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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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