Reference
Date 2001
Event ID 928511
Category Documentary Reference
Type Reference
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/928511
This symbol-stone is said to have been built into the door-jamb of a house in the township of Tote until about 1880 (1). It was then set up on a slight ridge about 9m N of the minor road that runs through the township, bounded on the N by a large gravel-quarry. This location, at an elevation of 60m, commands an extensive view including the head of one of the inlets of Loch Snizort, 0.7km to the W, and the remains of the parish church on an island in the River Snizort below Skeabost Bridge, which was dedicated to St Columba and used in the late medieval period as the cathedral of the Isles (2).
The stone is a pentagonal pillar of basalt, 1.41m in visible height, 0.53m in overall width and 0.44m on the widest (SSW) face, and 0.4m thick. The main face is weatherworn and has been damaged by cracking and flaking, especially in the lower part which appears to have been used as a tethering-post (3). The surface is irregular, with an abrupt change of level running across the crescent, but the symbols are confidently laid out and some pecking is visible. At the top there is the crescent-and-V-rod symbol, with traces of two 'wings' or arches in the crescent (4), and a series of short vertical strokes rising from its lower edge. In the apex of the crescent there is a small circle with a central depression, and this motif was repeated in the angle of the V-rod, whose terminals are obliterated except for a spiral at the right.
Below this symbol there is a vertically-set double-disc-and-Z-rod. Each disc has a broad flat margin and bears a circle with central depression in the sector nearest the linking bar, which is embellished with two concave grooves forming an hour-glass motif. The circles are repeated in the angles of the Z-rod, whose foliated upper left terminal is preserved. The lower terminal, and part of the lower disc, have been obliterated by flaking, as has the upper part of the mirror and comb at the foot of the slab. The short mirror-handle with its circular knob, however, is visible, as are the lower teeth of the comb to its right.
Footnotes:
(1) Information from Mr Gillies, Tote, to Ordnance Survey, 1961 (NMRS database NG44NW 1).
(2) D E R Watt 1969, 202; RCAHMS 1982a, p.148. The remains on the island include the outline of an elongated church, overlain with burial-enclosures and associated with architectural fragments of early 13th- and 15th-century type, and late medieval effigies (RCAHMS 1928, No.616). The so-called 'teampull' is a post-Reformation burial-aisle incorporating other late-medieval architectural fragments.
(3) The foot of the stone was obscured in 1991 by the cement support for an information plaque (figs.7B, 105B), but this has been removed.
(4) The lower edge of the right wing, as shown by Stevenson (1953, C14, fig.15 on pp.102-3), is an irregular crack running across the stone.
F T Macleod 1910, 384-5; RCAHMS 1928, No.640 and fig.263; sketch by J S Richardson, 1927 (copy in NMRS, IND/281/1); R B K Stevenson 1953, C14, fig.15 on pp.102-3; G Ritchie and M Harman 1985, 120; ibid. (2nd ed., 1996), 122; A Mack 1997, 114).
I Fisher 2001, 105.
