Having previously compiled an authoritative handbook on Scottish graveyards, Mrs Willsher, a leading expert on a subject which might be described as grave by nature as well as by name, has turned her attention to an anthology of remarkable Scottish gravestones and their inscriptions. She has divided it into chapters reflecting what she has ascertained to be the predominant themes covered. Naturally, they begin with the inevitability of death:
Our life is but a winter day ‐
Some only breakfast and away:
whilst others do to denner stay
but as frequent is the hope of resurrection:
Here lies three Hopes [the family name]
enclos’d within,
Death’s prisoners by Adam’s sin
Yet rest in hope that they shall be
Set by the second Adam free.
Naturally, praise of the deceased was prominent:
She was ‐ but words are wanting to say what ‐
Think what a wife should be ‐ she was that.
If the virtues of the dead person were not so pre‐eminent, the heirs could always resort to the excellence of his skills:
He played with such dexterity,
By all it is confest,
That in this grave interred is
Of Violists the best.
No less remarkable are the carvings illustrated in this well‐designed book. Only the wealthiest might expect a complete effigy on their tombs, or perhaps an elaborate scene of Adam and Eve, but an ordinary person might aspire to a skeleton (the emblem of death, often represented in a fashion which suggested that the sculptor had never seen one) or a winged head (the emblem of resurrection), and the coats of arms of the gentry are balanced by the trade tools of the middle class. If all else failed, even the most unskilled mason could manage an hourglass. However, it must not be forgotten that most people were too poor to have a gravestone at all.
While not really a reference book, this interesting work covers a subject which ought to be of universal significance, and is thus likely to be widely borrowed from any library which purchases it.
