361 



divided them into two classes, broad and slender. The broad, 

 a, o, u, are put first ; the slender, e, i, last. At whatever time 

 this distinction had its rise, it was not by any means strictly ob- 

 served by the earliest writers of this country. Frequent vio- 

 lations of it are to be found in the orthography of the Irish 

 passages in the Book of Armagh,' and of the names which 

 occur in the most ancient inscriptions. 



There is scarcely any particular in the foregoing account 

 of the Ogham alphabet which does not indicate a connexion 

 between it and the Runic alphabets, especially the later and 

 more developed ones, such as were used by the Anglo- 

 Saxons, and were constructed by persons acquainted with 

 the Roman letters. 



The most ancient Runic alphabet was commonly divided 

 into three groups of letters (cittcr) ; thus,/, u, th, o, r, k — A, 

 n, I, a, s — t, b, I, m, o ; and there existed an almost infinite 

 variety of cryptic alphabets, all founded upon this one princi- 

 ple, that the symbol for any letter indicated, in the first in- 

 stance, to which of these three groups it belonged, and, in the 

 next, the place which it held in that group. 



No better instance can be given than the following alpha- 

 bet, described by Liljegren in his Otunlara, p. 50 : 



+ 4^ -k -^ -h -I H- 4 + ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 



fnthorkhni astblmo 



Here we see not only an exemplification of the principle on 

 which the Ogham alphabet is constructed, but even a develop- 

 ment of it in a form very nearly the same as that of the 

 Ogham itself. Goransson, in his Bautil, p. 232, gives a figure 

 of an ancient monument, on which occur a few words written 

 in these Ogham-like Runes, the remaining part of the in- 

 scription being in Runes of the common form. 



Other Runic alphabets were formed by repeating the initial 

 letter of each group a different number of times, to denote each 



