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

the trees, and lament that memory is now all that it contains for them. Here are several curious specimens of sculpture. Some stones, not of the oldest type, have the crossed sword, symbolical alike of the warrior character of the dead and the religion of peace in which he rests. There is one with a figure in full chain-armour; and others, again, of an older date, ornamented with the geometric reticulations already discussed. Descending a few miles farther, in the small fertile delta of the Lachlan, and overshadowed almost by the old square castle of the M'Lachlans, there is a bushy enclosure which may be identified as the old burial-place of Kilmory. A large block of hewn stone, with a square hole in it, sets one in search of the cross of which it was the socket. This is found in the grass, sadly mutilated, but can be recognised by the stumps of the branches which once exfoliated into its circular head. Beside it lies a flat stone, on which a sword is surrounded by graceful floral sculpture.

Let us cross over again to the valley perforated by Loch Crinan. Northward of the canal there is a remarkable alluvial district, through which, although it seems crowded with steep mountain summits, one can travel over many a mile of level turf. From this soil the hills and rocks rise with extreme abruptness, in ridges at the border of the plain, and in isolated peaks here and there throughout its flat alluvial surface. Conspicuous, in a minor degree, is a great barrow like a pyramid, with a chamber roofed with long stones in its centre. Near it is one of those circles of rough stones called Druidical, and farther on there is another, and then another; some of them tall pillars, others merely peeping above ground. They literally people the plain. This must have been a busy neighbourhood, whatever sort of work it may have been that went on around these untooled fragments of the living rock, which have so distracted our antiquaries in later centuries. If they were the means or the object of any kind of heathen worship, then the existence close beside them of the vestiges of early Christianity may be set down as an illustration of the well-known historical opinion, that the first Christian missionaries, instead of breaking the idols and reviling the superstitions of those whom they went to convert, professed to bring a new sanctity to their sacred places, and endeavoured to turn their impure faith, with the least possible violence, into the path of purity.

Our next trial is at Kilmichael, about three miles from Loch Gilp. The churchyard is extremely fruitful in sculptured stones of various kinds—some floral, others geometrical, with wild beasts, monsters, and human figures. One of them was pointed out as the tomb of a member of the house of Campbell, who bore the name of Thomas, and was a great bard, and lived in London and other great cities—Thomas Campbell, in short. It seems to be true that his ancestors were buried in Kilmichael churchyard, but my informant seemed to struggle with an idea that the stone covered with the sculpture of a far-past century had been really raised to his honour. The next generation will probably assert this as a fact. The genesis of such traditions is curious. The stone called Rob Roy's tomb, which lies beside an ancient font in the churchyard of Balquhidder, is a sculptured stone raised for some one who had probably died in wealth and honour hundreds of years before Rob stole cattle.

By a slight ascent westward of the alluvial plain we reach Kilmartin, a village with a large modern church. Its graveyard is graced with many sculptured stones—twenty-five may be counted, conspicuous for their rich carving and excellent preservation. On one or two of the latest in date, there are knightly figures clad in chain-mail. A local antiquary could probably trace these home to some worshipful families in the neighbourhood, but there are others beyond the infancy of the oldest authentic pedigrees. While the stones in the eastern counties are all of extremely remote antiquity, offering no link of connection with later times, these Highland specimens seem to carry their peculiarities with modified variations through several centuries into times comparatively late. There are among them stones bearing some types of extreme antiquity, and others which undoubtedly proclaim themselves as no older than the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. It is sometimes a difficult task, in judging of antiquities, to make a sufficient allowance for the spirit of imitation. There is nothing certainly more natural than that a new tombstone should be made after the fashion of time-honoured monuments, the pride of the graveyard in which it is to be placed. In Kilmartin there are two decided imitations of the more ancient class of the western sculptured stones. Though the symbols and decorations which they bear are of ancient outline, the heavy, and at the same time accurate and workmanlike, way in which they are cut, would mark them indubitably as modern, even if the one did not bear the date of 1707, and the other of 1711.

But the sun is dropping behind Ben Cruachan and the Jura hills. The time of holiday reading and holiday rambling has come to its end; and a voice calls the wanderer back to more sedate and methodical pursuits.

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