Papil Description of stone
Event ID 1014996
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1014996
Papil 1 (St Laurence), West Burra, Shetland, Pictish cross-slab
Measurements: H 2.00m, W 0.50m, D 0.07m
Stone type: fine-grained red sandstone
Place of discovery: HU 3688 3148
Present location: National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh (IB.46)
Evidence for discovery: found in 1877 by Gilbert Goudie lying in the kirkyard at Papil, south of the church. It had been re-used ‘from time immemorial’ as a gravemarker for the family of John Inkster (1792-1884), the Baptist minister for West Burra. It was presented to NMAS in Edinburgh in the l890s.
Present condition: the rounded top of the slab is damaged, but otherwise the flaking on the lower part of the carved face occurred prior to its carving.
Description
This slender and slightly tapering slab would originally have been about 2.05m high. It is carved by incision and false relief on one broad face, and despite its re-use in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries nothing has been added or obliterated. Face A bears ornament carried out both in false relief and incision. Filling the upper part of the slab is a plain equal-armed cross-of-arcs with a central compass point. The cross is outlined and encircled by a double incised line, as is its shaft and rectangular base. The lentoid spaces between the arms contain interlace knots. The shaft is plain except for an interlace motif at the foot. The cross-base contains a double-outlined lion facing left, his tail curving up over his back and his upper leg joints depicted by spirals. He has a pricked ear, oval eye and tongue protruding from a well-defined snout.
On either side of the cross-shaft are two monks facing the cross, each dressed in a long hooded cloak and each carrying a hooked staff. The two outer monks have book satchels hanging by straps but the two next to the cross appear not to have had satchels. In each of the two triangular spaces between the pairs of monks and the cross-head above there is a triquetra knot.
Below the cross-base and standing free of any frame are two figures facing one another, with elongated bird’s beaks between which is a human head. The figures have human torsos and arms but bird’s legs with knobbly knees and bird’s feet. Each figure wears a short tunic and holds a long-handled axe resting on the shoulder.
Date: early ninth century.
References: Goudie 1881; ECMS pt 3, 10-15; Scott & Ritchie 2009, no 29; Fitzpatrick 2011.
Compiled by A Ritchie
