268 



DR THOMAS A. WISE ON SOME OF THE 



adoration. This was a.d. 326, in the twenty-first year of the reign of her son 

 Constantine, the thirteenth of the Pontificate of St Silvester, and the first after the 

 Council of Nice. Previous to a battle or great enterprise, an anticipatory offering 

 to heaven was presented by the erection of a cross, as we find Oswald did pre- 

 vious to the battle he fought with Cadwallo in the seventh century. In this case 

 it was a cross of wood, Oswald holding it till it was fixed in the earth, while his 

 soldiers kneeled around.* It was in the eighth century that, in compliance with 

 the teaching of John of Damascus, the crucifix was considered the principal 

 object of worship, so that it is probable those stone crosses in the north of Scot- 

 land were erected before this period ; and, from their being so different in their 

 form and ornament from those of Iona, they were probably erected by a distinct 

 set of missionaries from the east, at central situations, for affording instruction, 

 by the piety or remorse of individuals. From a consideration of all the cir- 

 cumstances known regarding them, I am inclined to suppose that these peculiar 

 engraved stones of the Pictish kingdom, with crosses, were erected in that native 

 transition period, from the fourth to the eighth century, when Pagan and Chris- 

 tian relics were so curiously mingled. 



The large obelisk of Meigle (fig. w) may be instanced as an example of a 

 beautiful cross which occupies the upper part of the face, with monsters, and 

 unseemly objects on the lower and outer compartments. On the back is the 

 armed centaur dragging away the sacred tree, with the figures of monsters on the 

 lower parts ; above which is the representation of some local tradition, with chiefs 

 on horseback, accompanied with dogs, to indicate the state and rank of the 

 individuals, which they were intended to represent. Upon the St Orleans stone, 

 a beautiful cross (fig. y), turned to the east, occupies the face, while the pagan 

 symbols are on the upper part of the back of the stone ; whereas on the Fordoun 

 stone, they are at the bottom of the cross, without the crescentic ornament, prov- 

 ing the discredit into which the emblems had fallen. This is still more marked 

 in the obelisk of Golspie, near Dunrobin, where the face represents a graceful and 

 chastely-ornamented cross, and the back a curious collection of pagan emblems 

 (see Drawing, by the Spalding Club). At the top, Providence is represented as 

 hovering over organized matter in the form of an embryo elephant. Under this 

 is a man armed with an uplifted battle-axe, threatening an animal marked for 

 a bloody sacrifice, as is still done in India. In his left hand he holds an open knife 

 over a fish — another emblem ; under which is the pyramidal form of organized 

 matter, the third member of the trinity, and the usual crescentic sceptred orna- 

 ment, which he is in the act of kicking away from their position over the " spec- 

 tacled ornament," now in the lowest and most degraded part of the stone, and 

 without the sceptres, the emblems of sovereignty. At the bottom of the stone is 

 a nondescript animal, upon the tail of which the armed man rests. 



* Bede, Eccl. Hist., iii., 2. 



