I’ve been down the ogham rabbithole – still there in fact -, but I am surfacing just a little to share an amused observation. In the course of my “Are ogham letters named for trees?” research I’ve discovered a side tunnel that joins up to my “tell me about dyeing in Ireland” research that I’m working on in advance of Strawberry Raid and for the Cuallacht Ruaimeoirí Lídiach dyeing collective. The letter for R, called Ruis, is this one
As I was saying in my last post, there was an effort, in period, to attribute all the letters as names of trees in Auraicept na nÉces (‘The Scholars’ Primer). Here Ruis is claimed to mean ‘elder’, but means ‘reddening’, derived from rondaid ‘to dye red’. I had already established to my satisfaction that the common Irish word used historically for red dye was ‘Ruam’, which David Stifter in Study in Red gives as “having reddening, reddener.” Stifter’s Study in Red is incredibly dense, and while I read with some fascination my brain doesn’t cope with etymology as well as it might, so I found myself just pulling out bits and pieces that merely caught my attention. For example, he says at one point that
“In Sanas Cormaic 1094 the word is thus glossed: ruam .i. luss dosber dath no cucht in faciem co mbi derg ‘ruam: a plant that gives colour or good appearance (?) to a face, so that it becomes red’.
I have many times come across references without reliable sources that madder was used by Irish women to redden complexion and fingernails, so I find this one interesting. He continues to say that Eugene O’Curry, in On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish (1873) described “the act of dyeing as a two-step process [..] First, a reddish-brown colour was effected with the twigs and brushwood of the alder tree (ruaim). This was the ground for further colours. According to O’Curry ‘in ancient Erinn’ a plant ‘called Rudh and Roidh was used for a ‘splendid crimson red.’ This plant was not known any more at his time.”
Alder is indeed an excellent mordant (the first stage of dyeing) it’s possible Rudh is madder, I need to look into that some more. It isn’t Elder, though, which is the reported “tree” name of the letter. In fact Alder is its own letter ᚃ Fern. Indeed of the confirmed tree names ᚁ Beithe (birch), ᚃ Fern (alder), ᚄ Sail (willow) and ᚇ Dair(oak) are all trees you can use to dye with.
Why am I talking about this? I’m just letting thoughts freewheel in a very unscholarly way, I started out looking to see if there really was a connection between ogham and trees – which if I had to pick a favourite, non person, thing in the world would probably be mine. I find many, but also find things like ᚈ Tinne – which is more and more being accepted as “bar of metal , ingot” which I associate with pewter casting – all the tree -which I could associate with turning and woodwork – ᚎ Straif -which appears to likely be sulphur, which is one of the three primes of alchemy and I associate it strongly with pigment making and alchemy – and now ᚏ Ruis, which I clearly associate with dyeing. All I need is an association with glass and I have my very own maker alphabet 🙂
I continue to poke at all things medieval ogham, so I have a few secondary sources to chase up
- Calder, George, Auraicept na nÉces. The Scholars’ Primer (Edinburgh, 1917).
- McManus, Damian, A Guide to Ogam (Maynooth, 1997).
- McManus, Damian, ‘Irish letter-names and their kennings’, Ériu 39 (1988), 127–168.
and I need to spend more time on this website https://ogham.celt.dias.ie
But I also now feel a need to cast skein shaped pewter tokens for Cuallacht Ruaimeoirí Lídiach and mark them all with Ruis.
Time traveling Órlaith 