OCAM 



OGDEN 



numeral was different, KM it immediately preceded 

 the accent, which, moving forward an usual in lu-li. 

 fixed iftelf on (In- a (of r/ii), made into a pure vowel, 

 ~' that ijufqifHt became yufyjue, or rather 

 whence tin- attested forms mic and cm;/, 'live. ' 

 This U paialli-Icd in In-h I iy i/i.ini, 'men,' at 

 rontroHbsj with iluinr, 'man,' from some imcli 



..iidelic st. -MI its ilut"n, so that tin- won! for 111:111 

 l.i- lieen c\p!ained to mean a mortal, anil in part 

 equated with the Greek tfr-ijrit, mortal.' Now, 

 Manx Gaelic ha.- not altogether followed Irish in 

 its accentual i< in. ami here tin- transition from 

 yni'i/i/Hf to tfiieyfiif never tonk place, so the Manx 

 lor 'live' is qttctg ; coni|>ure Manx <// or yuui, 



who.' The case of tin- lirst ( igam is more ditlicnlt, 

 a8 we should have to suppose fi-aon and h-oinos, 

 w here the connate languages prove that the h can- 

 not hare IMVM organic, oven though it sometimes 

 crept into the pronunciation of this wonl. It is 

 possible, however, that the wonl doing service for 

 the liret numeral was one of a different origin for 

 in-tanco, a wonl related to liwithad, 'the singular 

 number,' and hunilin, ' lonelier,' ' loneliest ;' and 

 it is worthy of notice that one of the names of the 

 Ugam for h was huiith. In such words as these 

 the h may l>e supposed, an already suggested, to 

 have been of ancient standing. 



Another circumstance sheds light on the history 

 t the Ogam alphabet: the oldest class of inscrip- 

 tions contain so many instances of cc and It where 

 later Irish has ch ami tli that the former digraphs 

 cannot he the result of accident, but rather a 

 recognised way of representing the spirants ch and 

 th. But as cr and tt do not phonetically become 

 ch and t/i in the course of phonetic decay in the 

 1 idelic dialects, the question arises, what can 

 have suggested such a spelling? On the other 

 hand, lirvthonic speech is jjiven to the change here 

 .tiled viz. the reduction of <x and tt into ch 

 and t/i, and before the s|>elliiig with h was regularly 

 adopted the spirants rh and tli must have l>een 

 hi-torically represented by < and U. This, we 

 venture to infer, suggested the digraphs re and It 

 for '>> anil l/i rMBwavety. (Granting that we are 

 so far on fairly lirm groun<l, we may go further, 

 and suggest tfiat the inventor of Ogam writing, 

 acquainted as he was with Roman and Urythonic 

 writing, lived somewhere in what is now South 

 Wales, or had at any rate visited that country : he 

 prolmblv belonged to the race of invaders from the 

 ninth of Ireland, who made the Severn sea their 

 highway to tin- heart of South Wales on the one 

 side and Somerset an< I Devon on the other. The 

 distribution of the Ogams indicate that the con- 

 nection wan close lietweeii the districts now repre- 

 sented by the counties of Pembroke, and \Vaterford. 

 The latter is divided by a low ridge of hills into 

 Decie* within I>nnn aiid Decies without Drum, 

 where the name I >e.-ie.s refers to an ancient people 

 railed the I), isi, whom Irish tradition traces across 

 to Pembrokeshire. 



The ancient Ogam* are all epitaphs on stone, 

 but a few of the later one* occur on lead and on 

 ring* and lir.H-li.-s. So far ax this goes, it might 

 be gathered that -tune was the most common 

 material on which Ogams were nil ; this may, 

 h<iwe\er. IK- 'I' mlited, and more use. may have been 

 m;.de nf pieces of wood. In any MM, when a 

 workman had to cut an Ogam inscription on a 

 tombctOM, it was pioluil.lv handed to him on a 

 slip of wood with prepared angles. \Ve ran call 

 ! mind more than one instance when- it can lie 

 shown that the cutter, so far from knowing \vluit 

 h" was cutting, began the Ogam at the end instead 

 of at the bi-giiiiiing. Had he had the Ogam before 

 him on a piece of skin or any plane surface he 

 mi;:lit lie cx|>ertnd to have cut the scores on the 

 middle of the face of the stone. In fact, some of 



the specimens of Ogams from Shetland are found 

 to have been MI win ten; and as the edge of the 

 I would lie represented in manuscript hv a 

 continuous straight line, we lind a groove scratched 

 on the Hat part of the stones, and the Ogam scores 

 arranged in connection with it instead of following 

 one of the edges. So it is not impn.liable that 

 prcjiared pieces of wood formed the most usual 

 material for cutting Ogams, as they seem to have 

 done for the Kunic alphalicts of Teutonic nations. 

 It is needless to mention that Ogam is not a s]>ecies 

 of shorthand : few hands could well be longer ; and 

 it ought likewise to lie needless to say that there U 

 nothing cryptic alnmt this method of wilting. It 

 is a pretty general rule, for example, that n com- 

 pound word of four syllables in the ,'ith or 6th 

 century A.I). ap]n>ars as a word of two in the 

 modern dialects of Goidelic, so that an Ogmic geni- 

 tive Luguyuriti is later met with compressed into 

 Luicria. Here the changes which have taken 

 place are in Imrmony with the ascertained rules 

 of Irish accentuation, and no Celtic scholar would 

 think of saying that Lutjiiquriti is a cryptic form of 

 l.n/rrid : tliat would be simply to deny the history 

 of the word any phonological perspective, and BO in 

 other cases. Lastly, for the study of Coidelic 

 philology the importance of the < >gam inscriptions 

 extant, few com|iaratively speaking and meagre 

 ps they are, is much the same as thnt of Human 

 inscriptions would be for KOIIKUICC philology, 

 supposing all other remains of Latin speech hail 

 utterly perished. 



The most comprehensive work on Ogams is Brash'i 

 Ogam-intcrilxd JUonumrnti of the tianlhil in the llrititk 

 lilandt, with a Dittertatiim on the Oijnm Character 

 ( land. 1879| ; and next to it in point of comprehensive- 

 Mrs* must lie ranked ir Samuel KITHUSIHI s (>/Anm In- 

 uriiiliimt in Ireland, Wale*, and .Snrf/.iwi/ ( Kdin. I8f 

 which consists of the Kliind Ltrtures delivcrril in Kd n- 

 burgh in 1884. 1 apers on Ogams will be found in the 

 Tran*. Jlou. Irith Acad., especially by the llishnp of 

 I.inurick, who bn also propounded a tlieory of the origin 

 of Ogniic writing in tin Hirmatlitna. The journal wliich 

 has above all others kept its pages open for Ogam finds 

 in Ireland is that of the Koyal Hist. Archa'o. AKMIC. 

 Ireland ( originally founded as the Kdkumy Scirtv in 

 the year 18-19). Among other tliinpt its Journal for 1S74 

 contains tracings made by G. M. Atkinsdii of old treatise! 

 on Ogams, togtthrr with explanations, including the 

 theory of the numerical oiigin ot the Ugams for A, </, r, 

 OH, which we find to have brrn contributed by the Rev. 

 Edmond Harry. The Ogams of \\ ales and Devon will 1 e 

 found in their places in \iubaet' Interiutionft Britannia 

 Chrutiajut (Berlin, 1H76). Further, tho.sc of the 1'rin- 

 cipality have from time to time been noticed and illus- 

 trated in the Arrhitnlinjin <'<imbrenri*, and they will also 

 be found in \Vto..d'8 La/iidarium Wallia (Oxford, 

 1-Ti; 7'J). The (Vams of the Isle of Man have been 

 described in the Academy and the Manx Nolt-bvok; and 

 paiwra on the Scottish Ugams were read before the 

 Nn'irty of Antiquaries i.f Scut. and in the years 1882-84 by 

 the Karl of Southesk after careful examination of the 

 stones. The name* in the Ogams of Wales and Devon 

 have been discussed in detail in Khys's Lectureion Wilth 

 Philology ( Lond. 1879), and some O^mic forms have been 

 mad fur the purposes of Celtic philology by Dr Whitley 

 Stokes in Ins <;lt,c Iiettcntion (G<itt. 1886). Lastly. 

 ilic must important Irish tract on Ogams is to be found 

 in the 15th-century manuscript known as the Book of 

 llallynmtr : it occupies folios 3(18 314 of the autotype 

 edition (Dublin, 1887) of that extensive codex. 



Oirnsnwara. See BON IN. 



Oifdrll. capital of Welier county, Utah, is 

 situated, at an elevation of 4.'i4(l fept, at the con- 

 tinence of the Welier and Ogden riveis. w hert! the 

 former passes through the \Yahsatch Mountains, 

 37 miles N. of Salt I-akr City. It is of im|K>rtance 

 as tin- place where the I'nion 1'acilie and Central 

 Pacific railroads, as well as three other*, join. 

 The city contains a Methodist university (founded 

 1890), a foundry and several mills, breweries, and 



