Our Ship in shattered fragments to the shore.
There ye flak'd surge opprest my darkening sight,
And there my eyes for ever lost the light.
"Captain George Colvill of the Private Ship
of War 'Amazon,' and only son of
Robert Colvill of Bangor, was wrecked
near this ground 25th February 1780, in
ye 22nd year of his age."
A possible explanation of the long endurance of this slate slab may be found in the practice which prevails in this and some other churchyards of giving all such memorials a periodical coat of paint; of which, however, in the case here quoted there is no remaining trace.
Altogether, primitive as they may be, the gravestones of the last century in Ireland, so far as I have seen them, compare favourably with the works of the hedge-mason in England which we have seen in earlier chapters. Even the poor pillar of rough stone, unhewn, ungarnished, and bare as it is, represents an affectionate remembrance of the dead which is full of pathos, and has a refinement in its simplicity which commands our sympathy far above the semi-barbarous engravings of heads and skulls which we have previously pictured. The immaturity of provincial art in Ireland is at least redeemed by an absence of such monstrous figures and designs as we at the present day usually associate with the carvings of savages in the African interior.