frequent visits to his bedroom.

It sometimes happened also that a subject originally treated in a paper by Sir James Simpson required a volume to exhaust it. Thus, in the spring of 1864, he read to a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland a "Notice of the Sculpturing of Cups and Concentric Rings on Stones and Rocks in various parts of Scotland;" but materials afterwards so grew on his hands that his original Notice came to be expanded into a volume of nearly 200 pages, with 36 illustrative plates. His treatment of this curious subject furnishes a model for such investigations.[5]

Setting out with a description of the principal types of the sculptures, he investigates the chief deviations which occur. He next classifies the various monuments on which the sculptures have been observed, as standing-stones, cromlechs, stones in chambered tumuli, and stones in sepulchral cists. Another chapter describes their occurrence on stones connected with archaic habitations, as weems, fortified buildings, in and near ancient towns and camps, and on isolated rocks and stones. After a description of analogous sculptures in other countries, there is a concluding chapter of general inferences founded on the facts accumulated in the previous part of the volume.

On the occasion of a rapid journey to Liverpool, Sir James Simpson visited a stone circle at Calder, near that city, and detected the true character of the sculptures on the stones, a very imperfect note of which I had recently brought under his notice. An account of this monument, which he prepared for the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, is printed in the Transactions of that body for 1865, and the following passages are quoted from it:--"Many suggestions, I may observe, have been offered in regard to the intent and import of such lapidary cup and ring cuttings as exist on the Calder Stones; but none of the theories proposed solve, as it seems to me, the hieroglyphic mystery in which these sculpturings are still involved. They are old enigmatical 'handwritings on the wall,' which no modern reader has yet deciphered. In our present state of knowledge with regard to them, let us be content with merely collecting and recording the facts in regard to their appearances, relations, localities, etc.; for all early theorising will, in all probability, end only in error. It is surely better frankly to own that we know not what these markings mean (and possibly may never know it), rather than wander off into that vague mystification and conjecture which in former days often brought discredit on the whole study of archaeology.