453 



Mr. Ramsay supposed ; or that the inscription was in any- 

 way imperfect, or originally connected with another on the 

 same cross, now destroyed. Mr. Petrie further stated, that, 

 having been kindly supplied with two rubbings of this in- 

 scription, one from Mr. Chalmers of Auldbar, through his 

 friend Mr. Worsaae, and the other from Mr. C. Innes, the 

 able Secretary to the Royal Scottish Society of Antiquaries, 

 he had given a good deal of attention to them, and had been 

 so far successful as to read with certainty nearly one-half of it. 

 As he still hoped, however, to be able to master the whole, 

 and to present the results to the Academy, he would, on the 

 present occasion, content himself with remarking, that the 

 inscription was unquestionably one connected with the Pictish 

 history ; and that, as might be expected in a country where 

 the literature had been, confessedly, entirely in the hands of 

 Irish ecclesiastics, the letters of which it was composed were 

 wholly of that description usually called Irish, though, in 

 reality, only the corrupt form of the Roman alphabet, general 

 in Europe during the fifth and some succeeding centuries. 

 In proof of these conclusions he exhibited a tracing from 

 the rubbing of the first line of the inscription (of which the 

 following is a copy), and which plainly gives the name 

 Drosten. 



This, Mr. Petrie remarked, was peculiarly a Pictish name, 

 and was equally connected with the ecclesiastical as with the 

 regal history of Scotland. It was a diminutive of the name 

 Drust, so common in the list of the Pictish Kings, and was 

 that of a Pictish ecclesiastic who flourished in the sixth century, 

 and who was spoken of in St. Adamnan's Life of St. Columba. 

 Whether, however, the St. Vigean's monument or cross was 

 erected to this Drosten, or one of the others of later date re- 



I 



