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



a word VIELLA, and so far as I know the word VIOLLA, with 

 two L's is not found, but VIOLA with one L does exist, and as I 

 think the letter before the two L's looks much more like an 

 than an E, and a letter more or less was not likely to trouble a 

 medieval scribe or stone carver, I am inclined to stick to VIOLLA. 

 At one time I thought the word was CITOLLA, which is found 

 with both one and two L's, but I think now VIOLLA or VIELLA 

 better. 



At the end of the third line Mr. Macleane suggests CATEEVA 

 TUBARUM and Mr. Powell TUBOEUM, CATEEVA TUBOEUM 

 being a good description of an organ, an assembly of tubes, not of 

 trumpets. 



In the fourth line Mr. Powell reads TUO for SUO, but to me 

 the word looks more like SUO than TUO, and in medieval Latin 

 I should expect that word to be used for " his," but TUO makes 

 equally good sense and may be right. Mr. Powell suggests HODIE 

 as the last word of the fourth line. There is certainly something 

 very like an H, but it is a modern H, not like those used elsewhere, 

 and in my opinion that part of the inscription has been mangled 

 by some later hand carving its owner's initials and so obscuring 

 the original word; the alteration is more apparent on the stone 

 than in the photograph. For the last word in this line Mr. Macleane 

 suggests COHOES. In the sixth line Mr. Powell suggests TIBI 

 as the word after QUI or QUE, and I think very likely he is 

 right. I have considered several other possible, but I think im- 

 probable, readings of the doubtful words, and I shall be grateful 

 for any new suggestions from anybody who may take sufficient 

 interest in the matter to insj^ect the stone. After all the varying 

 interpretations that I have mentioned, one most interesting fact 

 remains, which is, that we have in this inscription an epitapli 

 which has been exposed to the weather for something like five 

 hundred years, (putting MOTTRAM on one side the form of 

 the letters points to a time not later than the early part of the 

 fifteenth century,) and yet is still partially legible, and that in the 

 case of a stone which has been exposed to the English climate is 

 not a common thing to find. 



