Thus far, I was so much to be sympathised with as never to have heard of
the names of Dunbuie and of Mr. Donnelly. In this ignorance I remained
till late in October or early in November 1898. On an afternoon of that
date I was reading the proof sheets, kindly lent to me by Messrs.
Macmillan, of _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_ by Messrs. Spencer
and Gillen, a work, now justly celebrated, which was published early in
1899. I was much interested on finding, in this book, that certain
tribes of Central Australia,--the Arunta "nation" and the
Kaitish,--_paint_ on sacred and other rocks the very same sorts of
archaic designs as Mr. Donnelly found _incised_ at Auchentorlie (of which
I had not then heard). These designs are familiar in many other parts of
Scotland and of the world. They play a great part in the initiations and
magic of Central Australia. Designs of the same class are incised, by
the same Australian tribes, on stones of various shapes and sizes,
usually portable, and variously shaped which are styled _churinga nanja_.
(_Churinga_ merely means anything "sacred," that is, with a superstitious
sense attached to it). They also occur on wooden slats, (_churinga
irula_,) commonly styled "Bull roarers" by Europeans. The tribes are now
in a "siderolithic" stage, using steel when they can get it, stone when
they cannot. If ever they come to abandon stone implements, while
retaining their magic or religion, they will keep on using their stone
_churinga nanja_.
While I was studying these novel Australian facts, in the autumn of 1898,
a friend, a distinguished member of Clan Diarmaid, passing by my window,
in London, saw me, and came in. He at once began to tell me that, in the
estuary of the Clyde, and at Dunbuie, some one had found small stones,
marked with the same archaic kinds of patterns, "cup-and-ring," half
circles, and so forth, as exist on our inscribed rocks, cists, and other
large objects. I then showed him the illustrations of portable stones in
Australia, with archaic patterns, not then published, but figured in the
proof sheets of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's work. My friend told me,
later, that he had seen small stone incised with concentric circles,
found in the excavation of a hill fort near Tarbert, in Kintyre. He made
a sketch of this object, from memory: if found in Central Australia it
would have been reckoned a _churinga nanja_.
I was naturally much interested in my friend's account of objects found
in the Clyde estuary, which, _as far as his description went_, resembled
in being archaically decorated the _churinga nanja_ discovered by Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia. I wrote an article on the
subject of the archaic decorative designs, as found all over the world,
for the _Contemporary Review_. {24} I had then seen only pen and ink
sketches of the objects, sent to me by Mr. Donnelly, and a few casts,
which I passed on to an eminent authority. One of the casts showed a
round stone with concentric circles. I know not what became of the
original or of the casts.
While correcting proofs of this article, I read in the _Glasgow Herald_
(January 7, 1899) a letter by Dr. Munro, impugning the authenticity of
one set of finds by Mr. Donnelly, in a pile-structure at Dumbuck, on the
Clyde, near Dumbarton. I wrote to the _Glasgow Herald_, adducing the
Australian _churinga nanja_ as parallel to Mr. Donnelly's inscribed
stones, and thus my share in the controversy began. What Dr. Munro and I
then wrote may be passed over in this place.