The Book-Hunter, John Hill Burton [essential reading TXT] 📗

If that which is to be done shall rival that which the club has achieved, it will be worthy of all honour. No one can open the book of The Sculptured Stones without being almost overwhelmed with astonishment at the reflection that they are not monuments excavated in Egypt, or Syria, or Mexico, but have stood before the light of day in village churchyards, or in marketplaces, or by waysides throughout our own country. As you pass on, the eye becomes almost tired with the endless succession of grim and ghastly human figures—of distorted limbs—of preternatural beasts, birds, and fishes—of dragons, centaurs, and intertwined snakes—of uncouth vehicles, and warlike instruments, and mystic-looking symbols—of chains of interlaced knots and complex zigzags, all so crowding on each other that the tired eye feels as if it had run through a procession of Temptations of St Anthony or Faust Sabbaths. When this field of investigation and speculation is surveyed in all its affluence, one is not surprised to find that it has been taken in hand by a race of bold guessers, who, by the skilful appliance of a jingling jargon of Asiatic, Celtic, and classical phraseology, make nonsense sound like learning too deep to be fathomed. So, while Rusticus will point out to you "the auld-fashioned standin' stane"—on which he tells you that there are plain to be seen a cocked hat, a pair of spectacles, a comb, a looking-glass, a sow with a long snout, and a man driving a gig,—Mr Urban will describe to you "a hieroglyphed monolith" in the terms following:—

"The Buddhist triad is conspicuously symbolised by what the peasantry call a pair of spectacles. It consists of two circles, of which the one, having its radius 1-3/4 inch wider than the other, is evidently Buddha, the spiritual or divine intellectual essence of the world, or the efficient underived source of all; the other is Dharma, the material essence of the world—the plastic derivative cause. The ligamen connecting them together, completes the sacred triad with the Sangha derived from and composed of the two others. Here, therefore, is symbolised the collective energy of spirit and matter in the state of action, or the embryotic creation, the type and sum of all specific forms, spontaneously evolved from the union of Buddha and Dharma. The crescent, likened by the vulgar-minded peasantry to a cocked hat, is the embodiment of the all-pervading celestial influence; and the decorated sceptres or sacred wands of office, laid across it at the mystic angle of forty-five degrees, represent the comprehensive discipline and cosmopolite authority of the conquering Sarsaswete. The figure of the elephant—undoubted evidence of the oriental origin of this monoglyph—represents the embryo of organised matter; while in the chariot of the sun the never-dying Inis na Bhfiodhlhadth threads the sacred labyrinth, waving a branch of the Mimosa serisha, which has been dipped in a sacred river, and dried beneath the influence of Osiris. The figures called a comb and a looking-glass are the lingal emblems of the sacred Phallic worship. The whole hierograph thus combines, in an extremely simple and instructive unity, the symbolisation of Apis, Osiris, Uphon, and Isis, Phallos, Pater Æther, and Mater Terra, Lingam and Yoni, Vishnu, Brama, and Sarsaswete, with their Saktes, Yang and Yiri, Padwadevi, Viltzli-pultzli, Baal, Dhanandarah, Sulivahna and Mumbo Jumbo."

The honest transcripts in the club book clear away a great deal of that unknown which is so convertible into the magnificent. It was extremely perplexing to understand that the elephant was profusely represented upon memorials familiar to the eyes of the inhabitants of Scotland, at a period, if we might credit some theories, anterior to the time when Roman soldiers were appalled in the Punic war by the sudden apparition of unknown animals of monstrous size and preternatural strength. The whole flood of oriental theory was let loose by this evidence of familiarity with the usages of Hindostan. But it is pretty evident, when we inspect him closely, that the animal, though a strange beast of some peculiar conventional type, is no elephant. That spiral winding-up of his snout, which passed for a trunk, is a characteristic refuge of embryo art, repeated upon other parts of the animal. It is necessitated by the difficulty which a primitive artist feels in bringing out the form of an extremity, whatever it may be—snout, horn, or hoof. He finds that the easiest termination he can make is a whirl, and he makes it accordingly. Thus the noses, the tails, the feet of the characteristic monster of the sculptured stones, all end in a whirl, as the final letter of an accomplished and dashing penman ends in a flourish. The same difficulty is met in repeated instances on these stones by another ingenious resource. Animals are united or twined together by noses or tails, to enable the artist to escape the difficulty of executing the extremities of each separately.

There is a propensity to believe that whatever is old must have something holy and mysterious about it. It is difficult to suppose that, in making an ornament, men who would be so venerable, were they alive now, as our ancestors of many centuries ago, can have been in the slightest degree affected by the pomps and vanities of this wicked world. Hence there is never a quaint Gothic decoration, floral or animal, but it must be symbolic of some great mystery. So the reticulated and geometrical tracery on the sculptured stones has been invested with mythic attributes, under such names as "the Runic Knot." It has been counted symbolical of a mysterious worship or creed, and has been associated with Druids and other respectable, but not very palpable, personages.[83]

Good theories are such a rarity in the antiquarian world, that it is a luxury to find one which, in reference to this sort of decoration, merits that character. The buildings, both ecclesiastical and civil, of the early Christians of the North were, as we have seen, made of wattles or wicker-ware. The skill, therefore, of the architectural decorator took the direction of the variations in basket-work. We know that in the Gothic age those forms which were found the most endurable and graceful in which stone could be placed upon stone, became also the ruling forms which guided the carver and the painter; so that all wood-work, metal-work, seal-cutting, illumination of books, and the like, repeated the ornaments of Gothic architecture. It would only, then, be a prototype of an established phenomenon were it to be found that the sculptor of an earlier age adopted the decorations developed by the skillful platting of withes or wattles; and accordingly, this is just the character of the platted ornaments so prevalent on the sculptured stones.[84] But, however these may have been suggested, they show the work of the undoubted artist, and furnish, as the advertisements say, "a varied assortment of the most elegant and attractive patterns."

Every one who in future attempts to unravel the mystery of these primitive sculptures must not only in gratitude but in common justice pay homage to the services of Mr John Stuart, the secretary of the Antiquaries' Society of Scotland, to whose learning and zeal he owes the collective means of examining them. It will interest many to know that Mr Stuart has been at work again, and has a second collection of transcripts, in some respects even more instructive than the first. These will show, for instance, the point of junction between the sculptures of the East and of the West, which, in their extreme special features, are widely unlike each other.

In the mean time, as the reader is perhaps tired of all this talk about books, and I would fain part with him in good humour, I venture to take him on an imaginary ramble in the wilds of Argyllshire, in search of specimens of ancient native sculpture, that he may have an opportunity of noticing how much has yet to be gleaned off this stony field. So we are off together, on a fresh summer morning, along the banks of the Crinan Canal, until we reach the road which turns southward to Loch Swin and Taivalich. After ascending so far, we strike off by a scarcely discernible track, and climb upwards among the curiously broken mountains of South Knapdale. When we are high enough up we look on the other side of the first ridge, and see the brown heather dappled with tiny lakes, looking like molten silver dropped into their hollows; while far below, one of the countless branches of Loch Swin winds through a narrow inlet, among rocks cushioned to the water's edge with deep green foliage. We are not to descend to the region of lake and woodland, betrayed by this glimpse, but to keep the wilder upland; and at last, in a secluded hollow near the small tarn called Lochcolissor, we reach a deserted village—a collection of roofless stone houses, looking, if one judged from mere externals, as if they might in their early days have given shelter to Columba or Oran. In the centre of this group of domestic ruins is an affluent fountain of the clearest water. Standing over it is the object of our search—a tall, grey, profusely-lichened stone. At first it seems amorphous, as geologists say; but a closer view discloses on the one side a cross incised, on the other a network of floral decorations in relief. To trace these in their completeness, it would be necessary to accomplish the not easy task of removing the coating of lichen; and, by the way, if adepts in the cryptogamic department of botany shall succeed in finding a test of the precise age of those lichens, which they believe they have proved to be the growth of centuries, a key of the most valuable kind will be obtained for discovering the age of stone monuments.[85]

Turn now in another direction. At the head of Loch Fyne, near Dunderar, the grim tower of the Macnaughtons—which, from some decorations on it, looks hugely like as if it had been built in the seventeenth century with the stones of an old church—we find a tuft of trees with a dyke round it, called Kilmorich. It is a graveyard evidently, though it may not have been recently opened; the surface is uneven, and several rough stones, which may have been placed there at any time, stick through the earth. These, after a deliberate inspection, are found to have nothing of a sculptural character. But a small piece of rounded stone appears above the grass, and a little grubbing discloses a font, faintly decorated with some primitive fluting, on which a stone-mason would look with much scorn, and a scratching of a galley, the symbol of the Argyll family, or some other of the races descended from ancient sea-kings. This gives encouragement, and a sharper glance around betrays a singular-looking rounded headstone, in which are two crescent-shaped holes. There are corresponding holes on the portion under the sod, which thus completes the rounded head of an ancient Scoto-Irish cross. The next point is to find the shaft—it lies not far off, deep in the turf. And when we take the grass and moss from its face, it discloses some extremely curious quadrilateral decorations, quite peculiar, and not in conformity with any type of form which would enable its date to be guessed at within a century or two of the reality.

Passing through the rich woods of Ardkinglas, in a few miles we reach the burying-ground, called of old Kilmaglas, but now the well-kept churchyard, in which stands the modern church of Strachur. There are many who will remember the white house glimmering through