EARLY USE OF LETTERS, OGAM AND ROMAN
We now come to the question, When and where did the Irish get their
alphabet, and at what time did they begin to practise the art of
writing? The present alphabet of the Irish, which they have used in
all their books from the seventh century down, and probably for three
hundred years before that, is only a modification--and a peculiarly
beautiful one--of the Roman letters. This alphabet they no doubt
borrowed from their neighbours, the Romanised Britons, within whose
territory they had established themselves, and with whom--now in peace,
now in war--they carried on a vigorous and constant intercourse.[1] The
_general_ use of letters in Ireland is, however, to be attributed to
the early Christian missionaries.
But there is no reason to believe that it was St. Patrick, or indeed
any missionary, who first introduced them. There probably were in
Ireland many persons in the fourth century, or perhaps even earlier,
who were acquainted with the art of writing. Already, at the beginning
of the third century at least, says Zimmer in his "Keltische Studien,"
British missionaries were at work in the south of Ireland. Bede, in
his history, says distinctly that Palladius was sent from Rome in the
year 431 to the Irish "who believed in Christ"--"ad Scottos in Christum
credentes." Already, at the close of the third century, there was an
organised British episcopate, and three British bishops attended the
Council of Arles held in 314. It is quite impossible that the numerous
Irish colonies settled in the south of England and in Wales could
have failed to come into contact with this organised Church, and even
to have been influenced by it. The account in the Acta Sanctorum, of
Declan, Bishop of Waterford, said to have been born in 347, and of
Ailbe, another southern bishop, who met St. Patrick, may be looked
upon as perfectly true in so far as it relates to the actual existence
of these pre-Patrician bishops. St. Chrysostom, writing in the year
387, mentions that already churches and altars had been erected in
the British Isles. Pelagius, the subtle and persuasive heresiarch who
taught with such success at Rome about the year 400, and acquired
great influence there, was of Irish descent--"habet progeniem Scotticæ
gentis de Brittanorum vicinia," said St. Jerome. As St. Augustine
and Prosper of Aquitaine call him "Briton" and "British scribe," he
probably belonged to one of the Irish colonies settled in Wales or the
South-west of England. His success at Rome is a proof that some Irish
families at least were within reach of literary education in the fourth
century. His friend and teacher, Celestius, has also been claimed as an
Irishman, but Dr. Healy has shown that this claim is perhaps founded
upon a misconception.[2]
"The influence of the ancient Irish on the Continent," says Dr.
Sigerson, "began in the works of Sedulius, whose 'Carmen Paschale,'
published in the fifth century, is the first great Christian epic
worthy of the name." Sedulius, the Virgil of theological poetry,
flourished in the first half of the fifth century, and seems to have
studied in Gaul, passed into Italy, and finally resided in Achaia in
Greece, which he seems to have made his home. There are at least eight
Irish Siadals (in Latin Sedulius, in English Shiel) commemorated by
Colgan. The strongest evidence of Sedulius's Irish nationality is that
the Irish geographer Dicuil, in the eighth century, quoting some of
his lines, calls him _noster Sedulius_. John of Tritenheim, towards
the close of the fifteenth century, distinctly calls him an Irishman
_natione Scotus_, but attributes to him the verses of a later Sedulius.
Dr. Sigerson, by a clever analysis of his verse-peculiarities confirms
this opinion.[3]
In the "Tripartite Life of St. Patrick" we read that the druids at the
king's court, when St. Patrick arrived there, possessed books, and
when, at a later date, St. Patrick determined upon revising the Brehon
law code, the books in which it was written down were laid before him.
That there has come down to our time no written record earlier than the
seventh or eighth century[4] is chiefly due to the enormous destruction
of books by the Danes and English. The same causes produced a like
effect in Britain, for the oldest surviving British MSS. are not even
as old as ours, although the art of writing must have been known and
practised there since the Roman occupation.
The Irish had, however, another system of writing which they
themselves invented. This was the celebrated Ogam script, consisting
of a number of short lines, straight or slanting,[5] and drawn either
below, above, or through one long stem-line, which stem-line is
generally the angle between two sides of a long upright rectangular
stone. These lines represented letters; and over two hundred stones
have been found inscribed with Ogam writing. It is a remarkable fact
that rude as this device for writing is, it has been applied with
considerable skill, and is framed with much ingenuity. For in every
case it is found that those letters which, like the vowels, are most
easily pronounced, are also in Ogam the easiest to inscribe, and the
simpler sounds are represented by simpler characters than those that
are more complex. To account for the philosophical character of this
alphabet[6] "than which no simpler method of writing is imaginable,"
a German, Dr. Rethwisch, who examined it from this side, concluded
that "the natural gifts of the Celts and their practical genius for
simplicity and observation ripened up to a certain stage far earlier
than those of their Indo-European relations." This statement, however,
rests upon the as yet unproved assumption that Ogam writing is
pre-Christian and pagan. What is of more interest is that the author
of it supposed that with one or two changes it would make the simplest
conceivable universal-alphabet or international code of writing. It
is very strange that nearly all the Irish Ogam stones are found in
the south-west, chiefly in the counties of Cork and Kerry, with a few
scattered over the rest of the country--but one in West Connacht,
and but one or two at the most in Ulster. Between twenty and thirty
more have been found in Wales and Devonshire, and one or two even
farther east, thus bearing witness to the colonies planted by the
Irish marauders in early Britain, for Ogam writing is peculiar to
the Irish Gael and only found where he had settled. Ten stones more
have been found in Scotland, probably the latest in date of any, for
some of these, unlike the Irish stones, bear Christian symbols. Many
Ogams have been easily read, thanks to the key contained in the Book
of Ballymote; thanks also to the fact that one or two Ogams have been
found with duplicates inscribed in Latin letters. But many still defy
all attempts at deciphering them, though numerous efforts have been
made, treating them as though they were cryptic ciphers, which they
were long believed to be. That Ogam was, as some assert, an early
cryptic alphabet, and one intended to be read only by the initiated,
is both in face of the numbers of such inscriptions already deciphered
and in the face of the many instances recorded in our oldest sagas of
its employment, an absurd hypothesis. It is nearly always treated in
them as an ordinary script which any one could read. It may, however,
have been occasionally used in later times in a cryptic sense, names
being written backwards or syllables transposed, but this was
certainly not the original invention. Some of the latest Ogam pillars
are gravestones of people who died so late as the year 600, but what
proportion of them, if any, date from before the Christian era it is
as yet impossible to tell. Certain it is that the grammatical forms of
the language inscribed upon most of them are vastly older than those of
the very oldest manuscripts,[7] and agree with those of the old Gaulish
linguistic monuments.
Cormac's Glossary--a work of the ninth or tenth century--the ancient
sagas, and many allusions in the older literature, would seem to show
that Ogam writing was used by the pagan Irish. Cormac, explaining the
word _fé_ says that "it was a wooden rod used by the Gael for measuring
corpses and graves, and that this rod used always to be kept in the
burial-places of the heathen, and it was a horror to every one even
to take it in his hand, and whatever was abominable to them they (the
pagans) used to inscribe on it in Ogam."[8] The sagas also are full of
allusions to Ogam writing. In the "Táin Bo Chuailgne," which probably
assumed substantially its present shape in the seventh century, we
are told how when Cuchulain, after assuming arms, drove into Leinster
with his charioteer and came to the dún or fort of the three sons of
Nechtan, he found on the lawn before the court a stone pillar, around
which was written in Ogam that every hero who passed thereby was bound
to issue a challenge. This was clearly no cryptic writing but the
ordinary script, meant to be read by every one who passed.[9] Cuchulain
in the same saga frequently cuts Ogam on wands, which he leaves in
the way of Mève's army. These are always brought to his friend Fergus
to read. Perhaps the next oldest allusion to Ogam writing is in the
thoroughly pagan "Voyage of Bran," which both Zimmer and Kuno Meyer
consider to have been committed to writing in the seventh century. We
are there told that Bran wrote the fifty or sixty quatrains of the poem
in Ogam. Again, in Cormac's Glossary[10] we find a story of how Lomna
Finn mac Cool's fool (drúth) made an Ogam and put it in Finn's way to
tell him how his wife had been unfaithful to him. A more curious case
is the story in the Book of Leinster of Corc's flying to the Court of
King Feradach in Scotland. Not knowing how he might be received he hid
in a wood near by. The King's poet, however, meets him and recognises
him, having seen him before that in Ireland. The poet notices an Ogam
on the prince's shield, and asks him, "Who was it that befriended you
with that Ogam, for it was not good luck which he designed for you?"
"Why," asked the prince, "what does it contain?" "What it contains,"
said the poet, "is this--that if by day you arrive at the Court of
Feradach the king, your head shall be struck off before night; if it be
at night you arrive your head shall be struck off before morning."[11]
This Ogam was apparently readable only by the initiated, for the
prince did not himself know what he was bearing on his shield.
All ancient Irish literature, then, is unanimous in attributing
a knowledge of Ogam to the pre-Christian Irish. M. d'Arbois de
Jubainville seems also to believe in its pagan antiquity, for when
discussing the story of St. Patrick's setting a Latin alphabet before
Fiach, and of the youth's learning to read the Psalms within the
following four-and-twenty hours, he remarks that the story is just
possible since Fiach should have known the Ogam alphabet, and except
for the form of the letters it and the Latin alphabet were the same.[12]
St. Patrick, too, tells us in his "Confession" how after his flight
from Ireland he saw a man coming as it were from that country with
innumerable letters, a dream that would scarcely have visited him had
he known that there was no one in Ireland who could write letters.[13]
The Ogam alphabet, however, is based upon the Roman. Of this there can
be no doubt, for it contains letters which, according to the key,
represents Q (made by five upright strokes above the stem line), Z,
and Y, none of which letters are used in even the oldest MSS., and two
of which at least must have been borrowed from the Romans. The most,
then, that can at present be said with absolute certainty is, as Dr.
Whitley Stokes cautiously puts it, that these Ogam inscriptions and the
language in which they are couched are "enough to show that some of the
Celts of these islands wrote their language before the fifth century,
the time at which Christianity is supposed to have been introduced into
Ireland."[14] The presence of these Roman letters never used by the
Irish on vellum, and the absence of any aspirated letters (which abound
even in the oldest vellum MSS.) are additional proofs of the antiquity
of the Ogam alphabet.
The Irish themselves ascribed the invention of Ogam to [the god] Ogma,
one of the leading Tuatha De Danann,[15] and although it may be, as
Rhys points out, philologically unsound to derive Ogam from Ogma, yet
there appears to be an intimate connection between the two words, and
Ogma may well be derived from Ogam, which in its early stage may have
meant fluency or learning rather than letters. Certainly there cannot
be any doubt that Ogma, the Tuatha De Danann, was the same as the
Gaulish god Ogmios of whom Lucian, that pleasantest of Hellenes, gives
us an account so delightfully graphic that it is worth repeating in
its entirety as another proof of what I shall have more to speak about
later on, the solidarity--to use a useful Gallicism--of the Irish and
the Continental Gauls.
"The Celts,"[16] says Lucian, "call Heracles in the language of their
country Ogmios, and they make very strange representations of the god.
With them he is an extremely old man with a bald forehead and his few
remaining hairs quite grey; his skin is wrinkled and embrowned by
the sun to that degree of swarthiness which is characteristic of men
who have grown old in a seafaring life; in fact, you would fancy him
rather to be a Charon or Japetus, one of the dwellers in Tartarus, or
anybody rather than Heracles. But although he is of this description
he is nevertheless attired like Heracles, for he has on him the lion's
skin, and he has a club in the right hand; he is duly equipped with
a quiver, and his left hand displays a bow stretched out, in these
respects he is quite Heracles.[17] It struck me then that the Celts
took such liberties with the appearance of Heracles in order to insult
the gods of the Greeks and avenge themselves on him in their painting,
because he once made a raid on their territory, when in search of the
herds of Geryon he harassed most of the Western peoples. I have not
yet, however, mentioned the most whimsical part of the picture, for
this old man Heracles draws after him a great number of men bound
by their ears, and the bonds are slender cords wrought of gold and
amber, like necklaces of the most beautiful make; and although they
are dragged on by such weak ties they never try to run away, though
they could easily do it, nor do they at all resist or struggle against
them, planting their feet in the ground and throwing their weight
back in the direction contrary to that in which they are being led.
Quite the reverse, they follow with joyful countenance in a merry
mood, and praising him who leads them, pressing on, one and all, and
slackening their chains in their eagerness to proceed; in fact, they
look like men who would be grieved should they be set free. But that
which seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate
also to tell you: the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends
of the cords since the right hand of the god held the club and his
left the bow; so he pierced the tip of his tongue and represented the
people as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance
towards those whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time looking at
these things and wondered, perplexed and indignant. But a certain
Celt standing by, who knew something about our ways, as he showed by
speaking good Greek--a man who was quite a philosopher I take it in
local matters--said to me: 'Stranger, I will tell you the secret of
the painting, for you seem very much troubled about it. We Celts do
not consider the power of speech to be Hermes as you Greeks do, but we
represent it by means of Heracles, because he is much stronger than
Hermes. Nor should you wonder at his being represented as an old man,
for the power of words is wont to show its perfection in the aged;
for your poets are, no doubt, right when they say that the thoughts
of young men turn with every wind, and that age has something wiser
to tell us than youth. And so it is that honey pours from the tongue
of that Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators speak with a voice
of the delicacy of the lily, a voice well covered, so to say, with
bloom, for the bloom of flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has
the term lilies applied to it. So if this old man Heracles (the power
of speech) draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you
have no reason to wonder; as you must be aware of the close connection
between the ears and the tongue. Nor is there any injury done him by
the latter being pierced; for I remember, said he, learning, while
among you, some comic iambics to the effect that all chattering
fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts are of
opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the power of
words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his compulsion was
effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, were his utterances,
which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the mind, and you too
say that words have wings.' Thus far the Celt."
We see, then, that the Irish legend that it was Ogma (who is also said
to have been skilled in dialects and poetry) who invented the Ogam
alphabet, so useful as a medium through which to convey language, is
quite borne out by the account given to Lucian of the Gaulish god
Ogmios, the eloquent old man whose language was endowed with so great
a charm that he took his hearers captive. He turns, says Lucian,
towards his willing captives with a smiling face, and the Irish Ogma,
too, is called Ogma "of the shining countenance."[18] Nor does the
Gaul in dressing Ogma as a Hercules appear to have acted altogether
whimsically, because not only is Ogma skilled in poetry and dialects
and the inventor of Ogam, but he is also all through the battle of
Moytura actually depicted as the _strong man_ of the De Danann, strong
enough to push a stone which eighty pair of oxen could not have moved.
The modern Irish names for books, reading, writing, letters, pens, and
vellum, are all derived from the Latin.[19] But there seem to have been
other names in use to designate the early writing materials of the
Irish. These were the Taibhli Fileadh, "poets' tablets," and Tamhlorg
Fileadh, which is translated by O'Curry as poets' "headless staves."
This latter word, whatever may be the exact meaning of it, is at least
pure Gaelic. We read in the "Colloquy of the Ancients" that St. Patrick
began to feel a little uneasy at the delight with which he listened
to the stories of the ancient Fenians, and in his over-scrupulous
sanctity he feared it might be wrong to extract such pleasure from
merely mundane narrations. Accordingly he consulted his two guardian
angels on the matter, but received an emphatic response from both of
them, not only to the effect that there was no harm in listening to
the stories themselves, but actually desiring him to get them written
down "in poets' _támhlorgs_ and in the words of ollavs, for it will
be a rejoicing to numbers and to the good people to the end of time,
to listen to those stories."[20] An ancient passage from the Brehon
Laws prescribes that a poet may carry a _tábhall-lorg_ or tablet-staff,
and O'Curry acutely suggests that these so-called tablet-staves were
of the nature of a fan which could be closed up in the shape of a
square stick, upon the lines and angles of which the poet wrote in
Ogam. We can well imagine the almost superstitious reverence which in
rude times must have attached itself, and which as we know did attach
itself, to the man who could carry about in his hand the whole history
and genealogy of his race, and probably the catchwords of innumerable
poems and the skeletons of highly-prized narratives. It was probably
through these means that the genealogies of which I have spoken were so
accurately transmitted and kept from the third or fourth century, and
possibly from a still earlier period.
Amongst many other accounts of pre-Christian writing there is one so
curious that it is worth giving here _in extenso._[21]
THE STORY OF BAILE MAC BUAIN, THE SWEET-SPOKEN.
"Buain's only son was Baile. He was specially beloved by Aillinn,[22]
the daughter of Lewy,[23] son of Fergus Fairgé--but some say she was
the daughter of Owen, son of Dathi--and he was specially beloved not
of her only, but of every one who ever heard or saw him, on account of
his delightful stories.
"Now Baile and Aillinn made an appointment to meet at Rosnaree, on the
banks of the Boyne in Bregia. And he came from Emania in the north to
meet her, passing over Slieve Fuad and Muirthuimhne to Tráigh mBaile
(Dundalk), and here he and his troops unyoked their chariots, sent
their horses out to pasture, and gave themselves up to pleasure and
happiness.
"And while they were there they saw a horrible spectral personage
coming towards them from the South. Vehement were his steps and his
rapid progress. The way he sped over the earth might be compared to
the darting of a hawk down a cliff or to wind from off the green sea,
and his left was towards the land [_i.e._, he came from the south
along the shore].
"'Go meet him,' said Baile, 'and ask him where he goes, or whence he
comes, or what is the cause of his haste.'
"'From Mount Leinster I come, and I go back now to the North, to the
mouth of the river Bann; and I have no news but of the daughter of
Lewy, son of Fergus, who had fallen in love with Baile mac Buain, and
was coming to meet him. But the youths of Leinster overtook her, and
she died from being forcibly detained, as Druids and fair prophets
had prophesied, for they foretold that they would never meet in life,
but that they would meet after death, and not part for ever. There is
my news,' and he darted away from them like a blast of wind over the
green sea, and they were not able to detain him.
"When Baile heard this he fell dead without life, and his tomb and his
rath were raised, and his stone set up, and his funeral games were
performed by the Ultonians.
"And a yew grew up through his grave, and the form and shape of
Baile's head was visible on the top of it--whence the place is called
Baile's Strand [now Dundalk].
"Afterwards the same man went to the South to where the maiden Aillinn
was, and went into her grianan or sunny chamber.
"'Whence comes the man whom we do not know?' said the maiden.
"'From the northern half of Erin, from the mouth of the Bann I come,
and I go past this to Mount Leinster.'
"'You have news?' said the maiden.
"'I have no news worth mentioning now, only I saw the Ultonians
performing the funeral games and digging the rath, and setting up
the stone, and writing the name of Baile mac Buain, the royal heir
of Ulster, by the side of the strand of Baile, who died while on his
way to meet a sweetheart and a beloved woman to whom he had given
affection, for it was not fated for them to meet, in life, or for one
of them to see the other living,' and he darted out after telling the
evil news.
"And Aillinn fell dead without life, and her tomb was raised, etc. And
an apple tree grew through her grave and became a great tree at the
end of seven years, and the shape of Aillinn's head was upon its top.
"Now at the end of seven years poets and prophets and visioners cut
down the yew which was over the grave of Baile, and they made a
_poet's tablet_ of it, and they wrote the visions and the espousals
and the loves and the courtships of Ulster in it. [The apple tree
which grew over the grave of Aillinn was also cut down] and in like
manner the courtships of Leinster were written in it.
"There came a November eve long afterwards, and a festival was made
to celebrate it by Art, the son of Conn [of the Hundred Battles,
High-king of Ireland], and the professors of every science came to
that feast as was their custom, and they brought their tablets with
them. And these tablets also came there, and Art saw them, and when he
saw them he asked for them; and the two tablets were brought and he
held them in his hands face to face. Suddenly the one tablet of them
sprang upon the other, and they became united the same as a woodbine
round a twig, and it was not possible to separate them. And they were
preserved like every other jewel in the treasury at Tara until it was
burned by Dúnlang, son of Enna, at the time he burnt the Princesses at
Tara, as has been said
"'The apple tree of noble Aillinn,
The yew of Baile--small inheritance--
Though they are introduced into poems
Unlearned people do not understand them.'
"and Ailbhé, daughter of Cormac, grandson of Conn [of the Hundred
Battles] said too
"'What I liken Lumluine to
Is to the Yew of Baile's rath,
What I liken the other to
Is to the Apple Tree of Aillinn.'"
So far this strange tale. But poetic as it is, it yields--unlike
most--its chief value when rationalised, for as O'Curry remarks, it
was apparently invented to account for some inscribed tablets in the
reign of King Art in the second century, which had--as we ourselves
have seen in the case of so many leaves of very old manuscripts at this
day--become fastened to each other, so that they clung inextricably
together and could not be separated.
Now the massacre of the Princesses at Tara happened, according to the
"Four Masters," in the year 241, when the tablets were burnt. Hence one
of two things must be the case; the story must either have originated
_before_ that date to account for the sticking together of the tablets,
or else some one must have invented it long afterwards, that is, must,
without any apparent cause, have invented a story out of his own head,
as to how there were _once on a time_ two tablets made of trees which
_once_ grew on two tombs which were _once_ fastened together before
Art, son of Conn, and which were soon afterwards unfortunately burnt.
A supposition which, considering there were then, _ex hypothesi_,
no adhering tablets to prompt the invention, appears at first sight
improbable.
* * * * *
Brash, who made personal examination of almost every Ogam known to
exist, and whose standard work on the subject reproduces most of the
inscriptions discovered up to the date of writing, was of opinion that
no Ogam monument had anything Christian about it, and that if any
Christian symbol were discovered on an Ogam stone, it must be of later
date than the Ogam writing. Dr. Graves, however, has since shown that
Ogam was in some few cases at least used over the graves of Christians;
and he believes that all Ogam writing is really post-Christian, despite
the absence of Christian emblems on the stones, and that it belongs to
a comparatively modern period--"in fact, for the most part, to a time
between the fifth and seventh century."[24] Brash's great work was
supplemented by Sir Samuel Ferguson's, and since that time Professor
Rhys[25] and Dr. Whitley Stokes have thrown upon the inscriptions
themselves all the light that the highest critical acumen equipped with
the completest philological training could do, and have, to quote Mr.
Macalister, "between them reduced to order the confusion which almost
seemed to warrant the cryptical theories, and have thereby raised Ogam
inscriptions from the position of being mere learned playthings to a
place of the highest philological importance, not only in Celtic but
in Indo-European epigraphy." He himself--the latest to deal with the
subject--waves for the present as "difficult--perhaps in some measure
insoluble"--all "questions of the time, place, and manner of the
development of the Ogham script."[26] Rhys has traced in certain of
the inscriptions the influence exercised on the spoken language of the
Celtic people by an agglutinating pre-Celtic tongue.[27] This gives us
a glimpse at the pre-Aryan languages of the British Isles, which is in
the highest degree interesting.
To me it seems probable that the Irish discovered the use of letters
either through trade with the Continent or through the Romanised
Britons, at any time from the first or second century onward. But how
or why they invented the Ogam alphabet, instead of using Roman letters,
or else Greek ones like the Gauls, is a profound mystery. One thing is
certain, namely, that the Ogam alphabet--at whatever time invented--is
a possession peculiar to the Irish Gael, and only to be found where he
made his settlements.
[1] Dr. Jones, the Bishop of St. Davids, in his interesting book,
"Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynedd" (North Wales) has come to the
conclusion that the Irish occupied the whole of Anglesey, Carnarvon,
Merioneth, and Cardiganshire, with at least portions of Denbighshire,
Montgomery, and Radnor. Their occupation of part of the south and
south-west of England is attested by the area of Ogam finds.
[2] "Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," p. 39. I find Migne, in
his note on Pelagius, apparently confounding Scotia with Great Britain.
[3] See for Dr. Sigerson's ingenious argument "Bards of the Gael and
Gaul," Introduction, p. 30.
[4] Except perhaps on stone. There is an inscription on a stone in
Galway, "Lie Luguaedon Macc Lmenueh," for a facsimile of which see
O'Donovan's grammar, p. 411. O'Donovan says it was set up over a nephew
of St. Patrick's. Mr. Macalister reads it no doubt correctly, "Lie
Luguaedon macci Menueh." This is probably the oldest extant inscription
in Roman letters, and it shows that the old Ogam form _maqui_ had
already changed into mac[c]i. The "c" in place of "q" is only found on
the later Ogam stones, and only one stone is found to read "maic."
[5] Thus four cuts to the right of or below the long line stand for
S, above it they mean C, passing through the long line half on one
side and half on the other they mean E. These straight lines, being
easily cut on stone with a chisel, continued long in use. The long
line, with reference to which all the letters are drawn, is usually the
right angle or corner of the upright stone between the two sides. The
inscription usually begins at the left-hand corner of the stone facing
the reader and is read upwards, and is sometimes continued down on the
right-hand angular line as well. The vowels are very small cuts on the
angle of the stone, but much larger than points. There is no existing
book written in Ogam, but various alphabets of it have been preserved
in the Book of Ballymote, and some small metal articles have been found
inscribed with it, showing that its use was not peculiar to pillar
stones.
[6] See a curious monograph by Dr. Ernst Rethwisch entitled, "Die
Inschrift von Killeen Cormac und der Úrsprung der Sprache," 1886.
"Einfachere Schriftzeichen als das keltische Alphabet sind nicht
denkbar ... die Vocale haben die einfachsten Symbole und unter den
Vocalen haben wieder die am bequemsten auszusprechenden bequemer
zu machende Zeichen wie die Andern. Unter den Consonanten, hat die
Klasse die am schwierigsten gelingt ... die am wenigsten leicht
einzuritzenden Zeichen: die Gaumenlaute." He is greatly struck by "der
so verständig und sachgemäss erscheinende Trieb dem einfachsten Laut
das einfachste Symbol zu widmen." "Eine Erklärung [of the rational
simplicity of the Ogam script] ist nur möglich wenn man annimmt dass
die natürliche Begabung der Kelten, der praktische auf Einfachheit und
Beobachtungsgabe beruhende Sinn viel früher zŭ einer gewissen Reife
gediehen sind, als bei den Indogermanischen Verwandten" (p. 29).
[7] As _Curci_ and _maqi_ for the genitives of Corc and mac. In later
times the genitive ending i, became incorporated in the body of the
word, making _Cuirc_ and _maic_ in the MSS., which latter subsequently
became attenuated still further into the modern _mic_. Another very
common and important form is _avi_, which has been explained as from a
nominative *avios [for (*p)avios], Old Irish _aue_, modern _ua_ or _o_.
Another extraordinary feature is the suffix _*gnos = cnos_, the regular
patronymic formative of the Gaulish inscriptions. Another important
word is _muco_, genitive _mucoi_, meaning "descendant," but in some
cases apparently "chief." The word _anm_ or even _ancm_, which often
precedes the genitive of the proper noun, as _anm meddugini_, has not
yet been explained or accounted for. All these examples help to show
the great age of the linguistic monuments preserved in Ogam.
[8] "Ocus no bid in flesc sin dogres irelcib nangente ocus bafuath
la each a gabail inalaim ocus cach ni ba hadetchi leo dobertis [lege
nobentis] tria Ogam innti, _i.e._ Agus do bhíodh an fleasg sin do
ghnáth i reiligibh na ngente, agus budh fuath, le each a gabháil ann a
láimh, agus gach nidh budh ghránna leó do bhainidis [ghearradaois] tre
Ogham innti."
[9] See Zimmer's "Summary of the Táin Bo Chuailgne," _Zeit. f. vgl.,
Sprachforschung_, 1887, p. 448.
[10] Under the word _orc tréith_.
[11] The classical reader need hardly be reminded of the striking
resemblance between this and the σήματα λυγρά which, according to
Homer, Prœtus gave the unsuspecting Bellerophon to bring to the King of
Lycia, γράψας ἐν πἰνακι πτυκτῷ θυμοφθόρα πολλά.
[12] The "alphabet" laid before Fiacc, however, was not a list of
letters, but a kind of brief catechism, in Latin "Elementa." St.
Patrick is said to have written a number of these "alphabets" with his
own hand.
[13] The "Confession" and Epistles attributed to St. Patrick are,
by Whitley Stokes, Todd, Ussher, and almost all other authorities,
considered genuine. Recently J.V. Pflugk-Harttung, in an article in
the "Neuer Heidelberger Jahrbuch," Jahrgang iii., Heft. 1., 1893, has
tried to show by internal evidence that the "Confession" and Epistle,
especially the former, are a little later than St. Patrick's time,
and he relies strongly on this passage, saying that it is difficult
to imagine how St. Patrick came by the idea that a man could bring
him "innumerable letters from the heathen Ireland of that time,
where, except for Ogams and inscribed stones (_ausser Oghams und
Skulpturzeichen_), the art of writing was as yet unknown." But seeing
that Christian missionaries were almost certainly at work in Munster
as early as the third century this contention is ridiculous. It is
noteworthy, however, that even this critic seems to believe in the
antiquity of the Ogam characters. As to his main contention that the
"Confession" is not the work of Patrick, Jubainville writes, "Il ne
m'a pas convaincu" (_Revue Celtique_, vol. xiv. p. 215), and M. L.
Duchesne, commenting on Zimmer's view of St. Patrick's nebulousness,
writes, "Contestir l'authenticité de la Confession et de la lettre
à Coroticus me semble très aventuré" (Ibid., vol. xv. p. 188), and
Thurneysen also entirely refuses his credence.
[14] Preface to "Three Old Irish Glossaries," p. lv. Zeuss had already
commented on the Ogams found in the St. Gall codex of Priscian, and
written thus of them, "Figuræ ergo vel potius liniæ ogamicæ non diversæ
ab his quæ notantur a grammaticis hibernicis, in usu jam in hoc vetusto
codice, quidni etiam inde a longinquis temporibus?" There are eight
Ogam sentences in a St. Gall MS. of the ninth century which have been
published by Nigra in his "Manoscritto irlandese di S. Gallo."
[15] See above, ch. V, note 13. See O'Donovan's Grammar, p. xxviii, for
the original of the passage from the Book of Ballymote.
[16] Translated by Rhys in his "Hibbert Lectures," from Bekker's
edition, No. 7, and Dindorf's, No. 55.
[17] The Gauls assimilated their pantheon to those of the Greeks and
Romans in so far as they could, and as the Greek gods are by no means
always the equivalents of the Roman gods with whom popular opinion
equated them, still less were of course the Gaulish; and this is a good
case in point, for Ogmios has evidently nothing of a Hercules about
him, though the Gauls tried to make him the equivalent of Hercules by
giving him the classical club and lion's skin, yet his attributes are
perfectly different.
[18] Grian-aineach, or "of the sunny countenance." See O'Curry MS.
Mat., p. 249. Ogma was, according to some accounts, brother of Breas,
who held the regency amongst the Tuatha De Danann for seven years,
while Nuada was getting his silver hand.
[19] Leabhra, léigheadh, sgríobhadh, litreacha, pinn, meamram.
[20] "A anam a naem-chleirigh ni mó iná trian a scél innisit na
senlaeich út, or dáig dermait ocus dichhuimne. Ocus sgribthar let-sa
i támlorgaibh filed ocus i mbriathraib ollamhan, or bud gairdiugad do
dronguibh ocus do degdáinib deirid aimsire eisdecht fris na scelaib
sin" ("Agallamh," p. 101. "Silva Gadelica," vol. ii.) O'Grady has here
translated it by "tabular staffs." _Táibhli_ is evidently a Latin loan
word, _tabella_. The thing to be remembered is that Ogam writing on
staves appears to be alluded to.
[21] O'Curry found this piece in the MS. marked H. 3. 18 in Trinity
College, Dublin, and has printed it at page 472 of his MS. Materials.
Kuno Meyer has also edited it from a MS. in the British Museum, full
of curious word-equivalents or Kennings. (_See_ "Revue Celtique," vol.
xiii. p. 221. See also a fragment of the same story in Kuno Meyer's
"Hibernica Minora," p. 84.)
[22] Pronounced "Bal-a," and "Al-yinn."
[23] In Irish, _Lughaidh_.
[24] "Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," May, 1894.
[25] See "Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland," vol.
xxvi. p. 263.
[26] "Studies in Irish Epigraphy," London, 1897, part i., by R.
A. Stewart Macalister, who gives a most lucid study of the Ogam
inscriptions in the Barony of Corcaguiney and of a few more, with a
clear and interesting preface on the Ogam words and case-endings.
[27] It is thus he explains such Ogam forms as "Erc maqi maqi-Ercias,"
_i.e._, [the stone] of Erc, son of, etc. But "Erc" is nominative,
"maqi" is genitive, hence "Erc maqi" must be looked upon as one word,
agglutinated as it were, in which the genitive ending of the "maqi"
answers for both. As a rule, however, the name of the interred is in
the genitive case in apposition to "maqi."