FAMOUS BORDER CROSS

Evening Star, Issue 20313, 23 October 1929, Page 11

FAMOUS BORDER CROSS

OVER I.OCO YEARS OLD Within a few miles of the Scottish border is a hamlet cons.sting •>. a church and a handful of cottages. • It lies in a lonely moorland valley, and it is a toilsome journey to reach it by that hard, uninviting road the Romans built and called the _ Maiden Way. But here, if tradition is to ha believed, was once the homo of kings, and hero to this day there survives one of the most ancient and baffling Runic crosses in England (writes Donald Hows, in the ‘ Daily Telegraph ’). Who erected this Bewcastle cross? That is the mystery. For two centuries at least learned men have come from far counties and countries to study its ago-worn inscription, and to try to piece together its fragmentary history. Clearly it was a Christian memorial—the pious symbolism in the exquisite carvings testifies to that—and equally clearly must it hare pre-dated the Conquest Bewcastle. now literally miles from anywhere, and its peace disturbed only by the hardiest of antiquity lovers, was a place of repute in its day _ Here the Romans had one of rbrir clref military stations. Not far to the northward, though no traces of it have been discovered thereabouts yet, was_ the Great Wall, and the men who built it were protected as they worked by a garrison of the Second Legion.

Long years after Cromwell is said to have come and demolished the castle. From the fact that the Protector chose it for his vengeance, it may be concluded that it was still a place of no minor importance. But from that time came decline and decay._ From the remnants of it that survive it would, seem that it was not a formidable castle. Nevertheless, in the Border raids it offered some kind of a refuge for the inhabitants mil its crumbled walls might also tell name _ unhappy memories of the Jacobite risings. It must have been in the distant Saxon t : mcs that Bewcastle flourished. Legend has had it, indeed, that the kings of Northumbria held their Courts there; that the ancient monolith really marks the burial place of one of them, and that it was set up also to commemorate a peace with the Daces. Scholarship, having done the best it could with the battered inscription, has now decided that the memorial was raised to one Alcfrith. a “good” seventh century King of Northumbria, who in his lifetime nrobably embraced Christianity. But who did him the honour is not to be tffld. Leaving the question of its reputed origin, there can be no doubt that this old stone, with the elaborate carvings still wonderfully distinct on its tapering sides, is a relic of rare antiqmty. For well over a thousand years it bas stood as a witness in this blank Border country. It was once on tho main track of civiPsct’on, but now the tide of life has ebbed far to the south, .vid_ rem-'te-and sobtude brood over it in " tiny churchyard in an emntv mom-lcnd valley.