216 NAKCOTIC USAGES AND SUPERSTITIONS 



adds greatly to the force of the argument against any older employ- 

 ment of narcotics in the way of inhaling their fumes, based on the 

 absence of earlier notices of so remarkable a custom. The use in- 

 deed of various narcotics, such as opium, bang : the leaf of the hemp 

 plant, and the betel-nut, the fruit of the Areca palm, by the south- 

 eastern Asiatics appears to be traceable to a remote antiquity. North- 

 ern Europe has, in like manner, had its ledum and hop, and in Sibeiia, 

 its amanita muscaria, or narcotic fungus. But the evidence fails us 

 ■which should prove that in the case of the pipe, as in that of the 

 pouncet-box, the tobacco only came as a substitute for older aroma- 

 tics, or narcotics similarity employed. Nor when the evidence is 

 looked into more carefully, are such direct proofs wanting, as suggest 

 a comparatively recent origin, in so far as both Europe and Asia are 

 concerned, to the peculiar mode .of enjoying such narcotics by in- 

 haling their fumes through a pipe attached to the bowl in which they 

 are subjected to a slow process of combustion. 



When engaged, some years since, in the preparation of a work on 

 Scottish Archaeology, my attention was directed, among various minor 

 antiquities of the British Islands, to a curious class of relics popularly 

 known in Scotland by the name of Celtic or Eijin pipes, in the north 

 of England as Fairy pipes, and in Ireland where they are more abun- 

 dant, n< Danes' pipes. These are formed of white clay, with some re- 

 semblance to the form of the modern clay pipe, but variously orna- 

 mented, and invariably of a very small size compared with any 

 tobacco-pipe in modern use. Similar relics have since been observed 

 in England, found under circumstances calculated, like those attend- 

 ing the discovery of some of the Scottish examples to suggest an 

 antiquity for them long anterior to the introduction of America's 

 favourite narcotic, with what King James, on finding its taxability,, 

 learned to designate its " precious stink ! ' The most remarkable 

 of such discoveries are those in which pipes of this primitive form 

 have been found on Roman sites along side of genuine Roman remains. 

 Such was the case, on the exposure, in 1852, of part of the ancient 

 Roman wall of London, at the Tower postern ; and, along with mason- 

 ry and tiles, of undoubted Roman workmanship, a mutilated sepul- 

 chral inscription was found possessed of peculiar interest from sup- 

 plying the only example, so far as I am aware, in Britain, of a Chris- 

 tian date of the second century : — 



PO ANNO + C LXX* 

 In the summer of 1853, only a few months after this London dis- 



* M.S. Letter J. W. Archer, Esq., London, April, 1853. 



