Ferguson — Monataggart Ogham Inscription, No. 1. 207 



XXXIII. — On an Ogham- inscribed Stone (No. 1.) at Monataggart, 

 Co. Cork. By Samuel Ferguson, LL. D., Q. C, Vice-President. 



[Read November 9, 1874.] 



This legend, which, was the suhject of Paper XXY. of the current vo- 

 lume of the Academy's Proceedings (See p. 172), has heen thought to he 

 illegible ; and the same failure which attended the endeavour to decy- 

 pher it in the ordinary course of reading, from left to right, upward, 

 has been predicted for any one attempting its solution by any other 

 method. In my opinion, the text does not warrant that apprehension. 

 On the contrary, it appears to me to be one of the "inverted" class 

 of legends, like that at Camp, and to be read in the same manner. In 

 forming this opinion, I have not been in any degree influenced by 

 what has been written on the subject. I was not present at the read- 

 ing of the Paper referred to ; and knew nothing of the views expressed 

 in it until I read it for the first time in the recent issue of the Aca- 

 demy's Proceedings. But, observing the diagram which had been used 

 in illustrating the Paper, and which remained for a few days after the 

 meeting of 14th April, 1873, chalked on the demonstration-board, I 

 perceived that the failure to educe anything articulate from the cha- 

 racters arose from their being read with values the opposites of those 

 which, I conceive, were intended. In fact, the inscription, ought, as it 

 occurred to me, to have been read from the other side of the stem line, 

 and from right to left, in like manner as that at Camp, in which 

 course of transliteration it yielded the sequence of characters : — 



j. a td Ha t> k o t> o ioinNiaooax 



l " 1 " 1 mil 1HH H " mil /"mil" '""// " '" ' "" n "" -/tfh"-nr 



That is, in direct transliteration : — 



eeqreqmoqoigltjnlegget. 



The familiar formula moqoi — familiar at least in sound, although 

 slightly varied in the spelling — served both to fix the course of the 

 reading, and to separate the other constituents of the text. Feqreq 

 preceding it, appeared to me, without doubt, to be the genitive of 

 Fiachra; and gltinlegget, which follows and completes the legend, 

 I took with some confidence to be a name in religion. 



Considering, however, that what I had before me was derived 

 from a hand-drawn sketch, I thought it more prudent to reserve this 

 communication till I should have an opportunity of verifying it by 

 comparison with the original. Having now had that opportunity, I 

 am satisfied that the text is correct as conventionally presented in 

 page 173 of the Proceedings. I am also satisfied that, in it, we possess 

 an entire epigraph, certain in all its characters, and perfectly reliable 

 as an example of the orthography of the Oghamic school of writing. 



SEK. II., VOL. I., POL. LIT. AXD AXTIQ. 2 R 



