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Compact, expressive, serene, solemn, musical, in four brief stanzas it tells the story of the past, records the commemorative act of the passing day, and invokes the higher Power that governs the future to protect the Memorial-stone sacred to Freedom and her martyrs.

A memorial-stone on the roadside near the church marks the scene of a sudden death. Ash, a parish including several small hamlets, 1 m. N.E. from Martock. The church is modern. Ash Priors, a small village 1 m. N.W. of Bishop's Lydeard Stat., owes its name to the fact that it once belonged to the Priory of Taunton.

Compact, expressive, serene, solemn, musical, in four brief stanzas it tells the story of the past, records the commemorative act of the passing day, and invokes the higher Power that governs the future to protect the Memorial-stone sacred to Freedom and her martyrs.

As the great throng, some thousands in number, and arranged in choirs, four and four, stood round the spot on the roadside where Christian David had raised his axe, and where a new memorial-stone now stood, they rejoiced because during those hundred years the seed had become a great tree, and they mourned because the branches had begun to wither and the leaves begun to fall.

The whole of the text is too long to quote, and it will suffice to note here that Melishikhu proceeds to appeal to future kings to respect the land and privileges which he has granted to his son, Marduk-aplu-iddina, even as he himself has respected similar grants made by his predecessors on the throne; and the text ends with some very vivid curses against any one, whatever his station, who should make any encroachments on the privileges granted to Marduk-aplu-iddina, or should alter or do any harm to the memorial-stone itself.

The emblems of the gods whom Melishikhu invokes to avenge any infringement of his grant are sculptured upon one side of the stone, for, as has already been remarked, it was believed that by carving them upon the memorial-stone their help in guarding the stone itself and its enactments was assured.