I am not so sure as Dr. Munro is that we have not found small perforated
stones, sometimes inscribed with archaic patterns, sometimes plain, even
in Scotland; I shall later mention other places. For the present I leave
aside the small stone, inscribed with concentric horse-shoes, and found
in a hill-fort near Tarbert (Kintyre), which a friend already spoken of
saw, and of which he drew for me a sketch from memory. In country houses
any intrinsically valueless object of this kind is apt to fall out of
sight and be lost beyond recovery.
Sir John Evans, however, in his work on _Ancient Stone Implements_, p.
463 (1897), writes: "A pendant, consisting of a flat pear-shaped piece of
shale, 2.5 inches long, and 2 inches broad, and perforated at the narrow
end, was found along with querns, stones with concentric circles, and cup-
shaped indentations worked in them; stone balls, spindle whorls, and an
iron axe-head, in excavating an underground chamber at the Tappock,
Torwood, Stirlingshire. One face of this pendant was covered with
scratches in a vandyked pattern. Though of smaller size this seems to
bear some analogy with the flat amulets of schist of which several have
been discovered in Portugal, with one face ornamented in much the same
manner."
For these examples Sir John Evans refers to the _Transactions of the
Ethnological Society_. {100a}
If by "a vandyked pattern," Sir John means, as I suppose, a pattern of
triangles in horizontal lines (such as the Portuguese patterns on stone
plaques), then the elements of this form of decoration appear to have
been not unfamiliar to the designers of "cups and rings." On the cover
of a stone cist at Carnwath we see inscribed concentric rings, and two
large equilateral triangles, each containing three contingent triangles,
round a square space, uninscribed. {100b} The photograph of the Tappock
stone (figs. 9, 10), shows that the marks are not of a regular vandyked
pattern, but are rather scribbles, like those on a Portuguese perforated
stone, given by Vasconcellos, and on a Canadian stone pendant, published
by Mr. David Boyle (figs. 12, 13).
Sir John Evans does not reject the pear-shaped object of shale, "a
pendant," found in a Scottish site, and associated with querns, and an
iron axe, and cup and ring stones. Sir John sees no harm in the
"pendant," but Dr. Munro rejects a "pear-shaped" claystone "pendant"
decorated with "cup-shaped indentations," found at Dunbuie. {101} It has
a perforation near each end, as is common in North American objects of
similar nature (see fig. 11).
Why should the schist pendant of the Tappock chamber be all right, if the
claystone pendant of Dunbuie be all wrong? One of them seems to me to
have as good a claim to our respectful consideration as the other, and,
like Sir John Evans, I shall now turn to Portugal in search of similar
objects of undisputed authenticity.