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The Clyde Mystery, a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, a non-fiction book by Andrew Lang |
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XXVIII - QUESTION AS TO THE OBJECTS AS ORNAMENTS OF THE PERSON |
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_ XXVIII - QUESTION AS TO THE OBJECTS AS ORNAMENTS OF THE PERSON Dr. Munro now objects that among the objects reckoned by me as analogous to churinga is a perforated stone with an incised line, and smaller slanting side lines, said to have been found at Dumbuck; "9 inches long, 3.5 inches broad, and 0.5 an inch thick." {108} I wish that he gave us the weight. He says, "that no human being would wear this as an ornament." No human being wears any churinga "as an ornament!" Nobody says that they do. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, moreover, speak of "a long stone churinga," and of "especially large ones" made by the mythical first ancestors of the race. Churinga, over a foot in length, they tell us, are not usually perforated; many churinga are not perforated, many are: but the Arunta do not know why some are perforated . There is a legend that, of old, men hung up the perforated churinga on the sacred Nurtunja pole: and so they still have perforated stone churinga, not usually more than a foot in length. {109} If Dr. Munro has studied Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, he cannot but know that churinga are not ornaments, are not all oval, but of many shapes and sizes, and that churinga larger than the 9 inch perforated stone from Dumbuck are perforated, and attached to strings. I cannot tell the reason why, any better than the Arunta can; and, of course, I cannot know why the 9 inch stone from Dumbuck (if genuine) was perforated. But what I must admire is the amazing luck or learning of Dr. Munro's supposed impostor. Not being "a semi-detached idiot" he must have known that no mortal would sling about his person, as an ornament, a chunk of stone 9 inches long, 3.5 broad, and 0.5 an inch thick. Dr. Munro himself insists on the absurdity of supposing that "any human being" would do such a thing. Yet the forger drilled a neat hole, as if for a string for suspension, at the apex of the chunk. If he knew, before any other human being in England, that the Arunta do this very thing to some stone churinga, though seldom to churinga over a foot in length,--and if he imitated the Arunta custom, the impostor was a very learned impostor. If he did not know, he was a very lucky rogue, for the Arunta coincide in doing the same thing to great stone churinga: without being aware of any motive for the performance as they never suspend churinga to anything, though they say that their mythical ancestors did. The impostor was also well aware of the many perforated stones that exist in Scotland, not referred to by Dr. Munro. He perforated some which could not be worn as ornaments, just as the Arunta do. We shall find that the forger, either by dint of wide erudition, or by a startling set of chance coincidences, keeps on producing objects which are analogous to genuine relics found in many sites of early life. This is what makes the forger so interesting. My theory of the forger is at the opposite pole from the theory of Dr. Munro. He says that, "in applying these local designs" (the worldwide archaic patterns,) to unworked splinters of sandstone and pieces of water- worn shale and slate, "the manufacturers had evidently not sufficient archaeological knowledge to realise the significance of the fact that they were doing what prehistoric man, in this country, is never known to have done before." {111} But, (dismissing the Kintyre and Tappock stones,) the "manufacturers" did know, apparently, that perforated and inscribed, or uninscribed tablets and plaques of shale and schist and slate and gas coal were found in America, France, Russia, and Portugal, and imitated these things or coincided in the process by sheer luck. The "manufacturers" were, perhaps, better informed than many of their critics. But, if the things are genuine, more may be found by research in the locality.
{109} Tribes of Central Australia , pp. 141-145. {111} Munro, pp. 260, 261. _ |
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