Reference
Date 2001
Event ID 928442
Category Documentary Reference
Type Reference
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/928442
(Raasay 1) This slab is said to have been found when James MacLeod of Raasay (d.1824) was building the road from the landing-place to Raasay House, about 90m from the rock-cut cross no.2 (NG c.5462 3637).(i) It now stands at the entrance to a conifer plantation, 7m E of the road from Clachan to Oscaig and 190m NNW of Raasay House. It is fixed in a turf-covered modern base on a stony mound about 0.5m high and 4m in diameter.
The slab is a rectangle of granite, 1.56m in visible height (ii) by 0.56m and 0.18m in thickness. The surface is slightly irregular and has flaked, especially at the left, both before and after carving, while the edges show signs of rough dressing. At the top of one face there is an incised cross-of-arcs adapted to a 0.39m square frame, and with a scroll attached to the right side of the top arm to represent the rho of the Chi-rho symbol. Each arm has a flat margin formed by a triangle whose outer end is convex, perhaps showing the derivation of the cross from the more common circular form. At the centre there is a raised ring round a hollow, 40mm in overall diameter. The cross is supported by a shaft of the same height as the square and 70mm wide at foot and top, whose sides curve out into cusps just above mid-height.
Below the foot of the shaft there is a 'tuning-fork' symbol, set horizontally with a damaged double-spiral handle at the right and a small boss with a central hollow at its junction with the prongs. The ends of the four prongs extend onto a flaked area to the left, and their terminals, which should define two bars with a central notch (RA 135), are lost by further flaking. Below this there is a crescent-and-V-rod symbol, with ornament of the 'dome-and-wing' type. Both terminals are damaged, but remains of double spirals suggest that they were of identical type.
(i) J S Richardson 1907, 435.
(ii) Richardson records the overall height as 2.13m (J S Richardson 1907, 435).
NMS cast, X.IB 223; RCAHMS 1928, No.582 and fig.265; J S Richardson 1907, 435-6; PSAS, 67 (1932-3), 63; J J Galbraith 1933, 318-20; R B K Stevenson 1955, C2; D McRoberts 1963, pl.27; R Sharpe 1977, 21-5; A Mack 1997, 113.
I Fisher 2001, 103.
