The obelisk at Hilton, though perhaps the most elegant of its class in Scotland, is less known than any of the other two, and it has fared more hardly. For, about two centuries ago, it was taken down by some barbarous mason of Ross, who converted it into a tombstone, and, erasing the neat mysterious hieroglyphics of one of the sides, engraved on the place which they had occupied a rude shield and label, and the following laughable inscription; no bad specimen, by the bye, of the taste and judgment which could destroy so interesting a monument, and of that fortuitous species of wit which lies within the reach of accident, and of accident alone.
HE · THAT · LIVES · WEIL · DYES · WEIL · SAYS · SOLOMON · THE · WISE.
HEIR · LYES · ALEXANDER · DVFF · AND · HIS · THRIE · WIVES.
The side of the obelisk which the chisel has spared is surrounded by a broad border, embossed in a style of ornament that would hardly disgrace the frieze of an Athenian portico;—the centre is thickly occupied by the figures of men, some on horseback, some afoot—of wild and tame animals, musical instruments, and weapons of war and of the chase. The stone of Shandwick is still standing,[4] and bears on the side which corresponds to the obliterated surface of the other, the figure of a large cross, composed of circular knobs wrought into an involved and intricate species of fretwork, which seems formed by the twisting of myriads of snakes. In the spaces on the sides of the shaft there are two huge, clumsy-looking animals, the one resembling an elephant, and the other a lion; over each of these a St. Andrew seems leaning forward from his cross; and on the reverse of the obelisk the sculpture represents processions, hunting-scenes, and combats. These, however, are but meagre notices; the obelisk at Nigg I shall describe more minutely as an average specimen of the class to which it belongs.
It stands in the parish burying-ground, beside the eastern gable of the church; and bears on one of its sides, like the stone at Shandwick, a large cross, which, it may be remarked, rather resembles that of the Greek than of the Romish Church, and on the other a richly embossed frame, enclosing, like the border of the obelisk at Hilton, the figures of a crowded assemblage of men and animals. Beneath the arms of the cross the surface is divided into four oblong compartments, and there are three above—one on each side, which form complete squares, and one a-top, which, like the pediment of a portico, is of a triangular shape. In the lower angle of this upper compartment, two priest-like figures, attired in long garments, and furnished each with a book, incline forwards in the attitude of prayer; and in the centre between them there is a circular cake or wafer, which a dove, descending from above, holds in its bill. Two dogs seem starting towards the wafer from either side; and directly under it there is a figure so much weathered, that it may be deemed to represent, as fancy may determine, either a little circular table, or the sacramental cup. A pictorial record cannot be other than a doubtful one; and it is difficult to decide whether the hieroglyphic of this department denotes the ghostly influence of the priest in delivering the soul from the evils of an intermediate state; for, at a slight expense of conjectural analogy, we may premise that the mysterious dove descends in answer to the prayer of the two kneeling figures, to deliver the little emblematical cake from the “power of the dog;”—or, whether it may not represent a treaty of peace between rival chiefs whose previous hostility may be symbolized by the two fierce animals below, and their pacific intentions by the bird above, and who ratify the contract by an oath, solemnized over the book, the cup, and the wafer. A very few such explanations might tempt one to quote the well-known story of the Professor of signs and the Aberdeen butcher; the weight of the evidence, however, rests apparently with those who adopt the last. We see the locks of the kneeling figures curling upon their shoulders in unclerical profusion, unbroken by the tonsure; while the presence of the two books, with the absence of any written inscription, seems characteristic of the mutual memorial of tribes, who, though not wholly illiterate, possess no common language save the very doubtful language of symbol. If we hold further that the stone is of Scandinavian origin—and it seems a rather difficult matter to arrive at a different conclusion—we can hardly suppose that the natives should have left unmutilated the monument of a people so little beloved had they had no part in what it records, or no interest in its preservation.
We pass to the other compartments;—some of these and the plane of the cross are occupied by a species of fretwork exceedingly involved and complicated, but formed, notwithstanding, on regular mathematical figures. There are others which contain squares of elegantly arrayed tracery, designed in a style which we can almost identify with that of the border illuminations of our older manuscripts, or of the ornaments, imitative of these, which occur in works printed during the reigns of Elizabeth and James. But what seem the more curious compartments of the stone are embossed into rows of circular knobs, covered over, as if by basket-work, with the intricate foldings of myriads of snakes; and which may be either deemed to allude to the serpent and apple of the Fall—thus placed in no inapt neighbourhood to the cross; or to symbolize (for even the knobs may be supposed to consist wholly of serpents) that of which the serpent has ever been held emblematic, and which we cannot regard as less appositely introduced—a complex wisdom, or an incomprehensible eternity.
The hieroglyphics of the opposite side are in lower relief, and though the various fretwork of the border is executed in a style of much elegance, the whole seems to owe less to the care of the sculptor. The centre is occupied by what, from its size, we must deem the chief figure of the group—that of a man attired in long garments, caressing a fawn; and directly fronting him, there are the figures of a lamb and a harp. The whole is, perhaps, emblematical of peace, and may be supposed to tell the same story with the upper hieroglyphic of the reverse. In the space beneath there is the figure of a man furnished with cymbals, which he seems clashing with much glee, and that of a horse and its rider, surrounded by animals of the chase; while in the upper part of the stone there are dogs, deer, an armed huntsman, and, surmounting the whole, an eagle or raven. It may not be deemed unworthy of remark, that the style of the more complex ornaments of this stone very much resembles that which obtains in the sculptures and tatooings of the New-Zealander. We see exhibited in both the same intricate regularity of pattern, and almost similar combinations of the same waving lines. And we are led to infer, that though the rude Scandinavian of perhaps nine centuries ago had travelled a long stage in advance of the New-Zealander of our own times, he had yet his ideas of the beautiful cast in nearly the same mould. Is it not a curious fact, that man, in his advances towards the just and graceful in design, proceeds not from the simple to the complex, but from the complex to the simple?
DUNSKAITH.
The slope of the northern Sutor which fronts the town of Cromarty, terminates about a hundred and fifty feet above the level of the shore in a precipitous declivity surmounted by a little green knoll, which for the last six centuries has borne the name of Dunskaith (i.e. the fort of mischief). And in its immediate vicinity there is a high-lying farm, known all over the country as the farm of Castle-Craig. The prospect from the edge of the eminence is one of the finest in the kingdom. We may survey the entire Firth of Cromarty spread out before us as in a map; the town, though on the opposite shore, seems so completely under our view that we think of looking down into its streets; and yet the distance is sufficient to conceal all but what is pleasing in it. The eye, in travelling over the country beyond, ascends delighted through the various regions of corn, and wood, and moor, and then expatiates unfatigued amid a wilderness of blue-peaked hills. And where the land terminates towards the east, we may see the dark abrupt cliffs of the southern Sutor flinging their shadows half-way across the opening, and distinguish among the lofty crags, which rise to oppose them, the jagged and serrated shelves of the Diamond-rock, a tall beetling precipice which once bore, if we may trust to tradition, a wondrous gem in its forehead. Often, says the legend, has the benighted boatman gazed from amid the darkness, as he came rowing along the shore, on its clear beacon-like flame, which, streaming from the rock, threw a long fiery strip athwart the water; and the mariners of other countries have inquired whether the light which they saw shining so high among the cliffs, right over their mast, did not proceed from the shrine of some saint, or the cell of some hermit. But like the carbuncle of the Ward-hill of Hoy, of which the author of Waverley makes so poetical a use, “though it gleamed ruddy as a furnace to them who viewed it from beneath, it ever became invisible to him whose daring foot had scaled the precipices from whence it darted its splendour.” I have been oftener than once interrogated on the western coast of Scotland regarding the “Diamond-rock of Cromarty;” and an old campaigner who fought under Abercromby has told me that he has listened to the familiar story of its diamond amid the sand wastes of Egypt. But the jewel has long since disappeared, and we see only the rock. It used never to be seen, it is said, by day, nor could the exact point which it occupied be ascertained; and on a certain luckless occasion an ingenious ship-captain, determined on marking its place, brought with him from England a few balls of chalk, and, charging with this novel species of shot, took aim at it in the night-time with one of his great guns. Ere he had fired, however, it vanished, as if suddenly withdrawn by some guardian hand; and its place on the rock has ever since remained as undistinguishable as the scaurs and cliffs around it. And now the eye, after completing its circuit, rests on the eminence of Dunskaith;—the site of a royal fortress erected by William the Lion, to repress, says Lord Hailes in his Annals of Scotland, the oft-recurring rebellions and disorders of Ross-shire. We can still trace the moat of the citadel, and part of an outwork which rises towards the hill; but the walls have sunk into low grassy mounds, and the line of the outer moat has long since been effaced by the plough. The disorders of Ross-shire seem to have outlived, by many ages, the fortress raised to suppress them. I need hardly advert to a story so well known as that of the robber of this province who nailed horse-shoes to the feet of the poor widow who had threatened him with the vengeance of James I., and who, with twelve of his followers, was brought to Edinburgh by that monarch, to be horse-shoed in turn. Even so late as the reign of James VI. the clans of Ross are classed among the peculiarly obnoxious, in an Act for the punishment of theft, rief, and oppression.
THE URQUHARTS OF CROMARTY.
Between the times of Macbeth and an age comparatively recent, there occurs a wide chasm in the history of Cromarty. The Thane, magnified by the atmosphere of poetry which surrounds him, towers like a giant over the remoter brink of the gap, while, in apparent opposition to every law of perspective, the people on its nearer edge seem diminished into pigmies. And yet the Urquharts of Cromarty—though Sir Thomas, in his zeal for their honour, has dealt by them as the poets of ancient Greece did by the early history of their country—were a race of ancient standing and of no little consideration. The editor of the second edition of Sir Thomas’s Jewel, which was not published until the first had been more than a hundred years out of print, states in his advertisement that he had compared the genealogy of his author with another genealogy of the family in possession of the Lord Lyon of Scotland, and that from the reign of Alexander II. to that of Charles I. he had found them perfectly to agree. The lands of the family extended from the furthest point of the southern Sutor to the hill of Kinbeakie (i.e. end of the living), a tract which includes the parishes of Cromarty, Kirkmichael, and Cullicuden; and, prior to the imprisonment and exile of Sir Thomas, he was vested with the patronage of the churches of these parishes, and the admiralty of the eastern coast of Scotland, from Caithness to Inverness.