terminates at the Cross if there be one. At Lanark before separating the company sings “Scots wha hae” beneath the Cross, near which stands what would two centuries since have been called “an idolatrous statue” of William Wallace. At Linlithgow the function begins by drinking the sovereign’s health at the Cross, and the procession returns thither before breaking up. At Kilmarnock Fastern’s Eve (in English, Shrove Tuesday) used to be celebrated by a large amount of horse-play round the ancient Cross; the town fire-engines and their hose being called into requisition for the drenching of the crowd with water, who probably drenched themselves with something rather stronger later in the day.

Of all the royal edicts proclaimed from these Crosses the following was certainly one of the most curious. It was ordered to be published from every Town Cross in Scotland in 1619, and was issued by King James from London, whither a host of adventurers from his northern dominions had promptly followed him. The proclamation warns “all manner of persons from resorting out of Scotland to this our kingdome, unlesse it be gentlemen of good qualitie, merchands for traffiques, or such as shall have a generall license from our Counselle of that Kingdome, with prohibitioun to all masters of shippes that they transport no such persons;” it further goes on to announce that “Sir William Alexander, Master of Requests, hath received a commission to apprehend and send home, or to punish all vagrant persons who came to England to cause trouble, or bring discredit on their country.”

Here and there throughout Scotland crosses of various kinds have no doubt escaped destruction, when they happen to be in obscure places, or small and scarcely noticeable in form or situation; thus the old Cathedral of Brechin still preserves one of the consecration Crosses, cut in its walls as part of the ceremony of its original dedication. But almost the only examples of importance left to us, besides those town crosses which we have considered, are several exceedingly interesting ancient memorial or sepulchral crosses, of which those at Iona are by far the best known.

An anonymous writer in 1688, speaking of this sacred isle, says, “that M’Lean’s Cross is one of the 360 standing before the Reformation; the others were thrown into the sea by order of the Synod of Argyle.” In the absence of anything beyond the bare assertion, this statement must be considered as at least doubtful. No earlier writers, including those who had visited Iona, mention the fact; and if an organized attack of this kind were made upon the monuments of the island, it is difficult to explain why two were left untouched. That there were many more Crosses here formerly may be taken for certain, and that the Synod of Argyle would think them all idolatrous is equally clear; but it is not likely that it ordered so great an undertaking as that of digging from their foundations nearly four hundred massive blocks of stone, some, to judge by what is left to us, of great size, and casting them into the sea. All such monuments having been formally condemned throughout Scotland, it is fair to assume that those of Iona met with a good deal of ill-usage. The “axes and hammers” of the isle would be brought to bear upon “the carved work thereof”; and it is more probable that the mode of destruction has been of this kind, aided by time and storm, whose ravages nothing has been attempted to stay or to repair, than that any definite scheme of demolition has been carried out.

ST. MARTIN’S CROSS, IONA.

Two fine crosses yet remain in good preservation in Iona, known respectively as St. Martin’s Cross and the Cross of the Maclean. The former of these is considerably the older, and stands in front of the ruined cathedral. It is a monolith measuring fourteen feet in height above ground, eighteen inches in breadth, and ten inches in thickness, and is set in a block of granite three feet in height. It is elaborately carved, figures of the Blessed Virgin-Mother and the Holy Child, of ecclesiastics in vestments, of musicians with harps and wind instruments, occupying one face, together with foliage and twining snakes; while the other has a more conventional design. On the roadside, near the ancient nunnery, stands Maclean’s Cross, which has been described as “one of the oldest Celtic crosses in Scotland,” and even as “the oldest Christian monument” in that country. This is to ascribe to an undoubtedly ancient relic an antiquity to which it has no claim; it dates probably from the fifteenth century. It is eleven feet high, and is carved with the figure of the crucified Redeemer, attended by angels, and with much graceful scroll-work. The claimants for the greater age of this fine cross assert that it marks the spot where St. Columba rested on his last walk about the monastic lands.

St. Oran’s Chapel, alleged to have been built by Queen Margaret some time after 1072, contains one or two broken crosses. There is the shaft of one erected in memory of the Abbot Mackinnon in 1489, a portion of another known now as the “Flat stone of Oran,” and a fragment of yet a third. The famous burial ground of Iona, the Reilig Orain, to which were brought the remains of kings, not only from the mainland of Scotland, but from Ireland and even from Norway, has several sepulchral slabs which still bear the sacred sign. One, probably of the twelfth century, has a well-designed interlaced cross stretching almost the whole length and breadth of the stone, with a galley carved upon the one side of it and a sword upon the other; another, alleged to commemorate Ranald, Lord of the Isles in the early thirteenth century, has a small interlaced cross upon one side of a sword, and two “disguised” crosses, somewhat of the fylfot shape, upon the other. There is also a broken stone, with a portion of a cross of Irish design, and a fragmentary inscription. It has been supposed to mark the burial-place of Maol Patrick O’Banan, the saintly bishop of Conor and Down, who died in Iona in 1174.[1] Two boulders, measuring rather less than two feet in length, have also been found in the island, each incised with a cross. One, which has a well-proportioned figure of the type commonly called “runic,” is supposed by some to have been the stone, which, according to his biographer Adamnan, formed the pillow of St. Columba.

Some others of the Western Isles have preserved a few of their ancient crosses. Boswell, in his “Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides” in 1773, speaks thus of the approach to Rasay: “Just as we landed I observed a cross, or rather the ruins of one, upon a rock, which had to me a pleasing vestige of religion.” A few days later the traveller set out to explore the island, and he made other discoveries of the same nature. “On one of the rocks just where we landed,” he tells us, “there is rudely carved a square, with a crucifix in the middle: here, it is said, the Lairds of Rasay, in old times, used to offer up their devotions; I could not approach the spot without a grateful recollection of the event commemorated by this symbol.” A little further on he writes, “The eight crosses, which Martin mentions as pyramids for deceased ladies, stood in a