WORSHIP OF SPIRITS, ATMOSPHERIC AND TERRESTRIAL: ETHE- REAL FIRE-SPIRIT OF THE WATERS: THE WATER KELPIE, ETC.-SPIRIT OF THE ELVES AND IMPS 140 EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. IT is a remarkable fact that numerous hieroglyphics, graven on conspicuous monuments in many of the most fertile parts of Scotland, should only lately have attracted special notice. Many such monuments known to have existed are no longer to be found. Some have been destroyed, and accurate delineations of the remaining "sculptured stones of Scotland" are only to be seen in folios published within the last twenty years-exclusively for two societies with a limited number of members-viz. "The Bannatyne" and "The Spalding" Clubs.2 "3 The volume of the Spalding Club, edited by Mr. John Stuart, has been taken as the basis of the present work, in so far as it refers to the hieroglyphical figures on "the sculptured stones of Scotland." The Roman numerals attached to each figure of the hieroglyphics or emblems give the means of reference to the plates and descriptions in The Sculptured Stones of Scotland, published by the Spalding Club. 1 The notices and plates of a few of these sculptures, as given by Gordon, Cordiner, Pinkerton, etc., are not sufficiently accurate to be of much value. 2 To the intelligence and liberality of the late Mr. Patrick Chalmers of Auldbar is owing the first of these worksviz. an elephant folio of plates and letterpress descriptive of the sculptured monuments of Forfarshire. This work was edited by Mr. Chalmers in 1846. The second of the works referred to was edited by Mr. John Stuart, for the Spalding Club, in 1856. It is in folio, and contains accurate plates of all the most ancient sculptured monuments of Scotland then known. Others, however, have since been discovered, which, but for these publications, would probably at no remote period have disappeared, or have remained neglected and unnoticed. These are now in course of publication in a second volume of The Sculptured Stones of Scotland, and will, like the first volume, have the valuable addition of an introduction and notices of the plates by the same editor, Mr. John Stuart, now secretary to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries. The plates in the present work, mostly from drawings by the author, are executed by the same artist, Mr. Gibb, who had so accurately copied and delineated the sculptures for the work of the Spalding Club. |