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There are in South Wales, at its western part, a large number of what are called Ogam inscriptions, and in Devon there are one or two . In the south of Ireland there are large numbers. Outside these islands no such thing is known in the whole world.
It is a sad story, and we can easily weep at the thrilling moment when, there being no man among the Ultonians to do the king's bidding, a Norse captive takes Naisi's magic sword and strikes off the heads of the three sons of Usnach with one swift blow, and Deirdre, falling prone upon the dead bodies, chants a lament; and when she has finished singing, she puts her pale cheek against Naisi's, and dies; and a great cairn is piled over them, and an inscription in Ogam set upon it.
Newhaven, 1, 2, 3, 4, 21. New Zealand, 62. Nightcap on skull, 18. Norse memorial, 102. North Cray, 41. Northolt, Middlesex, 71. Ogam inscriptions, 97, 100, 103. Old Romney, 17. Ornaments on gravestones, 3, 70, 71. Orpington, 38, 39. Padrington, 108. Paganism, 50, 67, 98, 102. Paris, burial reform, 57. Pennant, 85, 87. Penry, J., a Welshman, 53. Père la Chaise, 57. Petrie, Dr., 102.
Wherever the Irish Gael planted a colony, he seems to have brought his Ogam writing with him. The Irishman who first invented the Ogam character was probably a pagan who obtained a knowledge of Roman letters. He brought back to Ireland his invention, or, as is most likely, invented it on Irish soil.
I realise that all the knowledge of the world means nothing beside one short human existence. Upon the Ogam tablets, the Assyrian cylinders, the Egyptian monuments is written a wisdom perhaps greater than ours, but it is cold, like the stone that bears it; within ourselves it lives all that knowledge, that universe of truth. What do the Egyptologists know of the message of Egypt?
There are a great many allusions to this Ogam writing in the ancient epics, especially in those that are purely pagan in form and conception, and there can be no doubt that the knowledge of letters must have reached Ireland before the island became Christianized.
In Cornwall and Devonshire, along the coast line, there have been found a goodly few, and the others are dotted sparsely over the whole kingdom England, as just indicated, furnishing only a modicum. The inscriptions upon such stones, when they are inscribed, are usually in Ogam or Runic characters.
The Ogam inscription on the Lumasting stone has been made by one expert to read: EATTUICHEATTS MAHEADTTANNN HCCFFSTFF NCDTONS. A strange and inexplicable aggregation of consonants. The stone represented below, 101 b, bears an inscription in Runic characters.
Cuchulainn constantly used Ogam writing, which he cut upon wands and trees and standing stones for Queen Medb's army to read, and these were always brought to his friend Fergus to decipher.
Ogam is an alphabet suitable enough for chiselling upon stones, but too cumbrous for the purposes of literature. For this the Roman alphabet must have been used. The Ogam script consists of a number of short lines straight or slanting, and drawn either below, above, or through one long stem-line.
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