recognized by the Eisteđvod, the other two being bards and druids. Thus if I presented myself as a candidate for a degree without having any claims to be considered a bard or a druid, I should, in case I was not plucked by the presiding druid and his bardic assessors, assume the degree of 'ovyđ,' together with a Welsh proper name. In Welsh the equivalent of the Gaulish word Ogmios has always remained an appellative; but not so in Irish, where Ogma figures as the name of one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, as the gods of the Goidelic pantheon are collectively called in Irish. Nor is this all: he is signalized in Irish mythology as the inventor of writing, that is to say of the Ogam alphabet; for Ogma being much skilled in dialects and in poetry, it was he, we are told,[1] who invented the Ogam to provide signs for secret speech only known to the learned, and designed to be kept from the vulgar and poor of the nation. The motive attributed to Ogma is an invention of a comparatively late age, for there was nothing cryptic about the Ogam alphabet; but the allusion to Ogma's skill in poetry and dialects is important, especially as there was not only a mode of writing called Ogam, but also a kind of pedantic jargon which bore that name.[2] Now Irish legend will have it that the Ogam was so called from the name of Ogma, which is etymologically impossible; so we are left to conclude from the relation in which the words
- ↑ Mr. M. Atkinson (quoting from the Irish MS. called the Book of Ballymote), in the Kilkenny Journal of the Royal Hist. and Arch. Ass. of Ireland, for 1874, p. 207; see also my Lectures on W. Phil. p. 293.
- ↑ O'Donovan, Irish Grammar, p. xlviij; also the Rev. Celt. vii. 369-74, where the true nature of a large part of the Ogmic jargon has been explained for the first time by Thurneysen.
