160 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



XXIV. — On the Ogham-Inscribed Stone on Callan Mountain, Co. 

 Clare.— By Samuel Ferguson, LL.D., Q.C., V.P.IU.A. 



[Read February 10, 1873.] 



The first paper published by the Royal Irish Academy in the de- 

 partment of Antiquities, in their Transactions, was that by Theophilus 

 O'Flanagan on the Ogham inscription on Mount Callan, in the county 

 of Clare, read 19th December, 1785. In this paper O'Flanagan gives 

 an interesting account of his search for the stone bearing the inscription, 

 which he states he had first discovered about six years before, in com- 

 pany with Mr. Burton Conyngham, who made the drawing published 

 by the Academy. 



O'Flanagan's reading of the inscription purports to have been 

 prompted by some lines which he cites as from an Irish poem, called 

 the Battle of Gabhra, to the effect that one of the Fenian heroes, named 

 Conan had been slain at the spot by the Fianna on the occasion of an 

 assembly held for worship of the sun, and that Conan' s name, in 

 Ogham characters, existed on his sepulchral stone, where he had been 

 buried, on this mountain. He does not pretend to find the name of 

 Conan, totidem Uteris, on the monument; but avers that, according to 

 certain rules of Ogham spelling, the letters Co naf appearing there, stand 

 for Conan: the n and/ being, as he alleges, commutable, by reason of 

 their occupying respectively the same place in the series of both the Irish 

 alphabets, that is the " Beth-luis-nion," or ordinary alphabet, and the 

 " Bobel-loth-fearn," on which latter the first category of the ordinary 

 Ogham scale appears to be constructed. This interchangeable quality 

 of the letters being premised, he proceeds to extract a series of no 

 less than five several readings from the line of digits constituting the 

 inscription. First he reads it from left to right, giving the groups 

 which stand for n and / their proper respective values ; then he repeats 

 the process, giving them their interchangeable values ; then, pivoting, 

 as it were, on the last digit and reading backwards, he educes a third 

 variation ; then turning the legend upside down, he subjects it, in its 

 inverted position, to another decipherment from left to right ; and 

 still to another, houstrophedon, from right to left,* The result is unlike 



* Whence O'Flanagan derived this idea — supposing it not to have been of his own 

 invention, I do not pretend to conjecture. A good Irish scholar of our own da)' has 

 tried the same process on the Ballyqiiin Ogham, but whether on O'Flanagan's or on 

 some more authentic precedent is also unknown to me. I extract the following memo- 

 randum from Windele MSS., Supplt., vol. 2, p. 663 d, in the Library, R. I. A. : — '' See 

 in the Irish American, New York paper of 14th August, 1858, a communication from 

 John O'Mahony regarding this inscription. He boasts of his accuracy, arising from 

 numerous visits, in his copy of this inscription, which he reads four [five] ways : up from 

 bottom, it is Gatabar moca finicog . Divided, it makes Cathbar mac fionaic oig ; that is, 

 Cathbar, son ofFinnach the younger. The others are, reversed: Gocinifacomrabatac, 



