186 The Bishop of Bristol [May 19, 



gives a curiously close agreement between the forms of the two in- 

 scriptions, if we suppose the first n in Fanoni duplicated, 



Sfannoni maqui Eini 



Sfaqquci maqi Qici, 

 and when we examine the differences, we find that they are chiefly 

 questions of one side or other of the arris. Thus if the ogam cutter 

 had put his two groups of five scores each on the other side of the 

 arris, we should have had Sfann in both scripts. In two other cases 

 he puts four scores on one side of the arris where the Latin script 

 requires five on the other side. If we can suppose that he made these 

 two mistakes of transplanting from one side to the other of the divid- 

 ing edge, and in one case stopped five scores at the edge instead of 

 running them through, each repeated, we have 



Latin, Sfanoni maqui Eini, 



Ogam, Sfannuni maqi Eini. 



It is clear that, phonetically, the difference between o and u is 

 almost nothing ; and if the o in the Latin script on this stone is 

 examined, it will be seen to have a good deal more of a u than an o 

 in it. There is, perhaps, in the abstract a greater probability that 

 the cutter of the Latin letters mis-read some of the ogams, but the 

 names seem to point the other way. If my suggestion has anything 

 in it, this stone is of very great interest, as marking a parting of the 

 ways between the two scripts. 



The stone from Llywell, in Brecon, now in the British Museum, 

 has on one side a mass of curious sculpture, about which a good deal 

 might be said if this were the place to say it. On the back (Fig. 20) 

 there is a Latin cross, and it is here that the two inscriptions, in Latin 

 and Ogam script, are found. The Latin reads Vaccutreni Saligiduni, 

 " the memorial of Vaccutren, son of Saligidun," or, inasmuch as the 

 first letter is very near the end of the stone, and the A is joined on to 

 the V, it may well have been M, and then we should read Maccutren. 

 The Ogam settles the point in favour of M ; it reads Maqitreni 

 Salicidni, " the memorial of Maqitren (son of) Salicidn." It will be 

 remembered that on the stone at Cilgerran, about 45 miles from 

 Llywell as the crows fly, there is a memorial of " the son of Macutren." 

 I should give a warning to any one who attempts to follow the 

 readings on this stone with Sir Samuel Ferguson's volume of Ehind 

 Lectures in his hand. The late Sir A. W. Franks told me that 

 Sir S. Ferguson, a devoted observer and recorder of ogams, spent 

 hours upon this stone ; but his notes were so far from clear that his 

 account is most baffling. He remarks that the Latin inscription is 

 Vaccutrenii Maqi Saligiduni. But the second i in the first word 

 is only the limb of the incised Latin cross, and not a letter of the 

 Maqi is there at all. Sir Samuel clenches the error by remarking 

 that this is the only example of a Latin Maqi ; and having read the 

 limb of a cross as a second i at the end of Maccutreni, he reads the 

 Ogam as Maqitrenii, thus inserting a whole row of five scores which 

 are certainly not on the stone. 



