103 



these unimpeachable witnesses, can the early use of some such charac- 

 ters be longer questioned ? 



The nature of this alphabet, known by the name of Beth-luis-nion, 

 is also a most satisfactory internal evidence of its antiquity. Here it 

 must suffice to say, that its characters differ from those of all other 

 European nations in name, order, number, power, and formation ; all 

 the letters by a natural association borrowing their names from some 

 tree; their order differing from that of either the Greek or Latin, B, 

 L, N, F, S, &c. (Hesiod has recorded that Cadmus named the first 

 letter of the alphabet ^ovq;) their number limited in the genuine 

 simple scale to eighteen, (being exactly that, which, according to 

 Aristotle, (citante Plinio,) Cadmus introduced into Greece. ("In 

 Greciam intulisse e Phoenice Cadmum * * * * * x. et viii. 

 priscas fuisse,")* which characters were, however, subsequently so 

 varied in Greece, as to be unintelligible in the days of Agesilausj-f) 

 and their proportion of vowels to consonants being so great ; all these 

 concurring qualities must evince their importation into Ireland, at a 

 period when letters were in their most primitive infancy. 



But beside these common characters, the ancient Irish, or rather 

 their heathen priests, also made use of secret occult letters known by the 

 name of Ogham, of which there were three varieties, but the principal, 

 as it was the most difficult, was "composed of certain lines and marks, 

 which derived their power from their situation and position as they 

 stood in relation to one principal line, over or under which they are 

 placed, or through which they are drawn ; the principal line is horizon- 

 tal, and serveth for a rule or guide, whose upper part is called the left, 

 and the under side the right; above, under, and through which line the 



♦ Plinii Nat. Hist 1. 7. c. 56. f See Plutarch de Socratis Genio, p. 578. 



