Ogham (redirected from ogams)

ogham, ogam, or ogum (all: ŏg`əm, ō`əm), ancient Celtic alphabet of one of the Irish runic languages. It was used by the druids and abandoned after the first few centuries of the Christian era. The ogham runes remain only in gravestone inscriptions found mostly in W Ireland and also in England, Scotland, and the Shetland Islands. The origin of ogham is uncertain; it contained 25 letters formed of straight lines and may have been adapted from a sign language. A treatise on ogham, The Book of Ballymote (15 cent.), confirms that it was a secret, ritualistic language.

Bibliography

See R. A. Macalister, The Secret Languages of Ireland (1937).

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Ogham 

a phonetic writing system used by the Celts and Picts of the British Isles (see Figure 1). It is known from fourth-century inscriptions in Old Irish (Ireland, Scotland, Western Brittany, and the Isle of Man) and in Pictish (inscriptions from Scotland, the Shetland Islands, and the Orkney Islands, which have not yet been deciphered). Ogham was displaced from regular usage by the Latin alphabet but survived in Ireland as a cryptographic device until the 17th century.

Figure 1. Ogham system

The core of an ogham inscription was a line (which could also be the edge or corner of a stone slab or a wooden object) on which dots were marked, with groups of dots representing the vowel sounds; groups of lines leading to one or both sides of the vertical line indicated consonants. A letter consists of a combination of one to five identical lines or dots. Additional letters of a more complex shape were introduced into the ogham system at a later date. The origin of ogham is unknown.

REFERENCES

Ferguson, S. Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Edinburgh, 1887.
Macalister, R. A. S. Studies in Irish Epigraphy, vols. 1–3. London, 1897–1907.
Vendryes, J. “L’Écriture ogamique et ses origines.” Etudes celtiques, 1939, vol. 4.

A. B. DOLGOPOL’SKII