1899.] on Runic and Ogam Characters, etc. 1G9 



the hair of her head. Attulit alabastrum unguenti capillis 



capitis sui tergebat. Fig. 3 shows this inscription and parts of the 

 one below ; the L in alabastrum has lost or never had the horizontal 

 stroke. The figure is taken from ' Theodore and Wilfrith,' p. 240. 



The runic stone shown next was found a few years ago in the 

 Wirral. It must be regarded as having an error in the inscription. 

 Errors did occur, even in those careful times. Even on the Euthwell 

 cross a letter was cut as E instead of U, and a bold stroke of the 

 chisel corrected it, but left the correction evident. On one of the 

 pillow-stones found under the heads of the early Anglo-Saxon nuns 

 in the cemetery at Hartlepool, the rune-cutter omitted a letter, and 

 cut Hilddiyth instead of Hilddigyth ; he remedied this by drilling a 

 hole between the i and the y, and above the line he cut a g. This is 

 shown on a slide. The error in the Wirral stone seems to be due to a 

 confusion of the two words for " in memory of," fore and sefter. It is 

 said, also, that there is a very irregular plural for folk. The inscrip- 

 tion was in two lines, thus : 



" Folkge araerdon bek [un . . . 

 [gebjiddath fote ^thelmun[d . . " 



" The people erected a memorial . . 

 Pray for iEthelmund." 



There are at Thornhill, near Dewsbury, three pretty little runic 

 tombstones, with interlacing patterns in the upper part and the runes 

 below. The longest of the three inscriptions is thus : — " Gilsuith 

 araerde aft Berhtsuithe bekun at bergi gebiddath thaar saule," 

 "Gilsuith erected in memory of Berhtsuith a memorial at the grave- 

 mound. Pray for the soul." Thus in three cases we have the word 

 bekn or bekun for a memorial : it means " that which beckons to us, 

 gives us a sign, reminds us." Another slide shows the whole of the 

 Runic inscriptions on the Bewcastle and Euthwell shafts, about 530 

 runes in all, 180 at Bewcastle and 350 at Ruthwell : but there were 

 many more on the Ruthwell cross, now no longer legible. The re- 

 maining inscriptions in Anglian runes now known in England give 

 about 400 runes. The only runes in the southern part of England 

 are the 8 letters of a name at Dover, and 8 at Sandwich. There are 

 about a dozen letters of Anglian runes in Wigtonshire, at Whithorn 

 and in St. Ninian's cave. 



Of runes Scandinavian in character, we have in England two 

 examples in Cumberland (now practically ascertained to be forgeries 

 of about the middle of the present century), and one in London. The 

 runic head-stone now in the Guildhall Museum in London, shown on 

 a slide, was found some twenty feet below the surface in St. Paul's 

 Churchyard during the excavations for Messrs. Cook's warehouses. 

 There is an excellent cast of it in Messrs. Cook's counting-house, and 

 another in the library at St. Paul's. The front of the stone has a bold 

 and intensely Scandinavian representation of the ancient Persian 

 ornament, the antelope looking over his shoulder at the sun rising 



