Ogham (also ogam and ogom,Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire, p. 40 , Modern Irish: ; , later ogum, ogom in 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 called ogom or ogum in Middle Irish, ogham in Modern Irish.") is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish language (scholastic ogham, 6th to 9th centuries). It was also used much less frequently to record the Pictish language in what is now Scotland. There are roughly 400 surviving orthodox inscriptions on stone monuments throughout Ireland and western Britain, the bulk of which are in southern areas of the Irish province of Munster.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 University ; See also The New Companion to the Literature of Wales, by Meic Stephens, p. 540. The Munster counties of Cork and Kerry contain 60% of all Irish ogham stones. The largest number outside Ireland are in Pembrokeshire, Wales.O'Kelly, Michael J., Early Ireland, an Introduction to Irish Prehistory, p. 251, Cambridge University Press, 1989
The inscriptions usually consist of personal names written in a set formula.De Breffny, pg. 172.
Many of the High Medieval (kennings for the ogham letters) are understood to reference various trees and plants. This interpretation was popularized by Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess; for this reason, Ogham is sometimes known as the Celtic tree alphabet.
The etymology of the word ogam or ogham remains unclear. One possible origin is from the Irish 'point-seam', referring to the seam made by the point of a sharp weapon.(MacManus, §8.6)
Origins
Archaeological evidence shows that the earliest inscriptions in ogham date to about the 4th century AD,O'Kelly 1989, p. 250 but James Carney believed its origin is rather within the 1st century BC, though he stated this without evidence.Carney, James. The Invention of the Ogam Cipher 'Ériu', 1975, p. 57, Dublin: Royal Irish Academy Although the use of classical ogham in stone inscriptions seems to have flourished in the 5th and 6th centuries around the Irish Sea, from the phonological evidence it is clear that the alphabet predates the 5th century. Indeed, the alphabet has letters representing archaic phonemes 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") and straif ("Z" in the manuscript tradition, but probably "F" from "SW"), and gétal (velar nasal "NG" in the manuscript tradition, but etymologically probably "GW").
The Ogham alphabet was made to fit the Latin language, but there is speculation that it was modelled on another script,Macalister, R. A. Stewart, The Secret Languages of Ireland reprinted by Craobh Rua Books, Armagh 1997. and some even consider it a mere cipher of its template script (Düwel 1968:Düwel, Klaus. "Runenkunde" (runic studies). Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 1968. OCLC 183700 points out similarity with ciphers of Germanic runes). The largest number of scholars favour the Latin alphabet as this template, although the Elder Futhark and even the Greek alphabet have their supporters.The Secret Languages of Ireland as above. 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 Roman Britannia, while runes in the 4th century were not very widespread even in continental Europe.
In Ireland and Wales, the language of the monumental stone inscriptions is termed Primitive Irish. The transition to Old Irish, the language of the earliest sources in the Latin alphabet, takes place in about the 6th century.Thurneysen, Rudolf A Grammar of Old Irish. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. 1980, etc. pp. 8–11. 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 to phonological developments.
Theories of origin
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.Carney, J (1975) "The Invention of the Ogam Cipher", Ériu, Vol. 22, pp. 62–63MacNeill, Eoin (1931) "Archaisms in the Ogham Inscriptions", Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 39, pp. 33–53, Dublin 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." The serious threat of invasion by the Roman Empire, which then ruled over neighbouring central and southern Britain, may have spurred the creation of the alphabet. 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.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."
The second main school of thought, put forward by scholars such as McManus,MacManus 1988, pp. 7, 41, 1991 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 of Palladius by Pope 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 west Wales after contact and intermarriage with Romanised Britons with knowledge of the Latin alphabet. In fact, several ogham stones in Wales are bilingual, containing both Irish and British Latin, testifying to the international contacts that led to the existence of some of these stones.The New Companion to the Literature of Wales, by Meic Stephens, p. 540; http://ogham.lyberty.com/mackillop.html
A third hypothesis, put forward by the noted ogham scholar R. A. S. Macalister was influential at one time, but finds little favour with scholars today.Macalister, R. A. S. The Secret Languages of Ireland, pp. 27–36, Cambridge University Press, 1937 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 of finger 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,McManus 1988, pp. 22–23, 1991 primarily because a detailed study of the letters 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.
A fourth hypothesis, proposed by the scholars Rudolf Thurneysen and Joseph Vendryes, is that the forms of the letters derive from a numerical tally-mark counting system of the time, based around the numbers five and twenty, which was then adapted into an alphabet.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.
Legendary accounts According to the 11th-century , the 14th-century , and other Medieval Irish folklore, ogham was first invented soon after the fall of the Tower of Babel, along with the Gaelic language, by the legendary Scythian king, Fenius Farsa. According to the , Fenius journeyed from Scythia together with , and a retinue of 72 scholars. They came to the plain of Shinar to study the confused languages at Nimrod's tower (the Tower 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 created "the selected language", taking the best of each of the confused tongues, which he called , Goidelic, after . He also created extensions of , called , after himself, , after , and others, and the (the ogham) as a perfected writing system for his languages. The names he gave to the letters were those of his 25 best scholars.
Alternatively, the Ogam Tract credits Ogma 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 seven b on a birch, sent as a warning to Lug, meaning: "your wife will be carried away seven times to the otherworld unless the birch protects her". For this reason, the letter b is said to be named after the birch, and goes on to tell the tradition that all letters were named after trees, a claim also referred to by the as an alternative to the naming after Fenius' disciples.
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