1899.] on Runic and Ogam Characters, etc. 1G5 



identical. On which of these two alphabets was the Runic alphabet 

 based ? I fail to see sufficient length of time, or any geographical 

 connection, to account for their being based on the Latin. On the 

 other hand, there are a sufficient number of centuries and sufficient 

 geographical links to account for the runes being based on a Greek 

 alphabet ; not the ordinary Attic, but one more archaic in some 

 leading characters. It is technically an error to speak of a " Latin 

 alphabet " or a " Runic alphabet." It is only the Greek that is 

 properly called an alphabet, from its first two letters. The Latin is 

 properly called the abecedarium, from its a b c, d, and the Runic the 

 futhork, / u th o r Jc. The Ogam alphabet is called in a similar way 

 the bethluisnion, from the first letters b I (beth and Ziw's), pronounced 

 baylushneen. The English " alphabet " is wrongly so-called ; it is 

 properly " the abecee." 



I accept as conclusive Canon Isaac Taylor's theory as set forth 

 in his Greeks and Goths, a preliminary portion of his great book on 

 The Alphabet. He goes boldly to the time when the Ionian colonies 

 in Thrace and about the Black Sea were cut off for ever from their 

 mother country by the Persian invasions of the sixth century before 

 Christ. They were shut off in that distant and dark land for cen- 

 turies, with the alphabet of the mother country as it was at the 

 time of their separation. What that alphabet was we know. In the 

 course of centuries a junction was effected between the barbarians 

 our ancestors, living about the Baltic, and the Greek traders from 

 the Black Sea with their remains of an ancient civilisation. Our 

 Gothic ancestors learned from the traders from the south to use their 

 characters as a means of recording transactions. That is the simple 

 theory. When you examine the table which I have prepared (Fig. 1), 

 of the Ionian alphabet and the runes, you will need only two 

 other hints to see the connection. Our Baltic ancestors kept their 

 tallies by incisions on wood. Anyone who has cut his initials on a 

 school bench or desk knows that boys with initials formed of straight 

 strokes are lucky as compared with boys whose initials are rounded. 

 He knows also that a straight stroke itself can be a nuisance if it 

 goes along the grain ; care is needed to prevent its splintering at 

 the ends when he endeavours to extract the piece he is cutting out. 

 The difference between the Ionian alphabet and the runes consists, 

 roughly speaking, in all rounded curves being made into straight 

 lines, forming angles instead of curves, and in the removal by one 

 device or another of every horizontal line ; there is not one horizontal 

 line in the whole futhork. 



The Anglian runes identical with the Ionian letters are B, I, L, 

 R, S. The runes for W and long O are Ionian letters cut in straight 

 lines instead of curves ; E and T are only altered by horizontal 

 lines being replaced by two lines at an angle, cut against the grain ; 

 G and U are the Ionian gutturals Ch and G ; Ng is a double Ionian 

 G ; Th is the Ionian D ; H has its horizontal line made slanting, as 

 also F ; M has its two middle lines cut through to the side lines, to 



