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

lines is easily settled, as 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