Page:Shetland Folk-Lore - Spence - 1899.pdf/103

 grained sandstone, 6 feet 10 inches in height, 1 foot 7½ inches wide at the top, and contracting slightly towards the base. The designs are boldly carved, incised lines, except in the case of the four ecclesiastical figures beside the shaft of the cross which stand out in relief. The grotesque animal within the panel in the middle of the stone is said to bear some likeness to the conventional figure of a lion, and probably the resemblance is quite as strong as may be found in many heraldic drawings of the king of beasts. The two semi-human figures at the base are even more strange, the heads having a kind of human look, in spite of the enormous beaks with which they are provided, and the legs which terminate in claws resembling a bird's. Otherwise the figurse are evidently intended as human, and each holds an axe which is not of the Stone Age type. The beaks of these creatures, it will be noticed, are fixed in a human head placed between them, but from the stone having been