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Publication Account
Date 1985
Event ID 1016231
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016231
The moor known as Annan Street was first brought into cultivation in 1803-4, and the stone was turned up by the plough; it was lying flat just under the surface with human bones below. At that time there were also some twenty "large cairns" on the moor.
Just over 1.5m high as now set, it bears an important six line Latin inscription, fairly roughly carved and in parts badly weathered. The letters are mainly Roman capitals, irregular and sprawling; the words are badly set out and carelessly written! Certain letters, however, provide parallels with stones elsewhere, notably in Wales and Cornwall, and help date it to the early 6th century. A brief translation would run:
''This (is) the everlasting memorial.
In (this) place (lie) the most famous princes
Nudus and Dumnogenus,
In this tomb lie the two sons of Liberalis".
The stone was erected, therefore, to mark the grave of two Christian British chieftains; but burial was not in a churchyard as such, rather in a small cemetery, probably the family or tribal graveyard, alongside a trackway.
The record of bones beneath the stone and of cairns on the moor cannot be dissociated with other discoveries, made in 1857, some 730 m north-east at the Warriors' Rest (NT 354277). There, about 9m south of a standing stone, eight stone-lined cists or graves were found lying east-west Such groups of aligned graves without gravegoods are characteristic of Christian, not pagan burials, and have also been found at the Cat Stane close to Edinburgh Airport (presently inaccessible).
The inscription on the late 5th-6th century Cat Stane suggests that "In this tomb lies Vetta, daughter of Victricius"-presumably a woman of considerable political and social importance amongst the Votadinim, British tribe whose roots and language were closely related to those who emerged subsequently as the Welsh. Much preoccupied with warring, good living and genealogy, their Christianity may have been little more than a veneer-but Christian they were nonetheless, and from the discoveries of their graves, they were fairly liberally scattered across the attractive Lothian plain.
Information from 'Exploring Scotland's Heritage: Lothian and Borders', (1985).
