There is another copy in a Southern dialect.
These three brief poems, viz. Beda's Death-song, C{ae}dmon's Hymn, and
the Riddle, are all printed, accessibly, in Sweet's _Anglo-Saxon
Reader_.
There is another relic of Old Northumbrian, apparently belonging to
the middle of the eighth century, which is too remarkable to be passed
over. I refer to the famous Ruthwell cross, situate not far to the
west of Annan, near the southern coast of Dumfriesshire, and near the
English border. On each of its four faces it bears inscriptions; on
two opposite faces in Latin, and on the other two in runic characters.
Each of the latter pair contains a few lines of Northern poetry,
selected from a poem (doubtless by the poet Cynewulf) which is
preserved in full in a much later Southern (or Wessex) copy in a MS.
at Vercelli in Piedmont (Italy). On the side which Professor Stephens
calls _the front_ of the cross, the runic inscriptions give us two
quotations, both imperfect at the end; and the same is true of the
opposite side or _back_. The MS. helps us to restore letters that are
missing or broken, and in this way we can be tolerably sure of the
correct readings.
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