AMERICAN LITERARY FORGERIES. 141 



and sister of Thorgr, cMldren of the same father, twenty-five years of 

 age. May God make glad her soul. 1051." Thereupon follows a 

 great display of learning. " This remarkable epitaph, it seems, is 

 written in the ancient style of runes, known as the Nevok, a variety 

 found only in the Orkneys and the isle ofBarljof," — a statement some- 

 what startling when one remembers that the eleventh century is any- 

 thing but ancient for runic writing. Then the description of these 

 peculiar "Nevok" runes: '^ easily recognised by being the most 

 regular, the deepest cut," &c.; shows that they present " by far the 

 most ancient variation, though it was employed with remarkable purity 

 on monumental stones in the Orkneys, as late as the fourteenth century;" 

 — all which must be surprising to Orkney antiquaries, above all others ; 

 unless indeed Mr. Rafl&nnson, in passing through Orkney, made some 

 wonderful discoveries there also, unheard of before or since. The 

 wonder has always been that, notwithstanding the occupation of the 

 Orkneys by Northmen for centuries, no single monumental stone 

 graven with runic characters is known to exist there ; and no runic 

 inscription of any kind had turned up, till the exploration of the Maes- 

 howe by James Farrer, Esq., in 1861, brought to light a splendid array 

 of them. But it would not be easy to describe anything less like the 

 Maeshowe runes than is assigned in the above characteristics. It has 

 already been remarked in the " Prehistoric Annals of Scotland," " The 

 Kunic inscriptions on the Manx crosses are regularly and sharply cut 

 with a chisel; whereas the most of the Maeshowe graf&ti are slightly 

 and irregularly scratched, as if with a nail." It is obvious that we 

 must still await the long-delayed publication of the full account of Mr. 

 Eaffinnson's archaeological researches in the Orkneys, Iceland, and else- 

 where. 



But another feature also rather startles the reader already familiar 

 with former Runic discoveries. The inscription, though somewhat of a 

 wordy jumble as a whole, begins and ends satisfactorily. The begin- 

 ning is, indeed, the same as one well-known Greenland inscription, 

 viz., that of Ikigeit; while, by a curious coincidence, the pious sen- 

 tence with which it ends, occurs on another of the Greenland inscrip- 

 tions from Igalikko, to be found in the same suggestive volume of the 

 Danish Antiquaries; and, indeed, on the same page in others repro- 

 ducing its contents. 



Perhaps American archssologists were tempted by this to suspect a 

 hoax, the darning and patch-work did look so undisguised. But before 



