Cemetery Sunday: "Spare Nought"

The trip South today took 12 hours - an improvement over last Saturday's journey!

I stopped for a few minutes at the Old Cemetery in Rathven, and took some shots of the family tomb of the Hays of Rannes. (All that's left standing of the once-grand Rannes House, a couple of miles from Rathven, is one wing - that's still occupied as a house in its own  right.)

The family motto - "spare nought" - appears twice in the interior of the tomb. It's tempting to think that perhaps, as well as its more obvious meaning (to spare no effort (or expense) in their endeavours), it's also here a memento mori - death, after all, spares nothing.

Many years ago, walking though the cemetery one evening, I got a fright when several pigeons suddenly flew out of the tomb as I passed it! That happened again today - not so scary in the morning, but they kept circling and coming back to the tomb to see if I'd gone, so I was able to capture them in the shot :)