The etymology of the wordogam orogham remains unclear. One possible origin is from the Irishog-úaim 'point-seam', referring to the seam made by the point of a sharp weapon.[12]
Carving of Ogham letters into a stone pillar – illustration byStephen Reid (1873 – 1948), in:Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race byT. W. Rolleston (1857 – 1920), published 1911, p. 288
It is generally thought that the earliest inscriptions in Ogham date to about the 4th century AD,[13] butJames Carney believed its origin is rather within the 1st century BC.[14] Although the use of classical ogham in stone inscriptions seems to have flourished in the 5th and 6th centuries around theIrish Sea, from the phonological evidence it is clear that the alphabet predates the 5th century. Indeed, the alphabet has letters representing archaicphonemes which were clearly part of the system, but which were no longer spoken by the 5th century and never appear in inscriptions, suggesting an extended period of ogham writing on wood or other perishable material prior to the preserved monumental inscriptions. They are:úath ("H") andstraif ("Z" in the manuscript tradition, but probably "F" from "SW"), andgétal (velar nasal "NG" in the manuscript tradition, but etymologically probably "GW").
It appears that the Ogham alphabet was modelled on another script,[15] and some even consider it a mere cipher of its template script (Düwel 1968:[16] points out similarity withciphers of Germanic runes). The largest number of scholars favour theLatin alphabet as this template,[17][18] although theElder Futhark and even theGreek alphabet have their supporters.[19] Runic origin would elegantly explain the presence of "H" and "Z" letters unused in Irish, as well as the presence of vocalic and consonantal variants "U" vs. "W", unknown to Latin writing and lost in Greek (cf.digamma). The Latin alphabet is the primary contender mainly because its influence at the required period (4th century) is most easily established, being widely used in neighbouring RomanBritannia, while runes in the 4th century were not very widespread even incontinental Europe.
In Ireland and Wales, the language of the monumental stone inscriptions is termedPrimitive Irish. The transition toOld Irish, the language of the earliest sources in the Latin alphabet, takes place in about the 6th century.[20] Since ogham inscriptions consist almost exclusively of personal names and marks possibly indicating land ownership, linguistic information that may be gleaned from the Primitive Irish period is mostly restricted tophonological developments.
There are two main schools of thought among scholars as to the motivation for the creation of ogham. Scholars such as Carney and MacNeill have suggested that ogham was first created as a cryptic alphabet, designed by the Irish to hide their meaning from writers of the Latin alphabet.[21][22] In this school of thought, it is asserted that "the alphabet was created by Irish scholars or druids for political, military or religious reasons to provide a secret means of communication in opposition to the authorities of Roman Britain."[23] The serious threat of invasion by the Roman Empire, which then ruled over neighbouring southern Britain, may have spurred the creation of the alphabet.[24] Alternatively, in later centuries when the threat of invasion had receded and the Irish were themselves invading western Britain, the desire to keep communications secret from Romans or Romanised Britons would still have provided an incentive. With bilingual ogham and Latin inscriptions in Wales, however, one would suppose that the ogham could easily be decoded by at least an educated few in the post-Roman world.[25]
The second main school of thought, put forward by scholars such as McManus,[26] is that ogham was invented by the first Christian communities in early Ireland, out of a desire for a unique alphabet to write short messages and inscriptions in Irish. The sounds of Primitive Irish may have been difficult to transcribe into the Latin alphabet, motivating the invention of a separate alphabet. A possible such origin, as suggested by McManus (1991:41), is the early Irish Christian community known from around AD 400 at latest, attested by the mission ofPalladius byPope Celestine I in AD 431.
A variation is the idea that this alphabet was first invented, for whatever reason, in 4th-century Irish settlements in westWales after contact and intermarriage with Romanised Britons with knowledge of the Latin alphabet.[27] In fact, several ogham stones in Wales are bilingual, containing both Irish andBritish Latin, testifying to the international contacts that led to the existence of some of these stones.[28]
A third hypothesis, put forward by the noted ogham scholarR. A. S. Macalister was influential at one time, but finds little favour with scholars today.[29] He believed – because ogham consists of four groups of five letters with a sequence of strokes from one to five – that ogham was first invented as a secret system offinger signals in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 BC by Gaulish druids, and was inspired by a form of the Greek alphabet current in Northern Italy at the time. According to this idea, the alphabet was transmitted in oral form or on wood only, until it was finally put into a permanent form on stone inscriptions in early Christian Ireland. Later scholars are largely united in rejecting this hypothesis, however,[30] primarily because a detailed study of the letters[citation needed] shows that they were created specifically for the Primitive Irish of the early centuries AD. The supposed links with the form of the Greek alphabet that Macalister proposed can also be disproved.[citation needed]
A fourth hypothesis, proposed by the scholarsRudolf Thurneysen andJoseph Vendryes, is that the forms of the letters derive from a numericaltally-mark counting system of the time, based around the numbers five and twenty, which was then adapted into an alphabet.[31]
According to the 11th-centuryLebor Gabála Érenn, the 14th-centuryAuraicept na n-Éces, and other MedievalIrish folklore, ogham was first invented soon after the fall of theTower of Babel, along with theGaelic language, by the legendaryScythian king,Fenius Farsa. According to the Auraicept, Fenius journeyed fromScythia together with Goídel mac Ethéoir, Íar mac Nema and aretinue of 72 scholars. They came to the plain ofShinar to study theconfused languages atNimrod's tower (theTower of Babel). Finding that they had already been dispersed, Fenius sent his scholars to study them, staying at the tower, coordinating the effort. After ten years, the investigations were complete, and Fenius createdin Bérla tóbaide "the selected language", taking the best of each of the confused tongues, which he calledGoídelc,Goidelic, after Goídel mac Ethéoir. He also created extensions ofGoídelc, calledBérla Féne, after himself,Íarmberla, after Íar mac Nema, and others, and theBeithe-luis-nuin (the ogham) as a perfectedwriting system for his languages. The names he gave to the letters were those of his 25 best scholars.[citation needed]
Alternatively, theOgam Tract creditsOgma with the script's invention. Ogma was skilled in speech and poetry, and created the system for the learned, to confound rustics and fools. The first message written in ogam was sevenb's on a birch, sent as a warning toLug, meaning: "your wife will be carried away seven times to the otherworld unless the birch protects her". For this reason, the letterb is said to be named after the birch, andIn Lebor Ogaim goes on to tell the tradition that all letters were named after trees, a claim also referred to by the Auraicept as an alternative to the naming after Fenius' disciples.[citation needed]
Mug with Ogham letters: the four series (aicmi) of the 20 original letters and the five most important supplementary letters (forfeda)
Strictly speaking, the wordogham meansletters, while the alphabet is calledbeith-luis-nin after the letter names of the first letters (in the same way that the modern word "alphabet" derives from the Greek lettersalpha andbeta). The order of the first five letters, BLFSN, led the scholar Macalister to propose that a link between a form of the Greek alphabet used in Northern Italy in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. However, there is no evidence for Macalister's theory, and it has been discounted by later scholars. There are in fact other explanations for the nameBeith-luis-nin. One explanation is that the wordnin, which meansforked branch, was used to mean letters in general.Beith-luis-nin could therefore mean simplybeith-luis letters. Another suggestion is thatbeith-luis-nin is a contraction of the first five letters, ie,beith-LVS-nin.[32]
The ogham alphabet originally consisted of twenty letters, divided into four groups (Irish:aicme,lit. 'family') according the stroke angle and direction. The groups were
Irish:Aicme beithe,lit. 'B group', right side/downward strokes
Irish:Aicme hÚatha,lit. 'H group', left side/upward strokes
Irish:Aicme ailme,lit. 'A group', notches or perpendicular crossing strokes
Five additional letters were later introduced (mainly in the manuscript tradition), the so-calledforfeda.
A letter forp is conspicuously absent, since thephoneme was lost inProto-Celtic, and the gap was not filled inQ-Celtic, and no sign was needed before loanwords fromLatin containingp appeared in Irish (e.g., Patrick). Conversely, there is a letter for thelabiovelarq (ᚊceirt), a phoneme lost in Old Irish. The base alphabet is, therefore, as it were, designed for Proto-Q-Celtic.
Of the fiveforfeda or supplementary letters, only the first,ébad, regularly appears in inscriptions, but mostly with the value K (McManus, § 5.3, 1991), in the wordkoi (ᚕᚑᚔ "here"). The others, except foremancholl, have at most only one certain 'orthodox' (see below) inscription each.[33] Due to their limited practical use, later ogamists turned the supplementary letters into a series ofdiphthongs, changing completely the values forpín andemancholl.[34] This meant that the alphabet was once again without a letter for the 'P' sound, forcing the invention of the letterpeithboc (soft 'B'), which appears in the manuscripts only.[35]
The letter names are interpreted as names of trees or shrubs in manuscript tradition, both inAuraicept na n-Éces ('The Scholars' Primer') andIn Lebor Ogaim ('The Ogam Tract'). They were first discussed in modern times byRuaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh (1685), who took them at face value. The Auraicept itself is aware that not all names are known tree names: "Now all these are wood names such as are found in theOgham Book of Woods, and are not derived from men", admitting that "some of these trees are not known today". The Auraicept gives a short phrase orkenning for each letter, known as aBríatharogam, that traditionally accompanied each letter name, and a further gloss explaining their meanings and identifying the tree or plant linked to each letter. Only five of the twenty primary letters have tree names that the Auraicept considers comprehensible without further glosses, namelybeith "birch",fearn "alder",saille "willow",duir "oak" andcoll "hazel". All the other names have to be glossed or "translated".
According to the leading modern ogham scholar, Damian McManus, the "Tree Alphabet" idea dates to theOld Irish period (say, 10th century), but it postdates the Primitive Irish period, or at least the time when the letters were originally named. Its origin is probably due to the letters themselves being calledfeda "trees", ornin "forking branches" due to their shape. Since a few of the letters were, in fact, named after trees, the interpretation arose that they were calledfeda because of that. Some of the other letter names had fallen out of use as independent words, and were thus free to be claimed as "Old Gaelic" tree names, while others (such asruis,úath orgort) were more or less forcefully reinterpreted as epithets of trees by the medieval glossators.
McManus (1991, §3.15) discusses possible etymologies of all the letter names, and as well as the five mentioned above, he adds one other definite tree name:onn "ash" (the Auraicept wrongly has "furze"). McManus (1988, p. 164) also believes that the nameidad is probably an artificial form ofiubhar "yew", as the kennings support that meaning, and concedes thatailm may possibly mean "pine tree," as it appears to be used to mean that in an 8th-century poem.[36] Thus out of twenty letter names, only eight at most are the names of trees. The other names have a variety of meanings.
Beith, Old IrishBeithe means "birch-tree", cognate to Middle Welshbedw. Latinbetula is considered a borrowing from the Gaulish cognate.
Luis, Old IrishLuis is either related toluise "blaze" orlus "herb". The arboreal tradition hascaertheand "rowan".
Fearn, Old IrishFern means "alder-tree", Primitive Irish*wernā, so that the original value of the letter was[w].
Sail, Old IrishSail means "willow-tree", cognate to Latinsalix.
Nion, Old IrishNin means either "fork" or "loft". The arboreal tradition hasuinnius "ash-tree".
Uath, Old IrishÚath meansúath "horror, fear"; the arboreal tradition has "white-thorn". The original etymology of the name, and the letter's value, are however unclear. McManus (1986) suggested a value[y]. Peter Schrijver (see McManus 1991:37) suggested that ifúath "fear" is cognate with Latinpavere, a trace of PIE*p might have survived into Primitive Irish, but there is no independent evidence for this.
Tinne, Old IrishTinne from the evidence of thekennings means "bar of metal,ingot". The arboreal tradition hascuileand "holly".
Coll, Old IrishColl meant "hazel-tree", cognate with Welshcollen, correctly glossed ascainfidh "fair-wood" ("hazel") by the arboreal interpretation. Latincorulus orcorylus is cognate.
Ceirt, Old IrishCert is cognate with Welshperth "bush", Latinquercus "oak" (PIE*perkwos). It was confused with Old Irishceirt "rag", reflected in the kennings. The Auraicept glossesaball "apple".
Muin, Old IrishMuin: the kennings connect this name to three different words,muin "neck, upper part of the back",muin "wile, ruse", andmuin "love, esteem". The arboreal tradition hasfinemhain "vine".
Gort, Old IrishGort means "field" (cognate togarden). The arboreal tradition hasedind "ivy".
nGéadal, Old IrishGétal from the kennings has a meaning of "killing", maybe cognate togonid "slays", from PIEgwen-. The value of the letter in Primitive Irish, then, was a voiced labiovelar,[ɡʷ]. The arboreal tradition glossescilcach, "broom" or "fern".
Straif, Old IrishStraiph means "sulphur". The Primitive Irish letter value is uncertain, it may have been a sibilant different froms, which is taken bysail, maybe a reflex of/st/ or/sw/. The arboreal tradition glossesdraighin "blackthorn".
Ruis, Old IrishRuis means "red" or "redness", glossed astrom "elder".
Ailm, Old IrishAilm is of uncertain meaning, possibly "pine-tree". The Auraicept hascrand giuis .i. ochtach, "fir-tree" or "pinetree".
Onn, Old IrishOnn means "ash-tree", although the Auraicept glossesaiten "furze".
Úr, Old IrishÚr, based on the kennings, means "earth, clay, soil". The Auraicept glossesfraech "heath".
Eadhadh, Old IrishEdad of unknown meaning. The Auraicept glossescrand fir no crithach "test-tree oraspen"
Iodhadh, Old IrishIdad is of uncertain meaning, but is probably a form ofibhar "yew", which is the meaning given to it in the arboreal tradition.
Ogham stone from the Isle of Man showing thedroim in the centre. Text reads BIVAIDONAS MAQI MUCOI CUNAVA[LI], or in English, "Of Bivaidonas, son of the tribe Cunava[li]".
Monumental ogham inscriptions are found in Ireland andWales, with a few additional specimens found in southwest England (Devon andCornwall), theIsle of Man, andScotland, includingShetland anda single example fromSilchester and another fromCoventry[37] in England. They were mainly employed as territorial markers and memorials (grave stones). The stone commemoratingVortiporius, a 6th-century king ofDyfed (originally located inClynderwen), is the only ogham stone inscription that bears the name of an identifiable individual.[38] The language of the inscriptions is predominantlyPrimitive Irish; the few inscriptions in Scotland, such as theLunnasting stone, record fragments of what is probably thePictish language.
The more ancient examples arestanding stones, where the script was carved into the edge (droim orfaobhar) of the stone, which formed the stemline against which individual characters are cut. The text of these "Orthodox Ogham" inscriptions is read beginning from the bottom left-hand side of a stone, continuing upward along the edge, across the top and down the right-hand side (in the case of long inscriptions). Roughly 380 inscriptions are known in total (a number, incidentally, very close to the number of known inscriptions in the contemporaryElder Futhark), of which the highest concentration by far is found in the southwestern Irish province ofMunster. Over one-third of the total are found inCounty Kerry alone, most densely in the former kingdom of theCorcu Duibne.
Later inscriptions are known as "scholastic", and are post 6th century in date. The term 'scholastic' derives from the fact that the inscriptions are believed to have been inspired by the manuscript sources, instead of being continuations of the original monument tradition. Unlike orthodox ogham, some medieval inscriptions feature all fiveForfeda. Scholastic inscriptions are written on stemlines cut into the face of the stone, instead of along its edge. Ogham was also occasionally used for notes in manuscripts down to the 16th century. A modern ogham inscription is found on a gravestone dating to 1802 in Ahenny,County Tipperary.
In Scotland, a number of inscriptions using the ogham writing system are known, but their language is still the subject of debate.It has been argued by Richard Cox inThe Language of Ogham Inscriptions in Scotland (1999) that the language of these is Old Norse, but others remain unconvinced by this analysis, and regard the stones as beingPictish in origin. However, due to the lack of knowledge about the Picts, the inscriptions remain undeciphered, their language possibly being non-Indo-European. The Pictish inscriptions are scholastic, and are believed to have been inspired by the manuscript tradition brought into Scotland byGaelic settlers.
As well as its use for monumental inscriptions, the evidence from early Irish sagas and legends indicate that ogham was used for short messages on wood or metal, either to relay messages or to denote ownership of the object inscribed. Some of these messages seem to have been cryptic in nature and some were also for magical purposes. In addition, there is evidence from sources such asIn Lebor Ogaim, or theOgham Tract, that ogham may have been used to keep records or lists, such as genealogies and numerical tallies of property and business transactions. There is also evidence that ogham may have been used as a system of finger or hand signals.[40]
In later centuries when ogham ceased to be used as a practical alphabet, it retained its place in the learning of Gaelic scholars and poets as the basis of grammar and the rules of poetry. Indeed, until modern times the Latin alphabet in Gaelic continued to be taught using letter names borrowed from theBeith-Luis-Nin, along with the Medieval association of each letter with a different tree.
ModernNew Age andNeopagan approaches to ogham largely derive from the now-discredited theories ofRobert Graves in his bookThe White Goddess.[42] In this work, Graves took his inspiration from the theories of the ogham scholar R. A. S. Macalister (see above) and elaborated on them much further. Graves proposed that the ogham alphabet encoded a set of beliefs originating in the Middle East inStone Age times, concerning the ceremonies surrounding the worship of the Moon goddess in her various forms. Graves' argument is extremely complex, but in essence, he argues that the Hebrews, Greeks and Celts were all influenced by a people originating in the Aegean, called 'the people of the sea' by the Egyptians, who spread out around Europe in the 2nd millennium BC, taking their religious beliefs with them.[43] He posits that at some early stage these teachings were encoded in alphabet form by poets to pass on their worship of the goddess (as the muse and inspiration of all poets) in a secret fashion, understandable only to initiates. Eventually, via the druids of Gaul, this knowledge was passed on to the poets of early Ireland and Wales. Graves, therefore, looked at the Tree Alphabet tradition surrounding ogham and explored the tree folklore of each of the letter names, proposing that the order of the letters formed an ancient "seasonal calendar of tree magic".[44] Although his theories have been discredited and discarded by modern scholars (including Macalister himself, with whom Graves corresponded),[45] they were taken up with enthusiasm by some adherents of the neopagan movement. In addition, Graves followed the BLNFS order of ogham letters put forward by Macalister (see above), with the result taken up by many New Age and Neopagan writers as the 'correct' order of the letters, despite its rejection by scholars.
The main use of ogham by adherents ofNeo-druidism and other forms ofNeopaganism is for the purpose of divination. Divination with ogham symbols is possibly mentioned inTochmarc Étaíne, a tale in the IrishMythological Cycle, wherein thedruid Dalan takes four wands of yew, and writes ogham letters upon them. Then he uses the tools for what some interpret as a form ofdivination.[46] However, as the tale doesn't explain how the sticks are handled or interpreted, this theory is open to interpretation.[47] A divination method invented by neopagans involves casting sticks upon a cloth marked out with a pattern, such asFinn's Window, and interpreting the patterns.[48] The meanings assigned in these modern methods are usually based on the tree ogham, with each letter associated with a tree or plant, and meanings derived from these associations. While some use folklore for the meanings,Robert Graves' bookThe White Goddess continues to be a major influence on these methods and beliefs.[48]
^Thurneysen, R.A Grammar of Old Irish page 9: "Older as a rule even than the above archaic material are the sepulchral inscriptions in a special alphabet calledogom orogum in Middle Irish,ogham in Modern Irish."
^McManus (1991) is aware of a total of 382 orthodox inscriptions. The later scholastic inscriptions have no definite endpoint and continue into the Middle Irish and even Modern Irish periods, and record also names in other languages, such as Old Norse, (Old) Welsh, Latin and possibly Pictish.See Forsyth, K.; "Abstract: The Three Writing Systems of the Picts." in Black et al. Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Vol. 1. East Linton: Tuckwell Press (1999), p. 508; Richard A. V. Cox, The Language of the Ogam Inscriptions of Scotland, Dept. of Celtic, Aberdeen UniversityISBN0-9523911-3-9[1];See alsoThe New Companion to the Literature of Wales, by Meic Stephens, p. 540.
^De Breffny, Brian (1983).Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopedia. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 172.
^O'Kelly, Michael J.,Early Ireland, an Introduction to Irish Prehistory, p. 251, Cambridge University Press, 1989
^Thurneysen, R.A Grammar of Old Irish pages 9–10: "... In Britain ... most of these inscriptions are bilingual, with a Latin version accompanying the Ogam". Macalister,The Secret Languages of Ireland p. 19: "The reader has only to jot down a few sentences in this alphabet to convince himself that it can never have been used for any extended literary purpose."
^Vendryès 'L'écriture ogamique et ses origines' Études Celtiques, 4, pp. 110–113, 1941; Thurneysen, 'Zum ogam' Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, pp. 196–197, 1937. Cf. McManus 1988, p. 11, 1991.
^McManus 1988, pp. 36, 167, 1991; B. Ó Cuív, "Irish words for Alphabet", Eriu 31, p. 101. [...] it would be impossible to change the order of letters in ogham, given that it is a numbered series of strokes. In other words, to change N from the third to the fifth letter would also mean changing its symbol from three strokes to five strokes. The letters F and S would also have to be changed. This would obviously lead to great confusion, and would only be done if there was some compelling reason for the change. Macalister provides no such reason.
^See inscription 235 foróir, 240 foruillen, and 327 and 231 forpín in Macalister CIIC, Vol I
^Graves, Charles; Limerick, C. (1876). "The Ogham Alphabet".Hermathena.2 (4):443–472.JSTOR23036451.
^The rationale for the artificial formidad would be to make a pairing withedad. With regard toailm, in the "King and Hermit" poem the hermit Marban says "caine ailmi ardom-peitet" – "beautiful are the pines that make music for me". This is a reference to the idea that pine makes a pleasing, soothing sound as the wind passes through its needles.
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O'Brien, Michael A., ed. (1962).Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae. Vol. 1. Kelleher, John V. (intro. in the reprints of 1976 and 2005). Dublin:DIAS.ISBN0901282316.OCLC56540733.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
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