Gents Mag 1856 part 1 p.407

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1856 part 1 p.407
Bewcastle Cross   inscription
	Inscriptions, Bewcastle Cross SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE. March 5. A paper was contributed by the Rev. Daniel H. Haigh, of Erdington, "On the Inscribed Cross at Bewcastle in Cumberland," - a four-sided column, about 14 1/2 feet high, tapering gently from its base to the top. As a monument of our language, it is positively the very earliest we have of Anglo-Saxon times; and it belongs to a class of mounuments of which very few now remain - the memorials of the kings of England anterior to the Norman Conquest. Moreover, the inscription derives additinal interest from the fact that the king whom it commorates played a most important part in the ecclesiastical transactions of his age. In the inscriptions on the stone, the name of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, appears in a Latin form, GESSUS CRISTTVS as it was only from missionaries, to whom the Latin language was as their mother tongue, that His name became known to our Saxon forefathers. The other inscriptions are in the early Saxon dialect of Northumbria. An inscription, in nine lines, on the western face, commemorates the personages to whose memory the monument was erected:- + THIS SIGBEC VNSETTAE H WAETRED EOM GAER FLWOLD V ROETBERT YMB CYNING A;CFRIDAE G ICEGAED HE OSVM SAWLVM This inscription, like others of the same class and age, resolves itself into couplets of Alliterative verse, thus This sigbecun Settae Hwaetred Eom gaer felwold Ymb Roetbert Ymb Cyning Alcfride Gicegaed heosum sawlum. (This memorial set Hwaetred, in the great pestilence year, to Roetbert, to King Alcfride. Pray for their souls.) The letters LW in the fourth line may possibly be AEB. If so the meaning of EOM GAERFAE BOLD may be "also carved this building." On the southern face these names occur each in a single line - CRIST EANFLAED CYNGN ECGFRID CYNING CYNIBVRVG CYNGN OSWV CYNING ELT And on the following - GESSV OSLAAC CYNING WILFRID PREAST R CYNIBVRVG Alchfrid was the eldest son of King Oswiu the Bretwalda, by his first wife Riemmelth the daughter of Rum - his second being Eanflaed, daughter of Edwin. While yet these inscriptions were a mystery, the tradition of the country, now confirmed, declared that a king was buried at Bewcastle. The same tradition points out the locality from which the stone was taken; and here, again, it is verified by a fact. On White Lyne Common, about five miles from Bewcastle, near the centre of a ridge of rocks called the Langbar, a stone is still lying, the very counterpart of of this monument, 15 feet in length, and of the same hard white freestone, marked with spots of grey, which is found at the Langbar, and the adjacent rocks on the south side of the White Lyne river, and in no other part of the district. This stone shows most distinctly, on its western side (which is much fresher than the others), the marks of the chisel which were used in splitting the block when the monument
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