461 



possess a peculiar mellowness, from the action of the causes 

 just alluded to. 



These characters, moreover, have plainly been cut with 

 9 graver, such as is employed at the present day. But no 

 traces appear, on genuine antique Irish ornaments, of the 

 use of such an instrument. The lines and patterns on them 

 seem to have been laboriously scratched with a point rather 

 than cut in. The conclusiveness of these reasons is main- 

 tained by the judgment of Mr. West, the eminent jeweller, to 

 whom Mr. Graves applied for his opinion on the subject. So 

 many valuable relics of antiquity have passed through his 

 hands, at different times, that his opinion on a point of this 

 kind ought to be nearly decisive. 



Mr. Graves further remarked, that the characters said by 

 Vallancey to be " Phoenician or Estrangelo," are neither the 

 one nor the other; and, what is more, in the scanty remains of 

 Phoenician literature, which have been collected by Gesenius 

 and Hammaker, we meet with no such word as Olta, meaning 

 a holocaust. As for the word Aesar, which Vallancey pro- 

 fesses to find, though somewhat deformed, in the Ogham in- 

 scription, Mr. Graves asserts that it does not frequently occur 

 in ancient Irish MSS. ; on the contrary, it is so rare that, with 

 the aid of the most accomplished Irish scholars, Mr. Graves 

 has not yet succeeded in finding a single instance of its use, 

 except as it occurs in O'Reilly's and Shaw's Dictionaries. It 

 certainly is an Etruscan word, meaning God, and it may have 

 found its way into Irish glossaries, though not belonging to 

 the Irish language. 



In order to show how unsafe a guide Vallancey is in what 

 relates to Ogham writing, or, it might be added, in any mat- 

 ter of Irish archaeology or philology, Mr. Graves referred to 

 a passage which occurs in the tract on Oghams, preserved in 

 the Book of Ballymote. This passage stands thus in the 

 original (Book of Ballyynote, f. 168) : 



