FROM THE ROMAN AVALL NOUTinVARD INTO SCOTLAND. l.'3l

of Edward L, 127.9, John Swinburne obtained a fair and market to be held liere. On a fillet on the south side appear to be the following characters. What the first three maymean is doubtful,but the sub- k fc l^y |- 1 |y|fif IT sequent letters appear to be the word D ANEGELT. This term was first applied to a tribute of 30,000, or according to some wTiters, 30,000 pounds (A. Sax.), raised in the year 1007 during the reign of Ethelred the Unready, to purchase a precarious peace from the Danes. It was also sometimes used to designate taxes imposed on other extraordinary occasions. On the western side are three figures, which, as Bishop Nicholson says, " evidently enough manifest the monument to bo Christian.^ The highest may be, as the learned prelate suggested, the Blessed Virgin with the Babe in her arms.* The next is that of our Saviour with the glory round his head. In a compartment underneath this is the principal inscription, consisting of nine lines ; and underneath this is the figure of a man w^ith a bird upon his hand, and in front of him a perch, which, in the absence of a better explanation, may possibly have been intended to represent Odin, or some Danish chieftain, and his dreaded raven : and we may suppose that he was placed at the bottom of the group to typify his conversion and subjection to the Redeejner, who was descended from the Blessed Virgin. The inscription appears to be as follows, so far as I have been able to trace the letters (see woodcut, p. 132). The eighth and nmth lines are quite illegible. In the first line the three characters at the commencement probably form the monogram I H S, and being placed ' * Camden's Britannia," ed. by Gibson, prised some mention of St. John. The vol. ii., p. 1028. figure at the base, as some have thought, ■* It must be admitted that this suppo- most probably pourtrayed some person of sition is somewhat countenanced by the note by whom this remarkable Christian fact that the Churcli of Bewcastle is monument was erected. The bird which dedicated to the Virgin. The represen- he has taken off its perch, appeal's to be tation, liowever, of these weather-worn a hawk, introduced, possibly, to mark his sculptures, given by Lysons in his " His- noble rank. In examining Lysons' plate, tory of Cumberland," p. cxcix, suggests the best representation of the sculptures, the notion, that what has been supposed hitherto published, attention is arrested to be the Infant Saviour, may be the by the introduction ol a vertical dial on Agnus Dei, and it is so described by him. the south side, resembling those at Kirk- If this be correct, the figure must repre- dale and Bishopstone, described in this sent the Baptist, and the two lines of volume of the Journal, p. 60, the only cliaracters, now defaced, under its feet, as examples of so early a date hitherto shown in Lysons' plate, possibly com- noticed. — En.