On the Shandwick stone,[20] one of the most interesting of the Scottish series, figures of men, horses, stags, birds, and other animals are carved with much spirit, and with more than usual attention to their relative proportions. The animals are represented in life-like attitudes, as if moving about. But there is one remarkable exception,[21] a colossal four-legged creature, of a form peculiar to these Scottish stones, differs from the others as much in figure as in size. Compared with two sheep and a dog which occur on the same panel,[21] its height, if erect, would be about thirteen feet, its length about eighteen feet, while its ungainly leaning posture is singularly suggestive of its being a sculptured representation of some huge beast built up of wicker-work. Certain marks on its surface warrant this supposition, which is strengthened by the fact that other representations of a similar animal, which occur on the same series, have the most distinct indications of a basket-work origin. Well marked examples are to be found on the stones at Brodie and at Glenferness.[22] Resembling no known animal, these curious figures—which are represented above twenty times on the Scottish stones and are nowhere else to be met with—have a general likeness to each other; they are all in postures by no means indicating life or motion, and all distinguished by the striking peculiarity of having no feet; the limbs terminate in long wands rolled up after the manner of volutes, obviously suggesting the idea that if opened out they would serve, on being thrust deeply into the ground, to keep the colossus in a standing attitude. Similar volutes are represented terminating the base of the well-known cross at the gate of St. Michael’s church yard in the Isle of Man. They were probably used in the same way to fix to the ground an earlier cross of wicker-work, of which the existing monument is a copy engraved on stone.
I dare not of course take it upon me to assert that there is any positive connection between the huge animal on the Shandwick stone and the colossal images mentioned by Cæsar and Strabo, as being employed by the Druids in their human sacrifices, but the coincidence (if indeed it be not something more) is sufficiently curious and interesting to demand a passing notice. It is supposed that these and some other as yet inexplicable devices found on the same stones are symbols of a religion prior to Christianity; a circumstance by no means improbable, as it is known that convents among the Saxons and probably the Britons also, clung with much pertinacity to some of their Druidical and Pagan customs long after they had assumed the outward emblems of Christianity. This may account for the juxtaposition of the cross with devices of unknown meaning, and explain in some degree the remarkable circumstance that Pagan and Christian emblems both derive their ornamentation from the same source—basket-work.