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

we may assign them to
Whitby. Similarly, Beda's Death-song may be assigned to the county of
Durham.
A third poem, extending to fourteen lines, may be called the
"Northumbrian Riddle." It is called by Dr Sweet the "Leiden Riddle,"
because the MS. that contains it is now at Leyden, in Holland. The
locality is unknown, but we may assign it to Yorkshire or Durham
without going far wrong. There is another copy in a Southern dialect.
These three brief poems, viz. Beda's Death-song, Cædmon'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]geredæ hinæ god almechttig tha he walde on galgu gistiga,
modig fore allæ men; buga [ic ni darstæ.]

2. [ahof] ic riicnæ kyningc, heafunæs hlafard; hælda ic ni darstæ.
bismæradu ungket men ba æt-gadre. ic wæs mith blodæ bistemid
bigoten of [his sidan.]
The two quotations at the back are these:
3. Crist wæs on rodi; hwethræ ther fusæ fearran cwomu æththilæ til
anum; ic thæt al biheald. sare ic wæs mith sorgum gidr{oe}fid; hnag [ic
hwethræ tham secgum til handa.]
4. mith strelum giwundad alegdun hiæ hinæ limw{oe}rignæ;
gistoddum him æt his licæs heafdum, bihealdun hiæ ther heafun[æs
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 Vitæ_ 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