178 
front. On the left side of the corpse was a bronze sword, in 
a wooden sheath, two feet two inches in length, having a 
solid simple handle ; at the feet were two pieces of woollen 
stuff, about fourteen and a-half inches long, by three and 
a-half inches wide, what may have been the remains of 
leggings. At the end of the coffin were found traces of 
leather, doubtless the remains of boots. In the cap, where 
the head had been, was some black hair, and the form of the 
brain was still recognizable. Finally, this ancient warrior 
had been wrapped round with an ox hide, and so committed 
to the grave. 
THE RUNIC MONUMENTS OF NORTHUMBRIA. BY THE 
REV. DANIEL HENRY HATGH, OF ERDINGTON. 
Runes are a system of writing which the Jutes, the 
Angles, and the Saxons, our forefathers, brought with them to 
England in the 5th centurj^ ; a sj^stem which they had 
preserved, in common with all the other branches of the great 
Teutonic stock, from times of very remote antiquity ; a system 
perfectly distinct from the old Shemitic alphabet, which was 
the parent of the alphabets of Greece, and the abecedaria of 
Italy. The origin of this system must certainly be referred 
to very early prehistoric times ; to times when nations who 
appear as perfectly distinct, each from the others, when the 
dawning light of history first breaks upon the darkness of 
northern antiquity — whose remains, disinterred from their 
tombs, show that even then they had been distinct for a 
period long enough to have estabhshed amongst them distinct 
manners, customs, and traditions of art — were one people, and 
spoke one language : for, whilst there are differences in the 
forms of some of the characters in the inscriptions which 
remain to us of different Teutonic nations — to say nothing of 
dialectic differences in the names of the characters as preserved 
