The Ruthwell Cross and the Story it has to Tell. 117 



were laid in their last resting-place the bodies of those who had 

 died in the faith of Christ, their risen and glorified Redeemer. 



The Bewcastle Cross. 



The Bewcastle Pillar, on tlie other hand, was a memorial or 

 churchyard cross and not a j^eaching cross like our own. But 

 why, it may be asked, does this memorial stone prove to be of so 

 much value in fixing the date of the monument of which we are 

 speaking? Simply because it has been clearly demonstrated 

 that the two rune-inscribed shafts are the production of the same 

 period in the history of the Church, that they may possibly be the 

 work of the self-same artist, and that the Bewcastle Pillar having, 

 as its Runic inscription declares, been erected to the memory of 

 a Northumbrian King Alchfrith, the date of whose death we 

 know, we are enabled, from the evidence thus made available, to 

 fix approximately the date of both the Crosses. 



This remarkable monument, " the fellow-pillar to the Ruth- 

 well Cross," as Stephens calls it, stands in the churchyard at 

 Bewcastle in the north-east part of Cumberland about ten miles 

 from Longtown and Brampton and twelve from Gilsland. 

 The Bishop of Bristol observes that the fifty-fifth parallel of 

 latitude passes near the present or the original home of the three 

 greatest monuments of the kind which we English possess ; and 

 he adds: "No other nation in Eoirope has such. Thev are the 

 great Cross at Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire, once Northumbrian; 

 the great Cross at Bewcastle, in Cumberland; and Acca's Cross 

 at Hexham." When visiting this part of Cumberland six years 

 ago I was astonished to find such a splendid and costly work of 

 art in such an out-of-the-way corner of the county. After a 

 careful examination of its beautiful vine-tracery, its interlaced 

 knot work, its mysterious chequer pattern, and its noble and 

 dignified figure sculptures, I was forced to the conclusion that, 

 viewed merely as a work of art, it was really finer than the Cross 

 at Ruthwell. Still it is freely admitted even by English scholars 

 and antiquarians that in respect of historical, literary, and 

 religious interest the Dumfriesshire Cross far surpasses the 

 Cumberland one. 



