178 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



inasmuch as it is vouched not by fallible observation and oral report of 

 past impressions, but by a cast (made by myself and Mr. Burchett in 

 1872) of the very monument bearing the inscription, and which for the 

 purposes of this inquiry is substantially of the same authenticity as if 

 we stood before the original, where it now lies in the farm yard of Mr 

 Bowen, at Dygoed, near Newcastle-Evelyn, in Pembrokeshire. - 



A drawing of this stone, with its inscribed cross and biliteral inscrip- 

 tions, has been communicated by Professor "Westwood to the Archceologia 

 Cambrensis, whereat will be found in the volume for June, 1860, p. 227. 

 Accurate as the draftsman is, he has failed to take in the concluding 

 portion of the Ogham legend running along the left arris of the stone ; 

 and has also omitted to observe the traces of a composite letter or sig- 

 lum (which may, however, have been taken for the f offtlius), existing 

 on the flat, and, with the Roman characters, dob, conspicuous in the 

 drawing, completing some form of the name Dobtac. This name, the 

 correlative Ogham presents in the form of obt(a)ceos, preceded by a 

 character, which must necessarily be the d of which we are in quest, 

 being in fact the well known equivalent of that letter in Irish Oghams, 

 but only now independently identified among those of South Britain. 

 Were we looking for the corresponding name in a classical context, we 

 might expect some such form as the Divitiacus of Caesar ; but the b of 

 the Latin epigraph is evidently unaspirated, and the composite charac- 

 ter of siglum remaining, resolves itself but obscurely into anything 

 more than ies. Traces exist from which we might believe that the 

 artist had succeeded in rolling into one alphabetic chimera all the 

 letters taqeo, making Dobtaqueo in the dative : but the indentations are 

 too much worn for affirming this positively, and indeed are so faint that 

 few eyes could discern them otherwise than by the aid of the cast held 

 in a favorable light. The photogram, however, which I exhibit to the 

 Academy, taken from the cast, so placed as to develop so much of the 

 legend as time has left, places the existence of the siglum beyond 

 question, and justifies the conclusion, that the name conveyed by the 

 Ogham on the arris is the same as that inscribed in the Latin characters 

 on the flat, and is some form in both of Duftac, which is all the most 

 critical inquirer will demand to establish the power, as d, of the Oghamic 

 initial. 



It will be observed that one of the digits of the fifth group on the 

 arris is prolonged across the face of the stone, and that there insist on 

 and depend from it several apparently Oghamic digits, two of which 

 are, in like manner, prolonged towards the cross- inscribed circle at the 

 top. "Whether these also may not be phonetic, seems a debateable 

 question, inasmuch as instances are not wanting of digits issuing from 

 digits on other lapidary Oghams. I would refer for examples, to one 

 of the inscribed pillars at Killeen-Cormac, and to the great Ogham in- 

 scription at Kilbonane, in Kerry (of which photograms from casts are 

 presented) ; and notably — but with the caution to be observed in all 

 cases of eye-sketches — to the inscribed bead published by Mr. AVilliams 

 in the Kilkenny ArchfeologicalSociety's Journal (vol. I., 2nd Ser.p. 339). 



