[Illustration: A CORNISH CROSS.]
Kerning corn waved to the walls of the little churchyard and spread a
golden foreground for the squat grey mass of the church that rose behind
it. The building stood out brightly, ringed with oak and sycamore, and
the turrets of the tower barely surmounted the foliage wrapped about it.
Rayed in summer green the trees encircled church and burying-ground with
shade so dense that the sun could scarce throw a gleam upon the graves.
They lay close and girdled the building with mounds of grass and slabs
of slate and marble. The dripping of the trees had stained the stones
and cushions of moss flourished upon them. Here was the life of the
hamlet written in customary records of triumphant age, failures of
youth, death of children--all huddled together with that implicit pathos
of dates that every churchyard holds.
But more ancient than any recorded grave, more venerable than the church
itself, a granite cross ascended among the tombs. Centuries had
weathered the stone so that every angle of its rounded head and
four-sided shaft was softened. Time had wrought on the granite mass, as
well as man, and fingering the relic through the ages, had blurred every
line of the form, set grey lichens on the little head of the Christ that
hung there and splashed the shaft with living russet and silver and
jade-green. The old cross rose nine feet high, its simple form clothed
in a harmony of colours beautiful and delicate. The arms were filled
with a carved figure of primitive type and a carmine vegetation washed
the rough surfaces and outlined the human shape set in its small tunic
stiffly there. Green moss covered the head of the cross and incised
patterns decorated its sides to within a foot or two of the grass by a
churchyard path from which it sprang.
The design was of great distinction and I stood before one of the finest
monuments in Cornwall. On the north side ran a zigzag; while to the
south a more elaborate key-pattern was struck into the stone--a design
of triangles enfolding each other. The back held the outline of a square
filled with a cross and a shut semicircle carved beneath; while upon the
face, under the head which contained the figure, there occurred another
square with a cross. The shaft upon this side was adorned with the
outline of a tall jug, or ewer, from which sprang the conventional
symbol for a lily flower.
There was another detail upon the southern side which seemed to lift
this aged stone back into the mists of a past still more remote, for
there, just above the ground, might be read the fragment of an
inscription in debased Latin capitals. They were no longer decipherable
save for the solitary word "FILIUS" which was easily to be
distinguished, and this fragment of an obliterated inscription spoke
concerning a period earlier by centuries than the carving and
decoration. Indeed it indicated that the memorial was a palimpsest--a
pre-Christian pillar-stone transformed at a later age to its present
significance.
There are above three hundred old crosses still standing in Cornwall,
and not a few of these, dating from time beyond the Roman period,
originally marked the burying-places of the pagan dead. At a later
period, long after their original erection, they were mutilated. But the
greater number of these grand stones belong to Christianity, and by
their varied decorations the age of them may approximately be learned.
Some bear the _Chi Rho_ monogram, which stands for the first two letters
of the Greek "Christos," and these belong to the seventh century; but
the more numerous appear to date from that later period when the sacred
figure of the Christ began to be substituted in religious architecture
for the symbolic lamb that always preceded it. The Eastern Church
authorised this innovation, after A.D. 683, and pronounced that "The
Lamb of Christ, our Lord, be set up in human shape on images henceforth,
instead of the Lamb formerly used." The earliest type is not
particularly human, however, and the little, archaic, shirted doll of
Byzantine pattern, which ornaments so many of these Cornish crosses, has
not much save archaeological interest to commend it. Until Gothic times
this was the conventional pattern, and it is assumed that these early
crucifixes dated from the eighth century and onward until a more
naturalistic figure began to appear.
Scattered over the far-flung landscape of the West our Cornish crosses
stand; by meadow and tilth and copse, among the little hamlets of the
peninsula, in lonely heaths and waste places overrun by wild growing
things, they shall be found. Sometimes the Atlantic is their background
and sometimes the waters of the Channel. They were set on the roads that
led to the churches, and served not only as places for prayer, but also
as sign-posts on the church-ways. Now many of the more splendid
specimens have been rescued, as in the case of this great cross, and
stand in churchyards, or under the shadow of sanctified buildings. Their
fragments are also scattered over the land, here set in walls, here at
cross-roads, now as a gate-post, or a stepping-stone, or foot-bridge.
Sometimes they serve for boundary stones, and are yearly beaten;
occasionally they support a sundial; not seldom the Ordnance Surveyors
have outraged them with bench marks. Often only the stunted head and
limbs of the wheel-crosses remain, their shafts vanished forever; still
more frequently the cross-bases or pedestals alone have been chronicled
and the stones that surmounted them exist no longer. None can say how
numerous they were of old time; and it may happen, while many have been
destroyed past recovery or restoration, that others still exist in
obscure places, or sheltered by the saving earth, for a future race of
antiquaries to discover and reclaim.