of Edward I., 1279, John Swinburne obtained a fair and market to be held here.
On a fillet on the south side appear to be the following characters. What the first three may mean is doubtful, but the subsequent letters appear to be the word DANEGELT. This term was first applied to a tribute of 30,000, or according to some writers, 36,000 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 be Christian.[1] The highest may be, as the learned prelate suggested, the Blessed Virgin with the Babe in her arms.[2] 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 with 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 Redeemer, 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 ninth 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, vol. ii., p. 1028.
- ↑ It must be admitted that this supposition is somewhat countenanced by the fact that the Church of Bewcastle is dedicated to the Virgin. The representation, however, of these weather-worn sculptures, given by Lysons in his "History of Cumberland," p. cxcix, suggests the notion, that what has been supposed to be the Infant Saviour, may be the Agnus Dei, and it is so described by him. If this be correct, the figure must represent the Baptist, and the two lines of characters, now defaced, under its feet, as shown in Lysons' plate, possibly comprised some mention of St. John. The figure at the base, as some have thought, most probably pourtrayed some person of note by whom this remarkable Christian monument was erected. The bird which he has taken off its perch, appears to be a hawk, introduced, possibly, to mark his noble rank. In examining Lysons' plate, the best representation of the sculptures, hitherto published, attention is arrested by the introduction of a vertical dial on the south side, resembling those at Kirkdale and Bishopstone, described in this volume of the Journal, p. 60, the only examples of so early a date hitherto noticed.—Ed.
