The inscribed stones and ancient crosses of Devon / by C. Spence Bate.

  • Charles Spence Bate
Date:
[between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The inscribed stones and ancient crosses of Devon / by C. Spence Bate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    fying deep or low, because they inhabited for the most part a plain encompassed by hills. Whether the name on the stone be that of an individual or of a nation, it certainly is, says Mr. Bray, of British origin. “The inscription,” Dr. Ferguson says, “is remarkable as being all in Roman capitals—a criterion thought to bespeak a higher antiquity than where capitals and minuscales are intermingled, as is the case in most of the ‘ bi-literals ’ of South Wales.” (Pres. Royal Irish Academy, Nov. 29th, 1873.) Hiibner, who has given only the Roman inscription in page 10 of his recently published work, Inscriptiones Britannia Christiana, 1876, and appears not to have been able to obtain a drawing of the Ogham inscription upon the same stone, of which he knows neither the form nor dimensions, remarks, “ In angulo litterse Celticae scriptse sunt, quarum imaginem nancisci non potui. Formam lapidis depictam non habui mensuramque eius ignoro. S. Ferguson, Archseol. Camb. sec. iv. 5, 1874, p. 92; et I. Rhys, ibid, p. 173, cf. p. 334 adn. Is mihi ectypum misit litterarum, quod hie repetendum curavi. Litterarum Celticarum has tautum ... NABAEK ... Rhys legit, diverse a religuis; ut mihi significavit per litteras. Idem lapide denuo inspecto Jilli potius quam fili legendum putat.” On the reverse side are the letters G. C., which Mr. Bray pre- sumes may stand for Galba Csesare. But I can see little to induce us to follow Mr. Bray in this, except in his quoting from Shake- speare the following lines: “ Figures pedantical, these summer flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation : I do forswear them.”
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