MacNeill — Notes on Irish Ogham Liscriptions. 331 



distribution outside of these areas, manifestly indicate an arrested custom or 

 cult. This was not the custom of Ogham writing, which may have been 

 widespread among the pagan Irish, but the custom of Ogham inscriptions 

 on stone monuments commemorative of the dead. 



Two hypotheses may be regarded. Either the epigraphic cult was 

 widespread in its early period, and died out rapidly except in the districts 

 in which oghams are now numerous ; or the cult originated in these districts 

 and became general in them, but had not time to become general elsewhere 

 before the causes came into operation which brought about its abandonment. 

 The latter hypothesis is the more satisfactory. If we suppose a widespread 

 custom at an early stage, we must expect to find the early linguistic forms 

 characterizing the scattered inscriptions, and the late forms chiefly in the 

 areas of frequency, i.e. of persistence. This is not the case. Both early and 

 late forms are found promiscuously throughout the whole Irish region. 

 I cannot speak for the British oghams, the records of which are scattered in 

 a great variety of publications covering half a century. 



II.— NON-CHEISTIAN CHAKACTEK 



The arresting causes, it can hardly be doubted, were the spread of 

 Christianity and the concomitant spread of Latin learning and the Latin 

 alphabet. The use of Latin letters is not in itself sufficient to explain the 

 discontinuance of Ogham epigraphy. The Ogham inscriptions were not 

 replaced, at all events in Ireland, by literal inscriptions. The Ogham in- 

 scriptions seem to commemorate men of the world. The literal inscriptions of 

 ancient Ireland commemorate chiefly ecclesiastics. There are few inscriptions 

 in Eoman or Irish-Eoman characters in memory of kings, princes, nobles, 

 warriors, or poets. Literal inscriptions did not take the place of the 

 numerous oghams of Corcaguiny, Muskerry, and the Desi. The ancient 

 cult was abandoned, not altered. 



The bulk of the Ogham inscriptions may perhaps be ascribed to the fifth 

 and sixth centuries ; and I think the cult must have chiefly flourished in the 

 fifth century. The latest word-forms and inflexions are as old as the oldest 

 in MS. Irish, and the words which, according to the Ogham orthography, are 

 the direct equivalent of Old-Irish forms are comparatively few in number. 

 The characteristic Christian nomenclature and vocabulary of ancient Ireland 

 are absent from all but half a dozen at the most of the known inscriptions. 

 The word qrimitir, 0. I. cruimtlier, borrowed through Cymric from the Latin 

 Ijresbyter, occurs once. Ehys, by reading an ogham backwards, has found the 

 Latin word Sangti {Sancti), but the final vowel, which should be i, is u in 



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