212 ANNUAL ADDEESS BY PEOFESSOR DUNS, D.D., F-E.^.E., 



apologetic we need only say that every so-called miracle 

 recorded by the biographer can be explained apart 

 altogether from supernatural influences. What we wish at 

 present is to concentrate attention on the colour — white — 

 because it not only suggests a form of stone folk-lore not 

 yet referred to, but also because it sheds some light on a 

 well known passage of Holy Scripture. 



In many widely separated districts the white stone is 

 associated with sepulture. We have met with it in North 

 Wales churchyards, in burial-places of Lowland Scotland, 

 and in lonely spots of the Outer Hebrides. Sometimes the 

 grave is surrounded by a single or a double row of snow- 

 white quartz pebbles ; often a few are placed at the head 

 aud foot of the grave, and occasionally a single stone lies at 

 the head only. Most of the stones are rounded and smooth, 

 thus the rains keep their tops free from lichens, and the 

 pebbles ever suggest 



" The white of purity, surpassing snow," 



and, by many, this kind of memorial is valued more than 

 that of flowers because 



" Full soon the canker death eats up the plant." 



In one instance that came under my notice the white stones 

 were deposited m the grave not 07i it. When one of several 

 " half-length " stone cists was laid bare in a sandhill it 

 contained four pebbles of quartz, whose position seemed to 

 indicate that one had been placed at the head, another at 

 the feet, and one under each shoulder. Ure (1793), de- 

 scribing a section made through a tumulus^ says that twenty- 

 live urns of coarse clay, rudely formed, full of earth and 

 human bones, were met with. " They were placed with 

 their mouths undermost upon flat stones, and a piece of 

 white quartz was found in the centre of each. These 

 pebbles were larger or smaller, in proportion to the dimen- 

 sions of the several urns to which they belonged.*' Some 

 time ago Sir Arthur Mitchell read a suggestive paper before 

 the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, — "On the occurrence 

 of white quartz pebbles in chambers and cists." On visiting 

 an old burial-ground at Kilmalew, near Inverary, he found 

 that eight of the graves had quartz pebbles on them. All 

 these had been recently opened. Thus the old practice had 

 not died out. Sir Arthur asks, " Is the modern practice a 

 survival of a Stone Age custom, knowingly or unknowingly? 



