THE EXTRAORDINARY EPITAPH.
(To TEM Eorrea or rut " Sezerssmi.'1 Sm.—Perhaps I might as well give the remainder of my reoord, copied from the tombstone in High Email Churchyard. First come the verses that I sent up to you about four weeks ago, end the date attached to these was certainly 17.•, and looked like 178*. (By the stars I mean that there appeared to be something there, but it was illegible.] Then came—
Elizabeth the wife of Richard Barklamb
, passed .to eternity on Sunday 21 May • • • •
in the 71 year of her age.
Richard Barklamb ths Antespottse uxorious was interred •-• 27th Jany. 1806 in his 545• • -- William Barklamb Brother to the preceding Sept. 5 1779 aged 68 years."
Records get only too easily altered in transmission. I have here, in my old record, 1806 instead of Mt. Mason's 1800. And Dr. Kenny tells me that your printer changed his 1885 inn 1855! Further, in the four lines that Dr. Kenny quoted there were two differencestfrom the version that you had printed for tee the week before. When I was collecting Swiss inscriptions in the Chitsehenthal for a book published later (Oxford University Press) I had with me a monograph on this valley written by a Swiss. He professed to give some of these inscriptions; yet he had "some" for "cuo," "bleibe" for "welch," and all sorts of other differences. Even now, I suppose, we ought to ask the present vicar to verify the whole thing; only, I fear, illegibility would have inereased.—I am, Sir, Sae., Cheltenham, WALTER LARDER.
Previous page
