CHAPTER X.

OLD GRAVESTONES IN IRELAND.

[Illustration: FIG. 88. SWORDS.]

In entering upon a chapter dealing with "Old Gravestones in Ireland,"
one is tempted to follow a leading case and sum up the subject in the
words: "There are no old gravestones in Ireland." But this would be
true only in a sense. Of those primitive and rustic carvings, which
are so distinctive of the eighteenth-century memorials in England, I
have found an almost entire absence in my holiday-journey ings about
Ireland--the churchyards of which I have sampled, wherever opportunity
was afforded me, from Belfast and Portrush in the north, down to
Killarney and Queenstown in the south. But there are unquestionably
old gravestones of quite a different order of simplicity in the Irish
burial-places, the most common type being the rough slab of stone,
several of which are here sketched at random from the graveyard of
the large village or little town of Swords, ten miles or so north of
Dublin (Fig. 88). Very few of these stones bear any inscription, and,
according to the belief of the local residents, never have been carved
or even shaped in any way. In one or two instances, however, the
effort of trimming the edges of the stone is clearly visible, and in
rare cases we see the pious but immature attempts of the amateur mason
to perpetuate, if only by initials, the memory of the deceased.[10]
Some such records still remain, but many have doubtless perished, for