I know I am not the only person who enjoys walking round graveyards. Hours can go by whilst I wander happily amongst broken columns and ivy-clad memorials. Here are whole family plots, charting a dynasty’s line, then stopping abruptly after 1914. There is a tiny simple stone marking the burial place of a young child – taken by some unspecified infant illness. All around are beloved wives, drowned sailors, and stone angels. Graveyards are often havens for wildlife, and a place for lichen-hunters to take their fill.
Orkney graves have their own stories to tell. Within the nave of St Magnus Cathedral the great and the good of Kirkwall were once buried. Although their remains were exhumed long ago, the splendid carved stones lining the walls still tell how they ‘lived regarded and died regretted’.
The hourglasses, gravediggers’ tools, candles – all are gorgeous examples of the 17th-century monumental mason’s art. I wrote about them here, in my original Memento Mori blog.
The cathedral graveyard is the burial place of John Rae, a great Orkney hero who discovered the North-West Passage and mapped great swathes of the Canadian Arctic. The grave is an off-white cross on a stone platform, at the far east end of the cemetery against the back wall.
Last year, when the 200th anniversary of Rae’s death focussed attention on the man and his life, there were stirrings of discontent and strident voices making clear their ‘disgust’ at the ‘state’ of Rae’s grave. Why, the question was asked, is the council not doing anything about it? Letters were written to the paper, accusations flew. Then everyone calmed down. The law as it stands in Scotland is that the upkeep of a grave is the responsibility of the person’s family – not the church, nor the government, nor the local authority. Attempts in the past to clean Rae’s gravestone have resulted in a pitted, discoloured surface; but it certainly does not look out of place in the graveyard amongst the other worn and aged stones. It has not been broken, defaced or otherwise vandalised. It looks, frankly, like you would imagine a 120 year old gravestone to look.
Another notable stone is the one telling us that the grave’s occupant died on 30 February but that’s another story…..
Around Orkney’s cemeteries you will find a great variety in the materials used and skill employed in carving. Many stones are made from Eday sandstone; this small north isle had a large quarry on the west side of the island widely thought to have been the source of the cathedral’s yellow stone. The typical gravestone design is the shape of a pointed, gothic arch flanked by trailing stone ivy. In January 1953 a powerful storm swept away the quarry jetty – and that was the end of the Eday gravestones; you’ll rarely see any made after that date.
One such stone gave me another candidate for the ‘-ina’ list. Many older women in Scotland are known as Ina (pronounced either ‘eena’ or ‘eye-na’); the chances are they have a much longer first name. It was a popular tradition for a girl to be named after males in her family (father, uncles etc); it was done simply by adding the suffix ‘ina’ to the man’s name. Hence Edwina, Thomasina, Williamina, Ernestina, Jamesina, Robina and so on. A look at old censuses will bring forth Kennethinas, Hectorinas and Peterinas.
My recent addition was the splendid ‘Dunckina’ – presumably named after a Duncan, her parents may have added the extra ‘k’ to avoid the soft ‘c’, which would have created a ‘Dunseena’ (and by implication, a dunce?). A pal recently cast up the wonderful (and apparently authentic) concept of a Baldina – named, one imagines, after an Archibald.
Another Orkney phenomenon is that of the painted gravestone. On a visit to Westray recently I noticed that several of the stones were covered in paint – pink being the predominant colour but cream, white and yellow also popular. On enquiring of one-who-knows (and whose mother was from Westray), I was told that painting your relative’s stone kept it looking clean and fresh, and showed that the grave was still tended and looked after. This may still be the case, but as families move away it becomes harder to keep up the maintenance. The cathedral graveyard yields many that were once blue (including Dunckina’s) and this rather sad example of painting-gone-wrong, creating the running mascara look. The person beneath the stone is, I note, called Mina.
The graveyards in the smaller islands are the best places to seek the home-made stones. In cases where the family were simply too poor to pay for a stone or someone to carve it, slabs were clearly taken from a nearby quarry or beach and incised with whatever skills and tools were to hand. They can make for very touching memorials.
I love the gravestones of Orkney for their beauty, their pathos, and for the stories they tell.
