MONUMENTAL ART IN EARLY ENGLAND, ETC. 



215 



had described so well. This most striking and beautiful monument 

 had originally stood in the churchyard there till 1642, when it was 

 broken in pieces, though the fragments were preserved inside the 

 church till near the end of the eighteenth century, when they were 

 placed on the ground in the churchyard again. But about 1802 

 the cross was partly dug up and completely re -erected in the garden 

 of the manse by the parish minister, new arms being designed 

 for it by him and added some years later. The whole is now, 

 with a fine disregard of Presbyterian scruples, placed within the 

 parish church in an apse built to receive it about 1887. The 

 inscription in Runic letters, running along its edges from the base 

 to the top and down the other side to the base again, without any 

 division into words, was at first translated wrongly as being Old 

 Norse ; and although the letters were read fairly correctly, and as 

 translated made sense, the translation was completely mistaken. 

 It was to the effect that a baptismal font of 11 lbs. in weight was 

 given by the authority of certain Fathers to atone for the devastation 

 of certain fields and the theft of certain cows. In 1840, however, 

 the late Mr. J. M. Kemble correctly read what remained legible 

 of the inscription as Anglo-Saxon and rhythmical, and showed 

 that it was a poem describing the Passion of Our Lord, with, 

 unfortunately, considerable gaps where the Runes on the stones 

 were defaced. In the poem the Cross addressed the Crucified, 

 and considerable portions of the writing were legible. The whole 

 story of its decipherment is given by Dr. Joseph Anderson in the 

 Second Series of his Rhind Lectures on Scotland in Early Christian 

 Times, 1880, published by David Douglas of Edinburgh in 1881, 

 from which it appears that long after he had deciphered the stone 

 Mr. Kemble found in an appendix to a Report to the Record Office 

 on quite another subject by Mr. Cooper, a complete poem of 314 

 lines entitled " The Dream of the Holy Rood," in which (as Dr. 

 Anderson puts it) the Christian sees in a vision the instrument of 

 man's salvation appearing in the sky surrounded by angels, and 

 revealing its sympathy with the Passion and Glory of the Redeemer, 

 and breaking into impassioned but dignified language as it tells 

 the story of its experience on the Day of the Crucifixion 



Dr. Anderson goes on to give certain parts of the poem, whicn 

 are freely translated by him from the manuscript in the Saxon 

 tongue found by Mr. Cooper at VerceUi. 



