It is found at the end
of the Cambridge MS. of Beda's _Historia Ecclesiastica_ in the
following form:

Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard,
metud{ae}s maecti end his modgidanc,
uerc uuldurfadur; sue he uundra gihuaes,
eci Dryctin, or astelid{ae}.
He aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe, haleg scepen[d].
Tha middungeard moncynn{ae}s uard,
eci Dryctin, {ae}fter tiad{ae}
firum fold[u], frea allmectig.

I here subjoin a literal translation.

Now ought we to praise the warden of heaven's realm,
the Creator's might and His mind's thought,
the works of the Father of glory; (even) as He, of every wonder,
(being) eternal Ruler, established the beginning.
He first (of all) shaped, for the sons of men,
heaven as (their) roof, (He) the holy Creator.
The middle world (He), mankind's warden,
eternal Ruler, afterwards prepared,
the world for men--(being the) Almighty Lord.

The locality of these lines is easily settled, as we may assign
them to Whitby. Similarly, Beda's Death-song may be assigned to the
county of Durham.

A third poem, extending to fourteen lines, may be called the
"Northumbrian Riddle." It is called by Dr Sweet the "Leiden Riddle,"
because the MS. that contains it is now at Leyden, in Holland. The
locality is unknown, but we may assign it to Yorkshire or Durham
without going far wrong. 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, an