Scotland/Scots > Reminiscences of a Highland parish

CHURCHYARDS AND FUNERALS.
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You sit down among the ruins and hear only the
bleat of sheep, the whish-whish of the distant
waterfalls, the lapping of the waves, or the wind
creeping through the archways and mouldering
windows. The feuds and combats of the clans
are all gone; the stillness and desolation of their
graves alone remain.
But “ the parish” churchyard is not much less
picturesque. It is situated on a green plateau
of table-land which forms a ledge between the
low sea-shore and hilly background. A beautiful
tall stone cross from Iona adorns it; a single
Gothic arch of an old church remains as a witness
for the once consecrated ground, and links the old
“ cell ” to the modern building, which in architec¬
ture—shame to modern Lairds—is to the old one
what a barn is to a church. The view, however,
from that churchyard, of all God’s glorious archi¬
tecture above and below, makes one forget those
paltry attempts of man to be a fellow-worker with
Him in the rearing and adorning of the fitting and
the beautiful. There is hardly in the Highlands a
finer expanse of inland seas, of castled promon¬
tories, of hills beyond hills, until cloudland and