many notches as were necessary that letters were formed. After that, on a 
slate stone ; that is, letters were engraved on it with a steel pencil or a flint.” 
The lettered stone was called coelvain. 
The first ten letters were the following* : — 
a, p, c, e, t, i, 1, r, o, s, called Abcedilros. 
In the second age, sixteen letters were arranged, whence literature became 
more clear.f 
In the third age, there were eighteen letters for the improvement of 
literature ; in the fourth age, twenty-four. 
According to Ctesar, the Druids in their public and private accounts used 
Greek letters ; but there were some things, such, probably, as the name of 
God, which they did not deem it lawful to commit to writing. 
“ The three primary letters,” and “ the principal secret of the Bards,” 
reminds of the history of Sanchimiathon , who records the fact that Isiris, 
the inventor of the three letters, the brother of Chna (Canaan), who is called 
the first Phoenician, was instructed in certain mysteries by the prophets who 
superintended the mysteries and taught the initiated. 
I will add the passage in the Appendix for the information of those who 
can compare the account with the worship of Demeter as Eleusis, of the 
Cabeiri, and of Bacchus. Was the same secret worship common to these 
initiated ones, and to the Druids ? and have we to look for a Phoenician 
origin for the religion ? 
Whatever may be the answer to these questions, I think it can scarcely be 
denied that all this speculation about the rise of letters looks back to an 
early period of the world’s history. 
Cadmus is said to have introduced into Greece, from Phoenicia, an alphabet 
of sixteen letters, so that the “ letters ” may after all have been imported 
into both countries from the same quarter. 
In order to explain the religious system of Bardism, it is necessary to 
recur to their three different circles. Ceugant, then, is to them the infinite 
expanse which symbolizes with the to a-mipov of Pythagoras, “an undefined 
and infinite something” in which were found the points or monads, the apxaai, 
the beginning of all things.^ 
It seems to produce in the disciples of Bardism a sense not only of awe, 
but of something akin to the revulsion of feeling that one experiences in 
suddenly being placed on the brink of a precipice. “ God only can endure 
to traverse the circle of Ceugant ” (p. 233), and in attempting to do this and 
to become gods the first created mortals fell into Annwn as the just punish- 
ment of their pride. 
They were created in the circle of Cxoyn'Oyd (p. 259), that is, of white or 
happy life, “ thoroughly good” (p. 253), for “ where God exists in every atom 
* Irenaeus says (“Ad. Haer.” 2, 41), “The old and first letters of the 
Hebrews which are also called sacerdotal are in number ten, but everything 
is expressed in writing by means of fifteen.” — Kenrick’s Phoenicia , p. 162. 
t “ The primitive Greek alphabet is attested by many authorities to have 
consisted of only 16 letters, which have been thus enumerated : — 
a/3ydeiK\p.vo7rp(TTV 
and these are called Phoenician letters.” — Kenrick’s Phoenicia, p. 161. 
“ Quippe fama est, Cadmum, classe Phoenicium rectum, rudibus adhuc 
Grsecorum populis artis ejus auctorem fuisse temporibus Trojanis memoravit 
xvi. litterarum formas.” — Corn. Tacit. Ann., lib. xi. 16. 
X Smith’s Did. 
