42 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



How little this was the case, while the legends had to he studied 

 in the open air, in the disused huiying- ground at Ballintaggart, may 

 he judged of hy a reference to Yolume I. of Mr. Du JNbyer's drawings 

 in our library, where five of the Ballintaggart group are figured. It 

 will he seen that in no one case has this accomplished artist succeeded 

 in transferring the characters in their textual integrity to his portfolio. 

 The difficulty in dealing with this class of legends sicb clio has, indeed, 

 been insurmountable ; and I am not aware that any, even of the most 

 experienced draftsmen of such objects, has hitherto attempted to 

 decipher more than certain portions of some of them. 



As an example of this rounded stemless class, as well as of the 

 difficulty of securing exact copies of such objects, even by the most 

 learned and conscientious, I adduce a mould taken by the paper 

 process from another Kerry Ogham, now preserved in the Hall of 

 Trinity College Museum. This is the Fort William inscription, which 

 was figured by our late dear and revered academic brother, Dr. Todd, 

 in vol. ii., p. 411, of our " Proceedings." It is, I believe, the first illus- 

 tration of a monument of this class to be found in our publications after 

 the revival of Oghamic inquiry amongst us, and has evidently been 

 drawn with scrupulous attention to accuracy. 



Even at this early stage of the inquiry, Dr. Todd saw the para- 

 mount importance of exact texts, and, in his paper, presses earnestly 

 on the Academy to secure " the most accurate and best authenticated 

 collection of copies, or fac similes of the inscriptions themselves," in 

 preference to even " the best essays or theories for the explanation of 

 the Ogham character." It is instructive to read the assurance that 

 the accompanying woodcut is "an exact copy," coming from one so 

 competent to judge, and so strongly impressed with the necessity of 

 judging rightly, and to compare with that statement the paper-mould 

 lately taken from the original, exhibiting as it does, amongst other 

 less prominent discrepancies, the transposition from the under to the 

 upper-line series of the penultimate digit-group. 



Even where, as in the case of Dr. Petrie, learning and con- 

 scientiousness have had high artistic skill for their exponent, the pencil 

 in the open-air has been unequal to a less difficult series of Ogham 

 groups. In his essay on "Irish Church Architecture" (p. 135), 

 Petrie has given a drawing of the pillar at St. Manchan's, near Kil- 

 dram, on the road from Dingle to Kilmalkedar. As represented, the 

 legend yields no pronounceable combination of sounds, the translitera- 

 tion being 



Qen [ ~]fcihaqemgcumaainiamu\_. 



This inarticulateness results from errors mostly of omission, and 

 all of a minute kind. The moulded paper-duplicate supplies the over- 

 looked and retrenches the superfluous digits, yielding, not indeed the 

 name Manchan in any of its forms, but the name (apparently in the 

 genitive) qeijiloci, followed by formulas familiar to the eyes of Ogham 

 students, but which I do not here attempt to explain. This Qeniloc 



