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Ogham ~

The Ogham (Ogam) - pronounced “Oh-m” or “Oh-wam” - script recorded the earliest Old Irish texts dating between the 3rd and 7th centuries CE. Ogham inscriptions have been found in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England and the Isle of Man. It is also known as or ogham craobh, beth luis fearn or beth luis nion.

Various opinions exist on the exact origins of the form. Most enchantingly, in lore, the name Ogham is believed to be derived from the Celtic/Irish god of literature and the well-spoken, Ogma, who is credited with it’s invention. Ogma has the epithets of “honey mouthed” and “eloquent”. He has been linked with the Gaulish deity Ogmios whose “golden speech” was recorded in Gallic artwork as a fine gold chain linking the tip of his tongue to the ears of a group of his followers. There are those who believe this mythological connection to be merely etymological. Others claim the script stemmed from a cryptic way of writing runes, that it was inspired from the Roman alphabet or that, indeed, it was independently invented. Another theory holds that it evolved out of a system of tallies used for accounting.

There are numerous accounts in the ancient literature which suggests that Ogham may have been not only been a type of written or marked form but a signalling mechanism as well. This premise holds that a use of signs corresponding to the markings of the script were employed only by the bards, druids and warrior classes (the “intelligentsia”) as code and were not understood by the common or uneducated folk. It is thought for example, that the druid could stroke across the ridge of his nose or such in different ways with his fingers to denote the different symbols thereby communicating a cryptic message to others in the know.

There are inscriptions in ancient Irish and Pictish which have not been deciphered. A number of bilingual inscriptions in Ogham and Latin or Ogham and Old Norse written with the Runic alphabet have also been found.

While all surviving traces of Ogham are inscriptions on stone, it was probably more commonly inscribed on sticks, stakes (or staves) and trees. Inscriptions generally take the form of someone’s name or the name of a place and were probably used to mark boundaries.

Those found are mostly genealogical inscriptions in the form of “X son of Y” on corners of large stone slabs. After the 6th century CE, Old Irish was written with the Roman alphabet, and Ogham disappeared from general use but the knowledge must have been preserved in some form because our understanding of Ogham comes from the chapter Auraicept na n-Éces in the 15th-century work The Book of Ballymote (Leabhar Bhaile an Mhóta), which also contains geneologies, mythologies and histories of Ireland.

The Ogham letters are divided into four groups, each containing five letters. This yields a total of 20 Ogham letters. When inscribed on stones, Ogham is written vertically from bottom to top.  The ordering of the letters is a mystery, as it does not correspond to either Roman nor runic letter orders. It appears to have some phonetic basis.

In Auraicept na n-Éces, a fifth group of letters called forfeda is also listed. These extra letters did not appear in stone inscriptions before the 6th century CE, and most likely were added to represent new sounds introduced by natural changes in the Irish language after the 6th century CE.

There are 369 verified examples of Ogham writing surviving today which exist in the form of gallán (standing stones). Similar markings, dating to 500 BC, have been found on standing stones in Spain and Portugal. It is from this area of the Iberian Peninsula that the Celts who colonized Ireland may have come.

The discovery of carvings that appear similar in the state of West Virginia in the United States, has caused some speculation that the Celts may have come to the New World as early as 100 BC., however others sources believe this connection to be unlikely…