40 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



sent to the Academy the several moulds above enumerated, together 

 with : 



No. xxxii. Newton Stone, Aberdeenshire, Ogham legend in plaster 

 of Paris. 



No. xxxin. "Druides" Stone, Killeen Cormac, (part of) do. 



No. xxxrv. Paper mould of Stone No. 1, in the Museum of the 

 Royal Irish Academy. 



No. xxxv. Ditto, No. 5, in do. 



No. xxxvt. Ditto. of the Non-Oghamic legend on the 



Newton Stone, from the plaster cast in the possession of the Academy. 



No. xxxvii. Ditto. of the Ogham inscribed stone from 



Fortwilliain in the County of Kerry, in the Museum of Trinity College, 

 Dublin. 



In the enumeration of these legends, and in the references to them, 

 I have employed Roman numerals to distinguish them from the stones 

 in the Lapidary Museum of the Academy, which are referred to by 

 Arabic figures. 



The district around Dingle which has supplied the bulk of the 

 examples, while extremely rich in such memorials, is very sparingly 

 alluded to in our annals, civil or ecclesiastical. The names decypher- 

 able are, with few exceptions, quite unknown 7 to the student of 

 our written annals, martyrologies, and acta. In drawing these un- 

 wonted sounds and syllabic combinations from the obscurity in which 

 their Ogham equivalents have involved them, we seem to be intro- 

 duced to new communities and conditions of life apart from the his- 

 toric current. That these were, in the main, Christian communities, 

 is the conclusion to which most minds will probably be led, even 

 from the little known of them ; but to what epoch referrible, and 

 under what relations to other bodies and communities, are conclu- 

 sions for which, as yet, we can only provide the material of induction. 

 Enough, however, is historically on record respecting the intimate 

 relations subsisting in post-Roman and ante-Patrician times, between 

 South Britain and South Ireland, to make it at least an allowable conjec- 

 ture that traces of those relations, in other instances besides the common 

 use of a peculiar alphabet, may appear among some of the older forms 

 of these memorials. Such results would not be without an historic 

 value, and are at least worthy of being sought for with diligence and 

 exactness. 



With respect to the sites from which the Kerry moulds have been 

 derived, the collection includes — with the exception of the Roman- 

 inscribed stones at Reask and near Ballyferriter — one Ogham legend 

 buried in the sand at Ballinrannig, on the shore of Smerwick harbour — 

 and two in the Cave at Aghacarrible, which, from their position, could 



7 It will be seen from the letter of the Bishop of Limerick (post) that these 

 obscurities are regarded by Bishop Graves as incident to certain laws of construc- 

 tion observed in the formation of " Ogham names," and that, substantially, all 

 are recognisable through their disguises. 



