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Ogham is writing liberated from the fixed forms of the alphabet. It allows the human artifice of writing to reclaim something of the spontaneity of nature.
From the time of the Scholars’ Primer a certain ambiguity was felt to apply to the Ogham. Were the letter names the names of the scholars who had created it, or were they the names of trees? Some claimed the former, while others (says the Primer) “say that it is not from men at all that the Ogham vowels are named in Gaelic but from trees…” Moreover, the fact that ‘fid‘ means both letter and tree, meant that a similar ambiguity applied to the ‘woods‘ themselves: “As to fedha, wood vowels…two kinds are reckoned of them, to wit, artificial tree and natural tree. Artificial tree, i.e. the tree of the Ogham; and natural tree, the tree of the forest”. (Although these statements apply specifically to the vowels, much the same thing can be taken as applying to the consonants, too). It was also claimed for the Ogham that it was a more advanced conception than the alphabets that preceded it, and I believe that the following indicates that this is indeed the case.
Ogham restores the flow interrupted by the analytical process leading to the creation of alphabets.
As Damian McManus in his ‘Guide to Ogam’ points out, the alphabetic principle is ‘not an invention in itself’ but the end result of a prolonged analytical process whereby language was reduced first to individual words isolated from the flow of speech, then to the syllabic components of those words, then to the component sounds of the syllables. First words, then syllables, then the individual sounds, came to be designated by a diminishing series of agreed signs.
The Ogham, far from being a simple and primitive device, represents a further step along this road. Behind it lies an alphabet, generally assumed by scholars to be the Latin alphabet, although Greek and Runic alphabets have also been proposed. But it takes the signs or letters of that alphabet and reduces them further by making their form irrelevant. We are left with marks, the significance of which lies not in their shape or form, but rather in their relative position, and in their number: the relative position and number of the marks identifying the sound, in any given case, by reference to an agreed sequence that lies in the background.
“The characters of the Ogam signary are not alphabetic graphemes;” says McManus, they are integral parts of a linear code…clearly unconnected in its origin with alphabetic writing.”
The marks made “right of, left of, athwart, across and around the stem” serve as positional markers that refer to a fixed but unmanifest order of sounds, like a musical scale apprehended through a melody. The fragmented and static nature of the alphabet is replaced by something more akin to the pulse and flow of the hands of a drummer expressed in graphic form.
The fragmented alphabet is exchanged for a signary that can also be compared to the organic growth of plants. In this sense the Ogham is most definitely a tree alphabet (and “Ogam is climbed like a tree” says the Scholars’ Primer) even if not all the letter names were originally the names of trees.
Once again, the complex multiple signary of the alphabet dissolves to give way to a system that abandons form in favour of position relative to the stem or line of expression. The characters can take ANY form, potentially, because it is not their form but their number and position that matters. This leaves the dimension of form free to be employed aesthetically, imaginatively, expressively. A calligrapher, of course, can make imaginative use of the alphabet, but is bound by the need to keep the form of the letters recognisable. This does not apply to the Ogham.
Once it is grasped that orientation and number are the governing factors, rather than the specific form or appearance of the marks, then the writing process is allowed to imitate the creative diversity of form within nature. I have tried to give some expression to some small aspect of this in the ‘cursive Ogham’ illustrations that I’ve posted in this tribe’s album.
This creative potential of the Ogham is already adumbrated in the variety of forms set out in the Book of Ballymote, a variety sometimes dismissed by desiccated scholars as a puerile exercise in doodling. But the full creative potential of the Ogham has not, it seems to me, as yet been clearly realised or fully exploited.
From the time of the Scholars’ Primer a certain ambiguity was felt to apply to the Ogham. Were the letter names the names of the scholars who had created it, or were they the names of trees? Some claimed the former, while others (says the Primer) “say that it is not from men at all that the Ogham vowels are named in Gaelic but from trees…” Moreover, the fact that ‘fid‘ means both letter and tree, meant that a similar ambiguity applied to the ‘woods‘ themselves: “As to fedha, wood vowels…two kinds are reckoned of them, to wit, artificial tree and natural tree. Artificial tree, i.e. the tree of the Ogham; and natural tree, the tree of the forest”. (Although these statements apply specifically to the vowels, much the same thing can be taken as applying to the consonants, too). It was also claimed for the Ogham that it was a more advanced conception than the alphabets that preceded it, and I believe that the following indicates that this is indeed the case.
Ogham restores the flow interrupted by the analytical process leading to the creation of alphabets.
As Damian McManus in his ‘Guide to Ogam’ points out, the alphabetic principle is ‘not an invention in itself’ but the end result of a prolonged analytical process whereby language was reduced first to individual words isolated from the flow of speech, then to the syllabic components of those words, then to the component sounds of the syllables. First words, then syllables, then the individual sounds, came to be designated by a diminishing series of agreed signs.
The Ogham, far from being a simple and primitive device, represents a further step along this road. Behind it lies an alphabet, generally assumed by scholars to be the Latin alphabet, although Greek and Runic alphabets have also been proposed. But it takes the signs or letters of that alphabet and reduces them further by making their form irrelevant. We are left with marks, the significance of which lies not in their shape or form, but rather in their relative position, and in their number: the relative position and number of the marks identifying the sound, in any given case, by reference to an agreed sequence that lies in the background.
“The characters of the Ogam signary are not alphabetic graphemes;” says McManus, they are integral parts of a linear code…clearly unconnected in its origin with alphabetic writing.”
The marks made “right of, left of, athwart, across and around the stem” serve as positional markers that refer to a fixed but unmanifest order of sounds, like a musical scale apprehended through a melody. The fragmented and static nature of the alphabet is replaced by something more akin to the pulse and flow of the hands of a drummer expressed in graphic form.
The fragmented alphabet is exchanged for a signary that can also be compared to the organic growth of plants. In this sense the Ogham is most definitely a tree alphabet (and “Ogam is climbed like a tree” says the Scholars’ Primer) even if not all the letter names were originally the names of trees.
Once again, the complex multiple signary of the alphabet dissolves to give way to a system that abandons form in favour of position relative to the stem or line of expression. The characters can take ANY form, potentially, because it is not their form but their number and position that matters. This leaves the dimension of form free to be employed aesthetically, imaginatively, expressively. A calligrapher, of course, can make imaginative use of the alphabet, but is bound by the need to keep the form of the letters recognisable. This does not apply to the Ogham.
Once it is grasped that orientation and number are the governing factors, rather than the specific form or appearance of the marks, then the writing process is allowed to imitate the creative diversity of form within nature. I have tried to give some expression to some small aspect of this in the ‘cursive Ogham’ illustrations that I’ve posted in this tribe’s album.
This creative potential of the Ogham is already adumbrated in the variety of forms set out in the Book of Ballymote, a variety sometimes dismissed by desiccated scholars as a puerile exercise in doodling. But the full creative potential of the Ogham has not, it seems to me, as yet been clearly realised or fully exploited.
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