I feel much interested in the Query of your correspondent Z.A.Z. (Vol.
ii., p. 41.) I had a "Query" something similar, with a "Note" on it,
lying by me for some time, which I send you as they stand.--Was not
smoking in use in England and other countries before the introduction of
tobacco? Whitaker says, a few days after the tower of Kirkstall Abbey
fell, 1779, he
"Discovered imbedded in the mortar of the fallen fragments
several little smoking pipes, such as were used in the reign of
James I. for tobacco; a proof of a fact _which has not been
recorded_, that, prior to the introduction of that plant from
America, the practice of inhaling the smoke of some indigenous
plant or vegetable prevailed in England." (_Loidis and Elmete_.)
Allowing, then, pipes to have been coeval with the erection of
Kirkstall, we find them to have been used in England about 400 years
before the introduction of tobacco. On the other hand, as Dr. Whitaker
says, we find _no record_ of their being used, or of smoking being
practised; and it is almost inconceivable that our ancestors should have
had such a practice, without any allusion being made to it by any
writers. As to the antiquity of smoking in Ireland, the first of Irish
antiquaries, the learned and respected Dr. Petrie, says:
"The custom of smoking is of much greater antiquity in Ireland
than the introduction of tobacco into Europe. Smoking pipes made
of bronze are frequently found in our Irish _tumuli_, or
sepulchral mounds, of the most remote antiquity; and similar
pipes, made of baked clay, are discovered daily in all parts of
the island. A curious instance of the _bathos_ in sculpture,
which also illustrates the antiquity of this custom, occurs on
the monument of Donogh O'Brien, king of Thomond, who was killed
in 1267, and interred in the Abbey of Corcumrac, in the co. of
Clare, of which his family were the founders. He is represented
in the usual recumbent posture, with the short pipe or _dudeen_
of the Irish in his mouth."
In the _Anthologia Hibernica_ for May 1793, vol. i. p. 352., we have
some remarks on the antiquity of smoking "among the German and Northern
nations," who, the writer says, "were clearly acquainted with, and
cultivated tobacco, which they smoked through wooden and earthen tubes."
He refers to Herod. lib. i. sec. 36.; Strabo, lib. vii. 296.; Pomp. Mela
2, and Solinus, c. 15.
Wherever we go, we see smoking so universal a practice, and people
"taking to it so naturally," that we are inclined to believe that it was
always so; that our first father enjoyed a quiet puff now and then;
(that, like a poet, man "nascitur non fit" a smoker); and that the
soothing power of this narcotic tranquillised the soul of the aquatic
patriarch, disturbed by the roar of billows and the convulsions of
nature, and diffused its peaceful influence over the inmates of the ark.
Yes, we are tempted to spurn the question, When and where was smoking
introduced? as being equal to When and where was _man_ introduced? Yet,
as some do not consider man as a smoking animal "de natu et ab initio,"
the question may provoke some interesting replies from your learned
correspondents.
Jarltzberg.
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