Stan’s mony a sculptured stane;
An’ yet in a’ this peopled field
No being thinks but ane.”
—Anon.
THE CHAPEL OF ST. REGULUS.
The ruins of the old chapel of St. Regulus occupy the edge of a narrow projecting angle, in which the burying-ground terminates towards the east. Accident and decay seem to have wrought their worst upon them. The greater part of the front wall has been swallowed up piecemeal by the ravine, which, from the continual action of the stream, and the rains, and snows, of so many winters, has been gradually widening and deepening, until it has at length reached the site of the building, and is now scooping out what was once the floor. The other walls have found enemies nearly as potent as the stream and the seasons, in the little urchins of the town, who, for the last two centuries, have been amusing themselves, generation after generation, in tearing out the stones, and rolling them down the sides of the eminence. What is now, however, only a broken-edged ruin, and a few shapeless mounds, was, three hundred years ago, a picturesque-looking, high-gabled house, of one story, perforated by a range of narrow, slit-like windows, and roofed with ponderous grey slate. A rude stone cross surmounted the eastern gable. Attached to the gable which fronted the west, there was a building roofed over like the chapel, but much superior to it in its style of masonry. It was the tomb of the Urquharts. A single tier of hewn ashlar, with a sloping basement, and surmounted by a Gothic moulding, are now almost its only remains; but from the line of the foundation, which we can still trace on the sward, we see that it was laid out in the form of a square, with a double buttress rising at each of the angles. The area within is occupied by a mouldy half-dilapidated vault, partially filled with bones and the rubbish of the chapel.
A few yards farther away, and nearly level with the grass, there is an uncouth imitation of the human figure with the hands folded on the breast. It bears the name of the “burnt cook;” and from time immemorial the children of the place spit on it as they pass. But though tradition bears evidence to the antiquity of the practice, it gives no account of its origin, or what perhaps might prove the same thing, of the character of the poor cook; which we may infer, however, from the nature of the observance, to have been a bad one. I find it stated by Mr. Brady in his Clavis Calendaria, that as late as the last century it was customary, in some places of England, for people to spit every time they named the devil.
Viewed from the ruins, the tombstones of the burying-ground seem clustered together beneath the fence of trees which overtops the eminence on the west. I have compared them, in some of my imaginative moods, to a covey of waterfowl sleeping beside the long rank grass and rushes of a lake. They are mostly all fashioned in that heavy grotesque style of sculpture, which, after the Reformation had pulled down both the patterns and patrons of the stone-cutter, succeeded, in this part of the country, to the lighter and more elegant style of the time of the Jameses. The centres of the stones are occupied by the rude semblances of skulls and cross-bones, dead-bells and sand-glasses, shovels and sceptres, coffins and armorial bearings; while the inscriptions, rude and uncouth as the figures, run in continuous lines round the margins. They tell us, though with as little variety as elegance of phrase, that there is nothing certain in life except its termination; and, taken collectively, read us a striking lesson on the vicissitudes of human affairs. For we learn from them that we have before us the burial-place of no fewer than seven landed proprietors, none of whose families now inherit their estates. One of the inscriptions, and but only one, has some little merit as a composition. It is simple and modest; and may be regarded, besides, as a specimen of the language and orthography of Cromarty in the reign of Charles II. It runs thus—
HEIR · LYES · AT · REST · AN · FAITHFVL · ONE ·
WHOM · GOD · HAITH · PLEASIT · TO · CAL · VPON ·