MEMOIR OF THE LATE MB. JOHN JUST, OF BURY. 



109 



who first saw the casts in the autumn of 1842, and sent 

 copies of the inscriptions, with translations, in January, 1843, 

 to Joseph Train, Esq., F. S.A. of Scotland, which are pub- 

 lished in that gentleman's ^'History of the Jsle of Man" 

 (vol. ii., pp. 32 — SQ,) in juxtaposition with the previous 

 attempts. 



On the death of the late Dr. Edward Holme, a stone cross 

 was found in a box in his cellar, which had formerly stood in 

 the churchyard of St. Mary, Lancaster. In August, 1848, 

 this Runic cross was presented by Dr. Holme's residuary 

 legatees, the Council of University College, London, to the 

 Manchester Natural History Society ; and a few plaster casts 

 having been taken of the inscription, the cross was placed in 

 a glass case, in that Society's Museum, Peter-street. This 

 inscription had been repeatedly engraved, and had long 

 been the subject of examination by antiquaries. The late 

 Dr. Whitaker, the historian of Whalley, offered one attempt 

 at decyphering and translation, and held it to be Danish ; 

 Baines's Lancashire gave another, terming it Runo-Danish. 

 In 1836, the late Professor Finn Magnusen, of Copenhagen, 

 having received a cast of it from the late Dr. Hibbert-Ware, 

 offered a fourth interpretation, regarding it as Scandinavian. 

 A fifth was given in 1847, by Mr. Kemble, the learned 

 translator of Beowulf, who pronounced it Anglo-Saxon. In 

 August or September, 1848, Mr. Just received a cast of 

 this inscription, and another was transmitted to the learned 

 Dr. Grimm, whose interpretation has not been given to the 

 world. In January, 1849, Mr. Just published his decyphering 

 and translation, agreeing with Mr. Kemble that the language 

 of the inscription is Anglo-Saxon ; but differing with that 

 learned Saxon scholar as to the characters themselves. 



On the 12th April, 1849, Mr. Just read before the Lanca- 

 shire and Cheshire Historic Society, and on the 1st May, 

 before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, a 

 paper " On the Reading of the Lancaster Runic Inscription," 



