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.

The two quotations at the back are these:

The literal meaning of the lines is as follows:

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 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.

We thus learn that Adam’s flesh was made of a pound of loam; his red and hot blood, of fire; his salt tears, of salt; his sweat, of dew; the colour of his eyes, of flowers; the instability of his thoughts, of cloud; his cold breath, of wind; and his intelligence, of grace.

The Northumbrian glosses on the four Gospels are contained in two MSS., both of remarkable interest and value. The former of these, sometimes known as the Lindisfarne MS., and sometimes as the Durham Book, is now MS. Cotton, Nero D. 4 in the British Museum, and is one of the chief treasures in our national collection. It contains a beautifully executed Latin text of the four Gospels, written in the isle of Lindisfarne, by Eadfrith (bishop of Lindisfarne in