302 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



"WTiile maintaining that the names in Irish inscriptions are real 

 ones, I do not for a moment wish to conceal the fact that some of 

 them are highly enigmatic ; hut some of this description will turn out 

 to he had readings perhaps, and in some few the scribes may have 

 made mistakes. However, I need not dilate on this head, as a 

 Member of your Academy has lately made the following very sensible 

 suggestion to it: — " Ogham inscriptions are of the simplest and most 

 straightforward of their class ; there is nothing about them either 

 cryptic or mysterious, and if we cannot read a certain number of them, 

 the reason is, that we are ignorant of the archaic forms of language in 

 which they are inscribed." 



By means of some method like that suggested above, and with the 

 aid of history, where available, together with the indications to "be 

 derived from a consideration of the circumstances under which the 

 various monuments were found, one would be able, I think, approxi- 

 mately to classify your Ogams. 



The origin of Ogmic writing is still hidden in darkness. Did the 

 Insular Celts borrow the germ of the system from Rune-writing 

 nations or vice versa, or else are we to regard Runes and Ogams as of 

 independent growth ? These are questions which still remain to be 

 solved, and the cryptic Runes of Scandinavian nations seem to be too 

 late to assist us in answering them, though they betray a great simi- 

 larity of principle. It is noteworthy that British Ogam writing is to 

 be traced back to a time when we may reasonably suppose Kimric 

 nationality to have revived, and a reaction against Roman habits and 

 customs to have, to a certain extent, taken place when the last Roman 

 soldier had taken his departure from our island. But once the Roman 

 alphabet had been introduced into Britain, it is highly improbable that 

 another clumsier one should have been invented, and got into use : the 

 inevitable inference then seems to be, that Ogmic writing dates from a 

 time anterior to the introduction of the Roman alphabet. 



