In

mentioned among the contents of Scottish tumuli. a cist, discovered under a barrow, in Kirkurd parish, Peeblesshire, there were various weapons of flint and stone, including one described as resembling the head of a halbert, another of a circular form, and the third cylindrical; in all probability a celt, a spherical flint or stone, and one of the implements now referred to, which may be conveniently designated flail-stones. On levelling a large tumulus a few years since, at Dalpatrick, Lanarkshire, a cist was discovered enclosing an urn. Two other specimens of fictile ware, one of them supposed to be a lamp, were found imbedded in the surrounding earth, and also a flail-stone made of trap rock. It is described as "a curious whinstone, of a roundish form, about four inches in diameter, perforated with a circular hole, through which the radicle of an oak growing near the spot had found its way. Similar stone implements have been frequently met with in Scotland, and were perhaps designed for use as offensive weapons, attached to a leather thong, or secured by such means to the end of a shaft, like a modern flail. The Shoshonee Indians, and other North American tribes, used such a weapon under the name of a Pogamoggon; the stone not being perforated, but enclosed in leather, by which it was fastened to the handle. Other tribes of the Mississippi valley had a simpler form of the same weapon, possibly corresponding to the spherical objects of flint or stone occasionally found with these, consisting of a grooved ball attached to a long leather thong, which they wielded, like a slungshot, with deadly effect. A medieval offensive weapon, constructed on the same principle, bore the quaint name. of "The Morning Star," an epithet no doubt suggested

"2

1 Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. x. p. 186.

2 New Statist. Acc. vol. vi. p. 734.

3 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi, p. 219.

by its form; as it consisted of a ball of iron armed with radiating spikes, attached by a chain to its handle. Like the ruder flail stone, the morning-star, when efficiently wielded, must have proved a deadly weapon in the desultory warfare of undisciplined assailants; but whenever the value of combined operations was discovered and acted upon, it would have to be thrown aside, as probably more fatal to friends than to enemies. In the Scottish flail-stones the perforation is bevelled off so as to admit of their free use without cutting or fraying the thong by which they were held.

A stone implement in my own possession, somewhat similar in general form to these flail-stones, was found beside a group of cists near North Berwick, East Lothian, but its original destination is obvious. It is made of sandstone, of a flattened oval form in section, and is worn on the two alternate sides where it has been used as a whetstone: a use to which the hardness and high polish of the others render them totally inapplicable. Not the least curious among the primitive relics in the celebrated museum of Northern Antiquities at Copenhagen, are the various whetstones, some of which have been found in barrows and elsewhere under ground, with half-finished stone-wedges lying upon them: as if the workman had been suddenly interrupted by death in the midst of his laborious industry, and his unaccomplished task had been deemed the fittest memorial to lay beside him. It formed no part of the old Pagan creed that "there is no work nor device in the grave." Possibly enough the buried celt-maker was expected to resume his occupation and finish his axe-grinding in the spiritland. No similar example has yet been noted in Scotland, though smaller hand whetstones, like the one found at North Berwick, are not uncommon. One which is described as very smooth and neat, was obtained among

the contents discovered on excavating within the area of the vitrified fort of Craig Phaidrick, near Inverness;1 several such were found in cists at Cockenzie, East Lothian; and Barry mentions among the miscellaneous contents of the tumuli or cists in the island of Westray, "a flat piece of marble, of a circular form, about two inches and a half in diameter, and several stones, in shape and appearance like whetstones that had never been used."

Among the larger and more elaborate implements of this period the most remarkable and varied are the Stone Hammers and Axes. They are of common occurrence and present a variety of forms, evidently designed to adapt them to a considerable diversity of purposes. They are therefore available as evidence in estimating the degree of inventive talent manifested in the primitive state of society in which they were produced: showing as they do the intelligent savage coping with the intractable materials with which he had to deal, and supplying many deficiencies by his own ingenuity and skill. With these, as with the Elf-bolts of the same period, we find in the reminiscences of early superstition the evidence of their frequent recurrence long after all traces of their origin and uses had been obliterated by the universal substitution of metallic implements. As we find the little flint arrow-head associated with Scottish folk-lore as the Elfin's bolt, so the stone hammer of the same period was adapted to the creed of the middle ages. The name by which it was popularly known in Scotland almost till the close of last century was that of the Purgatory Hammer. Found as it frequently was within the cist, and beside the mouldering bones of its old Pagan possessor, the simple discoverer could devise no likelier use for it than that it was laid there for its owner to bear with him "up the trinal steps," and with it to thunder

1 Archol. Scot. vol. iv. p. 188.

2 Barry's Hist. Orkney Islands, p. 206.

at the gates of purgatory till the heavenly janitor appeared, that he might

With humble heart that he unbar the bolt."1

Stone hammers have been frequently found in the older Scottish cists, and dug up at considerable depths in many localities. The examples figured here illustrate a few of the most characteristic varieties. In 1832 a farm-servant, while ploughing a field on the farm of Downby, in Orkney, struck his ploughshare on a stone which proved to be the cover of a cist of the usual contracted dimensions. Within it lay a skeleton that seemed

to have been interred in a sitting posture, and at its right hand a highly polished mallet-head of gneiss, beautifully marked with dark and light streaks. Another hammer, of fine-grained mica schist, and of a rare if not unique shape, dug up within the area of a megalithic circle at Crichie, Aberdeenshire, and presented to the Scottish Museum, by the Earl of Kintore in 1856, is shown on Plate III. Fig. 20.

The name of Axe is, with sufficient appropriateness, applied to the double-edged stone implements, and to those of a wedge shape which have the aperture for inserting the handle near the broad end; whereas other

1 Carey's Dante, Canto Ix. 1. 97.

2 MS. Soc. Ant. Scot.; Rev. Charles Clouston.

examples, perforated sufficiently near the centre to admit of the free use of both ends, are with equal propriety styled hammers. They are often finished with great neatness and art; not formed by taking advantage of the natural fracture like the flint hatchet, but laboriously wrought in various kinds of stone, including the grey granite, of which the largest are generally made, trap, mica schist, and even sandstone. Several examples have been discovered in an unfinished state, furnishing curious illustration of the laborious process of manufacture. One

large one in particular in the Scottish Museum, found in digging the Caledonian Canal, is made of grey granite, very symmetrically and beautifully formed, but with the hole only partially bored on both sides. This, it is obvious, was effected by a workman devoid of metallic tools, and may be assumed to have been done with water and sand by the tedious process of turning round a smaller stone until the perforation was at length completed. Tried therefore by the standard of value of the Stone Period, the hammer was perhaps a more costly deposit in the tomb of some favourite chief than the

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