Runic Inscriptions 251 



to have come.^ The Manx stones in question are assigned to the 

 years 1050—1100, or later.^ Hence we gain an important terminus 

 a quo for all the English stones bearing cejt or cefter in this sense. 



^Eft Alkfrifm is plain, but the words following are a little doubtful. ^ 



^FTAL aUe beschadigt, aber, wie ich glaube, vorhanden ; CFRI 

 (dies mit Nebenstrichen rechts ? und vielleicht noch: = ]^'' ? auf der 

 Grenze) . . . pti . . . (U ? mit Querstrichen).* 



IFTIR, after, preposition governing the accusative. The word is 

 found with numerous variations on the Swedish, Danish, and Manx 

 stones— a/<er, aft, auft, eft, aftir. eftir, oftir, aiftir, and iftir as in the 

 present case.^ 



I samme Betydning forekommer aft i mange Runeindskrifter isa?r 

 fra 9de og lOde Aarh.^ 



The Northmen would seem to have made their way into western 

 Yorkshire by way of Cumberland.' 



Before the Normans came, our district [the diocese of Carlisle] was 

 Scandinavian. . . . There is reason to believe . . . that Norse began 

 to settle the western parts not much later [than 876], coming in from the 

 Isle of Man and Ireland. ... In the course of 200 years their descendants 

 became leading landowners, as we see from Norse names in twelfth 

 century records. The map (over leaf) sketches the probable distribu- 

 tion of races. Naturally, the art of the district must have been in- 

 fluenced by such people. . . . We have then remains in Man of a kindred 

 race to ours in the age before the Normans came ; and we find resem- 

 blances between the Manx crosses and some of ours both in subject and 

 in style. ^ 



1 Cf. p. 102. Rousseau (Annales de la Soc. Archeol. de Bruxelles 16. 71) 

 even conjectures, in allusion to the local tradition that the Ruthwell Cross 

 had come by sea, that it may have been carved in the Isle of Man. 



2 Noreen {Gram., p. 16) assigns the date 1050-1100; Kermode (p. 1) 

 says: ' The greater number appear to belong to the early part of the 12th 

 century'; in the Saga-book of the Viking Cluh 1. 369, he says 1050-1150. 



^ Colhngwood, Early Sculpt. Crosses, p. 45. 



* Victor, p. 15. I may add that ceft seemed to me, on an inspection of the 

 stone on August 26, 1909, to be, if anything, the plainest word in the in- 

 scription. 



5 Goudie, in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., N. S. 1. 152. 



^ Bugge, Norges Indskrifter med de Jl£ldre Rimer, p. 33. See also Stephens, 

 Old-North. Runic Mon., passim. 



' E. A. Freeman, in Encyc. Brit., 9th ed., 8. 283, note. 



^ Colhngwood, Early Sculpt. Crosses, pp. 290-1, and map on pp. 292-3. 



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