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244. If the circles were monuments of the Celts, whom they despised, and in fact had even then exterminated, they would hardly choose a burying-place so close to them.

The most important, however, of all the tumuli, not only in this neighbourhood, but in the islands, is known as the Maes-Howe, It was opened in 1861, in the presence of a select party of antiquaries from Edinburgb, who had hoped from its external appearance to find it intact: in this, however, they were dis- appointed. It would seem that men of the same race as those who erected it, but who in the meanwhile had been converted to Christianity, had apparently in the middle of the twelfth century broken into this sepulchre of their Pagan forefathers, and despoiled it of its contents. As some compensation ior this, they have written their names in very legible Runes on the walls of the tomb, and recorded, in short sentences, what they knew and believed of its origin.

From these Runes we learn, in the first place, that the robbers were Christian pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land—Iorsala Farer—from which Professor Munch infers that they must have formed part of the expedition organized for that purpose by Jarl Ragnvald, 1152. Beyond this it is not possible to lay much stress on what these Runes tell us. In the first place, because the learned men to whom they have been submitted differ considerably in their interpretation, and the record, even in the best of them, is indistinct. In one or two respects the evidence of the inscriptions may be considered satisfactory. Their writers all seem to have known so perfectly what the tomb was, and to whom it belonged, that no one cared to record, except in the most poetic fashion, what every one on the spot probably knew perfectly well. At all events, there is no allusion in these inscriptions to any other or earlier race. Every expression, whether intelligible or not, bears a northern stamp. Lothbrok, Ingeborg, and all the other names introduced are Scandinavian, and all the allusions have a Northern twang. Though this is merely negative evidence, it certainly goes