Runes are difficult. Mr. Stephens once read a Greek epitaph in elegiac verse, for a Syrian boy, at Brough, as a Runic lament, in old English, for a martyred Christian lady. I have little confidence in Hwaetred, Olfwolthu, and Wothgar: who were they; the artists employed in making the Cross? Eac Oswiung, "and son of Oswin," "the king," is said to be plain enough, and to indicate Alchfrith, son of Oswin, who after a stormy youth accepted, as against the Celtic clerics, the positions of St. Wilfred.
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The decorative work, knot work, vine scrolls, birds and little animals among the grapes, is of Byzantine and Northern Italian origin: like the decoration of the Ruthwell Cross.
Bewcastle must, it seems, have been a more important and populous place when this monument was erected, than even when the Royal castle was a centre of resistance to the Riddesdale clans in Queen Elizabeth's day.
Returning from Bewcastle by Penton, we strike the Riddel near Penton Linn, not distant from the vanished peel of that Judas, Hector Armstrong of Harelaw, who betrayed the Earl of Northumberland into the hands of the Regent Murray in 1569. A little way below, near the junction of Riddel and Esk, on a commanding height that overhangs railway and river, is Riddel Moat. Locally this moat is called "the Roman Camp," but to the average amateur there is certainly nothing Roman about it. No doubt the Romans may have had an outpost here; the position is too strong not to have been held by them, especially as they had a station barely a couple of miles away, at Netherby. But the prominent remains of fortifications now to be seen here manifestly date from long after Roman days. It is, I believe, the site of the earliest Riddel Castle, erected by Ranulph de Soulis before either the Riddel Castle at Castleton, or Hermitage, was built. This Riddel Castle was razed to the ground, wiped out of existence, by the Scottish army under David Bruce, which invaded England in 1346 and was so totally routed at Neville's Cross a few weeks later. On his march southward, says Redpath, Bruce "took the fortress of Riddel and put the garrison to the sword,... spreading terror and desolation all round him in his progress through Cumberland." Liddel Moat is well worthy of a visit, but it is somewhat out of the beaten track and can only be reached by walking a little distance, preferably from the station at Biddings Junction. The position, defended on the landward side by an immensely deep moat, and on the other dropping almost sheer into the river—or rather, now, on to the intervening railway line—is a magnificent one, and the view obtained from the highest point is very fine,—at one's feet, just beyond the two rivers, "Cannobie lea";
"There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan,
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran,
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie lea,