FERGUSON — On the Transcription of Ogham Legends. 59 



the word apostoli ; and this is the process on which I grounded the 

 statement that the filfots on the Aglish stone are associated with an 

 Ogham legend probably of a Christian character. 



But while I had prosecuted this and other branches of the inquiry, 



Graves in vol. ii. of the " Proceedings of the Academy," from which it is here 

 reproduced. 



Here, associated with the Ogham equivalents 

 of Marianus, is a figure, which seems, at first 

 sight, merely geometrical — a square divided into 

 four squares — the upper pair of which are again 

 subdivided into four squares respectively. Thus 

 there results an arrangement, in the upper pair, 

 of a medial line, crossed by five digits, of which 

 the second and fourth are distinguished by not 

 being carried below the lateral boundary, while 

 the first, third, and fifth, extend to the limit of the 

 containing square. Assuming these to be dis- 

 guised Ogham digits, and that the shorter lines 

 here, like the discontinuous digits of the Tyvoria 

 example, are intended as the turning points of the 

 transliteration, the same reading, with a capacity 

 for expressing the additional power of n, is 

 capable of being extracted, so as to produce all 

 the elements of Mariani. If, then, the reflected 

 light of the Kinard monument show the reading 

 suggested for the Tyvoria design to be probable, 

 and that both may reasonably be taken for mono- 

 grams, it may be inferred that in monogrammatic 

 Ogham combinations certain digits, distinguished 

 from the rest by some peculiarity of formation, or 

 otherwise, were used as turning points, so to 

 speak, of the spelling. Assuming this to be so, 

 it will not appear irrational, if, when we find a 

 slender digit, for example, in the midst of a group 

 of broadly-incised characters, which refuse to 

 yield any pronounceable reading, we should try 

 what will be the effect of reading up to the cardo, 

 and then resuming from another point. 



The stone No. 5, in the Academy's collection, 

 illustrates this suggestion. It comes, I have been 

 informed, from a rath- cave at Ballyhank, near 

 Cork. The paper-mould has, I believe, rendered 

 the inscription, so far as it is conceived in the 

 usual way, legible for the first time, yielding the 

 words moco forr.tigurn — a legend in itself suffi- 

 ciently interesting, as pointing to south British 

 and Welsh connexions. But what was the name 

 of the son of Vortigern so commemorated it re- 

 fuses, unless under the application of a further key, to disclose. The name begins with 

 a. Then follows a group of five sub-linear digits, the centre one of which is very deli- 

 cately incised, as compared with the pairs flanking it. The first and last of these pairs 

 taken alone, would sound I ; the middle digit b ; and the whole group n ; but the 

 reading is obviously neither albl nor an. Let us try the effect of recognizing the central 

 digit as a cardo, reading up to it, and recommencing from the left as was done in the 

 Tyvoria example. The first step yields alb, the second an, = Alban, a name which 

 will not seem strange in association with the " son of Vortigern." 



