448 



inscription. It is impossible to determine what selection the 

 stone-cutter may have made in his drafts on the Roman and 

 Irish alphabets. At all events, he must have so managed 

 matters, as to confine his work within the prescribed limits. 



" I translate the above as follows : 



" ' O / Cross ! Time may destroy thee, too ! Pray for his 

 (the person named in ih.e first part of the inscription) soul /' 



" Now, there is a singularity in this inscription : the first 

 word {Chros) is GcbUc, and the rest are Latin. How may this 

 be accounted for ? The ancient Gaelic term for a cross is cros. 

 The vocative is formed by aspirating the nominative into 

 chros. To write the Latin crux with the Irish character was 

 iinpossible. The alphabet has no x, and the sound of this let- 

 ter is foreign to the Gaelic language. Hence, instead of Saa;e- 

 nach, we have Sassenach. Thus there was an obvious neces- 

 sity for using the vocative of the Gaelic word, cros. 



" I conjecture that, as was usual in such cases, the first part 

 of the inscription contained the name of the person to whose 

 memory the cross was erected. Thus, the part above deci- 

 phered would be a very natural sequence. It is marked by 

 all that touching simplicity which is characteristic of inscrip- 

 tions on monuments of the same era, noticed by Mr. Petrie, 

 whose accurate and tasteful researches have thrown so much 

 light on some of the darkest and most interesting points of 

 ■ Gaelic antiquities. 



" Of the devices, animals, &c., on the back of the cross, I 

 shall not here speak, as my present business is with the in- 

 scriptions. Suffice it to say, that I think I could prove that 

 some of these devices are borrowed from monuments, still ex- 

 tant in Scotland, the age of which exceeds that of the cross by 

 many centuries. 



" The next inscription which I shall notice is that on an 

 ancient monument in the Church of Fordun. Fordun is a 

 parish of Kincardineshire, the county immediately north of 

 Forfarshire, Kincardineshire is sometimes called the Mearns, 



