Letters from the Trees

I’ve been putting this post of for an age because I’ve been reluctant to find out that a lot of what I thought was true about the subject would turn out to be Victorian fabrication, as this has been a far bigger element in my research in the last few years than I would like. As a kid I remember hearing that though the Irish had an incredibly strong Oral tradition, we did use a writing system, called Ogham, for short messages and inscriptions, and that that was associated with trees. I really wanted to believe that (the tree association, Ogham existing is absolute fact), so I’m coming to this area of research with a little trepidation.

Ogham is mythologically attributed to Ogma of the Tuatha de Danann. Being a fanciful child I was highly taken with a figure/demigod/god who was written about as having honey golden words, which swirled through the air and connected the ears like delicate shining chains. Of course such an entity would create a writing system, how could you not have written words? While the gift of the gab (and spectacular feats of memory) won out for recording poetry, lore and history, I still adore ogham, however prosaic the surviving inscriptions often are. The Lebor Gabála Érenn has a whole other complicated history involving scholars going to the Plain of Shinar to try to save the splintering of languages at the Tower of Babel, but I don’t find that one sticks in my memory nearly as well It does make me think about writing a short story occasionally though. I digress, again.

The alphabet started as one group of five vowels and three groups (called aicmí) of five consonants. The letters were made up of one to five lines that either branched off from, came just to, or slashed across a “line” or edge, usually the edge of a stone for surviving remnants, but likely (as in story) to have been used on sticks. As with most things in history the original alphabet was changed a bit over time, and the newest letters tend to be more complicated than the original twenty. I’ve poked the idea of variant alphabets and you wouldn’t believe the awesome stuff that has fallen out, but we’ll get back to that.

A system of writing symbols has to be taught, in the same way we teach children with pictures, songs, phonetic association and so on. The way it was done in old languages (including, but not restricted to, Irish, Saxon or Icelandic) was by the use of “kennings” – something figurative, an abstract bundle of ideas made concrete. (I ADORE this so much, it is absolutely how I think) These kennings (there are three variations I understand, and they’re called Bríatharogaim) explain the meaning of the names of the letter and we know most about them from two sources – The Book of Ballymote (which has a beautiful script hand as well) which in turn contains the Auraicept na n-Éces (roughly, a Primer for Scholars), and what is now known as In Lebor Ogaim (the Book of Oghams), referenced by the Auraicept.

This is f. 170r from the link above,  Leabhar Bhaile an Mhóta, RIA MS 23 P 12, 275 foll.),written in 1390 or 1391 in or near the town of Ballymote in Sligo This happens to be near where my cousins grew up, so the name sticks nicely in my head.

One thing I learned today is that strictly speaking Ogham is the form of the letters, but Beith-Luis-Nin is the equivalent word for Alphabet. Also, I am embarrassed to note, Alphabet comes from the first two letters of the Greek Alphabet, Alpha, Beta, which I totally should have noticed. Duh, me. The first letter in the alphabet notated with Ogham is Beith, the second Luis. I’m a bit confused about Nin, which is letter five, more on that another time, but you see the gist of it anyway. It starts BLFSN.. I find this mad in ways I really, really shouldn’t.

Each letter – called feda – was one in a family of five, the afore mentioned aicmí, singular aicme. Each of those families of letters were named for the first letter in that group, so (Aicme Beithe, Aicme hÚatha, Aicme Muine, Aicme Ailme, the Beithe or B group (BLSFN), the Úatha or H Group (HDTCQ), the Muine or M Group (M,G, NG, Z,R), and the Ailme Group, which are the vowels) in the first form of the alphabet. Modern letters used for convenience and the impression of sound, in Irish H is a weird one, but another topic for another day..

Okay, so what about these trees then? What seems to have happened is that some of the feda are named for trees and linked as such in the kenning. There is some disagreement as to whether than number is 5 or 8. A lot later in the Medieval period there was serious work to make the rest of the letters fit as trees as well through extensive glosses. (I will be fishing out more about this in another post) There have been numerous scholarly works based on that work that have become a branch of Ogham understanding referred to commonly as the (Celtic) Tree Alphabet and I happily will indulge myself with all of those later, but for now I will attempt to stick to my beginning.

It is absolutely certain that the very first letter, Beith, is Birch. We also have Sall (Willow), Fearn (Alder), Dair (Oak), Coll (Hazel), Ailm(Pine), Idad/Ibhar (Yew) and Onn(Ash) – but why? I think it’s much more likely that the alphabet is based on a sense of place and significance. It is absolutely certain that trees were a very, very important component of Irish life (other posts deal with aspects of that), but consider some of the other feda; Gort – which means a good field, Tinne which is a lump of metal, Úr which is earth. There are words that we just don’t really know for sure what they were, there are some that have been puzzled out because of the kennings and then there was the work to make all the words match a tree in some way.

So these kennings.. what’s that all about? I found this excellent blog (Ogmóracht) which has this to say

“In many cases the bríatharogaim are similar to the Old English, Norse, and Icelandic kennings (in the broad sense), poetic descriptions that use devices like metaphor and metonymy to stand in for the concept they describe³ e.g. grennir gunn-más ‘feeder of the war-gull (raven)’ for ‘warrior’. For an ogam example, forbbaid ambí ‘shroud of a lifeless one’ is for úr ‘earth’, the name of the 18th fid (letter). One can think of them somewhat like riddles or clues, e.g., ined erc ‘suitable place for cows’ for gort ‘field’ and trian roith ‘one of three pars of a wheel’ for tinne ‘metal bar”. Others are’, or as simply descriptive epithets, e.g., ardam dosae ‘most exalted tree’ for dair ‘oak’, name of the 7th fid.”

https://ogmoracht.com/2023/07/09/the-briatharogaim-keys-to-the-ogam-letter-names/

It is far later in the night than I intended to stay pursuing this topic, so I’m going to finish for now with just a little bit from Auraicept na hÉces

“This is their number: five Oghmic groups, i.e., five men for each group, and one up to five for each of them, that their signs may be distinguished. These are their signs: right of stem, left of stem, athwart of stem, through stem, about stem. Thus is a tree climbed, to wit, treading on the root of the tree first with thy right hand first and thy left hand after. Then with the stem, and against it and through it and about it.”

Calder, George, [1917]. Auraicept na n-Éces : the scholars’ primer ; being the texts of the Ogham tract from the Book of Ballymote and the Yellow Book of Lecan, and the text of the Trefhocul from the Book of Leinster