Illustration of Hog-back Stone.
The stone is perhaps more than a thousand years old, and has been a good deal knocked about. It was once the tomb of a great Christian Briton or Englishman, before the Norman Conquest; and you may still see four other "hog-backed Saxon" uncarved tombstones in Lowther Churchyard, marking the graves of the noble of that day. When a stone church was built, our sculptured shrine was built into the walls of the church, and some of the mortar still sticks to the red sandstone. When this old church was pulled down to give place to a new one this same stone, covered with lime and unsightly, was left lying about. You will see something twisted and coiled along the bottom of each drawing beneath the figures, and you will see some strange designs (they are sacred symbols used long ago) on either side of one of the heads in the lower picture; but what will strike you most will be the long curls of hair, and the hands pressed to the breast or folded and pressed together as if in prayer; and, above all, you will notice that all these people seem to be asleep; their eyes are closed and their hands folded or pressed to their breast, and they all look as if they were either asleep or praying, or very peaceful and at perfect rest. These people are not dead; look at their faces and mark generally the attitudes of repose.
Now let us find something worth remembering about all this.
The tombstone is made like a little house to represent the home of the dead. But at the time I am speaking of the people believed that only those who died bravely fighting would have a life of happiness afterwards; other people who were not wicked people at all—but all who died of sickness or old age—went to the cold, dark world ruled over by a goddess called "Hel," who was the daughter of the Evil one. "Such is the origin of our word Hell, the name of a goddess applied to a locality. Her domains were very great and her yard walls very high. Hunger is her dish, starvation her knife, care is her bed, a beetling cliff is the threshold of her hall, which is hung with grief." All, except the warriors who died fighting, however good, went to her domain. It might be thought that to be with such a goddess after death was bad enough, but there was a worse place. For the wicked another place was prepared, a great hall and a bad one; its doors looked northward. It was altogether wrought of adders' backs wattled together, and the heads of the adder all turned inwards, and spit venom, so that rivers of venom ran along the hall, and in those rivers the wicked people must wade for ever.
The Christian wished to show that this terrible idea of man's future state was to fire away to something better through the Lord of Life, our Lord Jesus Christ, and so they set up crosses and carried triquetra, the sign of the ever blessed Trinity, on their sculptured tombs to teach the people to believe no longer in gods and goddesses of darkness, but to look to one God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to drive away all evil spirits from their hearts, and to give them a quiet time and a perfect end. Was there any wonder that years afterwards, when the bright light shone forth from the Cross to disperse the dark clouds of paganism, that men said that holy men, such as Patrick, Kentigern and Cuthbert had driven all poisonous snakes out of the land? The twisted and coiling thing beneath the figures is no doubt the old serpent. The Cross of Christ and the ash tree Yggdrasil of the northern tribes bore a like meaning at a certain time to the mixed peoples on this coast. (W. S. Collingwood.)