Sentimental Mottos and Aphorisms

If you read last week’s post, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Chinese seals in Ireland mystery had been solved long before The Book of the Damned was published. Not so, according to this 1925 piece from The Irish Monthly.

Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1836-1869), vol. 10, 1866

THE MYSTERY OF IRELAND’S CHINESE SEALS

IRELAND, as becomes the island of Celtic Romance, has many intriguing mysteries, mysteries in the real sense of the word deriving from “myo,” “to close,” “shut impenetrably.” And few of them are more unfathomable than that concerning the retrieving of ancient porcelain seals bearing the ancient Chinese characters in different parts of Ireland. Many of them were found towards the mid-years of last century in places which wholly negative the supposition of a well contrived hoax.

These seals have been discovered at various times, and in localities very far from each other. One, for instance, was found early last century among the roots of an old pear-tree in a garden in County Down, and, judging by the depth of soil at which it was retrieved, and the age of the tree, it must have lain there for many generations before its discovery. Another was picked up in 1841 immediately outside Cahir Castle. Lying with it, at a little distance from the surface of the ground, were the remains of a skeleton, the bones of which soon crumbled to dust on exposure to the atmosphere. Another was found by a turf-cutter in a bog in Queen’s County, and another in a ploughed field in Borrisokane, County Tipperary. In only one instance have seals been discovered in localities near to each other. In County Down, a second one was accidentally lit upon in the parish of Killyleagh, close to the surface in a piece of ground overgrown with whins beyond the memory of tradition. Among other sites where such seals have been recovered was that of an old disused road leading to the Catholic burying-ground hard by Carlow, while in 1805 a fine specimen was picked up in a small cave near the mouth of Cork Harbour.

Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1836-1869), vol. 10, 1866

For many centuries now the seals in common use throughout China have been of long rectangular shape, with an animal at one end, and either with or without inscriptions, and such seals are common enough among us to-day, many curio dealers selling them. All the mystery seals, however, are each of them, of a perfect cube of porcelain, which is quite as indestructible by the process of time and nature as the fine ware of the Pharaohs or the glazed tiles of the Mayas in their ruined cities of Yucatan. Each seal has the same ornamentation - the figure of a monkey surmounting the cube - and all are identical in size, form and appearance. Only the inscriptions differ; although all of them are in the “Chuentze” or ancient-seal character of China, which, it has been stated, dates from the sixth century before the Christian era. The matter of the inscription varies. Sometimes it consists of sentimental motto, and sometimes appears to be merely a proper name, or, again, it deals with an aphorism, in one instance, “Yuy ke keih jin (put one’s self in another place).”

How came these seals to Ireland, and when? And their wide dispersal?

When the mystery of them was publicly discussed last mid-century it was advanced by some that the seals had been introduced by chance in tea chests; no similar ones, however, have been found elsewhere in Europe; and it is singular that only tea chests consigned to Ireland should have contained them. Several distinguished archaeologists declared them to be a hoax. On the other hand, however, the hoaxing would have required more than one generation to carry it through, after procuring the seals from China, and would have entailed much and arduous travelling about for the purpose of hiding them in peat bogs and other places, where only mere chance could lead to their discovery.

The most plausible explanation advanced was that someone connected with Lord Macartney’s ambassadorial visit to Pekin in 1792 brought the seals home. Against this, there is the discovery of them in most distant and scattered localities in Ireland, while elsewhere in Europe they appeared to be unknown.

When the discussion was at its warmest, great interest was aroused in London by one of several energetic searchers finding in a curio-shop, not far from the docks, a seal identical with the porcelain “mysteries.” It, however, was ultimately traced as having been stolen out of a private collection in Dublin.

Ireland’s Chinese seals remain a mystery.

Yet, to-day, we know, that a thousand years and more before the Christian era, China carried on an overland trade with Asia Minor and Phoenicia. The vases of Chinese ware-makers have been found in the rock tombs of Egypt, and fragments of Chinese porcelain, identical with the “murrhine” cups mentioned by Pliny, have been found in pre-Christian graves in Spain and Sicily. After the Mithridatic War these cups became popular among the wealthy Roman nobles, who willingly gave immense sums for them and other articles coming out of the Far East.

Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1836-1869), vol. 10, 1866

We know, too, that the Phoenicians traded with the coastal natives of Eire, even as they traded with the Gaels of Cornwall. Possibly, then, the mystery seals of Ireland came with them, having reached Phoenicia by the Mid-Asian route from China to the Euxine or Black Sea, or through the countries of Asia Minor in communication with it.

That these singular cubes of porcelain did not find their way to our shores in modern times or for centuries past becomes certain if the conditions are considered in which most of them have been found. Nature and mother-earth have their own ways of marking the passage of the centuries over that which falls into their care. The human bones, found with the Chair Castle specimen, told, by falling away into dust, of their long measure of antiquity.

N. TOURNEUR

Sources:

Frazer, W. “On Chinese Porcelain Seals Found in Ireland.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (1836-1869), vol. 10, 1866, pp. 172–179. 

Tourneur, N. “The Mystery of Ireland's Chinese Seals.” The Irish Monthly, vol. 53, no. 619, 1925, pp. 48–50.