The purpose of this paper is to give a brief survey of the Needfire ceremony and its variants as they occurred in various parts of Scotland. As the introductory example we take the case of a Morayshire farmer. ‘In the year 1850 a murrain decimated the herd of a farmer in the parish of Dallas. He proceeded at once with all ceremony to kindle the needfire. Then digging a pit in the ground he sacrificed an ox’ (1). This is fairly representative of the practice which was common all over Scotland. From time immemorial fires of different kinds have been kindled on certain days of the year. But besides these regularly recurring celebrations farmers resorted to fire rituals in seasons of distress above all when their cattle were attacked by epidemic disease, or, to ward off the devils of witchcraft. The general name by which they are known is needfire, Gaelic teine-éiginn, ‘churned’ or ‘forced fire’. It was by needfire that fire was originally produced at all fire festivals. Of the primitive ways of kindling fire the commonest was by the friction of wood, and two methods of producing friction in this way was clearly distinguished, the fire-drill and stick and groove or fire-plough. In its simplest form the fire-drill consists of two sticks, one of which is pointed and held upright with its point pressing on the other, which was laid flat on the ground; the upright stick, or drill proper, is twirled rapidly between the palms of the hands till the point bores a hole in the other stick and the continued friction generates first heat and then fire which is nursed into a flame by dry leaves or other suitable tinder. In the fire-plough a pointed stick is rubbed vigorously along a groove or depression in a piece of wood laid flat on the ground.

Professor Conrad Engelhardt, who was himself responsible for the excavation of the four great finds of Thorsbjærg, Vimose, Nydam and Kragehul, gave us in his Denmark in the Early Iron Age (illustrated by recent discoveries in the Peat Mosses of Slesvig) our first comprehensive picture of Danish archaeology in the centuries immediately before and after the birth of Christ. His book was published in English in London in 1866 and the engravings of the Nydam boat and the Thorsbjærg woollen trousers have been commonplaces of archaeological teaching ever since. Engelhardt lived and worked in stirring times—his excavations at Nydam had to be discontinued ‘when the two Allied German Powers, in the heart of the winter of 1864, assailed Denmark and conquered South Jutland’; and he was writing only thirty years from the time when C. J. Thomsen had formally proposed that the antiquities of the Danish prehistoric period should be divided into three distinct ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron. Engelhardt adopted Worsaae's classification of the Danish Iron Age into three periods, the Early Iron Age which he dated from 250 B.C. to A.D. 450, a transition period extending to the close of the 7th century, and the Late Iron Age terminating with the introduction of Christianity in the year 1000. He discussed whether the changes implicit in the Early Iron Age were the result of pacific intercourse or commercial relations with nations of higher civilization, rejects these, and says ‘the higher state of civilization was the result of an invasion, for in no other way can the sudden appearance of damascened weapons, of materials hitherto unknown, of horses, arts and letters, be satisfactorily explained’.

This magnificent and monumental volume must be ranked amongst the trophies which Iran seems to engender for the bibliophile. That is chiefly due to the sumptuous and extensive architecture and sculpture to which justice can only be done by lavish illustration and panorama. Many of the half-tone plates are triumphs of photography which by skilful use of chiaroscuro bring into bold relief the mastery of the ancient stone-cutter over his material, his sense of space and proportion, his unending battle with the rock. Occasionally there is a photograph which has been better done in Arthur Upham Pope's Survey of Persian Art, notably for example the extraordinary quasi-Egyptian figure with the triple crown at Pasargadae, symbol perhaps of Cyrus's triumph over Syria; but en masse the views are glorious, be they reliefs, buildings or photographs taken from the air. It should be added that the anonymous architectural line drawings are also worthy of the book's distinguished format.

To investigate any topic properly, we should exploit all the evidence bearing upon it. The study, therefore, of any period of antiquity documented both by artifacts and texts, requires the synthesis of archaeology and philology. He who would control any period of history, must master its written as well as its archaeological sources.

The growth of knowledge, and the development of new techniques, evoke more and more specialization. This has happened particularly in the study of man as a result of the masses of data that keep pouring in, during an age of discovery through exploration and excavation.

Sir Walter Scott ’, Andrew Lang once remarked, ‘ entered literature through the ruined gateway of archaeology ’. The influence of Scott’s poetry, and of the Waverley Novels, upon the growing antiquarian and romantic taste of the early 19th century is a commonplace which needs no enlargement here, but it should have a particular interest to us as Fellows of a Society founded for the study of Scottish antiquities when young Walter was nine years old, and to which he was elected in 1796. That one of his novels should be called The Antiquary is no mere chance, and in Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns, who plays the title-r6le, Scott produced a character whom he acknowledged as in part a humorous caricature of himself. As a crumbling pilaster, or mouldering gargoyle, of Lang's ruined gateway, I should like tonight to direct your attention to The Antiquary’s, and The Shirra’s, archaeological ancestors : what was the climate of antiquarian thought in which Scott had been brought up and how is it reflected in his work ? I do not promise anything new in this brief enquiry, but there are points of interest which may not have been brought together before.