(Vol. iv., p. 86.)
ABERDONIENSIS tells us that Mr. Chalmers, of Auldbar, had got drawings
of the sculptured stone obelisks in Angus lithographed for the Bannatyne
Club, and that the work had excited considerable interest, and that the
Spalding Club of Aberdeen are now obtaining drawings of the stones of
this description in the north of Scotland. Circulars from the Spalding
Club desiring information had been sent to a large number of the clergy,
to which answers had been received only from a small portion, and he
desired further information. These monuments, he states, are not to be
found south of the Forth, and I am told not further north than
Sutherlandshire. It would be desirable to know what these sculptured
obelisks and the sculptures on them are; if symbolical, of what, or what
they serve to illustrate; the supposed race and date to which they are
referable. What the Veronese antiquarians, Maffei and Bianchini, did
from the nation's ancient remains to throw light on history, shows what
may be done. In Orkney no sculptured stone, or stone with a runic
inscription, has been noticed among its circles of standing stones, or
single bantasteins; and though it is right to admit that attention has
not been directed to seeking them, yet I do not believe they could have
escaped observation had there been any such. The absence of runic stones
in Orkney appears singular in a country certainly Scandinavian from its
conquest by Harald Harfager, king of Norway, A.D. 895 (or perhaps
earlier), till its transfer to Scotland in 1468 in mortgage for a part
of the marriage portion of the Danish princess who became the queen of
James III. of Scotland by treaty between the countries of Denmark and
Norway and Scotland. In Zetland Dr. Hibbert noticed a few ruins, and
within these few days the peregrinations of the Spalding Club have
brought to notice, in the Island of Bruray, a stone of runic state,
having inscribed on it letters like runic characters, and sculptures in
relief, but decayed. A drawing is being made of it, to satisfy
antiquarian curiosity. It may merit notice that _no_ runic stones have
been found in Orkney, nor circles of standing stones in Zetland. The
sculptures of classic antiquity have been made use of to elucidate
history, and it is equally to be desired that those Scottish sculptured
remains should, if possible, be rescued from what Sir Francis Palgrave
calls the "speechless past," and made to tell their tale in illustration
of the earlier period of Scottish or Caledonian story.