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The Clyde Mystery, a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, a non-fiction book by Andrew Lang |
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V - HOW I CAME INTO THE CONTROVERSY |
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_ V - HOW I CAME INTO THE CONTROVERSY 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.
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