348 Notes on an Inscription on a Buttress of Salisbury Cathedral. 



p. cclxxxix.), where a rendering is given, but not a very convincing 

 one as it will neither construe nor scan. I have known of the 

 insci'iption for a great many years, but it was only in 1905 that I 

 made any serious effort to arrive at a reading of my own. The 

 first word, HAC, was all that I was able to read at first, owing 

 to the stone being so overgrown with lichen that, although it was 

 easy to see that words were there, they could not be read. By the 

 use of a scrubbing brush and soap and water I managed to remove 

 nearly all the lichen and was then able to read some of the words. 

 I then got the stone photographed, and from the photographs was 

 able to arrive at more of the sense. I have since had the photo- 

 graph enlarged. When the stone had been cleaned it was obvious 

 at once that there had been six lines of Latin Elegiacs relating to 

 music and musical instruments ; and further, from the beginning, 

 HAC lA . . . . TUMBA, that it was an epitaph, or of 

 the nature of an epitaph. The question then was : — whose 

 epitaph was it ? The first line ends with a dissyllabic word be- 

 ginning with MOTT, and I remembered the name of Adam 

 Mottram, who was Precentor of Salisbury at the beginning of the 

 fifteenth century, and I found that he died in August, 1415, and 

 by his will desired to be buried in the Cathedral (Jones, " Fasti," 

 quoting Browne Willis). I have, therefore, no doubt that this is 

 the epitaph, or an inscription in memory of Adam Mottram 

 Precentor from 1397 to 1415. When medieval writers of epitaphs 

 ventured into the realms of verse they found themselves obliged ^ 

 to write not exactly what they wished to say, but as near an ap- 

 proach thereto as they could manage to bring into lines that did not 

 too violently outrage the rules of Latin prosody and quantity, and 

 so I think we must not be too exacting in the sense we extract from 

 the lines. I should say that at some period a shed was built 

 against the buttress, and the sloping roof has cut off the ends of 

 the first four lines and nearly all of the fifth and sixth. I will 

 first give what I think the remaining words are, and afterwards 

 give the different readings and suggestions that have been kindly 

 offered me by others. My reading (some of the illegible words 

 being conjecturally supplied) is : — 



