Since that time no less than 200 inscribed stones have been discovered in various parts of the country, but especially in the South and West; and Irish scholars have directed their attention to decipher and explain these mysterious and time-worn lines. Twenty-two stones inscribed with similar characters have been found in Wales and Devonshire, that is in the South and West of England, and ten in Scotland. Almost all these inscriptions have been examined by the late Mr. Brash of Cork, a most painstaking and accurate investigator, who has published the result of his labours in a very interesting work on the subject.[24] His conclusions may be briefly summed up as follows[25]:—
The inscriptions have been invariably found on pillar stones and flags, and are nearly all of a sepulchral character. The lettering is in a style peculiar to the Gaedhlic race, and represents a very ancient dialect of the Gaedhlic language. The inscribed stones are found only in those districts, where the Gaedhils are known to have established themselves; and the mode of forming the characters and formulating the inscriptions is the same in Ireland, in Wales, and in Scotland. He asserts, moreover, that no Ogham monument hitherto discovered bears any trace of any Christian formula, or any symbol of Christian hope;[26] that any such symbols when found upon an Ogham stones, are manifestly of later date than the original inscription; and that the allusions in our ancient MSS. to the Ogham mode of writing have reference only to pre-Christian times. He thinks too that the Ogham mode of writing was not invented in Ireland, but carried to this country by a colony that landed on our south-western shores, and moved gradually from West to East, and thence across the Channel to Wales. He adds that in all probability this colony came originally from the East, then settled for some time in Egypt, and migrated thence to Spain—conclusions that are all in conformity with the common traditional account of the advent of the Milesian race to this country, as contained in our own ancient Books.
The invention of the Ogham is attributed in bardic history to Ogma, son of Elathan, a prince of the Tuatha de Danaans, that people whom all our national traditions represent as a more cultured race than any of the other colonies that took possession of this island in primitive times. The most singular fact connected with the Ogham inscriptions is their geographical distribution. They are in Ireland almost all confined to the South and West, and to those parts of Wales and England that could be most easily reached from the South of Ireland. The few inscriptions found elsewhere in Ireland are only found in those places, to which we have reason to know that families from the South-West migrated in early times. This certainly would seem to indicate that an immigrant colony landed somewhere in Kerry; and gradually diffusing themselves through the country carried this archaic form of writing along with them; but either they never succeeded in occupying the whole country, or before the occupation of the remoter parts they gradually gave up the Ogham, and adopted a form of writing more suitable for general use, but not so well adapted for brief permanent inscriptions in stone. Mr. Brash has declared that no Oghams of a Christian character have yet been discovered, nor is there any coeval reference to any Christian symbols on the Ogham pillar-stones, a fact which, if true, clearly proves that all the Oghams date from Pagan times. In most cases they are sepulchral inscriptions of the briefest character, merely giving the name of the deceased and the name of his father with, in a few instances, one or two short laudatory epithets.
The letters of the Ogham alphabet are divided into four groups of five letters each, twenty in all. Taking the angular edge of the upright pillar to be represented by a straight line the following is the score:—
Besides these we find a few dipthongal symbols, but apparently of later date:—
The line on which the letters are written is nearly always the rectangular line on the left hand side of the upright flag, facing the spectator. The inscription begins below at the left hand corner, and is read upwards, but sometimes it is continued downwards on the right hand angular line of the pillar on the same face. The vowels are generally not much larger than points on the very angle of the stone, or very short lines cutting the angular line; the consonants are much longer scores drawn to the left or to the right of the angular line as the word requires; the last five scores are longer lines across the angular line and oblique to it.[27]
From various references in our ancient MSS. it appears that the Oghams were written not merely on stones, but also on rods and tablets of wood, which could be easily tied up in bundles and carried from place to place. A letter written to a friend might thus consist of a bundle of rods, duly marked and numbered. The bark of trees, being easily notched, was probably used for the same purpose, and thus even before the introduction of parchment and Roman letters, there would be no want of writing materials. There is no evidence that before the introduction of Roman letters there was any other kind of alphabet in use except the Ogham. But as the Druids of Gaul, in the time of Cæsar, were acquainted with the use of the Greek letters, why should not the ‘more learned’ Druids of Britain and Ireland be familiar with the Greek or Roman alphabet? It will be seen in the next chapter that there is every reason to conclude that at least after the Roman occupation of Britain, they were quite familiar with Roman letters and Roman writing.