| The Ogham Inscriptions
Ogham is believed to have been invented
in Southern Ireland after the arrival of Christianity
and to have been inspired by the Roman alphabet. The
reason for this is that ogham, like Latin is an alphabetic
script. The suggestion therefore is that ogham came
into Scotland from Ireland though it is a fact that
the Scottish oghams appear to be in Pictish, rather
than in Gaelic or Latin. Many of the known Scottish
oghams include what are clearly personal names and several
other words which seem to be from Irish and Norse.
There
are differences from Irish ogham in that the Picts
seemed to prefer inscribing ogham on lines across
the face of the relevant stones where the Irish
ogham always appears on the edge.
(right)The Brandsbutt Stone, Aberdeenshire. In
fact only two Pictish stones have ogham on the
edge. Additionally a few instances of ogham have
been found on objects such as knife handles and
spindle whorls. Most scholars date the Pictish
ogham from the fifth to the eighth centuries. |
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Although ogham is considerably more
widespread in Ireland than in Scotland it is strange
that most of the Scottish examples come from the East
Coast when one would expect at least some of them to
be on the West Coast if the script came into Pictland
via the Scots of Dalriada.
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(Far
left)The Newton Stone ogham.
(left) The, as yet, undeciphered
Newton Stone script.
On the Newton Stone ogham appears
along with another alphabet but this has as yet
defied all attempts to decipher it, various suggestions
having it as a fifth century Continental script
and even that the inscription is in Sanskrit or
Phoenician! The Newton stone ogham contains the
name Eddarnon which some commentators suggest
might be Adomnan. |
Many of the Irish oghams have been
translated but we still await our first definitive interpretation
of a Pictish ogham.
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