176 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



XXVI. — On the Completion of the Biliteral Key to the Values 



OE THE LeTTEKS IN THE SOUTH BRITISH OgHAM ALPHABET. By 



Samuel Ferguson, LL. D., Q,. C, Vice-President. 

 [Read November 29, 1873]. 



There are three principal groups of Ogham-inscribed monuments in the 

 British islands : viz — the Irish, the Scottish or North British, and 

 the Welsh and Devonian, which I designate in this paper as the South 

 British. 



These last differ from the Scottish examples in this, that they alwaj^s 

 present their vowels in the form of notches on the angles of the in- 

 scribed pillars, and the same is also almost universally the case in the 

 Irish lapidary examples ; whereas the Scottish legends — without ex- 

 ception, that I am aware of — present their vowels in the form of digits 

 crossing the arris or stem line. This latter method, singularly enough, 

 is the one universally observed, so far as I know, in Irish manuscripts ; 

 and as these are obviously less ancient than most, if not all, of the South 

 British legends, an inference arises that, of the three groups, the 

 Scottish probably is the most recent. What gives to the South British 

 Oghams their claim to this higher antiquity is the almost universal 

 presence of correlative inscriptions in Roman characters, which are re- 

 cognised as belonging to periods not long subsequent to the Roman 

 occupation. Tbe fact of these Roman epigraphs being found to desig- 

 nate the same names which are commemorated in their Oghamic contexts 

 further gives to the South British Oghams the distinction of being to a 

 great extent self contained, as carrying their key within themselves. 



From the time when it was observed that the Oghamic groups on 

 the inscribed pillar at St. Dogmael's, corresponded to the proper names 

 Sagrani and Cunotami (and iu the form maqi to the word filii), in- 

 scribed on the adjoining fiat surface in Roman letters, it became evident 

 that such a key to the value of all the South British Oghams might be 

 looked for in the probable discovery of other biliteral legends of a like 

 character. This expectation was, to a great extent, fulfilled by the dis- 

 covery of the Llanfechan and Trallong legends, which exhibit in 

 associated Roman and Ogham characters the names Trenacat and 

 Cunacen, together with what appears to be in the former the equivalent 

 of filii in the Oghamic form fiil, and in the latter, oijacet in the seem- 

 ingly equivalent bilingual form of ffeto, where, not impossibly, the 

 double ff may have the power of/. 



It will be seen from these agreements that the Oghamic letters 

 a, c, e, g, I, m, n, o, a, s, t, u are directly vouched by the same process 

 that identifies the phonetic hieroglyphs of the cartouches with their 

 alphabetic equivalents on the Rosetta Stone ; that e and l are inferen- 

 tially ascertained by assuming^ to represent the Latin filii (an ar- 

 gument in the case of l which seems corroborated by the presumable 



