Ferguson — On the Calkin Ogham Inscription. 165 



and accurate description of the county of Clare, with some particular 

 and historical observations; printed at Ennis, for John Busteed and 

 George Trinder 1780 [Price, a British shilling]." 



" Contiguous to this coast of Malbay is the high Mount Callan, which commands 

 an inviting prospect of the whole country ; its fruitful environs are inhabited by the 

 descendants of Northern, orUltonian emigrants to this country, during the later wars in 

 this kingdom; they are an honest, endeavouring set of people. On this remarkable high 

 mountain is a large flat stone, under which Conanus (one of the celebrated Irish Militia) 

 is buried ; this stone hath an Irish Celtic inscription on it, which implies in English, 

 under this stone lies the furious, long-legged Conanus. Probably the mountain takes 

 its name from this monumental stone, as Callan is one of the Irish appellations for a rock 

 or stone. According to Irish romance the above gentleman was a very uncouth officer 

 and a voracious eater." 



If these evidences satisfy the inquirer that in 1779 the inscription 

 was a well-known object, they will acquit O'Elanagan of his portion 

 of the odium : but the proofs of his innocence derivable from the text 

 itself and his peculiar method of dealing with it are still more convincing. 

 Lloyd, it will be remembered, gave one direct reading onlj r , in the usual 

 course from left to right, while 0' Flanagan subjected the text to 

 readings in both directions, and from above as well as below. There 

 is no doubt that a series of Ogham characters (in that kind of 

 Ogham writing in which consonants and vowels are alike represented by 

 stem-crossing digits) may be arranged in such a sequence that they 

 will read from left to right, and back from right to left ; nay, even, if 

 we are set free from word-divisions and allowed to syllallehe at will, will 

 yield as good Irish as the Eugubian Tables, turned upside down, but this 

 can only be effected in legends of a very few words ; and the feat of 

 producing such a combination of any considerable length, with the 

 superadded capacity of yielding a further sensible meaning when in- 

 verted, would certainly be one of astonishing cleverness. But in any 

 process of that kind, it is obvious that the number of digits shall be 

 such that, whether read forward or backward, each shall fall into the 

 exact place necessary for the intended groupings, and that a digit more 

 or a digit less in any of the combinations \vould be fatal to the entire 

 scheme. It is a further and indeed a cardinal necessity of such a col- 

 location, that the reading shall pivot on a definite point at the end of 

 the line; and it is also, if not indispensable, at least very expedient, 

 that the characters which group themselves into words of various 

 lengths in the different combinations produced by the direct and retro- 

 verse readings, should remain undistinguished by marks of word-sepa- 

 ration. 



One set of word-separations is apparent on the face of O'Flanagan's 

 work, on -which it will be observed that the groups constituting the 

 words of the direct transliteration are divided by dots; but that, when 

 we attempt to follow him through his retroverse reoding, these dots, 

 instead of falling between the words, fall so as to divide them, not from 

 one another, but within themselves; and this confusion propagates itself 

 through new dislocations of the word-groups in each subsequent shift 



R. I. A. PROC. VOL. I., SER. II., POL. I, IT. AND ANTIQ. 2 B 



