The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Clyde Mystery, by Andrew Lang

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Clyde Mystery
a Study in Forgeries and Folklore

Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: March 25, 2007 [eBook #20902]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CLYDE MYSTERY***

Transcribed from the 1885 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

The Clyde Mystery
A Study in Forgeries and Folklore

By
Andrew Lang, M.A. Oxford
Hon. Fellow of Merton College, LL.D. St. Andrews
D.Litt. Oxford, D.C.L. Durham

Glasgow
James MacLehose and Sons
Publishers to the University
1905

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY
ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

PREFACE

The author would scarcely have penned this little specimen of what Scott
called "antiquarian old womanries," but for the interest which he takes
in the universally diffused archaic patterns on rocks and stones, which
offer a singular proof of the identity of the working of the human mind.
Anthropology and folklore are the natural companions and aids of
prehistoric and proto-historic archaeology, and suggest remarks which may
not be valueless, whatever view we may take of the disputed objects from
the Clyde sites.

While only an open verdict on these objects is at present within the
competence of science, the author, speaking for himself, must record his
private opinion that, as a rule, they are ancient though anomalous. He
cannot pretend to certainty as to whether the upper parts of the marine
structures were throughout built of stone, as in Dr. Munro's theory,
which is used as the fundamental assumption in this book; or whether they
were of wood, as in the hypothesis of Mr. Donnelly, illustrated by him in
the Glasgow _Evening Times_ (Sept. 11, 1905). The point seems
unessential. The author learns from Mr. Donnelly that experiments in
shaping piles with an ancient stone axe have been made by Mr. Joseph
Downes, of Irvine, as by Monsieur Hippolyte Muller in France, with
similar results, a fact which should have been mentioned in the book. It
appears too, that a fragment of fallow deer horn