The dead and the cross

In pre-reformation Scotland the graves of the important might be marked with a large and elaborately carved Celtic cross.

Following the reformation, perhaps surprisingly for a Christian nation, Scottish gravestones were not made in the form of crosses, and the cross was rarely used even as a symbolic carving, probably because it was considered a Papist emblem. 

It was only in the late 19th Century that crosses began to appear again in Scottish graveyards, often as copies of the monumental Celtic high crosses of the Mediaeval period, for those who could afford such grandeur. 

This huge and finely carved gravestone in the style of a Celtic cross stands at the head of the grave of a farmer in the ruins of the old Parish kirk at Methlick and is dated 1908.