Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 530

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IX
529 strokes intersecting the main line at right angles, or else by notches. (Fig. 236, 1).
According to Professors Macalister and Ifor Williams, the division of the oghams in groups of five may have its origin in the suggested derivation of this script from a gesture-alphabet or secret code used by the druids for private signalling. Originally, the five fingers were used in relation to the nose or the leg; in writing, the strokes were used in a similar manner, in relation to the stemline on wood or stone.
In some instances, special signs, forfede, were used for the diphthongs eo, oi, ui, io, se, placed, according to the use of either a horizontal or vertical main line, either (in the instances of ui and io) below or to the right, or else in the case of ae) above or to the left, or else (eo and oi) half above and half beneath, or half to the right and half to the left of the main line. The sound p, which was wanting in the regular oghamicalphabet, was sometimes represented by the same sign 35 the diphthong io. (Fig. 236, 2.)
It is generally agreed that the oghams were a cryptic script. The alphabet which I have described was only the basic oghamic script. There were several secondary varieties, such as the "wheel-oghars," which St. Columba (521-97) seems to have known; the "bird-oghams," the "tree-oghams," the "hill-oghams," the "church-oghams," the colouroghams" and so forth. The use of the oghamic scripts continued until the Middle Ages, and the fourteenth century Book of Ballymote (edited by R. Atkinson, Dublin, 1887) reproduces the earliest keys for transliteration
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. Rhys, Lectures on Welsh Philology, and ed., London, 1879.
J. MacNeill, The Irish Ogham Inscriptions, "PROC. OF THE Roy. Imish ACAD.," 1909: Celtic Ireland, London, 1921; Archaisms in the Ogham Inscriptions, Dublin, 1931.
R. A. S. Mucalister, Studies in Irish Epigraphy, 3 vols., London, 1897-1907; The Archæology of Ireland, London, 1928; Ancient Ireland, London, 1935
The Secret Languages of Ireland, Cambridge, 1937: Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticaram, I, Dublin, 1945 (bibliography).
W. Keller, Die Entstehung des Ogom, "BEITRAEGE, etc., 1938, pp. 121 fi.
J. Vendryes. L'Ecriture ogamique et ses origines, "ETUDES CELTIQUES," IV (1991), pp. 83-116.
Pictish Oghams Two oghams found in western Scotland, one on the small island of Gigha, off the western coast, the other in Argyll, belong to the same class as the oghamic inscriptions found in Ireland and Wales. Many other oghamic inscriptions were discovered in north-eastern Scotland (3 in Aberdeen, 2 in Kincardine, 2 in Sutherland, one each in some other counties), in the Northern Isles, as many as six of them coming from the
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