FERGUSON — On the Transcription of Ogham Legends. 3.1 



in adding, on the authority of Mr. Du JNoyer, a fourth Ogham legend, 

 Maqi deccodda, atArdgroom, on the Cork shore of the Kenmare River; 

 and on that of the " Kilkenny Archaeological Journal," a fifth 

 example of the same formula — whether itbepatronyniical or titular — 

 Sarini Fill Macco Decketi, in Roman characters, at Buckland llona- 

 chorum, in Devonshire. 1 In the face of these evidences of agreement, 

 confirmatory as they are of the native records and traditions of this 

 country, it would be an unreasoning pedantry that would hesitate 

 to admit the substantial identification of the Ogham characters with 

 their equivalents of the Roman alphabet. 



How comes it, then, that characters so simple and so settled in 

 phonetic value are found to offer such considerable difficulties in tran- 

 scription ? — for when we find the eminent palaeographic skill employed 

 in transcribing the Oghams on the Crickhowel and Clydai monuments 

 at fault, we may well recognize the fact that such difficulties have a 

 real existence. It may be considered that one of the causes of this 

 obscurity consists in the very simplicity of the forms to be copied. 

 If all the characters of the Roman alphabet were formed of a 

 series of I's, arranged in groups up to five consecutively, not 

 only would the eye miss that variety of form which in the case 

 of ordinary letters engages and fixes the attention, but any ac- 

 cident occasioning the disappearance of a single digit would, in 

 four cases out of five, leave the rest of the group of an altered value, 

 and in the fifth case would reduce the value to nil. Where part of a 

 character, composed of several lines, straight or curved, is' erased in a 

 Roman legend, there generally remains enough of indication for its re- 

 construction ; but in Ogham writing, a digit lost is either a new reading 

 or a dropped link in the chain of sound. 



Further, when it is borne in mind that, generally speaking, 

 there are no separations of words in an Ogham legend ; that 

 most of the names are new — not hitherto found, 2 either in his- 

 tory or hagiology — that the inflexional forms are seemingly unset- 

 tled — and that no form of a verb, 3 except possibly in imported 

 Latin formulas, has been detected; it will not be surprising that, 

 in the midst of these obscurities, the most attentive eye should 

 hardly escape fatigue in keeping an account of the changes in relative 

 position — under, over, across, or on a stem-line, sometimes indi- 

 cated and sometimes left to the imagination — concurrently with the 

 internal changes in the digits constituting the groups themselves. 



Such are the difficulties which the reader of any considerable 

 number of Ogham characters has to encounter, even when working 



i " Kilk. Arch. Journal," 2nd Series, Vol. II., p. 184. 



2 At least under their present aspect. 



3 Perhaps I should except the ffe to of the Trallong legend, seemingly correspond- 

 ing to the icjacit of the correlative Latin. But it seems more probably a siglum for 

 fecit opus. If it = hie jacet, it would suggest the value of j for the Ogham ff, and 

 help towards a solution of one of the difficulties presented by the Newton inscription. 



