Macalister — Temair Breg : Remains and Traditions of Tara. 293 



embarrassed by a variety of mutually contradictory legends is sufficient to 

 sliow that the story of Scota is no mere invention, devised to give some sort 

 of etymology for the ethnic name of the " Scots." Essentially the story of 

 Scota is a popular tale of a divine ancestress ; though the name of the 

 ancestress may have been artificially modified, by the men of learning who 

 systematized the stories into the form in which we have them, in order to 

 improve the analogy between the two words compared. If we could have 

 recovered the tale of this ancestress from the lips of the common people, we 

 would not necessarily find that "Scota" was the exact form in which they 

 would have given her name to us, or that the idea of the derivation of the 

 ethnic was at all uppermost or even present in their minds. Such artificial 

 modifications of proper names, in the interests of etymology, are not 

 unknown in Irish historical literature ; we may instance the constant habit 

 of spelling the name Finnachta with an interpolated shn, as though it were 

 Finn-shncehta, " white snow," or Fin-shnechta, " wine-snow." 



The story of Scota's parentage leads us to a further inference ; namely, 

 that not only are the two " Scotas " to be treated as one and the same 

 legendary personality, of whom different stories were told ; but that Tepqi 

 also is to be regarded as identical with them. Herein lies " the mystery 

 of Tephi." 



But, it will fairly be asked, what possible connexion can there be between 

 the names of Scota and Tephi ? One method of linking these words may be 

 suggested. Suppose we write the name Scota in Ogham letters on a circular 

 stem-line (fig. 3 a), and then manipulate its letters symmetrically, making the 

 first three strokes of the S, and the last three strokes of the 0, into vowel- 

 scores (fig. 3 6). Then, regrouping the vowels, and beginning to read at 

 the T (fig. 3 c), we obtain tebiii. According to the principles of Ogham 

 orthography, His not here the sign of lenition, so that the word \v,ould be 

 pronounced leb-hi, not tcvi. To preserve so far as possible this pronunciation, 

 the unlenited b is written p (as it usually is after vowels in Old Irish), 

 when the Ogham is transliterated. 



For purposes of comparison, a facsimile of an actual "wheel" of the 

 kind imagined is added to fig. 3 (fig. 3d). It occurs on the stone at tagie 

 Elphinstone, Aberdeenshire, in association with certain of the Pictish symbols, 

 to which reference has been made on a previous page. These scores arc 

 certainly cryptographic, but the key to their decipherment has not yet been 

 discovered. The puerile cryptograms on the great Runic stone at Rok, 

 Sweden, are of the same character. 1 



Reams of nonsense have been written, trying to make cryptograms out i if the 

 straightforward memorial inscriptions in Ogham ; this way of interpretation 



