"
[Illustration: THE CHANCEL, MELROSE ABBEY.]
Melrose Abbey was said to afford the finest specimen of Gothic
architecture and Gothic sculpture of which Scotland could boast, and the
stone of which it had been built, though it had resisted the weather for
many ages, retained perfect sharpness, so that even the most minute
ornaments seemed as entire as when they had been newly wrought. In some
of the cloisters there were representations of flowers, leaves, and
vegetables carved in stone with "accuracy and precision so delicate that
it almost made visitors distrust their senses when they considered the
difficulty of subjecting so hard a substance to such intricate and
exquisite modulation." This superb convent was dedicated to St. Mary,
and the monks were of the Cistercian Order, of whom the poet wrote:
Oh, the monks of Melrose made gude kail (broth)
On Fridays when they fasted;
Nor wanted they gude beef and ale,
So lang's their neighbours' lasted.
There were one hundred monks at Melrose in the year 1542, and it was
supposed that in earlier times much of the carving had been done by
monks under strong religious influences. The rose predominated amongst
the carved flowers, as it was the abbot's favourite flower, emblematic
of the locality from which the abbey took its name.
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