CELTS.
Of all the forms of bronze instruments the hatchet or axe, to which the name of celt has been applied, is perhaps the most common and the best known. It is also probably among the earliest of the instruments fabricated from metal, though in this country it is possible that some of the cutting instruments, such as the knife-daggers, which required a less amount of metal for their formation, are of equal or greater antiquity.
These tools or weapons—for, like the American tomahawk, they seem to have been in use for peaceful as well as warlike purposes—may be divided into several classes. Celts may be described as flat; flanged, or having ribs along the sides; winged, or having the side flanges extended so as almost to form a socket for the handle on either side of the blade, to which variety the name of palstave has been given; and socketed. Of most of these classes there are several varieties, as will be seen farther on.
The name of celt which has been given to these instruments is derived from the doubtful Latin word “celtis” or “celtes,” a chisel, which is in its turn said to be derived À coelando (from carving), and to be the equivalent of coelum.
The only author in whose works the word is found is St. Jerome, and it is employed both in his Vulgate translation of the Book of Job[105] and in a quotation from that book in his Epistle to Pammachius. The word also occurs in an inscription recorded by Gruter and Aldus,[106] but as this inscription is a modern forgery, it does not add to the authority of the word “celtis.”
Mr. Knight Watson, Sec. S. A., in an interesting paper communicated to the Society of Antiquaries of London,[107] has given several details as to the origin and use of this word, which he considers to have been founded on a misreading of the word certe, and the derivation of which from coelo he regards as impossible. There can be no doubt, as Beger pointed out two centuries ago, that a number of MSS. of the Vulgate read certe instead of celte in the passage in Job already mentioned, and that in all probability these are the most ancient and the best. But this only adds to the difficulty of understanding how a recently invented and an unknown word, such as celte is presumed to be, can have ever supplanted a well-known word like certe; and so far as the Burial Service of the Roman Catholic Church is concerned can have maintained its ground for centuries. Nor is this difficulty diminished when we consider that the ordinary and proper translation of the Hebrew ???? is either “in Æternum” or “in testimonium,” according as the word is pointed ????? or ?????, and that, so far as I am aware, there is no other instance of its being translated “certe.” On the other hand, a nearly similar word, ????? “with a stylus,” or, as it is translated, “a pen,” occurs in the same passage; and assuming that this was by some accident read for ??? by St. Jerome, he would have thought that the word for stylus was used twice over, and have inserted some word to designate a graving tool, by way of a synonym. The probability of such an error would be increased if his MS. had the lines arranged in couplets in accordance with its poetical character, the passage standing thus when un-pointed:—
????? ???? ???
?????? ????? ???
Very possibly the word used by St. Jerome may not have been celte but coelo, and the corruption into celte in order to make a distinction between heaven and a chisel would then at all events have been possible.
The other contention involves two extreme improbabilities—the one, that St. Jerome, having in his second revision of the Bible translated the passage as “in testimonium in petris sculpantur,” should in the Vulgate have given the inaccurate rendering “certe sculpantur in silice;” the other and the more extreme of the two, that the well-known word certe should have been ousted by a word like celte had it been utterly new-fangled.
Under any view of the case there are considerable difficulties, but as the word celt has now obtained a firm hold in our language, it will be convenient to retain it, whatever its origin or derivation.
It has been the fashion among some who are fond of novelties to call these instruments “kelts,” possibly from some mental association of the instruments with a Celtic or Keltic population. From some such cause also some of the French antiquaries must have coined the new plural to the word, Celtoe. Even in this country it has been said[108] with regard to “the ancient weapon denominated the celt,” “Our antiquarians have commonly ascribed them to the ancient CeltÆ, and hence have given them this unmeaning appellation.” If any one prefers pronouncing celt as “kelt,” or celestial as “kelestial,” let him do so; but at all events let us adhere to the old spelling. How the Romans of the time of St. Jerome would have pronounced the word coelum or celtis may be inferred from the punning line of Ausonius with regard to Venus.[109]
“Orta salo, suscepta solo, patre edita coelo.”
The first author of modern times whose use of the word in connection with Celts I can trace is Beger, who, in his “Thesaurus Brandenburgicus”[110] (1696), gives an engraving of a celt of the palstave form, under the title Celtes, together with the following dialogue:—
“Et nomen et instrumentum mihi obscurum est, infit ArchÆophilus; Instrumentum Statuariorum est, respondit Dulodorus, qui simulacra ex Cera, Alabastro, aliisque lapidum generibus cÆdunt et poliunt. GrÆcis dicitur ????pe??, qu voce Lucianus usus est in Somnio, ubi cum lusum non insuavem dixisset, Deos sculpere, et parva quÆdam simulacra adornare, addit ????p?a ??? t??? ?? d???, scilicet avunculus, id quod Joh. Benedictus vertit, Celte datÂ. Celte? excepit ArchÆophilus; at nisi fallor hÆc vox Latinis incognita est? Habetur, inquit Dulodorus, in versione vulgat Libri Hiob c. 19 quamvis alii non Celte, sed Certe ibi legant, quod tamen minus quadrat. Quicquid sit, instrumentum Statuariorum hoc esse, ex form patet, figuris incidendis aptissima; neque enim opinio Molineti videtur admittenda, qui Securim appellat, cum nullus aptandi manubrii locus huic faveat. Metallum reposuit ArchÆophilus, minus videtur convenire. Instrumentum hoc ex Ære est, quod duritiem lapidum nescio an superare potuerit? Uti lapides diversi sunt, regessit Dulodorus, ita diversa fuisse etiam metalla instrumentorum iis cÆdendis destinatorum, facilÈ cesserim. Vet. Gloss. Celtem instrumentum ferreum dicit proculdubio quÒd durioribus lapidibus ferreum chalybe munitum servierit. Hoc autem non obstat, ut Æreum vel ceris, vel terris, vel lapidibus mollioribus fuerit adhibitum. Si tamen res Tibi minus probetur, me non contradicente, molliori vocabulo ???fe??? coelum poteris et appellare et credere. G??fe?a etiam Statuariorum instrumenta fuisse, ex allegato modÒ Luciano planum est, ubi Humanitas, si me relinquis, inquit, s??a d????p?ep?? ??a????, ?a? ???a, ?a? ???fe?a, ?a? ??p?a?, ?a? ???apt??a? ?? ta?? ?e???? ??e??, habitum servilem assumes, Vectes, COELA, CELTES, Scalpra prÆ manibus habebis.”
The idea of a bronze celt being a statuary’s chisel for carving in wax, alabaster, and the softer kinds of stone will seem the less absurd if we remember that, at the time when Beger wrote, the manner in which such instruments were hafted was unknown, and that all antiquities of bronze were generally regarded as being of Roman or Greek origin.
Dr. Olaf Worm, a Danish antiquary of the seventeenth century, was more enlightened than Beger, for in his “Museum Wormianum,”[111] published in 1655, he states his belief that bronze weapons had formerly been in use in Denmark, and cites two flat or flanged celts, or cunei, as he calls them, found in Jutland, which he regards as hand weapons for close encounters. He also was, nevertheless, at a loss to know how they were hafted, for he adds that had they but been provided with shaft-holes he should have considered them to have been axes.
In a work treating of the bronze antiquities of Britain we must, however, first consider the opinion of British antiquaries, by whom the word celt had been completely adopted as the name for bronze hatchets and axes by the middle of the last century. Borlase,[112] in his “Antiquities of Cornwall,” 1754, speaking of some “spear-heads” of copper mentioned by Leland, says that by the spear-heads he certainly meant those which we (from Begerus) now call Celts. Leland’s words are as follows:[113]—“There was found of late Yeres syns Spere Heddes, Axis for Warre, and Swerdes of coper wrapped up in lynid scant perished nere the Mount in S. Hilaries Paroch in Tynne Works;” so that it by no means follows but that he was right in speaking of spear-heads, for if there were any celts among the objects discovered they were probably termed battle-axes by Leland.
Camden makes mention of the same find:[114] “At the foote of this mountaine (St. Michael’s Mount), within the memorie of our Fathers, whiles men were digging up of tin, they found Spear-heads, axes, and swordes of brasse wrapped in linnen, such as were sometimes found within the forrest of Hercinia in Germanie, and not long since in our Wales. For evident it is by the monuments of ancient Writers that the Greeks, the Cimbrians, and the Britans used brazen weapons, although the wounds given with brasse bee lesse hurtfull, as in which mettall there is a medicinable vertue to heale, according as Macrobius reporteth out of Aristotle. But happily that age was not so cunning in devising meanes to mischiefe and murthers as ours is.”
Hearne, the editor of Leland’s “Itinerary,” took a less philosophical view of these instruments. Writing to Thoresby[115] in 1709, he maintains that some old instruments of bronze found near Bramham Moor, Yorkshire, are not the heads of British spears; on the contrary, they are Roman, not axes used in their sacrifices, nor the heads of spears and javelins, but chisels which were used to cut and polish the stones in their tents. Such instruments were also used in making the Roman highways and in draining their fens.
Plot[116] also, at a somewhat earlier date, asserted a Roman origin for bronze celts, which he regarded as the heads of bolts, founding his opinion mainly on two, which are engraved in the Museum Moscardi. These, which are reproduced in the ArchÆologia, vol. v. Pl. VIII. 18 and 19, are of the palstave form, and were regarded by Moscardo[117] as the heads of great darts to be thrown from a catapult. A flat celt found in Staffordshire,[118] Plot takes to be the head of a Roman securis with which the PopÆ slew their sacrifices.
Rowland,[119] in his “Mona Antiqua Restaurata,” 1723, suggested that looped palstaves fastened by a thong to a staff might be used as war flails.
The imaginative Dr. Stukeley, in the year 1724, communicated to the Society of Antiquaries a discourse on the use of celts, which is to be found in the Minute Book of the Society. An abstract of it is given by Mr. Lort[120] in his paper subsequently mentioned. Dr. Stukeley undertook to show that celts were British and appertaining to the Druids, who, when not using them to cut off the boughs of oak and mistletoe, put them in their pouches, or hung them to their girdles by the little ring or loop at the side. In a more sensible manner he divided them into two classes, the recipient and the received; that is to say, the socketed, in which the handle was received, and the flat and palstave forms, which entered into a notch in the handle.
Borlase,[121] notwithstanding that he was under the impression that a number of socketed celts found at KarnbrÊ in 1744 were accompanied by Roman coins, one of them at least as late as the time of Constantius I., did “not take them to be purely Roman, foreign, or of Italian invention and workmanship.”
He argues that the Romans of Italy would not have made such instruments of brass after Julius CÆsar’s time, when the superior hardness of iron was so well understood, and that metal was so easily to be procured. Farther, that no representations of such weapons occur on the Trajan or Antonine Columns, that few specimens exist in the cabinets of the curious in Italy, where they are regarded as Transalpine antiquities, and that none have been found among the ruins of Herculaneum;[122] nor are any published in the Museum Romanum or the Museum Kircherianum. He concludes that they were made and used in Britain, but that though they were originally of British invention and fabric, they were for the most part made when the Britons had improved their arts under their Roman masters, as most of them seem too correct and shapely for the Britons before the Julian conquest.
As to the uses of celts, Borlase cites the various opinions of the learned, and observes that if they had not been advanced by men of learning it would be scarce excusable to mention some of them, much less to refute them. They had been taken for heads of walking staffs, for chisels to cut stone withal (as such instruments must have been absolutely necessary in making the great Roman roads), as tools with which to engrave letters and inscriptions, as the sickles with which the Druids cut the sacred mistletoe, and as rests to support the lituus of the Roman augurs. After all, however, Borlase himself comes to the somewhat lame conclusion that they formed the head or arming of the spear, the javelin, or the arrow, and thinks that Mr. Rowland comes the nearest to the truth of any author he has read, when he says that they might be used with a string to draw them back, and something like a feather to guide them in flying towards the enemy, and calls them sling-hatchets. He concedes, however, that for such weighty heads there was no occasion for feathers, and as for slinging of hatchets against an enemy, he does not remember any instance, ancient or modern. Some of the celts, moreover, are too light to do any execution if thrown from the hand.
The Rev. Mr. Lort,[123] who communicated some observations on celts to the Society of Antiquaries in 1776, differed from Dr. Borlase, and regarded a large flat celt found in the Lower Furness as manifestly designed to be held in the hand only, and much better adapted to the chipping of stone than to any other use which has hitherto been found out for it. He will not, however, take upon himself to assert that some socketed celts, which he also describes, were designed for the same purpose. Appended to the paper by Mr. Lort are notices of several bronze celts, which at different times had been brought under the notice of the Society of Antiquaries. Some which had been exhibited in 1735 were regarded by Mr. Benjamin Cooke and Mr. Collinson as Gaulish weapons used by the Roman auxiliaries at the time of Claudius. Mr. Cooke, however, took them to be axes, and mounted one of them on a shaft, citing Homer as his authority for doing so, and speaking of the ?????? ???a????.
The Rev. Samuel Pegge in 1787 makes some pertinent remarks respecting celts in a letter to Mr. Lort, which is published in the ArchÆologia.[124] He points out that from some of them having been found in barrows associated with spear-heads of flint, it is probable that some at least were military weapons. He also maintains that though the use of bronze originally preceded that of iron, yet that regard must be had to the circumstances of each country, so that it would not follow that a bronze celt found in Ireland was prior in age to the invention of iron. All that could be said was that it was older than the introduction of iron into Ireland, and when that was, no one could pretend to say. Mr. Pegge did not approve of the derivation of the name of celt from celtis or coelare, but thought it derived from the name of the Celtic people who used the instruments. In his opinion the instruments were not Roman, especially as they were frequent in Ireland and in places where the Romans never were settled. The specimen on which he comments is of the palstave form, and, though it might be mounted as a tool, he thinks it could never have served as an axe, but it might have tipped a dart or javelin.
Douglas[125] was of opinion that the bronze arms found in this country were not Roman, but that it was more reasonable to refer them to the early inhabitants, of probably not less than two centuries b.c.
Mr. C. J. Harford, F.S.A.,[126] writing in 1801, expressed his opinion that a clue as to the uses of celts might be obtained from a consideration of similar instruments which had been brought from the South Sea Islands. “Our rude forefathers doubtless attached the celt by thongs to the handle, in the same manner as modern savages do; and, like them, formed a most useful implement or destructive weapon from these simple materials.” He thought that the metal celts might have been fabricated abroad and exported to this country, just as we have sent to the South Sea Islands an imitation in iron of the stone hatchet there in use.
Coming down to later times, we find Sir Richard Colt Hoare,[127] who discovered a few flat and flanged celts in the Wiltshire barrows, regarding them as for domestic, and not for military, architectural, or religious purposes. He thought that the flat form must be the most ancient, from which the pattern of that with the socket for the insertion of a handle was taken; for among the numerous specimens described by Mr. Lort in the ArchÆologia, not one of the latter pattern is mentioned as having been discovered in a barrow. As many were found in Gaul, he rather supposed that they were imported from the Continent; or, perhaps, the art of making them might have been introduced from Gaul. From the method of hafting of one of those he found (see Fig. 189), he seems to have regarded the whole of them as chisels rather than hatchets.
Sir Joseph Banks,[128] in some observations communicated to the Society of Antiquaries in 1818, on an ancient celt found near Boston, Lincolnshire, pointed out the manner in which looped palstaves could be hafted so as to serve either as axes, adzes, or chisels. He thought that they were ill adapted for any warlike purposes, and regarded them as tools such as might be used in hollowing out the trunks of trees to form canoes, and suggested that they were secured to their handles by strings tied round them in the same manner as the stone axes used in the South Sea Islands were fastened to theirs.
About the year 1816 the Rev. John Dow,[129] in some remarks on the ancient weapon denominated the celt, advocated the opinion that it was an axe, and probably a weapon of war. He also traces its connection with the stone celt, from which he considered it to have been developed.
About the same year the Rev. John Hodgson, secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-on-Tyne, communicated to that society a valuable memoir in the shape of “An Enquiry into the Æra when Brass was used in purposes to which Iron is now applied,”[130] of which mention has already been made in the Introductory Chapter. He thought that celts were tools which were well adapted for use as wedges for splitting wood, or that with wooden hafts they might be used as chisels for hollowing canoes and for similar purposes, some instruments found with them being undoubtedly gouges. As to their date, he thought that bronze began to give way to iron in Britain nearly as soon as it did in Greece, and that consequently the celts, &c., found in this island belonged to an era 500, or at least 400 years, b.c.
In 1839 Mr. Rickman[131] communicated to the Society of Antiquaries a paper on the Antiquity of Abury and Stonehenge, in the notes to which he propounds the theory that the socketed celts were used merely as chisels, with hafts of wood inserted in the socket. They could be then either held in the hand or by means of a withe, like a blacksmith’s chisel, while they were struck with a stone hammer.
Among writers of comparatively modern times, the first whom I have to mention is the late Mr. G. V. Du Noyer,[132] who in 1847 communicated to the ArchÆological Institute two papers on the classification of bronze celts, which are still of great value and interest. He traces the gradual development in form from the bronze celt shaped like a wedge to that which is socketed, and shows that an important element in the transition from one form to the other has been the method of hafting. He also enters into the subjects of the casting and ornamentation of celts; and as in subsequent pages I shall have to refer to these as well as to the methods of hafting, I content myself here with citing Mr. Du Noyer’s papers as being worthy of all credit.
In 1849 Mr. James Yates communicated a paper to the ArchÆological Institute of a far more speculative kind than those of Mr. Du Noyer, his object being to prove that among the various uses of bronze celts one of the most important was the application of them in destroying fortifications and entrenchments, in making roads and earthworks, and in similar military operations. He confines his inquiry, however, to those which were adapted to be fitted to straight wooden handles. Following in the steps of some of the older antiquaries, he appears to regard them as of Roman origin, and identifies them with the Roman dolabra, an instrument which he thinks was used as a chisel or a crowbar. In fact, he was persuaded that the celt was commonly used not as a hatchet, but as a spud or a crowbar. Had he but been acquainted with the ancient handles, such as have been discovered in the Austrian salt-mines and elsewhere, he would probably have come round to another opinion as to the ordinary method of hafting, though it is of course possible that in some instances these instruments may have been mounted and used as spuds. Had he practically tried mounting them and using them as crowbars, he would have found that with but slight strain the shafts would break or the celts become loosened upon them. And had he been better versed in archÆology, he would have known that whatever was the form of the Roman dolabra, or whatever the uses for which it served, it can hardly have differed from their other implements in being made of bronze and not of iron; and he would have thought twice before engraving bronze celts from Cornwall and Furness as illustrations of the Roman dolabra in Smith’s “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.”
The ring or loop, which so often is found on the side of celts of the palstave and socketed forms, was thought by Mr. Yates to have been principally of use to assist in carrying them, a dozen or twenty perhaps being strung together, or a much smaller number tied to the soldier’s belt or girdle. He also thought that they might serve for the attachment of a thong or chain to draw the instrument out of a wall, should it become wedged among the stones in the process of destruction.
The next essay on celts and their classification which I must adduce was written by the late Rev. Thomas Hugo, F.S.A.,[133] who followed much the same system as Mr. Du Noyer, so far as the development of the socketed celt was concerned, though he differed from him with regard to the method of hafting, as he was persuaded that, in general, celts were mounted with a straight shaft, like spuds. He considered that the loop was not used for securing the celt to its haft, but for hanging it up at home when not in use, or for suspending it from the soldier’s girdle whilst on the march.
Mr. Hugo’s paper was followed by some supplementary remarks from Mr. Syer Cuming, who suggests that a thong may have passed through the loop by which the weapon might be propelled, and contends that socketed celts are neither chisels nor axe-blades, but the ferrules of spear-shafts, which might be fixed in the ground, or even used at times as offensive weapons.
The name of the late Mr. Thomas Wright[134] has already been mentioned. In his various works and papers he claims a Roman origin for bronze celts and swords, though admitting that they may occasionally have been made in the countries in which they are found.
Among other modern writers who have touched upon the subject of celts, I may mention that accomplished antiquary, the late Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A., whose remarks in connection with an exhibition of bronze antiquities at a meeting of the ArchÆological Institute in 1861[135] are well worth reading. I may also refer to the late Sir W. R. Wilde, in his “Catalogue of the Copper and Bronze Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy,” published in the same year; to Mr. Franks, in the “HorÆ Ferales;” to Sir John Lubbock, in his “Prehistoric Times;” and to General A. Lane Fox (now Pitt-Rivers), in his excellent lecture on Primitive Warfare, section iii.[136]
Canon Greenwell, in his “British Barrows,”[137] has also devoted a few pages to the consideration of bronze celts and axe-heads, more especially in connection with interments in sepulchral mounds.
Foreign writers I need hardly cite, but I may mention a remarkable idea that has been promulgated by Professor Stefano de Rossi[138] as to celts having served as money, which has, however, been shown by Count Gozzadini to be unfounded.
In conclusion, I may also venture to refer to an address[139] which I delivered to the Society of Antiquaries on the occasion of an exhibition of bronze antiquities in their apartments in January, 1873.
In treating of the different forms of celts on the present occasion, I shall divide them into the following classes:—
Flat celts.
Flanged celts.
Winged celts and palstaves, with and without loops.
Socketed celts.
What are known as tanged celts may perhaps be more properly included under the head of chisels, to which class of tools it is not unlikely that some of the narrow celts of the other forms should be referred.
It is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between the flat celts and the flanged, and between these latter and the so-called palstaves. I propose, therefore, to include the flanged celts, which are not provided with a stop-ridge to prevent their being driven into their haft, in the same chapter with the flat celts, and to treat of those which have a stop-ridge in the same chapter as the palstaves, with and without a loop. In a subsequent chapter I shall speak as to the manner in which these instruments were probably hafted.
