The Book-Hunter
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."
[Footnote 84: See "An Attempt to Explain the Origin and Meaning of the
Early Interlaced Ornamentation found on the Ancient Sculptured Stones of
Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, by Gilbert J. French of Bolton."
Privately printed.]
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]
[Footnote 85: Any one who desires to see the extent to which science can
find employment in this arid-looking corner of organic life, may look at
a "Memoir on the Spermogones and Pycnides of Filamentous, Fruticulose,
and Foliaceous Lichens," by Dr William Lauder Lindsay, in the 22d volume
of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.]
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 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.
INDEX.
Aberdeen laird, an, described by his wife, 10 _et seq._
Adams, Dr Francis, an eminent Greek scholar, 264 _et seq._
Adventures of Saints, 396, 397.
Advertisements, reading of, 156 _et seq._
--curious historical interest of, 160 _et seq._
Aidan and Columba, 383.
Ailbhe, St, and the cranes, 390.
Albania, a poem, reprinted by Leyden, 196.
Alexandrian Library, destruction of, by fire, 211.
Almanacs, as affording profitable reading, 155 _et seq._
Amateur book-hunters, 106 _et seq._
Ambrosian Library, the, at Milan, 198.
American collections dealing with early American history, 189 _et seq._
Americans duplicating old European Libraries, 174
--in relation to art and letters, _ib._
--combating for rarities, 175
--ransacking and anatomising private collections, 178.
Ancient literature, considerable amount of, lost, 324.
Angelo Mai of the Vatican, 229
--recovery by him of Institute of Gaius, 326.
Annotating of books a crime and a virtue, 185 _et seq._