MARG2/2

Macalister/1949, 157: `A slab...which was dug up in the churchyard some time before 1851...It seems to have been known to Lhuyd, who mentions it in a letter dated 1697'.

Nash-Williams/1950, 148: `Abbey churchyard'.

RCAHMW/1976, 49: `Formerly standing S. of the church,[1] and more recently re-set in Margam Stones Museum.

[1] Stowe MS. 1024, fo. 17; Arch. Camb., 1858, p. 345 (letter of E. Lhuyd, 1697)'.

Nash-Williams/1950, 148: `Pillar-cross with solid circular head and splayed quadrangular shaft with moulded offset and 4 1/2" tenon below (? for mounting in a base). 38 1/2" h. (above tenon) x 17" w. and 10 1/2" t. at bottom of shaft, diminishing to 10 1/2" w. and 9" t. at neck; diam. of head, 16--17 1/4". Local Pennant sandstone. The head is filled with a plain free-armed cross[2] of Anglian type, with moulded borders, carved in medium relief. The shaft below is filled with a Latin inscription (Fig. 167).

[2] The form of the cross with its widely splayed arms and small circular armpits is characteristic of a group of 10th--11th-century crosses in SW. Scotland and N. England, and may therefore be of northern derivation. See ECMS, iii, [Allen/Anderson/1903] pp. 484 ff.;... NC, [Collingwood/1927] p. 89'.

RCAHMW/1976, 49: `The disc-shaped head and four-sided splayed shaft formed from one block of local sandstone stand 101cm high, with a tenon at the base but lacking a socketed pedestal stone. The head is 44cm in diameter and 17cm thick; the shaft tapers in width from 48cm at the base to 28cm, and in thickness from 30cm to 21cm. Only one face is decorated, the other sides being dressed smooth above a rounded base moulding'.

Westwood/1879, 25: `the wheel-cross at its top...is of the Greek or Maltese form, with the four limbs of equal size and a circular boss in the centre'.

Macalister/1949, 157: `On one side there is a simply designed cross pattée'.

RCAHMW/1976, 49: `An equal-armed cross with `fan-shaped' arms in relief and hollowed angles fills the head, outlined by rounded edge-moulding and containing a central ring and pellet. The shaft, framed by rounded angle-moulding, is filled with a Latin inscription'.

RCAHMW/1976, 49: `Latin inscription in ten lines set horizontally'.

Rhys/1899, 143--144: `In early Medieval Irish z was treated as an equivalent for st, and it is fairly certain that our inscriber would not regard his z as the soft sibilant of such words as zeal or zero, as that sound was unknown in Celtic, whether Goidelic or Brythonic. One of the most remarkable things about this inscription is, that it seems to represent the author of the inscription's pronunciation of Latin phonetically: thus we have inomine for in nómine, and anma for ánima; whence in the same way Modern French âme for Old French anme, Spanish alma. The b in proparabit was to be here pronounced v as in Conbelin, and as in Latin from the fourth century down: see such forms as comparabit se biba for comparavit se viva in De Rossi's Christian Inscriptions found in Rome, vol. i, No. 1125. The o in proparabit is of a different origin, being due, no doubt, to confusion of the Latin prefixes prae and pro: it is attested elsewhere in Med. Irish procept `teaching', from the Latin praeceptum; while the related Welsh word was pregeth, originally meaning the act of teaching, but now only a sermon. It may be pointed out that the phonetic writing is quite of a piece with the simple syntax of the inscription: thus, judging from other instances, we have to take by itself In nomine. dei summi crux Christi, or treat it as equivalent to In nomine dei summi incipit crux Christi; and then it should have gone on with quam preparavit Grutne, but such a construction appears to have been too complicated for the Latinity of the author of this legend'.

See also Rhys/1905, 63--65.

Nash-Williams/1950, 148: `For the formula cf. No. 231. [MARG2/1/1]'.

Rhys/1899, 141--143: `As to the next Margam cross, I had only time to look at it hurriedly in 1897, but I felt confident that it had been correctly read. On my visit in 1898, however, I had plenty of leisure to scrutinise it, and to discover, to my surprise, that we have always misread it, especially the fifth line, which has been treated as Critdi...At all events, there is no doubt but that we are to read the beginning of this legend as inomine, and I am inclined to read the end Anest, and to regard that as an earlier form of the woman's name Nest: the perpendicular of the n in Anest is no taller than that of the first n in inomine, but it is straight or perpendicular, while that of the letter in inomine is not really so, as it bends backwards a bit at the top. However, I should not quarrel with anyone who wishes still to read Ahest, provided he does not further try to make it a form of the Latin word eius. The letter which has been read t in the impossible form Critdi = Christi is not a t, but has the shape of a z; but it may be doubted whether it was intended for z rather than for s. Thus we have s and sometimes a reversed s; and on the Clydey stone of Dobituci we have the former made with angles instead of curves, and looking, consequently, like an inverted z, namely, in FILIVS. So our instance here may be a reversed s similarly angulated into the shape of z. But, on the other hand, the inscriber may have intended a z, and in that case he probably congratulated himself on achieving a novelty in the spelling of the word Christi'.

See also Rhys/1905, 63--64.

Nash-Williams/1950, 148, `Round half-uncials, deeply picked in good but careless style, punctuated with single and triple points used as stops'.

RCAHMW/1976, 49: `The lettering is in crude half-uncials with one square E (l. 8) and common manuscript abbreviations: `inomine' for in nomine (cf Nos. 928, 933), `di' for dei and `sumi' for summi (see p. 27 above). Though there is no spacing of words, two punctuation stops occur, one single and one triple'.