erfect men and
women was to them a forbidden thing; the ostentation even of a name
carved on a slab was at variance with doctrine; the cravings of a poor
humanity to be remembered after death had to be satisfied with bare
initials, and initials are all that were written on the gravestones
in many thousands of cases, probably ninety per cent, of the whole,
throughout the eighteenth century and approximate years. But the
rule was not without its exceptions, often of novel and peculiar
description. The skull and crossbone series, so common in the south,
have no place in North Britain; while the symbol of the cross, so
frequent in Ireland, is very rarely to be found in any shape whatever
within the boundaries of a Scottish burial-place. I present four
specimen types from the old chapel-yard at Inverness.

[Illustration: FIG. 92. INVERNESS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 93. BRAEMAR.]

FIG. 92.--AT INVERNESS.

On the stone No. 2 the tailor's tools--shears, goose, and bodkin--are
clear enough, and I was told that the figures on the stone in the
lower left-hand corner (No. 3) are locally recognized as the shuttle
and some other requisite of the weaver's trade. Inverness had spinning
and weaving for its staple industries when Pennant visited the place
in 1759. Its exports of cordage and sacking were considerable, and
(says Pennant) "the linen manufacture saves the town above L3000 a
year, which used to go to Holland."

In the 1698 example (No. 1) the short "and" (&) leaves no doubt that
W.F. & J. McP. (probably McPherson and his wife) are there buried;
and the similar information is almost as certainly conveyed in the
manifold cases in which appears the sign which occupies the same
position in the two lower stones (Nos. 3 and 4). These, however, are
all of later date, and may be set down as developments, or rather
corruptions, of the original form. The same signs, however, constantly
occur in all the northern graveyards.

Scotland has also its cruder form of memorial in the rough unhewn
slabs of native freestone, which are used in all parts of the British
Isles wherever such material is readily procurable.

FIG. 93.--AT BRAEMAR.

Two of these slabs of different degrees are seen in my Braemar sketch,
but both seem of one family and serve to shew us the unconscious
evolution of a doctrinal law into a national custom. The employment
of initials, originally the sacrifice and self-denial of a dissentient
faith, is here, as in othe