201 
4. The fourth side, in -whicli I see RS at the commence- 
ment of the second line. Of this side I do not think a tracing 
necessary. 'Now these casts have revealed to me a fact for 
which I was quite unprepared. I could never understand 
how a part of the inscription was comparatively plain, and 
the rest very faint, until I noticed inequalities which led me 
to apply a rule to the surface. I then saw that it must have 
been reduced by rubbing, fully an eighth of an inch to the 
right of the name Ausicini, and considerably more below ; the 
same inequalities appear in the left and right faces ; the back, 
as I have said, is lowest in the middle, and I imagine that the 
hostility to which Oswini fell a victim, pursued his memory 
after death, and occasioned the obliteration of his title, and of 
those parts of the inscription which would have identified him 
and the person who set up the monument. To this cause also 
may be attributed the defacement of the sculpture in the 
panel above the commencement of the inscription. Probably 
it contained the effigy of the murdered king. 
The orthography of the names ^onhlced and Aiiswini differs 
remarkably from that which was usual at a later time. Yen. 
Baeda calls the queen of Oswiu ^anflced ; the occurrence of 
oe instead of ae has its parallel in the Falstone inscription to 
be noticed in the sequel, that of o for a may be compared with 
ModhaUl for Eadhald, and h for / with Mlhflced for ^Ifflced. 
In the Gothic of TVulfila, au is constantly used for o, as it is 
here in Ausuini for Oswini. 
That this monument was set up in memory of Oswini no 
one can doubt, and the name which I now find at the com- 
mencement of its inscription is the very name which I ought 
to have looked for at first; since — as we are informed by 
Yen. Baeda that ^anflced, the daughter of ^dicini, the queen 
of Oswiu, obtained from her husband a grant of the land on 
which Oswini was slain, and thereon caused a monastery to be 
built, in which prayers should be daily offered up to Almighty 
