(Vol. v., p. 122.)
SIR JAMES EMERSON TENNENT, in his learned and curious Note on stone
worship in Ireland, desires information as to the present existence of
worship of stone pillars in Orkney. When he says it continued till a
late period, I suppose he must allude to the standing stone at Stenness,
perforated by a hole, with the sanctity attached to promises confirmed
by the junction of hands through the hole, called the promise of Odin.
Dr. Daniel Wilson enters into this fully in _Præhistoric Annals of
Scotland_, pp. 99, 100, 101. It has been told myself that if a lad and
lass promised marriage with joined hands through the hole, the promise
was held to be binding. Whence the sanctity attached to such a promise I
could not ascertain to be known, and I did not hear of any other
superstition connected with this stone, which was destroyed in 1814. In
the remote island of North Ronaldshay is another standing stone,
perforated by a hole, but there is no superstition of this nature
attached to it. At the Yule time the inhabitants danced about it, and
when there were yule dancings in neighbouring houses, they began the
dancing at the stone, and danced from the stone all the road to what was
called to {384} me the dancing-house. The sword dance, with a great
deal of intricate crossing, and its peculiar simple tune, still exists
in Orkney, but is not danced with swords, though I heard of clubs or
sticks having been substituted. There are found in these islands the two
circles of stones at Stenness, and single standing stones. One of these,
at Swannay in Birsay, is said by tradition to have been raised to mark
the spot where the procession rested when carrying the body of St.
Magnus after his murder in Egilshay in 1110, from that island to
Christ's Kirk in Birsay, where it was first interred. Here is a date and
a purpose. The single standing stones, in accordance with SIR JAMES'S
opinion, and to use nearly his expressions, are said to mark the
burial-places of distinguished men, to commemorate battles and great
events, and to denote boundaries; and these, and still more the circles,
are objects of respect as belonging to ages gone by, but principally
with the educated classes, and there is no superstition remaining with
any. Such a thing as the swathing stone of South Inchkea is not known to
have existed. The stones in the two circles, and the single standing
stones, are all plain; but there was found lately a stone of the
sculptured symbolical class, inserted to form the base of a window in
St. Peter's Kirk, South Ronaldshay, and another of the same class in the
island of Bressay, in Zetland. The first is now in the Museum of
Scottish Antiquaries in Edinburgh; and the Zetland stone, understood to
be very curious, is either there or in Newcastle, and both are forming
the subject of antiquarian inquiry.