My private opinion as to the meaning of the archaic marks and the Clyde
objects which bear them, has, in part by my own fault, been misunderstood
by Dr. Munro. He bases an argument on the idea that I suppose the
disputed "pendants" to have had, in Clydesdale, precisely the same
legendary, customary, and magical significance as the stone churinga of
the Arunta tribe in Australia. That is not my theory. Dr. Munro quotes
me, without indicating the source, (which, I learn, is my first letter on
the subject to the _Glasgow Herald_, Jan. 10th, 1899), as saying that the
Clyde objects "are in absolutely startling agreement" with the Arunta
_churinga_. {65}
Doubtless, before I saw the objects, I thus overstated my case, in a
letter to a newspaper, in 1899. But in my essay originally published in
the _Contemporary Review_, (March 1899,) and reprinted in my book, _Magic
and Religion_, of 1901, {66} I stated my real opinion. This is a
maturely considered account of my views as they were in 1899-1901, and,
unlike old newspaper correspondence, is easily accessible to the student.
It is _not_ "out of print." I compared the Australian marks on small
stones and on rock walls, and other "fixtures in the landscape," with the
markings on Scottish boulders, rock walls, cists, and so forth, and also
with the marks on the disputed objects. I added "the startling analogy
between Australia and old Scottish markings _saute aux yeux_," and I
spoke truth. Down to the designs which represent footmarks, the analogy
is "startling," is of great interest, and was never before made the
subject of comment.
I said that we could not know whether or not the markings, in Scotland
and Australia, had the same meaning.
As to my opinion, then, namely that we cannot say what is the
significance of an archaic pattern in Scotland, or elsewhere, though we
may know the meaning assigned to it in Central Australia, there can no
longer be any mistake. I take the blame of having misled Dr. Munro by an
unguarded expression in a letter to the Society of Scottish Antiquaries,
{67} saying that, if the disputed objects were genuine, they implied the
survival, on Clyde, "of a singularly archaic set of ritual and magical
ideas," namely those peculiar to the Arunta and Kaitish tribes of Central
Australia. But that was a slip of the pen, merely.
This being the case, I need not reply to arguments of Dr. Munro (pp. 248-
250) against an hypothesis which no instructed person could entertain,
beginning with the assumption that from an unknown centre, some people
who held Arunta ideas migrated to Central Australia, and others to the
Clyde. Nobody supposes that the use of identical or similar patterns,
and of stones of superstitious purpose, implies community of race. These
things may anywhere be independently evolved, and in different regions
may have quite different meanings, if any; while the use of "charm
stones" or witch stones, is common among savages, and survives, in
England and Scotland, to this day. The reader will understand that I am
merely applying Mr. E. B. Tylor's method of the study of "survivals in
culture," which all anthropologists have used since the publication of
Mr. Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, thirty-five years ago.