166 



The extended inscription is also given, so as to exclude the errors inci- 

 dent to perspective. 



Fig. 6. 

 Outer Edge. 



Inner Edge. 



Before proceeding farther in the consideration of these characters, it 

 may be interesting to those members of the Academy who have not 

 given special attention to the subject, that something should be said of 

 the nature of the Ogham writing, and of the existing means for its de- 

 ciphering. It was a species of cipher, in which straight strokes en- 

 graved on monumental stones, by their number and relation to a parti- 

 cular line, called the stem-line (generally formed by the edge of the 

 stone), represented the letters of an alphabet. Facility of engraving 

 with rude implements, rather than a desire for secrecy — for who would 

 desire to commemorate in signs not generally understood ? — may have 

 been the original motive for the use of this species of writing. The 

 value of the characters depending on the number of strokes, and these 

 numbers increasing in a progressive ratio in sets of five — that is, 

 five groups below, five above, five obliquely across, and five directly 

 across, or on the stem-line — it is obvious, that if purposes of secrecy or 

 curiosity were desired, the cipher might be made more or less abstruse 

 by varying the number of the strokes ; as by beginning with two or 

 more at the commencement of each series ; and a great number of ex- 

 amples of such cryptic Oghams may be seen in the tract on this subject 

 in the "Book of Ballymote." They are all, however, resolvable into 

 the original key-cipher, in which each set of five commences with a 

 single stroke ; and which, with the other more complex examples, and 

 certain arbitrary marks for vowel combinations, is also found in the 

 same depository. With this key, available for the last five hundred 

 years, we may be surprised to find the Ogham character still involved 

 in so much mystery. This may be, in some measure, accounted for by the 

 discredit brought on the subject by a paper in our own " Transactions," 

 at an early period in the history of the Academy, in which a supposed 

 passage from one of the Ossianic poems was adduced in elucidation of an 

 Ogham inscription existing on Callan Mountain, in the county of Clare 



