FERGUSON — On the Transcription of Ogham Legends. 49 



explanation given in the "Sams Cormaic," which points to a British 

 connexion. 



"Cruimther, i. e. the Gaelic of presbyter. In "Welsh (Cymric) 

 it is premier : prem in the "Welsh is cruim in the Gaelic. The 

 Britons then who were in attendance on Patrick when preaching, 

 were they who made the change, and it is (to) premier that they 

 changed." 



In other words the Britons brought the name in the Welsh form 

 Premier, and the Irish, using c hard for the Welsh p, adopted the word 

 in the form Cruimther, in which form we find it ascribed in our oldest 

 ecclesiastical documents to various eminent Presbyters, as distinguished 

 from other orders and degrees, ecclesiastical and scholastic. 



Prom Stokes's note to his translation of the Glossary, at the place 

 cited, it would appear that this inscription had been submitted to 

 Siegfried, who had transliterated it Curimitirros. Was then the af 

 of Du Noyer's drawing correct, or was it a miseopyiug for of and 

 so a siglum having a separate meaning? or, as seemed probable 

 from Siegfried's reading, was it a double miscopying for os, and 

 part of the preceding groups ? These considerations gave me an 

 eager desire to visit the Brandon pillar. It is not marked on the 

 Ordnance Survey Map ; and the locality from which it is accessible, 

 marked on the Ordnance Map as Tycluff, is not known by that name in 

 the country at present, but by the name of Ballinahow, from whence 

 an excessively rough and broken mountain road leads through a dis- 

 tance of about three miles to the site of a disused watch-tower on the 

 northern shoulder of Brandon mountain. Here, at the summit of the 

 pass, just where the mountain track terminates, at a height of more 

 than 2000 feet above the sea, in a very wild and solitary scene, 

 stands, half buried in the bog ' which has grown up around it, the 

 Cruimther monument. As I had expected, the termination was in 

 os, attesting the accuracy of the transcriber, whoever he was, 15 on 

 whose material Siegfried had worked. A cross pate of the same form 

 (we would call it Maltese), as found on various other similar monu- 

 ments of the district, is carved in shallow, almost unnoticeable inden- 

 tations on the face and back of the pillar, which is grievously 

 corroded and weatherworn. It faces east and west. The legend 

 Qrimitirros is still clearly legible on the north-west angle. A second 

 line of Ogham letters, doubtless expressing, or which once expressed, 

 the name of the buried Presbyter, exists along the south-western 

 angle. "Whether from the disappearance of digits, or from some 

 designed inversion of the parts of the name, it has not yet yielded 

 any intelligible answer to my scrutiny ; 16 and a bruise received by the 

 mould in descending the mountain, so far detracts from its perfection 

 as to make this portion of it unreliable as an authority. 



Here I would desire to say a few words in extenuation of my 



15 1 apprehend the Bishop of Limerick. 



16 It will be seen (post) that the Bishop of Limerick reads it Macu Comogann. 



