MISCELLANEOUS ANTIQUITIES.
The numerous relics which illustrate the arts and manners of the
Medieval Period have already furnished English and foreign antiquaries
with copious materials for large and valuable treatises on single
selected departments, nor is the field of Scottish medieval art
greatly less productive. It is not, however, designed in this closing
chapter to do more than select a few characteristic examples of a very
miscellaneous character, which are worthy of a passing glance in a
treatise on Scottish Archæology, though they pertain to a branch of
the subject which can only be satisfactorily dealt with in detached
monographs. Of medieval personal ornaments it would be vain to attempt
the most cursory enumeration in a closing chapter; but their value as
elements of medieval history is altogether different from those of the
primitive periods heretofore referred to. Whatever exhibits to us the
artistic skill, the ingenuity, and the personal habits of a past age,
cannot be without interest to the historian; but we manifestly stand in
a very different position in relation to those accessories of history
when dealing with comparatively recent and literate ages.
[Illustration: Gold Ring, Flodden Field.]
One branch of medieval art--the fictile ware--naturally possesses
peculiar attraction to the Archæologist, as the offspring of the
primitive arts already minutely considered. So far as may be judged
of Scottish medieval pottery from the few examples preserved, it does
not greatly differ from contemporary English fictile ware. One curious
specimen found in 1833 at Perclewan, in the parish of Dalrymple,
Ayrshire, is described as "a pitcher of earthenware like that
represented in prints in the hand of the woman of Samaria, at the well
of Sychar."[702] It is glazed, as is most usual with medieval pottery,
of a greenish colour, and is curiously decorated on the front with the
face and hands of a man in relief. From the description it appears to
bear a close resemblance to a fictile vessel found at the bottom of an
old well, discovered under the foundation of houses in Cateaton Street,
City, London, taken down in 1841.[703]
Several fine specimens of medieval pottery were dug up a few years
since on the estate of Courthill, in the vicinity of Dalry, Ayrshire,
and are now in the possession of the proprietor, Andrew Crawford, Esq.
Nearly at the same time a remarkable antique sword was discovered at
Courthill. The blade, which was of iron, was so greatly corroded that
only a fragment of it could be removed; but the handle is of bronze, in
the form of a dragon, and is described as characterized by considerable
elegance.
[Illustration]
Fragments of pottery, of a similar character to the most abundant class
of early English medieval pottery, were dug up at a considerable depth,
during the progress of excavations on the Castlehill of Edinburgh in
1849, for constructing a large reservoir, but they were unfortunately
too much broken by the workmen to admit of any very definite idea
being formed of their shape. The annexed woodcut is from an example
in my own possession, which was dug up a few years since in the
ancient tumular cemetery in the neighbourhood of North-Berwick Abbey,
East-Lothian. It measures eleven and a quarter inches in height, and
about five and a half inches in greatest diameter, and is covered,
both externally and internally, with the usual greenish glaze, common
on contemporary English pottery. Various similar specimens appear to
have been discovered in the same locality, but in most cases only
to be destroyed,--such coarse earthenware being naturally regarded
as scarcely worth the trouble of removing. The example figured here
represents a small but very curious specimen of Scottish fictile
ware, in the collection at Penicuick House, of the precise age of
which we have tolerably accurate evidence. It was found on one of the
neighbouring farms in the year 1792, filled with coins of Alexander
III., and of Edward I. and II. of England. It measures only three and
three quarters inches in height; and is perforated at nearly uniform
intervals with holes, as shewn in the engraving. It is of rude unglazed
earthenware, and is unsymmetrical, as represented here.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Another class of relics found in considerable numbers at North-Berwick,
as well as in various other districts, are small tobacco pipes,
popularly known in Scotland by the names of _Celtic_ or _Elfin
pipes_, and in Ireland, where they are even more abundant, as _Dane's
pipes_. The woodcut represents one of those found at North-Berwick,
the size of the original. To what period these curious relics belong,
I am at a loss to determine. The popular names attached to them
manifestly point to an era long prior to that of Sir Walter Raleigh
and the Maiden Queen, or of the royal author of "A Counterblast to
Tobacco," and the objects along with which they have been discovered,
would also seem occasionally to lead to similar conclusions, in
which case we shall be forced to assume that the American weed was
only introduced as a superior substitute for older narcotics. Hemp
may in all probability have formed one of these. It is still largely
used in the East for this purpose; but Mr. C. K. Sharpe informs me
that even in his younger days it was common for the old wives of
Annandale to smoke a dried white moss gathered on the neighbouring
moors, which they declared to be much _sweeter_ than tobacco, and
to have been in use before the American weed was heard of. I leave
the subject, however, for further investigation, only adding one or
two examples of the circumstances under which these Elfin pipes have
been found. The ancient cemetery at North-Berwick is in the vicinity
of a small Romanesque building of the twelfth century, and close
upon the sea shore. Within the last fifty years the sea has made
great encroachments, carrying off a considerable ruin, and exposing
the skeletons of the old tenants of the cemetery, along with many
interesting relics of former generations, at almost every spring tide.
Notices of similar discoveries of the Elfin pipe occur in several of
the Scottish Statistical Accounts under various circumstances, but
some of them certainly suggestive of their belonging to a remote era:
_e.g._--
"Many of the ancient British encampments appear in the
parish [of Kirkmichael, Dumfriesshire.] Upon some of these
being opened ashes have been found, likewise several broken
querns or hand-mills, and in one of them, upon the farm of
Gilrig, with a partition crossing it, and which seems to have
been occupied during later times, there was dug out a sword
having a basket-hilt, but so much covered with rust that it
was impossible to form any accurate opinion respecting its
antiquity. There was also seen a number of pipes of burnt clay,
with heads somewhat smaller than that of the tobacco-pipe now
in use, swelled at the middle and straiter at the top."[704]
Again,
"Till lately, one of those remarkable monuments of antiquity,
called standing stones, stood at Cairney Mount, (parish of
Carluke, Lanarkshire,) but the hope of finding a hidden
treasure induced some rude hand to destroy it. It is supposed
to have stood at the side of a Roman road passing from Lanark
across the bridge of the Mouse beneath Cartland Crags....
A celt or stone hatchet; Elfin-bolts, (flint and bone
arrow-heads); Elfin pipes, (pipes with remarkably small bowls);
numerous coins of the Edwards, and of later date, have been
found in the neighbourhood."[705] An example is also noted of
the discovery of a tobacco pipe in sinking a pit for coal at
Misk, in Ayrshire, after digging through many feet of sand.[706]
Some of the Scottish and Irish Elfin pipes are even smaller than
the example figured above, and seem still better adapted for the
recreations of "the good people" to whom their origin is popularly
ascribed. Others are ornamented with patterns in relief, and many of
them, though not generally of the very smallest size, are stamped with
figures or devices. One example in the possession of Mr. C. K. Sharpe,
found at a depth of many feet on the Castlehill of Edinburgh, bears the
impress of the initials [Illustration: TB L]; and of upwards of seventy
specimens in the collection of Mr. Bell of Dungannon, some are stamped
R D, and on others are the letters G Λ, C L, [Illustration: o oHo], and
I P.
The annexed woodcut represents a still more curious relic, apparently
pertaining to the same class of objects, though greatly more primitive
in form and construction. It appears to be a tobacco pipe fashioned in
red sandstone in the form of an animal's head, and with the perforation
for inserting the straw or reed by which it must have been completed,
made obliquely through one of the eyes. It was found in digging a drain
at the village of Morningside, at the base of the Pentland Hills, where
numerous traces of primitive population have been brought to light, and
was presented to me by Dr. David Skae, Physician of the Royal Asylum
there. It is figured here about two-thirds the size of the original.
[Illustration]
In the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries there is a curious collection
of Irish "Danes' pipes," precisely similar in form to those found in
Scotland. A variety of examples of the same kind, found both in England
and Ireland, are also figured in the Dublin Penny Magazine,[707]
along with certain "clay pipe-stoppers, evidently appendages to pipes
with small bowls," but which those who can still remember the obsolete
fashions of the past generation have no difficulty in recognising as
the periwig curlers of much more recent times than the Danes, if not
the Elves! The conclusion arrived at by the writer in the Dublin Penny
Magazine is, that these Danes' pipes are neither more nor less than
tobacco pipes, the smallest of them pertaining to the earlier years of
Queen Elizabeth's reign, when the rarity and value of tobacco rendered
the most diminutive bowl sufficiently ample for the enjoyment of so
costly a luxury. From this he traces them down to the reign of Charles
II., by the increasing dimensions of the bowl. It is not improbable
that these conclusions may be correct, notwithstanding the apparent
indications of a much earlier origin, which circumstances attendant
on their occasional discovery have seemed to suggest. The following
description of a curious Scottish memorial of the luxury would,
however, seem at least to prove that we must trace the introduction
of tobacco into this country to a date much nearer the discovery of
the New World by Columbus than the era of Raleigh's colonization of
Virginia. The grim old Keep of Cawdor Castle, associated in defiance
of chronology with King Duncan and Macbeth, is augmented, like the
majority of such Scottish fortalices, by additions of the sixteenth
century. In one of the apartments of this later erection, is a stone
chimney, richly carved with armorial bearings and the grotesque devices
common on works of the period. Among these are a mermaid playing the
harp, a monkey blowing a horn, a cat playing a fiddle, and a fox
smoking a tobacco pipe. There can be no mistake as to the meaning of
the last lively representation, and on the same stone is the date
1510--the year in which the wing of the castle is ascertained to have
been built.[708]
[Illustration: Ancient Claymore.]
The arms and armour are no less characteristic of the medieval than
of earlier periods, and are not without minuter national details
well worthy of note. There was indeed from the very commencement of
the Scottish medieval period in the eleventh century, to the final
disarming of the Highland clans in 1746, two completely diverse
modes of warfare and military accoutrement prevailing in Scotland.
The old Celtic population, occupying for the most part the Highland
fastnesses, retained many of the usages of their forefathers under
partially modified forms, and even in the decoration of their weapons
and defensive armour preserved the ancient style, which is still
traceable on the Pictish monuments of Scotland. Many of the circular
Highland targets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries present
exactly the same interlaced knotwork as may be seen on bosses and
limbs of early crosses, and even on relics belonging to the last Pagan
era. A mere glance, however, at a few characteristic examples must
suffice here; and among these none is more noticeable than the old
claymore with reversed guard, which is sculptured on so many of the
ancient tombstones of Iona and of the Western Isles. In the portrait
of James I. of Scotland, which accompanies the old folio edition
of the Scots Acts, the king bears a weapon of this description. It
occurs, however, on tombs of a much earlier period, and is now very
rarely to be met with. One good small example is in the Museum of the
Scottish Antiquaries, and another larger and very fine specimen, the
handle of which is here engraved, is in the valuable collection of W.
B. Johnstone, Esq. The claymore is figured in the sculptures both of
Iona and Oronsay with a considerable variety of details. In some the
blade is highly ornamented, and the handle varies in form, but all
present the same characteristic, having the guards bent back towards
the blade. A curious variety of this peculiar form is seen in a fine
large two-handed sword preserved at Hawthornden, the celebrated castle
of the Drummonds, where the Scottish poet entertained Ben Jonson
during his visit to Scotland in 1619. It is traditionally affirmed to
have been the weapon of Robert the Bruce, though little importance
can be attached to a reputation which it shares with one-half the
large two-handed swords still preserved. The handle appears to be
made from the tusk of the narwhal, and it has four reverse-guards,
as shewn in the cut. The object aimed at by this form of guard
doubtless was to prevent the antagonist's sword from glancing off, and
inflicting a wound ere he recovered his weapon, and in the last example
especially it seems peculiarly well adapted for the purpose. Among the
curious collection of ancient weapons in the Museum of the Scottish
Antiquaries, is a sword the blade of which measures thirty-two and
a half inches long, and has a waved edge, returned a short way over
the back. It was discovered among the ruins of Bog-Hall Castle, near
Biggar, Lanarkshire; while the handle, which is made of the section
of a deer's horn, and is still more remarkable than the blade, was
found at a great depth in a morass, on the property of Sir Thomas G.
Carmichael, Bart., in Tweeddale.
[Illustration: Hawthornden Sword.]
[Illustration]
The later two-handed sword, though still so familiar to us, is perhaps
the most interesting in an archæological point of view, of all the
military relics pertaining to the Medieval Period. The huge, ponderous,
and unwieldy weapon, seems the fittest emblem that could be devised,
of the rude baron of the thirteenth century, who lived by "the good
old rule" of physical force, and whose hardy virtues--not unsuited
to an illiterate age--are strangely mistaken for the evidences of a
chivalry such as later ages have not seen. Calmly reasoning from this
characteristic heirloom, as we have done from those of remoter and
less known periods, we discern in it the evidence of just such hardy,
skilless, overbearing power, as history informs us was the character
of the medieval baron, before the rise of the burgher class readjusted
the social balance by the preponderance of rival interests. The weapon
figured here is a remarkably fine and unusually large specimen of the
old Scottish two-handed sword, now in the possession of George Seton,
Esq., representative of the Setons of Cariston. It measures forty-nine
inches in the blade, five feet nine inches in entire length, and weighs
seven and a half pounds. But the chief interest of this old relic
arises from the well-authenticated family traditions which associate it
with the memory of its first knightly owner, Sir Christopher Seton of
that Ilk, from whom some of the oldest scions of the Scottish Peerage
have been proud to trace their descent. He was married to Christina,
sister of King Robert the Bruce, whom he bravely defended at the battle
of Methven. He was shortly after taken prisoner by Edward I., and
basely hanged as a traitor. "So dear to King Robert was the memory of
this faithful friend and fellow-warrior, that he afterwards erected on
the spot where he was executed a little chapel, where mass was said
for his soul."[709] Besides this fine example of a Scottish two-handed
sword, may be mentioned that ascribed to Sir William Wallace, preserved
at Dumbarton Castle; that of Sir John Graham of Dundaff, (slain 1298,)
in the possession of the Duke of Montrose; another "Wallace sword" at
Kinfauns Castle; and other specimens at Talyskir, in the Isle of Rasay;
at Abbotsford; and in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries.
Among the most recent additions to the same collection is another
remarkable weapon, which possesses undoubted historical value, and may
be associated with more confidence with the great victory of Robert
the Bruce than most of the relics that bear his name. It consists
of the head of a battle-axe, of iron, coated with bronze, which is
figured here. It was discovered in draining the morass at Bannockburn
in 1785, and is considerably broken on the edge, evidently from its
use upon the mailed panoply of the gallant knights who fought in that
hard-stricken field. It measures eight and a quarter inches in length,
and four and three quarters in height, from the point to the insertion
of the haft.
[Illustration: Battle-Axe, Bannockburn.]
Numerous other remarkable specimens of ancient Scottish arms and
armour are preserved both in the Museum of the Scottish Antiquaries
and in other public and private collections; but a mere reference
to these without copious illustrations could be of little avail to
the antiquary. The Scottish Museum includes a variety of specimens
of the old quarrel-head, or Wallace Bolt, as it is generally termed;
ancient swords, lance and spear heads, cross-bows, daggers, dirks,
hunting knives, and the old Highland Lochaber-axe, with the more modern
fire-arms, and other military accoutrements, including the singularly
complicated purse-clasp, described by Sir Walter Scott as that of the
celebrated outlaw Rob Roy, with four pistols ingeniously concealed
in it for defence of the contents of the purse. Still more recent
relics preserve associations with the victors of Prestonpans and the
vanquished of Culloden Moor. But such objects belong perhaps fully more
to the poet than to the archæologist, and are too frequently employed
to add a fictitious interest to collections, the real use and value of
which have yet to be appreciated.
[Illustration: Lochaber Axes.]
[Illustration: Sculpture, Edinburgh Castle. Mons Meg.]
Some remarkable pieces of ancient artillery also figure in Scottish
history, one or two of which have escaped the perils of siege and
the waste of time, though the most of them live only in the quaint
records of Scottish chroniclers, like the famed Seven Sisters, cast
by Robert Borthwick, the master-gunner of James IV., which did their
last Scottish service on Flodden Field. A better fate has attended the
still more celebrated Mons Meg, whose unwieldy proportions probably
proved her safety, by inducing the impetuous king to leave her behind,
when he carried the flower of Scottish chivalry to that fatal field.
The ancient barrier gateway of Edinburgh Castle, built most probably
soon after the siege of 1572, was surmounted with a curious piece of
sculpture, occupying a long narrow panel, which is chiefly filled
with representations of artillery and munitions of war, and among
these Mons Meg plays a prominent part. The old-fashioned narrow
wheel carriages of the sixteenth century having given place to more
substantial modern artillery waggons, the highly ornamental but narrow
gateway was demolished in the beginning of the present century, and
one-half of its sculptured panel, figured here, now surmounts the
entrance to the Ordnance Office in the Castle. At the left side is
the famed Mons Meg--or, as she is designated in the list of ordnance
delivered to Monk, on the surrender of the Castle in 1650, "_The great
iron murderer, Muckle Meg_"--mounted, in all probability, on her "new
cradill, with xiii stane of irne graith," which, as we learn from
the Treasurer's accounts, was provided in 1497, not long after her
safe return from the siege of Dumbarton Castle. This remarkable piece
of ordnance is not cast like a modern cannon, but built of wrought
iron hoops and bars, or staves, and with a narrow fixed chamber in
the breach for containing the charge. It appears to be of enormous
strength; but after doing good service for upwards of two centuries,
both in peace and war, it burst on the 29th October 1680, when firing a
salute in honour of James, Duke of York, on his arrival in Edinburgh;
an occurrence which, as Fountainhall records, failed not to be regarded
as an evil omen. This mode of fashioning artillery with separate staves
and hoops is the oldest method of which we have any account, and was
probably universally employed on the first introduction of gunpowder
in constructing what our old Scottish poet designates, in the earliest
known allusion to field artillery, _crakys of war_. This curious
reference of the old metrical historian, Barbour, is to the first
expedition of Edward III. against the Scots in 1327, and consequently
may be accepted as fixing the precise date of the introduction of
artillery into Scotland:--
"Twa noweltyeis that dai thai saw,
That forouth in Scotland had been nane;
Tymmris for helmys were the tane,
That t'other crakys wer of war,
That thai before heard never er:
Of thai tua things thai had ferly
That nycht thai walkyt stalwartly."
Among the specimens of ancient pieces of ordnance in the Scottish
Museum is a curious pair of cannons, built in a similar manner to
Mons Meg, with hoops and staves of iron, bound with copper, measuring
each twenty-nine inches in length, and designed for mounting on one
stock. This double cannon was formerly stationed on the walls of Wemyss
Castle, Fifeshire, and is said to have belonged to the celebrated
Scottish admiral, Sir Andrew Wood of Largo. Double guns of the same
description, mounted on one carriage, are figured in the beautifully
illuminated MSS. of Froissart, believed to have been executed about
the beginning of the fifteenth century. They are also shewn on wheel
carriages among the Scottish artillery at the battle of Pinkie in a
very curious print belonging to the Bannatyne Club, entitled, "_The
Englishe victore agaynste the Schottes, by Muskelbroghe, 1547_."
Another piece of ancient artillery in the Scottish collection consists
of a still more complicated group of cannons of similar construction,
four being mounted on one carriage, and the whole united by an iron
rod at the breach. They are evidently designed to be fired at once,
so as to discharge a broadside on the enemy; and however tardy and
inconvenient the reloading of these pieces may have been, the first
broadside from a park of such artillery must have had no slight effect
on an advancing foe.
The second half of the curious sculptured memorial of ancient Scottish
artillery in Edinburgh, divorced from the group which includes Mons
Meg, on the demolition of the barrier gateway in 1800, lay long
neglected and buried in rubbish. It was at length rescued from
impending destruction, and safely lodged in the Museum of the Scottish
Antiquaries. It includes a singular group of ancient ordnance and
warlike appliances; chamber pieces or patereros, with chambers or
moveable breeches--frequently used separately for throwing small
shot; bombards, chiefly employed for throwing great stones; a curious
hexagonal cannon of large proportions, constructed, it may be presumed,
of separate bars; hand-cannons, or the earliest class of portable
fire-arms; with lintstocks, shot, barrels of powder, &c. Along with
these are also large guns of symmetrical form, which may be presumed to
represent brass cannon, as the art of casting cannon was introduced at
a much earlier period than the date suggested for the rebuilding of the
barrier gateway, though it is by no means improbable that the sculpture
may have belonged to a still older structure. Cannon are said to have
been cast even in the middle of the fourteenth century;[710] and a
brass cannon is still preserved at Toulouse, made in the year 1438.
One other class of relics, singularly characteristic of medieval
customs and civilisation, includes the instruments both of punishment
and of torture, of which Scotland may lay claim to the questionable
boast of having some peculiarly national examples. At a period when
criminal punishment avowedly assumed the character of retaliation and
revenge, and when torture was recognised as a legitimate means of
eliciting evidence, Scotland was not behind the other countries of
Europe in the full use of both. The execution at Edinburgh, in 1436, of
the murderers of James I., the poet king, and especially the horrible
scenes attending on the death of Sir Robert Graham and the Earl of
Athole,--crowned, in fearful mockery, with a red-hot iron diadem as
king of traitors,--sufficiently illustrate the ferocious spirit which
went hand in hand with medieval chivalry. One of the most curious
historical relics of this class is the Scottish Maiden, employed, so
far as we know, for the first time in the execution of some of the
inferior agents in the assassination of Rizzio. By this instrument
were beheaded the Regent Morton, Sir John Gordon of Haddo, President
Spottiswoode, the Marquis and Earl of Argyle, and many more of the
noblest and best blood in Scotland. The Earl of Argyle is reported
to have said, with a grave humour worthy of Sir Thomas More: it was
the sweetest maiden he had ever kissed. It now forms one of the most
remarkable national relics in the Scottish Museum, having, it may be
presumed, performed its last office as the instrument of death. It is
impossible to look without feelings of peculiar interest upon this
ancient Scottish guillotine, so directly associated with the great of
past ages; though the vindictive spirit which sought at times to give
an added ignominy to a violent death cheated it of the blood of the
gallant Kirkaldy, of Montrose and Warriston, as well as of others of
lesser note, who figure in the Scottish chronicles of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
[Illustration: The Scottish Maiden.]
The Boots and Thumbkins are two instruments of judicial torture,
especially associated in Scotland with the sufferings of the
Covenanters during the reign of Charles II. Neither of them, however,
were invented so recently. Torture, which the Roman law permitted
only to be used in compelling the evidence of slaves, bore no such
limitation in medieval Europe; and the name of _the Question_, commonly
applied to it, abundantly shews the direct purpose for which it was
employed. Examples of this barbarous mode of seeking to elicit the
truth are frequently to be met with in the earlier Acts of Sederunt
of the Court of Session: as in a case of suspected perjury, 29th June
1579, where the King's Advocate produces a royal warrant for examining
"Jhone Souttar, notar, dwelland in Dundee, and Robert Carmylie, vicar
of Ruthwenis, witnes in the action of improbatioun of ane reversioun
of the lands of Wallace-Craigy; and for the mair certane tryall of the
veritie in the said matter, to put thaim in the buttis, genis, or ony
uther tormentis, and thairby to urge them to declair the treuth." One
pair of thumb-screws in the Scottish Museum, of unusually large size,
is said to have been the instrument employed by the authorities of the
ancient burgh of Montrose for eliciting confession; and a ruder pair,
of peculiar form, in the Abbotsford collection, is figured in the
illustrated edition of the Waverley Novels.[711] Sir Walter Scott has
given fearfully vivid life, in his "Old Mortality," to the tribunal of
the Scottish Privy Council, where such horrible appliances were last in
vogue. Happily they too are consigned to the cabinet of the antiquary,
telling of times which are, we may hope, as truly left behind as the
aboriginal Stone Period, with its primitive arts and superstitions, and
its simple sepulchral rites.
[Illustration: Thumb-Screws, Antiq. Museum.]
The Scottish JOUGS and BRANKS are old instruments of punishment,
popularly associated, for the most part, with judicial visitations
of a more homely and less revolting character than those previously
referred to, though not altogether free from sterner associations.
The jougs, which consist of an iron collar attached by a chain to a
pillar or tree, form the corresponding Scottish judicial implement to
the English Stocks: applied, however, not to the legs or arms, but to
the neck. They are still to be met with attached to the porch of our
older village churches, or occasionally to some venerable tree in the
surrounding churchyard, their application having been most frequently
reserved in the olden time for the enforcement of ecclesiastical
discipline. The woodcut represents a fine old pair of jougs, the
property of Sir William Jardine, Bart., which were found imbedded in
a venerable ash tree, recently blown down, at the churchyard gate,
Applegirth, Dumfriesshire. The tree, which was of great girth, is
believed to have been upwards of three hundred years old, and the jougs
were completely imbedded in its trunk, while the chain and staple hung
down within the decayed and hollow core. The more usual form of the
jougs is simply a flat iron collar with distended loops, through which
a padlock was passed to secure the culprit in his ignominious durance.
Along with this may be mentioned a singular and probably unique relic
of old Scottish judicature, preserved in the Museum of the Scottish
Antiquaries, to which it was presented in 1784. It consists of the
brass collar of a Scottish slave of the eighteenth century. The collar
is inscribed in accordance with the terms of the following verdict,
which shews that the case was not singular; and having been dredged up
in the Frith of Forth, it seems sufficiently probable that the unhappy
victim may have chosen death in preference to the doom from which
there was no other release.
[Illustration: Jougs, Applegirth.]
"At Perth, the fifth day of December 1701 years, the
Commissioners of Justiciary of the south district, for securing
the peace of the Highlands, considering that Donald Robertson,
Alexander Steuart, John Robertson, and Donald M'Donald,
prisoners within the Tolbooth of Perth, and indicted and
tried at this court, are by verdict of the inquest returned,
GUILTY OF DEATH; and that the Commissioners have changed their
punishment of death to perpetual servitude; and that the said
pannells are at the court's disposal. Therefore the said
Commissioners have given and gifted, and hereby give and gift,
the said Alexander Steuart, one of the said prisoners, as ane
perpetual servant to Sir John Areskine of Alva, recommending
him to cause provide an collar of brass, iron, or copper, which
by his sentence or doom, (whereof an extract is delivered to
the magistrates of the said burgh of Perth,) is to be upon his
neck with this inscription: ALEXR. STEUART, FOUND GUILTY OF
DEATH FOR THEFT, AT PERTH, THE 5TH OF DECEMBER 1701, AND GIFTED
BY THE JUSTICIARS AS A PERPETUAL SERVANT TO SIR JOHN ARESKINE
OF ALVA; and recommending also to him to transport him from the
said prison once the next week; and the said Commissioners have
ordained and hereby ordain the magistrates of Perth, and keeper
of their Tolbooth, to deliver the said Alexander Steuart to
the said Sir John Areskine of Alva, having the said collar and
inscription conform to the sentence of doom foresaid."[712]
From another deed of gift, it appears that Donald M'Donald was bestowed
in like manner on John Earl of Tullibardine.[713] No doubt the other
two were similarly disposed of by gift, if not by positive sale--so
very recently was slavery a part and parcel of Scottish law: feudal
customs, and the singular ideas incident to the peculiar social
state of the Highlands, having remained little affected by all the
changes wrought on the Lowland Saxon and the Southron, until the final
overthrow of the clans on Culloden Moor abruptly broke the traditions
of many centuries.
The BRANKS is another Scottish instrument of ecclesiastical punishment,
chiefly employed for the coercion of female scolds, and those adjudged
guilty of slander and defamation. It may be described as a skeleton
iron helmet, having a gag of the same metal, which entered the mouth
and effectually _brankit_ that unruly member--the tongue.[714] It
is an instrument of considerable antiquity, and has probably not
unfrequently been employed for purposes of great cruelty, though in
most examples the gag is not designed to wound the mouth, but only to
hold down the tongue. In the Burgh Records of Glasgow, for example,
under date of April 1574, "Marione Smyt and Margaret Huntare" having
quarrelled, they appear, and produce two cautioners or sureties, "þat
þai sal abstene fra stryking of utheris in tyme cuming, under þe
pane of X lib., _and gif thai flyte to be brankit_."[715] One very
complete specimen still preserved at St. Mary's Church, St. Andrews,
is popularly known as the Bishop's Branks, and is usually said to
have been fixed on the head of Patrick Hamilton and of others of the
early Scottish martyrs who perished at the stake during the religious
persecution of James V.'s reign. This tradition, however, is not borne
out by history in the case of Hamilton, and is probably the addition
of a later age, though the instrument may possibly have supplied both
Archbishop and Cardinal Beaton with a ready means of restraining less
confirmed recusants, and thereby nipping the new heresy in the bud.
But the real origin of its present title is to be traced to the use of
it in much more recent times, by Archbishop Sharp, for silencing the
scandal which an unruly dame promulgated openly against him before the
congregation. A view of the Bishop's Branks is given in the Abbotsford
edition of _The Monastery_, where it is described as formerly kept
at St. Mary's Church. It still remains there, in the custody of the
sexton, and is regarded with such general interest as is likely to
secure its preservation. The annexed woodcut is drawn from another
example, which was discovered in 1848 behind the oak panelling in one
of the rooms of the ancient mansion of the Earls of Moray, in the
Canongate, Edinburgh. The term _Branks_, it may be added, is also used
in Scotland to designate a rude substitute for a horse's bridle and
bit, formed most frequently of a halter and stick. Some few years since
the frightful instrument represented below was preserved in the old
steeple at Forfar, where it bore the name of the _Witch's Branks_ or
_Bridle_, and is described in the Old Statistical Account of the parish
of Forfar as the bridle with which the wretched victims of superstition
were led to execution. The field, it is added, where they suffered is
pointed out to strangers as a place of curious interest. The witch's
bridle was carried off from Forfar to add to the antiquarian treasures
of the late well-known collector Mr. Alexander Deuchar of Edinburgh.
The date 1661 is punched on the circle, along with what seems to read
ANGUS S.[716] The object aimed at in applying so dreadful a gag to
those who were condemned to the stake as guilty of witchcraft and
dealing with the devil, was not so much the purposed cruelty which its
use necessarily involved, as to prevent the supposed possessors of such
unearthly gifts from pronouncing the potent formula by means of which
it was implicitly believed they could transform themselves at will to
other shapes, or transport themselves where they pleased, and thus
effectually outwit their tormentors. It furnishes a melancholy index
of the barbarism which prevailed in our own country at so very recent
a period, that educated men could be found to give credit to such
follies, or that even among the most illiterate and rude, executioners
could be enlisted to apply to a woman an instrument the very picture of
which is calculated to excite a shudder.
[Illustration: The Branks, Moray House.]
[Illustration: Witch's Bridle, Forfar.]
It would not be difficult to add to these common instruments of
punishment and of torture others equally characteristic of the spirit
of the age, though not brought into such general use. Registers of
various kirk-sessions recently printed by the Abbotsford Club, the
Spottiswoode Society, and others of the Scottish literary book clubs,
disclose much curious evidence of the petty tyranny and cruelty
too frequently exercised by these courts in the enforcement of
ecclesiastical discipline, most frequently by means little calculated
to promote reformation or good morals. In these, however, as in
the traces of earlier manners which we have sought to recover, the
historian finds a key to the character of the age to which they belong,
and indications of its degree of advancement in civilisation, such as
no contemporary historian could furnish, since it supplies elements
for comparing and for contrasting the present with the past, no less
available than the rude pottery and the implements of flint or bone
which reveal to us the simple arts of aboriginal races. The great
difference in point of value between the two classes of relics is, that
those more recent indices of obsolete customs supply to us only an
additional element wherewith to test and to supplement the invaluable
records which the printing press supplies, while the latter are the
sole chronicles we possess of ages more intimately associated with our
human sympathies than all the geological periods of the preadamite
earth.
FOOTNOTES:
[702] New Statist. Account, vol. v. p. 279.
[703] Journ. Archæol. Assoc., vol. iii. p. 63.
[704] New Stat. Account, vol. iv. p. 71.
[705] Ibid. vol. vi. p. 581.
[706] Ibid. vol. v. p. 430.
[707] Dublin Penny Magazine, vol. iii. p. 29.
[708] Carruthers' Highland Note-Book, p. 154.
[709] Tytler, third edition, vol. i. p. 229; Robertson's Index, pp.
135-138. The outer wood-casing of the handle is modern, and incorrectly
made in imitation of a small single-handed sword. That of the old
two-handed sword was invariably nearly straight, so as to admit of the
hand moving freely along it. The two-handed claymore figured on p. 682
is probably one of the very earliest examples of the transition to the
later unwieldy weapon. The handle measures fourteen inches, and the
blade three feet three and a half inches, in length.
[710] Archæologia, vol. v.; Ibid. vol. xxviii. pp. 383, 385.
[711] Abbotsford Edition, vol. ii. p. 24.
[712] From a copy in the possession of Alexander Macdonald, Esq.
[713] Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Perth.
[714] _To brank_, to bridle or restrain. _Vide_ Jamieson's Scot. Dict.
[715] Burgh Records of Glasgow, p. 7.
[716] Sir J. G. Dalyell's Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 686.