Clare

By ClareON

upon the brink of death

This is a stone in the Alloway Auld Kirk, which I noticed first because it is much more worn and weather beaten that the others - I think it is sandstone instead of the usual granite. The whole stone is in the extras. The carving can be seen to be a fragment of this verse:
Infinite joy, or wretched woe,
Attends on ev'ry breath;
And yet how unconcerned we go,
Upon the brink of death

This is from a very popular and enduring hymn, Thee We Adore Eternal Name, written in 1720. This kind of versified carving is not that common in Scottish graves, and there is nothing else on the stone - no names or dates,  so overall it's quite an unusual stone. From the lettering I would guess a date somewhere 1750  - 1800, but it's only a guess.

Edited to add: Having researched a bit more, my guess was quite wrong. Hymn-singing was regarded, in the Church of Scotland, as dangerous Popery  for over three hundred years, until the first official Hymnbook was introduced in 1870.  Although some congregations were early enthusiasts for hymns, there was basically no hymn singing  in Scotland before 1850.  I think the carved lettering may have been copied from a hymnbook.  One nineteenth century printing used an identical font to that carved here, changed 'wretched' to 'endless' and spelt woe as 'wo' - all of those quirks reproduced on this stone.

Here's another verse from that hymn to cheer us up:
The year rolls round, and steals away
The breath that first it gave;
Whate'er we do, whate'er we be,
We're traveling to the grave.

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