The Motive or Motives which Actuated the Production 329 



Dundrennan. They consist in an unusual degree of Kghtness mani- 

 fested by the use of colonettes of exceeding slenderness, in the lavish 

 use of mouldings, which depend for decorative effect upon depth of 

 cutting rather than upon fantastic surface carvings, in which respect 

 they are more hke the true Gothic type. ... It is this tendency toward 

 refinement and the unmistakable advance toward transition from 

 Romanesque to Gothic seen in David's churches that would make certain 

 other edifices in Scotland seem to belong to an earher period. ... In 

 short, these two groups of Romanesque buildings illustrate quite clearly 

 the difference that existed between the social, and hence the artistic, 

 condition of Scotland in the reign of Malcolm Canmore (1054-93) and 

 in that of his youngest son David (1124-53). David had not only prof- 

 ited by Enghsh training at Winchester but he imported monastics 

 from France, and these important facts must have influenced his exten- 

 sive architectural exploits. . . . There is in this mediseval architecture 

 of Scotland a certain originality that clothes it with special charm. . . . 

 It did not depend absolutely upon either of these sources for general 

 methods of design or treatment of detail, but, borrowing generously 

 from both, evolved new motives. ^ 



David found Scotland built of wattles and left her framed in granite, 

 castles and monasteries studding the land in every direction. - 



The monasteries of Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose, and Holyrood, with 

 many another stately pile, also owed their first foundations to the 

 fostering care of David ; for, independently of his reUgious zeal, he 

 appreciated the encouragement afforded by such establishments to the 

 pacific arts it was his aim to introduce amongst his subjects.^ 



There is probably no other country district, equally small in area, 

 that can boast a group of ruins, at once so great and interesting, as 

 those situated in the north of Roxburghshire, along the banks of the 

 Tweed and its little tributary the Jed. Here Avere founded almost 

 contemporaneously, in the first half of the twelfth century, four great 

 abbeys.^ 



In Lothian the religious houses of Holyrood, the Isle of May, 

 Xewbottle, Kelso, Berwick ; in Scotland proper, north of the Forth 

 or Scottish sea, St. Andrews, Cambuskenneth. Stirling ; in Moray, 

 Urquhart and Kinloss ; and in Scottish Cumbria, Selkirk, Jedburgh, 

 and Glasgow, have been certainly traced to DaAad.^ 



^ Butler, Scotland's Ruined Abbeys, pp. Iff. 



2 Robertson 1. 319. » /j^j. 1. 231. * Butler, p. 71. 



'" Diet. Nat. Biog. 14. 119; cf. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils 2. 15, 25, 



27, 28, 33: Chalmers. Caledonia (1807) 1. 678, note (x) ; Raine. Priori/ of 



(117) 



