"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.