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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
The Runic Inscription on the Font at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, has long attracted the attention of our Antiquaries, though not very successfully; owing in some degree, no doubt, to the unfamiliar aspect of its characters. “What they mean, and to what nation they belong, let the learned determine, for it is all mystery to me,” exclaims Camden, A.D. 1607.
page 380 note a Bishop Nicolson himself, on a re-examination of the subject in 1703, acknowledges that he found it, in some little particulars, different from what he had at first observed it to be. (Nicolson and Burn, vol. II. p. 102.)
page 380 note b Mr. Howard very judiciously suggested that the word Taner was more likely to be Nor: the letters in fact being NR.
page 380 note c Dodwell's Tour through Greece, vol. I. p. 553.
page 381 note a The same is also apparent from the engraving in Lysons's Cumberland, p. cxciii. where those accomplished antiquaries give it as their opinion that the style of the sculptures “would clearly indicate the font to be the work of an earlier age than that of the Norman conquest, if it had not the Dano-Saxon inscription. The scroll on which this inscription is cut, rests on two pillars, one of which is evidently clustered, and of a lighter style than that which prevailed a short time before the conquest.” The marks in the stone above alluded to, are of themselves so insignificant, that those intermixed with the first word are not given by Messrs. Lysons, in their fac-simile; whilst they notice some after the second word which are not in Mr. Howard's.
page 382 note a Sir Joshua Reynolds and Michael Angelo.