226 Introduction 



the earliest Northumbrian verses (before 740) he reckons those on the 

 Ruthwell Cross, which he considers to exhibit pecuharities of the 

 northern variety of Northumbrian. 



1903. John Romihy AUen^ quoted, without dissent, the con- 

 clusions of my paper of 1901. 



1905. Alois Brandl2 said of the Ruthwell Cross : ' There is of 

 late a tendency to relegate the stone to a much later period— to the 

 ninth or even the tenth century. Archaeologists conclude this from 

 its ornamentation, and Prof. Cook has shown that the archaic in- 

 flexions, on which so much stress was laid in fixing the age of the 

 Cross, also occur sporadically in Northumbrian manuscripts of the 

 late tenth century. As a matter of fact, this particular dialect 

 did retain for an astonishing length of time a whole series of sounds 

 and inflexions which the others had long since abandoned. The 

 patent objection, however, is : Could such a mass of archaisms 

 have got compressed into such narrow compass ? Only sixteen 

 lines, some of them mutilated, are preserved on the Ruthwell Cross, 

 and they show a consistent^ early Northumbrian dialect. At the 

 very least a particularly ancient stock of written forms must have 

 lain at bottom.' 



1905. Camille Enlart* characterized the human figures, knot- 

 work, vines, and animals of the Bewcastle Cross as of a good style 

 of the middle of the 12th century (but see under 1906), and added 

 that the Ruthwell Cross presents a series of interesting bas-reliefs 

 of the same period. 



1906. Camille Enlart^ inclined to attribute the Ruthwell Cross 

 to the 12th century, on account of its high reliefs and its inscriptions. 

 Of the Bewcastle Cross, on the other hand, he said^ : ' It bears a 

 runic inscription which attributes it formally to the first year of the 

 reign of Eadfrith, that is, to 670, and the inscription has all the 

 characteristics of the period' (but see under 1905). 



1907. G. T. Rivoira' said that the Ruthwell Cross ' cannot be 

 dated earlier than the first half of the Xllth century.' 



1 Early Christ. Mon. of Scotland 3. 515-6, 



^ Sitzungsberichte der Konigl. Preuss. Akadernie der Wissenschaften for 

 1905^, pp. 716-23. Our quotation is from the translation and revision of 

 this paper, entitled ' On the Early Northumbrian Poem, "A Vision of the 

 Cross of Christ," ' in Scottish Historical Review 9. 140 (January, 1912). 



^ But see Cook, Puh. Mod. Lang. Assoc, of America 17. 380 ff. 



* Michel, Histoire de l' Art V. 521. ^ Ibid. 2. 202. « Ibid. 2. 199. 



' Le Origini delV Architettura Lombarda, translated in 1910 as Lombardic 

 Architecture (2. 143). 



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