Mute Stones Speak: The Language Art of Ogham, the 'Irish Alphabet of Trees'

Dunloe Ogham Stones​ in Beaufort, County Kerry, Ireland, by Robert Lindsell, 2015​, Wikipedia Commons

​Sculpted diction. Mineralized utterances. Stony phonetics. Carved vowels. Enigmatic mark-making.
 
Why did I not know this form of ancient Irish writing called ogham?  
 
In Old Irish ogham was spelt 'ogam' and is pronounced oh-um or oɣəm.
 
"Ogam" might derive from the Irish "og-uaim," meaning “point-seam.” Ogham inscriptions begin with vertical marks made on a tall rectilinear stone starting at its outer edge [in Irish droim or faobhar] forming the “stemline” from which horizonal letters were then added above or below to complete the unfolding letter.
 
Ogham developed in Celtic Ireland and Britain in either the 1st or the 4th century AD [akin to but not related to Scandinavian runes; perhaps first written on perishable materials like wood], 
 
Some 400 stones containing ogham are still to be found in contemporary Ireland, in County Kerry, Cork and Waterford, and in Wales [in Pembrokeshire where bilingual Irish-Latin ogham stone writings are extant], Scotland, Isle of Man, Orkney and the Devon and Cornwall border in southwest England.  One ogham stone was just discovered last year in a garden in Coventry, England.
 
Irish ogham is related to Latin writing: “[Ogham is] [t]he earliest form of writing in Irish in which the Latin alphabet is adapted to twenty ‘letters’ [15 consonants and 5 vowels) made of straight lines and notches carved on the edge of a piece of stone or wood. Letters are divided into four categories of five sounds.” A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford University Press, 1998).
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ogham morphology

This pagan genealogy for ogham seems apt; the writing was a bardic craft. The preeminent  ogham scholar Damian McManus notes that the preparation of the Irish poet or file required learning one hundred and fifty varieties of ogham – fifty in each of the first three years of study. 

​Ogham  survived into the manuscript era in the 9th century, as evidence in this riveting sample from the manuscripts In Lebor Ogaim (The Ogam Tract) -- a scriptural tour de force. And a pictographic masterpiece, too.

​Obviously these Irish poet-scribes were visual artists, too, ogham represents an ancient cultural overlap between the arts of writing and picture-making – (and sculpture!).   
 
Further interest: click here for perusing a joint Ireland-UK digital research and archival web project on ogham based in Glasgow, and this 3-D ogham project here and those interested in a digital library for accessing works of Irish scribes ought to drop by here:  from your screen you can peruse in hi-res 450 digitized Irish manuscripts located all over the world.

​ [all images commons/public domain]