The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps

ATTEMPTED DECIPHERMENT OF NEWTON STONE 23

wards. But all of them totally disagreed in their readings and translations, which most of them candidly admitted were mere “ guesses,” till at last its decipherment was thrown up in despair by the less rash antiquaries and paleographers.

The chief later attempts at deciphering this central inscription, since those made by Lord Southesk in 1882-5," Sir W. Ramsay in 1892,* Whitley Stokes,* and Professor J. Rhys‘ in the same year, have been by Dr. Bannerman ‘in tg07* and Mr. Diack in 1922.° These attempts, like most of the earlier ones, were on the assumption that the script and language were “ Pictish” or “ Celtic,’ although Dr. Stuart, a chief specialist in “* Pictish ” or “‘ Celtic’ script who edited one of the oldest real Picto-Celtic manuscripts,’ confessed his mability to recognize the script as such, and expressly refrained from proposing the decipherment of a single letter. Professor Rhys, also an authority on Celtic script, similarly confessed his inability to decipher this inscription as he “‘ cannot claim to have had any success,” though he nevertheless ventured to hazard ‘a translation of part of both it and the Ogam script ’’—which latter he calls “non-Aryan Pictish ’’—with the apology that it was ‘‘ purely a guess '’ and a mere “ picking from previous attempts by others and by myself.”* Yet this final attempt does not carry him beyond three words in the former and five in the latter.

The totally different results of these latest conjectural readings and “ translations’’ will be evident when the readings are here placed alongside, and makes it difficult

'P.S.A.S., 1882, 21f; 1884, 191f; 1865, 3of.

+ Academy, Sept. 1892 240-1.

% Ibid. June 4, and July 12, 1892. 4P.S.A.S., 1891-2, 280f.

5 hid. 1907-8, 56f.

® Newton Stone and oiler Pictish Inscriptions, 1922. He surmises that the main inscription is in “‘ Old Gaelic’’ language in ““ Roman” script, and construes it after the opening sentence still altogether different from previous attempts, and makes it the epitaph of two persons Ette and Elisios ; and that the Ogam is not bi-lingual but added later as epitaph of a third person.

* Adamnan Gook of Deey with life of St. Columba, edited and translated by J. Stuart.

5 P.S.A.S., 1892-3, loc. cit., and 1898, 361f.