TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

Royal Society of Literature.

THE OGHAM-RUNES AND EL-MUSHAJJAR:

A STUDY.

BY RICHARD F. BURTON, M.R.A.S.

(Read January 22, 1879.)

PART I.

The Ogham-Runes.

IN treating this first portion of my subject, the Ogham-Runes, I have made free use of the materials collected by Dr. Charles Graves, Prof. John Rhys, and other students, ending it with my own work in the Orkney Islands.

The Ogham character, the "fair writing" of ancient Irish literature, is called the Bobel-loth, Bethluis or Bethluisnion, from its initial letters, like the Græco-Phoenician " Alphabeta," and the AraboHebrew "Abjad." It may briefly be described as formed by straight or curved strokes, of various lengths, disposed either perpendicularly or obliquely to an angle of the substance upon which the letters were incised, punched, or rubbed. In monuments supposed to be more modern, the letters were traced,

VOL. XII.

B

not on the edge, but upon the face of the recipient surface; the latter was originally wood, staves and tablets; then stone, rude or worked; and, lastly, metal, silver, and rarely iron. The place of the bevel was often taken by a real or an imaginary perpendicular, or horizontal, bisecting the shortest notches representing vowel-cuts; or, more generally, by a Fleasgh, stem-line, trunk-line, or Rune-Staff. According to the Rev. Charles Graves,1 "The continuous stemline along which the Ogham letters are ranged is termed the ridge (num); each short stroke, perpendicular or oblique to it, is called a twig (plea; in the plural flearga)." That authority also opines that the stem-line, as a rule or guide, like the Devanagari-Hindú, was borrowed from the Runic "Staf."

The "Tract on Oghams" and Irish grammatical treatises2 contain some eighty different modifications of the Ogham alphabet, while Wormius enumerates twelve varieties of the Runes proper-most of them mere freaks of fancy, like similar prelusions in the East. The following is the first on the list, and it is certainly that which derives most directly from the old Orient home.

"Paper on the Ogham Character."

Irish Academy, vol. iv, part 2, p. 360.

Proceedings of the Royal

"The "Tract" is in the "Book of Ballymote," written about the ninth century, and assuming its present form in the fourteenth. The treatise is the "Precepta Doctorum" (Upaicept or Uprichetna neigeas or n'eiger), the Primer (Precepts) of the Bards, composed in the ninth or tenth century, and found in the "Book of Lecan," a manuscript dating from A.D. 1417. It is "said to have been composed in the first century." (p. xxviii., John O'Donovan's Irish Grammar, Dublin, 1845.)

See "Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters explained,” &c., by Joseph Hammer. London, 1806.

114

q mz nz ft p aoue 1

ナキ手圭圭十事事

The number and the power of the letters are given, as above, by the author of the "Paper on Oghams. I am aware that this form in which the directing-line has been cut up to make steps is held by some scholars to be a "sort of artificial ladderOgham." Yet it is an undoubted revival of the most archaic type; and from it the transition is easy to the modification popularly known, the sixteenth figured in the "Tract on Oghams."

Here evidently the only thing needful was to make the stem strokes of the primitive alphabet continuous "Fleasgh."

Let us now compare the Ogham proper with what may be called "the Ogham-Runes"; the latter being opposed to Runogham or Secret Ogham in such phrases as Runogham na Fian-of the Fenians or ancient Irish militiamen. The "Ogham-Runes represent the three groups of letters (ätter) generally known as the Futhore, from the initial six.

5 O'Brien and O'Reilly (Dictionaries), translated Run by "Secret" Welsh, Rhin

(The letters may evidently be inverted with the twigs pointing upwards.)

דיי

The above specimen of the Ogham-Runes is quoted from Joh. G. Liljegren. In "Hermothena "7 we find the opinion that this "twig-Rune," corresponding with the "Ogham Craobh " (or virgular Ogham),8 composed of an upright stem and side branches, suggested the "stepped," "ladder" or primitive Ogham; and hence the perfect popular Ogham. This theory has by no means been generally accepted. Yet it well exemplifies the principle upon which the various Abecedaria were constructed—namely, that the symbol for any letter showed in the first instance its particular group amongst the three; and, secondly, the place which it held in that group. Goransson (Bautil, p. 232) figures an ancient monument on which are a few words written in these "OghamRunes" with the twigs (Kännestrecken), the remainder being in the common Runes.

Among the "class-Runes" supposed to have been developed from the "Futhorc" there is a vast variety of forms. We need only quote the variety called Hahal-Runes, whose resemblance is most striking to the "Ogham Craobh."

It is popularly asserted that the inventors, or rather the adapters of the Ogham, gave to its letters the names of trees or plants. So the Chinese "Runlära," p. 50.

Vol. v., p. 232.

See John O'Donovan's Irish Grammar, Introduction, pp. 34-47-"Craobh Ogham, i.e., Virgei Characteres.”

66

Radical," or key for Moh, a tree, is a plain cross † with two additional oblique strokes. General Vallancey ("Prospectus of a Dictionary," &c.), who makes this remark, seems to have held that the tree-form was adapted to the name, whereas the virgular shape named the letters. The Arabic El

Mushajjar or El-Shajari, the "branched" or the tree-like," certainly arose from the appearance of the letters.

In the original Runic Alphabet two letters are called after trees, the thorn and the birch; the latter I have shown' is like poplar (Pippal), the only term which spread through Europe deriving directly from the old Aryan home (Bhurja). To the thorn and the birch the more developed Anglo-Saxon alphabet added four: yew, sedge, oak, and ash. All the Irish letters are made to signify trees or plants ; but at least ten of them are not Irish terms. Amongst foreign words, curious to say, is the second letter of the Bethluis, L = luis = a quicken, or mountain ash; whilst the same is the case with the third letter n (nin, or nion, an ash) in Bethluisnin (Beth-luis-nion?). The latter term has suggested to some that in old Ogham the letter n stood third. But there is nothing in the Uraicept to support this theory. On the contrary, there are passages to show that the word nin was " occasionally taken in a general signification, and was used with reference to all the letters of the alphabet indifferently."

All the letters of the Bethluis are called Feada,

"See "Ultima Thule" (Nimmo and Co.) and "Etruscan Bologna."