RuUTHWELL Runic INSCRIPTION. ri) 
9th November, 1906. 
Chairman——Dr James MaAxweELt Ross, Vice-President. 
It was agreed to record in the minutes an expression of regret 
at the death of Mr Frank Reid, St. Catherines, Dumfries. 
Mr W. A. Mackinnel, the Photographic Secretary, described 
the leading photographs exhibited from the Society’s collection, 
and made a statement regarding the work of the committee. 
How THE RUTHWELL RuNIc INSCRIPTION WAS DECIPHERED. 
By Dr E, J. Cuinnock, LL.D. 
The decipherment of this Runic Inscription is one of the 
most interesting of literary discoveries. After various abortive 
attempts had been made by such scholars as the Icelanders, T. 
G. Repp and Professor Finn Magnusen, it was at last elucidated 
by Mr John M. Kemple, who in 1840 published an essay on 
“The Runes of the Anglo-Saxons.’’ To this he appended six 
quarto plates of Runic alphabets, the best being a representation 
of the Ruthwell Cross from the plates of Hickes, Gordon, and 
Duncan. He also translated the Runic carvings. He showed 
that the cross is a Christian memorial, and that the letters are 
20 lines, more or less complete, of a poem in the old North 
English dialect (commonly called the old Northumbrian) on the 
Holy Rood or Cross of Christ. In 1823 the German professor 
Blune found in the old Conventual Library at Vercelli, near 
Milan, an ancient skin-book in the old South English or Wessex 
dialect of the 10th century, containing homilies and poems. The 
Record Commission entrusted to Mr Benjamin Thorpe the task 
of copying and publishing the verses. One of the pieces, entitled 
by Mr Thorpe “ The Holy Rood, a Dream,’’ contains 314 lines. 
In 1842 Mr Kemble’s notice was arrested by certain lines, and on 
comparison he found that they were the identical. inscription 
which he had previously deciphered on the Ruthwell obelisk. 
So exact had been his text and version that the discovery of the 
manuscript copy led him to correct only three letters. It was 
now evident that this poem was in substance a work of the 7th 
century, and was originally written in the North English dialect. 
But its author was still a mystery. A daring conjecture there- 
