English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day | Page 7

Death-song, C?dmon's Hymn, and the Riddle, are all printed, accessibly, in Sweet's _Anglo-Saxon Reader_.
There is another relic of Old Northumbrian, apparently belonging to the middle of the eighth century, which is too remarkable to be passed over. I refer to the famous Ruthwell cross, situate not far to the west of Annan, near the southern coast of Dumfriesshire, and near the English border. On each of its four faces it bears inscriptions; on two opposite faces in Latin, and on the other two in runic characters. Each of the latter pair contains a few lines of Northern poetry, selected from a poem (doubtless by the poet Cynewulf) which is preserved in full in a much later Southern (or Wessex) copy in a MS. at Vercelli in Piedmont (Italy). On the side which Professor Stephens calls the front of the cross, the runic inscriptions give us two quotations, both imperfect at the end; and the same is true of the opposite side or back. The MS. helps us to restore letters that are missing or broken, and in this way we can be tolerably sure of the correct readings.
The two quotations in front are as follows: it will be seen that the cross itself is supposed to be the speaker.
1. [on]gered? hin? god almechttig tha he walde on galgu gistiga, modig fore all? men; buga [ic ni darst?.]
2. [ahof] ic riicn? kyningc, heafun?s hlafard; h?lda ic ni darst?. bism?radu ungket men ba ?t-gadre. ic w?s mith blod? bistemid bigoten of [his sidan.]
The two quotations at the back are these:
3. Crist w?s on rodi; hwethr? ther fus? fearran cwomu ?ththil? til anum; ic th?t al biheald. sare ic w?s mith sorgum gidr{oe}fid; hnag [ic hwethr? tham secgum til handa.]
4. mith strelum giwundad alegdun hi? hin? limw{oe}rign?; gistoddum him ?t his lic?s heafdum, bihealdun hi? ther heafun[?s hlafard.]
The literal meaning of the lines is as follows:
1. God almighty stripped Himself when He would mount upon the gallows (the cross), courageous before all men; I (the cross) durst not bow down
2. I (the cross) reared up the royal King, the Lord of heaven; I durst not bend down. men reviled us two (the cross and Christ) both together. I was moistened with the blood poured forth from His side.
3. Christ was upon the cross; howbeit, thither came eagerly from afar princes to (see) that One; I beheld all that. sorely was I afflicted with sorrows; I submitted however to the men's hands.
4. wounded with arrows, they laid Him down, weary in His limbs. they stood beside Him, at the head of His corpse. they beheld there the Lord of heaven.
In the late MS. it is the cross that is wounded by arrows; whereas in the runic inscription it seems to be implied that it was Christ Himself that was so wounded. The allusion is in any case very obscure; but the latter notion makes the better sense, and is capable of being explained by the Norse legend of Balder, who was frequently shot at by the other gods in sport, as he was supposed to be invulnerable; but he was slain thus one day by a shaft made of mistletoe, which alone had power to harm him.
There is also extant a considerable number of very brief inscriptions, such as that on a column at Bewcastle, in Cumberland; but they contribute little to our knowledge except the forms of proper names. The Liber Vit? of Durham, written in the ninth century, contains between three and four thousand such names, but nothing else.
Coming down to the tenth century, we meet with three valuable documents, all of which are connected with Durham, generally known as the Durham Ritual and the Northumbrian Gospels.
The Durham Ritual was edited for the Surtees Society in 1840 by the Rev. J. Stevenson. The MS. is in the Cathedral library at Durham, and contains three distinct Latin service-books, with Northumbrian glosses in various later hands, besides a number of unglossed Latin additions. A small portion of the MS. has been misplaced by the binder; the Latin prose on pp. 138-145 should follow that on p. 162. Mr Stevenson's edition exhibits a rather large number of misreadings, most of which (I fear not quite all) are noted in my "Collation of the Durham Ritual" printed in the Philological Society's Transactions, 1877-9, Appendix II. I give, by way of specimen, a curious passage (at p. 192), which tells us all about the eight pounds of material that went to make up the body of Adam.
aehto pundo of th?m aworden is Adam pund lames of thon Octo pondera de quibus factus est Adam. Pondus limi, inde
aworden is fl?sc pund fyres of thon read is blod and hat factus est caro; pondus ignis, inde rubeus est sanguis et calidus;
pund saltes of thon sindon salto tehero pund deawes