56 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



" III. That these rules and methods had regard — (1) to the actual 

 nature of the Ogham character ; (2), to the pronunciation of the names; 

 (3), to the partiality of the Ogham writers for Latin and Greek forms. 

 (The final OS. is not an ancient case-ending as some have supposed.) 

 " IV. That some, possibly many, Ogham inscriptions will remain 

 undecipherable. 



" I hope when I go up to Dublin at Easter to be able to give some 

 hours to the examination of your paper moulds and paper casts. The 

 use of them will save the Ogham student much fruitless labour. At 

 the same time I must check over my own drawings and woodcuts. I 

 think I have all those enumerated in your list, and about 80 more. 

 " Believe me to be, 



My clear Ferguson, 



Tours very sincerely, 



" Charles Limeblce. 



" P.S. — I ought, in honesty, to say that I cannot agree with you as 

 to the general nature of the names on these Kerry Oghams. You say 

 they are not like what we find in ' Annals, Martyrologies, and Acta.' 

 I think, on the contrary, that I can account for nearly all of them. 

 Take the following as a remarkable instance : — I mention it because 

 you have noticed it on your paper. 



" Here we have ttloinuna TYlacui Olacon. The names can be iden- 

 tified without trouble, and we seem to find a footing in an early part 

 of the field of Ecclesiastical history. 



" Olchtj was grandfather of St. Brendan ; and Maohsteaiw was the 

 Bishop attached to St. Brendan's Monastery at Clonfert. He died in 

 the year 571 (Tigh.) Olacon is plainly the genitive of Olchu." 



I desire first to express my thanks to the Bishop of Limerick for 

 allowing me to enrich this communication with so valuable a letter ; 

 and next to confess that in opening the subject in the manner I have 

 done, I left a great deal unsaid which I proposed to reserve for further 

 communications, and my reticence in respect of which seems to have 

 led to my appearing less acquainted with some of the topics thus 

 introduced than I really am. 



With the course of backward reading I have been long familiar ; 

 and my failure to decipher the whole of the Brandon legend cer- 

 tainly did not arise from any neglect to test the combinations in 

 their inverse order. I venture, in addition to the examples cited 

 by Bishop Graves, to refer to a very singular instance of studied 

 obscurity of this kind, found on an inscribed stone now in the 



