A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 
which inclosed the west side of the kistvaen. H is two feet eight inches in length, 
I is three feet in length, and one foot eight inches high. On these stones are various 
emblematic figures in rude sculpture, though some of the circles are exactly formed, 
and the rims and crosses within them are cut in relief. 
We reproduce, from Fergusson’s Rude Stone Monuments, one of the 
two side stones, so that their similarity to the stones at Old Parks is at 
once seen. Major Rooke takes the circles upon the Aspatria stones to 
be emblems of eter- 
nity, and from the 
circles and crosses he 
concludes the inter- 
ment to be that of a 
person of rank after the 
year A.D. 596, when 
_ Christianity became 
AZ established in Britain. 
We need not linger 
to argue the question 
Sivz Stonz, AspaTria Cisr. with the Major’s 
shade : his theory will 
hardly find a supporter at the present day.’ The relics, other than the 
cobble stones, found at Aspatria, are such as one would expect to find 
in a Northman’s grave, and probably mark the interment as a result of 
the settlement of Cumberland by the Northmen.’ 
The next recorded discovery of these cup and ring and other rock 
markings in Cumberland was made by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson in 1835, 
on the well known monolith Long Meg, where he found a concentric 
circle with four rings around a cupped centre.* At a later date Sir J. Y. 
Simpson and Dr. Taylor visited Long Meg and found not one but several 
concentric circles carved thereon.* The stone circle, so well known as 
‘Long Meg and her Daughters,’ is situate in the parish of Addingham, 
which is immediately to the south of Kirkoswald : Long Meg, as the 
crow flies, can only be distant from the Old Parks tumulus about a mile 
and a half. 
About the same time that Sir James Simpson discovered the circles 
on Long Meg, the Rev. Canon Simpson, formerly president of the 
Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archeological Society, 
found some ring cuttings on two boulders forming part of a circle of 
eleven stones around a cist, situated a few hundred yards to the east of 
1 The compiler of Hutchinson’s History of Cumberland, vol. ii. p. 288, note, asserts the 
marks on the Aspatria stones to be ‘magical numbers and figures, the work of ignorant 
sorcerers and wicked wretches,’ who inserted these things in the graves of bygone races in 
order to secure the obedience of evil spirits that dwelt therein. 
® Robert Ferguson’s Northmen in Cumberland and Westmorland. 
3 British Archeological Fournal, vol. xvi. pp. 101-18, with illustration. 
4 ¢On Ancient Sculpturings of Cups and Concentric Rings, by Sir J. Y. Simpson, 
Proceedings 8.A.8. ist. series, vol. vi. pp. 17, 18, with illustration ; Transactions of the Cum- 
berland and Westmorland Archeological Society, vol. vi. p. 111, 
242 
