OGHAM. 
well iar in the feveral idioms and diale&tis of the Irifh 
langu 
ae proceeding to offer any remarks on the Callan in- 
{cription, and on Mr, 
give the rules on which he contrived to brin 
fuch pipers of meaning: had 
down in Trifh elgg and in treatifes on the decy- 
phering of the Ogum charaéter, and had they been illuf- 
trated and cpannacd by examples of undoubted antiquity, 
In order to get the firft as fecond meanings, the in 
{cription muft be decyphered from the broad to the narrow 
end of the ftone, or from left to right ; the letters F and N 
bane interchanged, whenever they occur, as the fenfe fhall 
dire& : the third and fourth readings are found by taking 
the two former backwards (here the procefs is from ra to 
left, commuting the letters F and N as before.) The fifth 
and laft reading is made out ‘ by decyphering the Ogum 
line from the {mall to the broad end of the ftone, chang- 
ing its pofition that the procefs may be from left to right. 
Jn this, neither of the letters F or N occurs, and therefore it 
admits of no further readings.” The reafon which led Mr. 
O’Flanagan to the commutation of the letters F and N, is 
equally whimfical and unfounded with every other ftep in 
the procefs of interpreting this ipaeee «‘ This com- 
mutability of the letters F and 
eae Beithlasefeaens 3 the latter is jade to the Ogum fy/- 
tem when it is neceflary for the sp aes it does 
not totally reject the former, which was the alphabet in 
common ule, ey Greek and Roman ici vifited this 
e the Irifh ee their alphabet, as far as 
it extended, Sonloaadble «o their o And i ubfe 
quent page he obferves, <« shea y> a to contain muc 
within a narrow Pau was | the > purpoted end and ue of 
a for fro 
ali 
gum 
{mall al ce, audi is ultimately founded en an alphabet of 
f 
different chara&ters, which is evident even the ex 
plication of the inf riptio us, wherein the letters 
(which are feverally reprefented by three and five 
perpendicular ftrok he horizontal mafter line) are 
commutable, a property which they have not in any other 
part of our language; this commutation depending, as ha 
been already obferved, on the two different arrangements 
of the Infh alphabets: and thus it is left to the reader’s 
choice, to whic wo letters F or e will apply i 
e proper mode of applic 
of the Royal I = eteny for the 1787, vol.i, An- 
which Mr. 
a wach he has followed 
in decyrhering it, we hall I offer 2 a fee remarks, which, if 
OL. XXV. 
we are not aie vill not only go far to difprove ns 
exiftence o infcription on this monument, o 
granting its aa ienee the accuracy of the cept tiaa 
put upon it; but alfo the claim of a — m charaCter or 
pene 
s 
thofe he ese ely. defers 
ertain a kind of ftone likely 
ferve entire the barat eri on its furface. It Pould aif 
be hair ina that a fingle erafure of one of the ea 
or even of one of the cyphers, would have bee 
fufficient to ze ee or eflentially to alter, the meaning of 
any Ogum infcription 
In the fecond place, two engravings are given of the 
Callan oe both by Mr, O’Flanagan; one in the 
feventh volume of the Archzologia, p, 281 ; and the other 
in the farft elie of the TranfaGtions of the [rifh Aca- 
demy ed laste p- 16.) w whoever will compare, 
even in a curfory and fuperficial ey thefe two engrav- 
ings, will find that they materially differ. 
In the third place, Mr. O’Flanagan in his paper in the 
Trifh TranfaGtions, as has been already noticed, fays, that 
his firft reading, ‘* Fan licfi ta Conan Colgac cos-fada,”’ 
was made out before he had an opportuniyy of couileee 
colonel Vallancey’s grammar, and that it was afterwards 
ound to be erroneous 5 whereas, in his letters to that 
gentleman, publifhed in the feventh volume of the Archz- 
ologia, he ae fays, ‘by the rules given for the 
Ogham croab in M‘Curtin’s di@tionary, and your grammar, 
I decypher this infcription in the following manner,” 2. 
exactly in the manner which in his paper in the Irith Tranf- 
actions he declare es to be page ou to have been the 
of this mode of writing, Mr. anagan’s method 
regarded, not only as ubitary, but as utterly vafounded 
Y 
