We give two illustrations of Ogham writing.  The pillar-stone is from the collection of the Royal Irish Academy.  It is about four and a-half feet high, and averages eleven inches across.  It was found, with three others similarly inscribed, built into the walls of a dwelling-house in the county Kerry, to which it is believed they had been removed from the interior of a neighbouring rath.  The bilingual Ogham was found at St. Dogmael’s, near Cardiganshire.  The Ogham alphabet is called beithluisnion, from the name of its two first letters, beith, which signifies a birch-tree, and luis, the mountain-ash.  If this kind of writing had been introduced in Christian times, it is quite unlikely that such names would have been chosen.  They are manifestly referable to a time when a tree had some significance beyond the useful or the ornamental.  It has been supposed that the names of the letters were given to the trees, and not the names of the trees to the letters.  It is at least certain that the names of the trees and the letters coincide, and that the trees are all indigenous to Ireland.  The names of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet are also significant, but appear to be chosen indiscriminately, while there is a manifest and evidently arbitrary selection in the Celtic appellations.  The number of letters also indicate antiquity.  The ancient Irish alphabet had but sixteen characters, thus numerically corresponding with the alphabet brought into Greece by Cadmus.  This number was gradually increased with the introduction of the Roman form, and the arrangement was also altered to harmonize with it.  The Ogham alphabet consists of lines, which represent letters.  They are arranged in an arbitrary manner to the right or left of a stemline, or on the edge of the material on which they are traced.  Even the names of those letters, fleasg (a tree), seem an indication of their origin.  A cross has been found, sculptured more or less rudely, upon many of these ancient monuments; and this has been supposed by some antiquarians to indicate their Christian origin.  Doubtless the practice of erecting pillar-stones, and writing Oghams thereon, was continued after the introduction of Christianity; but this by no means indicates their origin.  Like many other pagan monuments, they may have been consecrated by having the sign of the cross engraven on them hundreds of years after their erection.

During the few months which have elapsed between the appearance of the first edition and the preparation of the second edition, my attention has been called to this portion of the history by four or five eminent members of the Royal Irish Academy, who express their regret that I should appear to have adopted, or at least favoured, Mr. D’Alton’s view of the Christian origin of the round towers.  I cannot but feel gratified at the interest which they manifested, and not less so at their kind anxiety that my own views should accord with those of the majority.