167 



("Transactions E.I. A.," vol. i., Antiq., p. 3). The passage appears 

 to have found its way into the text from a modern source ; and the 

 charge of falsification extendeditself, with questionable justice, as it seems 

 to the writer, to the inscription itself. Added to this disaster at the out- 

 set of the inquiry, were the really great obstacles arising from the sin- 

 gularity of the names, and from the absence of any clue to the sequences 

 in which the writing ran, whether from top to bottom, from left to right, 

 or vice versa. It was not till our President undertook the investigation 

 in the character on the scientific principles applicable to cipher-writing 

 in general, that the subject again attracted a philosophic interest. His 

 results, arising on independent analysis and comparison, are under- 

 stood — for as yet the complete paper has not been published — to have 

 come out in substantial accordance with the old key ; and in a short 

 paper in our " Proceedings" (vol. iv., p. 358), he adopted and published 

 the " Ballymote Key," which, with some slight difference, had also 

 been given by Dr. 0' Donovan in his " Irish Grammar," and by other 

 earlier writers. 



h d t c q m g ng st r a o u e i 



b 1 f s n 



- XOb** • 



ea oi ui ia ae 



In the course of these investigations our President early identified 

 the group, 



reading Maqui, as the genitive form of Mac, a son — a conclusion which 

 was destined to receive corroboration of the most convincing kind from a 

 source not then known to be in existence. The writer here refers to those 

 monumental stones of Wales, which bear inscriptions in Roman characters 

 with accompanying Oghams. These Oghams, rendered according to the 

 key so furnished, have been found to yield results confirmatory not 

 only of the alphabetic force of the characters, but of their proper se- 

 quences and collocations, as indicated by the independent method of in- 

 vestigation employed by our President. The Welsh Oghams so tested have, 

 in fact, been found to resolve themselves into an echo of the correlative 

 Eoman writing. One of these inscribed Welsh pillars, which may be 

 justly called the Eosetta Stone of the investigation, is in effect both bi- 

 lingual and bi-literal. It commemorates in Latin words and Eoman 

 characters a person called Sagran, son of Cunotam, in the form (Lapis) 

 Sagrani Fili Cunotami. An Ogham on the edge of the same stone reads 

 Sagramni Maqi Cunotami. Here we have Maqui as the equivalent of the 

 Latin Filii; and must acknowledge the conclusion to be very cogent that 



