The Sounds of Ancient Scotland1

John Purser

1 STONE FORMATIONS AND

ROCK GONGS
The great and ancient stone structures of Scotland
are now emerging clearly, rather than speculatively,
as places for music-making as well as ritual. The
recumbent stone in a stone circle in Northeast
Scotland, Easter Acquorthies, is the focal point of
a type of structure unique to the area, that dates
from circa 3000 BC (Fig. 1a, 1b). Such structures
(there are about 200 in Aberdeenshire alone) often
have an astronomical and calendrical function as
well as a ritual purpose. Some are considered to be
lunar and others solar observatories. In a recent
feature in British Archaeology, Aaron Watson has
suggested that this particular grouping of stones
appears to bounce sound around the interior of
the circle. Subsequent testing with audio recording equipment confirmed that these blocks were
reflecting sound (Watson 1997). That sound
was a potential part of these structures is proven
beyond doubt by the recumbent stone at another
site, Arn Hill stone circle and rock gong, for this
is an idiophone a ringing rock, or sangelstein
with traces of semicircular markings. It is known
locally as the iron rock, because of its sound; but
the people who erected it some 5000 years ago
could not have put it in place without hearing its
voice, and they mounted it on smaller rocks so as
to leave its surfaces free to resonate. Such rocks
are variously known as rock gongs, ringing
rocks and bell rocks. I shall basically follow
Catherine Fagg in calling them rock gongs (Fagg
1997).
These rock gongs frequently retain their significance into modern times. It is said that if the rock
gong on Tiree (Fig. 2) were ever to be moved, the
low-lying island would sink back beneath the
waves. The rock is covered over much of its surface with prehistoric cup-marks and is still a focus
of ritual behaviour (Henschen-Nyman 1988;
Alvarez/Siemens 1988), the weathered coins in a
depression on the top being modern votive offerings. When struck with hand-held stones it has at
least two clearly audible pitches a feature of sev-

eral other rock gongs, including Clach Oscar on

the Island of Skye.
Whether the rock gong on the sacred island of
Iona (Fig. 3) was used by the early Christians I
cannot say. It is an unusual saddle-shaped rock, and
has a small hollow, probably man-made, which can
support a stone with which to strike it. It is not far
from the Abbey which is on the site of the original
6th century AD monastic foundation and it would
be remarkable if the monastic occupiers of this
small island were not aware of its properties.
It is interesting to note that the destiny of the
Scottish nation is intimately involved with an idiophone known to St Columba a rock which was
supposed to make a sound. It is known variously
as the Lia Fail or Stone of Destiny, Stone of
Scone, and Coronation Stone. A stone bearing
that name is currently housed in Edinburgh Castle
and is itself a focus of pilgrimage, as it was hitherto
when it resided in Westminster Abbey where English and British monarchs have been crowned sitting ignorantly upon a 13th century chair into
which the stone was incorporated. I say ignorantly, because this is certainly not the true Lia Fail
or Stone of Destiny, for it is a piece of Scottish
sandstone, and has no footprints carved upon it.
The ignorance is compounded by the fact that all
these pretended monarchs, from Edward II to the
present incumbent, have failed to legitimise their
succession, for they should have stood barefoot
upon the stone. The stone itself has failed to legitimise them it cannot, as it is not the true stone;
but even if it were, it has not, for the true stone
1

I should perhaps acknowledge my own personal debt to the

Swedes for the initial stimulus to do anything about the
carnyx in particular and Music Archaeology in general. It
was the work of Cajsa Lund as recorded for the great Musica Sveciae project that made me culturally jealous. At the
time I had no idea of the riches that awaited discovery in
Scotland, and was delighted and astonished to realise just
how much there was. But I never really believed I would
manage to get the carnyx reconstructed, never mind two of
them, yet here they are, taking their places as cultural icons
and certain proof that good dreams can come true. All drawings (Figs. 19) by Daniel Arendt after photographs taken
by the author.

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John Purser

always uttered a cry of recognition or acceptance,

and the stone now in Edinburgh and formerly in
the hands of thieves in the form of the Church of
England, has remained decently silent for centuries. This much can be accorded to it as a mere
imposter of a stone, that it has been honest and
modest.
The legend is that the true stone was Jacobs
pillow and was brought to Ireland out of Egypt by
Scota and Gaythelos, her Greek husband, and
thence to Scotland some time after the Gaelicspeaking Scots settled in Dalriada in the southwest of Scotland, in the 5th century AD. If such a
stone ever existed, it was certainly known to St
Columba who, in the 6th century, was personally
responsible for the election and coronation of
Aidan, one of the Scottic kings of Dalriada, and
for whose predecessor, Fergus MacErc, the stone
is said to have been transferred to Scotland. The
Egyptian origin legend was and remains part of the
origin myth of the Scots, being first published
abroad by the seminal Scottish historian, John of
Fordun, in the mid 14th century; but the first references to the Lia Fail itself occur somewhat earlier
in Irish texts. Whatever the truth about this stone,
the fact is that its symbolism as a sacred idiophone
remains central to our political self-perception. Its
return to Scotland from Westminster was only
recently engineered by the Conservative Party in a
vain hope of retaining some influence in Scotland
at the last election. The significance was not lost
on the Scottish people who recognised it as a false
gesture from an unsympathetic government who
were subsequently left without one single seat in
Scotland.
With such a central image surviving through
the centuries, it should not surprise us to know
that rock gongs that were used in 3000 BC are still
visited today, albeit with a debased understanding.
Such rocks are more wide-spread than might be
supposed (Fagg 1997), and one of them at Port
Appin was used until recently to gather the local
clanspeople, suggesting a lengthy function as a signalling device, if nothing else.

2 BRONZE AGE HORNS AND

CROTALS BULLS AND BOARS
Returning, however, to prehistory, we have no
knowledge of whether the Bronze Age horns and
their associated idiophones, the crotals were used
at these sites. The crotals and Bronze Age horns
date from 800 BC and earlier, and while it is my
guess that they were played at major sites such as
stone circles, possibly with rock gong backing
group, this is an amiable fancy only! In Scotland
we have one surviving fragment of a bronze age

horn, found in Wigtownshire and now in the

National Museum of Scotland.
However, commerce between Ireland and
Scotland has been intimate for millennia and
bronze smiths working in a style similar to that in
Ireland were in Scotlands Northern Isles around
800 BC (Coles 19591960, 48),2 so the horns and
crotals could have been known and even made in
Scotland anywhere along the west coast, where
such skills would have travelled.
These instruments were technically difficult to
produce; yet they were made in considerable
numbers and deposited together, as in the famous
Dowris horde, suggesting they would have been
played together. The horns have the true shape of
cattle horns (Fig. 4). Cattle were the backbone of
the economy indeed they were, until recent
times, the economy itself; and the cast bronze jingles of the crotal type almost certainly accompanied the horns in music-making, for they were ritually deposited together. In size, shape and
decoration the crotals (Fig. 5) are similar to a bulls
testicles (Purser 1992). The ball within the rattle,
that makes the sound, may represent the seed
within the husk, and the bulls fertility, just as the
horn itself, represents the animals power and
weaponry. However, this association and deduction is not universally accepted. It is almost certain
that these crotals were not hung round the necks
of animals as their design is such that they would
produce only a small sound, and that infrequently.
For the crotals to sound clearly they have to be
agitated quite vigorously. The tone can be alternately damped by grasping the body of the crotal
with the hand, or allowed to ring free, using the
bronze ring to keep the hands clear of the surface.
The Celtic culture of Ireland and Scotland
must at least have over-lapped with that of the
makers of the horns and crotals, if it was not actually a continuation of it. The question is a matter
of fierce debate and remains unanswered. But
there is no doubt that the people were cattle people. Their greatest epic the Tain Bo Cuailnge
centres round a cattle-raid and is resolved by a
fight between two bulls, one coveted by Queen
Maeve who wished to prove herself as powerful as
her husband, Aillil, who owned the other. The tale
is written in Gaelic in a style dating from the 8th
century AD, but with older elements, and the tale
itself is probably much older still. Another cattleraid the Tain Bo Froech tells of such wonderful
music made by King Aillils nine horn players,
that thirty of his men died of rapture and it is
2

The suggestion was originally put forward by Professor

V. Gordon Childe (1935) and was echoed by Professor
Eogan at a conference (1955) on Ireland and Scotland, at
Edinburgh University, 18th February 1989.

The Sounds of Ancient Scotland

significant that in this tale the horns are used to

accompany a healing ceremony.
The bull and the wild boar could act as an
intermediary between this world and the next, just
as the (presumably sacred) pool in which so many
of these musical instruments were ritually deposited, allows the artefact to move on to another existence.
As late as the 12th century, Jocelin, bishop of
Glasgow, was happy to relate in his Life of St
Kentigern that a white wild boar showed
Kentigern where to found his monastery in North
Wales, by scraping the ground with his foot on the
top of a small possibly a fairy mound (McQueen
1980). Glasgow Cathedral was built over the burial
place of St Kentigern who was himself drawn to
the spot as it was the burial place of a holy man
called Fergus: and Fergus was buried there because
it was his will that he be buried where the two
oxen drawing his bier first stopped which they
did by the banks of the Molendinar burn, presumably for a drink. Thus the divine intuition of
these totemic creatures was adapted to the new
religion which cheerfully borrowed from older
religions in order to reconcile the people who had
followed the trumpetting boars head of the carnyx
(s. excursus), or the curved cattle-horn shape of
the bronze age horn or the Scottish example of the
Celtic lituus (the Caprington horn), to the new
ways of the missionaries of Christ.

3 CROZIERS AND BELLS MERE

CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS?
Indeed, the connections of the missionaries with
pre-Christian religion were frequently carefully
established rather than the reverse. St Ninians
bull, which he protected from cattle-raiders by
confining them within a magic circle so that the
bull could finish them off himself, indicates close
ties with the bull cult of former times. The line was
drawn with his crozier an object of magical
power like a Druids wand (McQueen 1980). St
Serfs crozier had similar powers, and the pastoral
staffs of which the fragment of St Moluags is a
7th century Scottish example is precisely a simple
shepherds stick which has lost its later mediaeval
embellishments of copper silver and gold. This
staff (in Gaelic, bachuil) was and is traditionally
guarded by a dewar.
Given the universal association of the crozier
with the pastoral staff or shepherds crook, it is not
surprising that the protective, gathering and signalling aspects of bells are profoundly associated
with herding of cattle, sheep and goats in many
parts of Europe. But it is an interesting fact that
this custom does not prevail in Ireland and Scot-

327

land, though in Trotternish in Skye they were put

on cows eight generations ago (Swire 1961, 38)
and a single image of a cow with a bell is shown on
the Fowlis Wester Pictish stone in Perthshire.
However, like the pastoral staffs, the early Celtic
Christian bells were also magical and, along with
other important objects such as psalters, gospels
and breviaries, were under the special care of these
hereditary guardians the dewars. The name
dewar derives from the Gaelic deoradh, meaning
stranger, or pilgrim perhaps because they carried
the cult objects on missionary pilgrimages. The
title has become a surname as well as surviving in
its original use, for there are still dewars of the
bells, in unbroken succession, though the duties
are now passed on from minister to minister in the
appropriate churches, rather than from father to
son. The Little Dunkeld bell (s. Fig. 8) is one such
example, currently under the custodianship of the
Rev Albert Smith. The function was also continued in Iceland (the title was bjolu gaetr), probably
under Celtic influence. Not only do the traditions
of custodianship continue in Scotland, but some of
the bells, such as St Finnans, are still in their original locations.
However, we do not have to rely on merely
symbolical threads to connect the idiophones of
the stone, bronze and iron ages to the Christian
iron age, for St Gildas (who came from the same
Strathclyde region of Scotland frequented by St
Kentigern) used a rock gong at his hermitage near
Castenec in Brittany to call the faithful to mass
(Fig. 6), as did his associate, St Bieuzy. Their rocks
are still there, still in use.
The early Christian bells of Scotland are still
played today, and occasionally used for much the
same functions as in the past for the burial of the
dead, for calling people to prayer, for protection
and, until recently, for curing ill-health. St Finnans
bell had these properties and used to be brought to
the landing place for the arrival of a funeral party
and then carried clockwise round the island
(Thornber 1975). Saints, such as Patrick, Gildas,
Brigid, Adomnan, Kentigern and Ninian had their
own bells, and a bell appears to have been a badge
of office of a bishop, for they are shown on early
stone carvings in the hands of mitred bishops. St
Kentigerns bell, which features on Glasgows coat
of arms, was rung in memory of the dead and was
replaced in 1641, probably because the original
was worn out with ringing.
There were two types of bells, both quadrangular, one type of sheet iron (Fig. 7), the other of
cast bronze, and all had their own clappers (the
morphology of these bells has been comprehensively described by Cormac Bourke, 1980, 1983;
cp. E. Hickmann 1998). The iron hand bells may
date from as early as the 7th8th centuries and are

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John Purser

intimately associated with the Iona mission and

therefore with Ireland. There is one which is
known as St Adomnans and it may well date from
his time. It is still housed at a site, long associated
with the saint, at the eastern edge of his missionary
activities. There are other bells, iron and bronze,
similarly sited, proclaiming their territorial significance. The iron bells are made by bending, lapping
and rivetting sheet iron. They were originally
coated in bronze (a practice still extant in Sardinia) one or two perhaps even in gold (Gregory
1904) and have suffered from corrosion. Saints
themselves were supposed to have made them,
which adds to their magical skills the deep-rooted
magic of the smith. In the case of St Gildas, and his
fellow St Bieuzy, the natural rock gongs, and their
associated man-made hand bells have contemporaneous and parallel functions. Indeed, legend has it
that St Gildas made two bells himself. The bell
shown here is St Lonans (Fig. 7), and is the best
preserved of the iron bells, having lain in the silt of
the River Forth for centuries, until caught in a
fishermans net this century. Its handle and clapper
are intact and its tone is metallic and strident.
The bells were not necessarily popular, for
there is more than one uncomplimentary reference
to them in the early literature:
Patrick of the closed-up mind Patrick of the
joyless clerks and of the bells the rough voice of
the bells has deafened me I have no liking for
clerks, their music is not sweet to me I have
heard music sweeter than your music, however
much you are praising your clerks: the song of the
blackbird in Leitir Laoi the very sweet thrush of
the Valley of the shadow, or the sound of the boats
striking the strand. (Gregory 1904).3
The lover of the song of the thrush was Oisin
(Ossian) who had been in the land of youth and
returned to find all his companions of the great
warrior troupe the Fianna long gone and a new
religion and a new music to confront him. The
conversations between Patrick and Oisin were
worked up by scholars much later than the days of
Patrick, but they reflect genuine confrontations
between the peoples of Scotland and Ireland and
those wishing to christianise them. Another poem
from the 11th century reads thus in English:
Blackbird it is well for you
wherever in the thicket be your nest,
hermit that sounds no bell
sweet, soft, fairylike is your note.
The fact that the chants and bells are fixed
upon as symbols of the new religion suggests that
bells of this type were novelties. Bells were some-

times given a form of baptism, and a service of

dedication for a bell is still in use in the British
Isles. Bells are still used to exorcise evil spirits
(hence the phrase bell, book and candle). The
bells were employed for healing purposes, but the
healing seems mainly to have been associated with
touching the bell (considered effective for skin
diseases, as recorded in the Life of St Mochua of
Balla), or drinking well-water from it, using it as a
cup, rather than from listening to it. St Fillans bell
was said to cure insanity. The bronze Skellat
Bell in Dunbartonshire Museum gets its name
from an old Scots word meaning a pan or cup.
The power of flight with which some of these
bells are credited (e.g. the bell at Insh, MacGregor
1961) may be a magical extension of the power of
the sound of a bell to travel over long distances
and draw people to it: in any case they often travelled with their owners. This same power is traditionally associated with St Moluags bachuil or
staff, which obligingly crossed the Firth of Lorne
for the saint on one occasion when he had forgotten to bring it with him from his island home. The
power of speech accorded to bells may simply be a
metaphor for their use for signalling purposes;
and, visually, the hollow of the bell represents the
preachers mouth, the clapper his tongue. We still
speak of the iron tongue of a bell.
It was a dangerous business to attempt to steal
one of these bells. One man became rooted to the
spot at the ridge of a hill with a stolen bell, until he
made up his mind to return it (Ellacombe 1872,
134). Another group of men attempting to steal a
bell from the Island of Skye by boat, were
rebuffed by increasing storms, until they left the
bell behind them. No doubt these tales were told
to intimidate thieves, but the belief that the tale
would carry weight with a thief is itself testimony
to their power.
Such was the significance of the bells, that they
gave their name to one of the unique structures associated with the Celtic church the round towers,
whose name in Gaelic is cloicthech bell-house. The
hand-bells would have been rung from the small
windows at the top, allowing the sound to carry a
fair distance. The round towers were also refuges, so
the bells may well have been used in times of danger
as well as, naturally enough, to call monks to prayer.
This 9th century poem (the original is in Gaelic) disarmingly reveals that, to the Christians at least, they
had great powers of attraction!

The passage is translated from the 12 th century AD Acallam na Senorach, which is also the source for the possible
use of gold coating on bells, though this might refer to
bell-shrines. This seminal text was published with a
translation by OGrady, Standish H. (1892), Silva Gadelica, London and Edinburgh.

The Sounds of Ancient Scotland

Sweet little bell

That rings in the windy night,
Id sooner be with you
Than to be meeting with a wanton woman.
We may imagine a monk on Iona, young enough
for temptation, old enough to reject it, stumbling
out of his cell on a wild night to the call of the bell
to sing the twelve prescribed psalms.
The iron bells produce a melancholy clanging
sound not dissimilar to that of large cow or sheep
bells, but with the bronze bells of Scotland,
thought to be of slightly later date we enter a different order of musicality, for these bells can each
individually play three different notes.
Two of the faces produce the same note, but the
others are different from it and each other. They
cover a minor third. Subsequent ringing of other
bronze bells of similar design (quadrangular,
flared, and with a curved flange where the bell
opens out) produced similar results. The bells in
question are the Little Dunkeld (Fig. 8), Forteviot,
Banchory and St Fillans bells. It seems likely that
the effect was deliberate and it is possible that it
was achieved by a slight irregularity in the quadrangle, sufficient to make the sides unequal in area,
though not so as to produce a distorted visual effect.
The characteristic is, as far as I can determine,
unique to this design; but the bronze bell of St
Finnan, which is the smallest, is an exception, producing only one basic note, possibly because it is
too small to make a meaningful difference in terms
of surface area of the four faces. Irish bronze bells,
which are generally less flared, hint at the characteristic but do not achieve it. The different notes
could have been used to indicate different times of
day or of the hour, or to accompany chanting and
to indicate moments of special importance in
church services Christs presence at the Mass is
announced by the Sanctus bell. Pitched bells were
certainly used in the middle ages to accompany
singing; and the Scottish bronze bells, which produce a lovely clear sound capable of soft as well as
very loud playing, could well be among the earliest
surviving bells worthy of that function.
Two of the bronze bells may have been commissioned by Kenneth MacAlpin in 848/9, who
united the Picts and the Scots and had built a
church at Dunkeld to house the relics of Saint
Columba, perhaps to save them from Viking
raiders but also to move the focus of Scottish religious life from the remote West to as near the dead
centre of his country as could be managed.
The ancient symbolism of the bronze age crotals and horns, has become the symbolism of the
new religion the three notes in the one instrument, the Holy Trinity. But of course it was not a
new religion, any more than the instruments were

329

new instruments, for the chain of symbolic resonance remains unbroken, and this little bell does
no more and no less than the oldest of them all, the
rock gongs with which I started.
Like the Lia Fail, the bells are intimately tied
up with the destiny of Scotland as a nation. At the
coronation of James IV it was borne in a pageant:
and at the decisive battle of Bannockburn in 1314,
when the Scots defeated the English and established the Scottish monarchy as sovereign and
independent, the crozier and bell of St Fillan were
carried before the army, to symbolise in Christian
form a continuity of pastoral staff (or druidic
wand), and protective bell (descendant of the rock
gong) that will proclaim the validity of their context and the certainty of their continuity into the
third millenium AD.

4 EXCURSUS: THE CARNYX

AS MODERN TOTEM
We should not be surprised that the effect of the
reconstruction of the carnyx (cp. the paper of J.
Creed in this publication) on Scottish cultural life
had been quite dramatic. It sounds impressive (eg.
paper of M. Campbell/Th. Gillivray in this volume). It looks impressive. It impressed the Romans, and it impressed the Celts because it is an
important part of their imagery not least among
the Picts.
The Pictish wild boar carving from Knocknagael is typical. The stone comes from near Inverness and is now in the Highland Council Offices
in Inverness. Similar images appear on two other
Class I stones as well as on summit rock at
Dunadd, which was the seat of the early Scottic
kings. But the carnyx itself is our finest example of
significance. The image is stylised, but it none-theless carefully reflects aspects of the live creature.
The imagery of the wild boar bears upon the
quality of ferocity, courageousness and cunning.
Pigs are intelligent, and the wild ones particularly
so, and very fast. But they were an important part
of diet (vide Obelix!) and, according to many
Celtic tales from Ireland and Scotland, were regularly herded if not partially domesticated. Some
had magical properties, notably the wild boar
whose poisonous bristles caused the death of
Diarmuid again a tale common to Ireland and
Scotland.
The hazel nuts discovered at the site where the
Deskford carnyx was discovered are especially significant, for the nut was not only food for humans,
but for pigs who are great nut eaters. More than
that, the hazel nut was known in Celtic mythology
in Scotland and Ireland as the nut of wisdom. It
was said to give bards their knowledge and the

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John Purser

wisdom could be imparted at second hand, by eating a salmon of knowledge for the salmon
acquired its red spots and its wisdom from swallowing the nine hazels of knowledge that fell into
the sacred pool where it swam. But the pig, as an
eater of hazel nuts, was itself wise and flesh was
highly prized. The people of the Orkneys take
their name from that of the pig the Arcaibh or
pig people, it being their totemic creature and traditionally featuring in their dreams, an association
which would give extra force to an artefact from
north-eastern Scotland, assuming association
between the two peoples of those parts. It is also
the traditional crest of the MacKinnons and the
Campbells of Argyll and Breadalbane.
With all the cultural associations cited (e.g.
MacQueen 1980; scenes of the Gundestrup bowl,
Fig. 9), the instrument, far from seeming alien, has
been accepted in Scotland as something which
belongs here. Of course it is recognised as panEuropean but, as Fraser Hunter (s. his paper in
this publication) has pointed out, elements of the
design appear to be local, and the potential role of
the instrument in the holding back of the Romans
gives it a particular appeal, the Scots being proud
of the fact that much of their territory was never

truly conquered, and such as was, was only held

for a brief and turbulent period.
What has been particularly heartening is that
the enthusiasm for the instrument has been felt by
a wide cross-section of Scottish society. School
children from opposite corners of the country
have been enthusiastic: in Fochabers they performed a play with the carnyx as its focal centre,
and in Bearsden the instrument was a vital link in a
European-funded Comenius partnership project
in which the pupils examined their Celto-Roman
heritage. The reconstruction has brought together
specialists of various fields (see the paper of J.
Creed and J. Kenny in this publication) and the
general public: and such has been the demand that
a second instrument had to be made, in order to
allow the first one to spend a reasonable amount
of time on public display in the National Museum.
Interestingly, the public have not had any
difficulty in approaching the instruments
unique sound world. Perhaps the combination
of its superb zoomorphic presence with the
great power and variety of the sound, makes
thoughts of conventional melody irrelevant. It
is accepted for what it is, not compared with
what it is not.

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SWIRE, O.F. (1961)

Skye the Island and its Legends. London/Glasgow.
THORNBER, I. (1975)
The Bell of St Finnan. The Scottish Field (June
1975).
WATSON, A. (1997)
Sound-Reflecting Rocks. British Archaeology
no. 23 (April 1997) London.

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b
Fig. 1 Sound-reflecting rocks Easter Acquhorthies, North-East Scotland.

The Sounds of Ancient Scotland

Fig. 2 Tiree Rock.

Fig. 3 Iona Rock (Isle of Iona, Scotland).

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Fig. 4 Irish Bronze Age horns (about 800 BC), end-blown instrument: L = 75 cm; side-blown horn = 60 cm.

Fig. 5 Bronze Age crotal, h=12 cm.

The Sounds of Ancient Scotland

Fig. 6 St. Gildas rock.

Fig. 7 St. Lonans bell (9th cent. AD, h = 21,5 cm).

Fig. 8 Little Dunkeld bell (9th cent. AD, h = 21,5 cm).

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Fig. 9 Scene with three carnyx-blowers. Inner surface of the Gundestrup cauldron (cast after original). Celtic, 2nd/1st century BC, National Museum Copenhagen.

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