Ogham
Ogham: those fascinating standing stones with grooves cut into them. That strange ‘alphabet’ of lines going this way and that. But how did they use it in transportable documents - this thought has been slumbering in the compost of my mind for a quarter of a century.
Twenty-five years ago I was working on a Masters in Visual Communication at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. My research showed how Roman handwriting came into Ireland at about the same time as Saint Patrick. I discovered that within a few hundred years two scripts had been developed from this handwriting (Half Uncial for writing Latin and Irish Minuscule for writing the Irish language) and that the orthography for the Irish language was more similar than might be expected all over the country, given the relatively few centuries which had elapsed: ‘orthography’ seems to relate to things like grammar, spelling and all that. I read that the Irish had to learn Latin to become members of the new Christian religion and that we invented word spacing to make it all that bit easier: (there was a suggestion, almost un-breathed, that we had already had a writing system). Like most of us, I had learned at school that the Irish were illiterate until civilised by Christianity and that our tradition was purely oral.
Ogham stones seem to be boundary markers with simple inscriptions on them such as personal names. Ogham is said to be written “as a tree is climbed” i.e. from the bottom up. A brief search of the internet will give you versions of the Ogham alphabet as well as the traditional understanding that each letter is connected with a tree. The letters are written across a vertical edge or central line and appear occasionally in manuscripts as a deliberately archaic reference. The alphabet of five lines might have been a secret writing which could be communicated silently with the fingers using a walking stick as the central line - my Dad told me that some sixty years ago.
I have used Ogham in my own calligraphic artwork and have found it to be unwieldy to write on paper because of the space taken up by those diagonal lines. How was Ogham used for the writing of less robust documents than those delightful stones? That is the thought which has occupied a corner of my mind for years.
While giving a calligraphy workshop in the National Heritage Park in Wexford a few years ago I looked around that inspirational place and began to wonder in a more active way - what did they use to write everyday Ogham. Not quite for shopping lists, but for those necessary documents dealing with ownership or messages to be carried over distances.
Studying for a BA in Calligraphy and Bookbinding in London some thirty years ago I had discovered the vast variety of writings and documents which exist for messages and legal dealings - and for stories. Cuneiform on clay tablets; Egyptian on papyrus and carved in stone; Roman on scraps of broken pot and on wax, to mention just two surfaces; and the South American quipu made of twiddled, knotted and woven bits of wool so suitable for transporting on the body over vast areas of mountainous terrain. I began my serious consideration of an everyday Ogham script with a very open mind.
As so often happens, the solution arrived fully formed in the middle of the night. My mental detritus had fed that germ of a thought until it hatched and flew. Perhaps I have conjured up a mythical beast but perhaps I have rediscovered something unseen for some two millennia.
If “letters are things and not pictures of things” as type designer Eric Gill said (reminding us that a child’s first wonky A actually is an A unlike their wobbly drawing of a face which is a picture of a face) then maybe Ogham is different in that those lines may be representations of individual trees to be used only when using the trees themselves is impossible - such as when cut into a stone. So how might actual trees be used as a writing system?
This is my thought - documents could be woven using actual bits of twig for each letter with a bit of extra weaving between the words; and to be woven “as a tree is climbed” by starting with the D of Dear Mary and continuing for as long as necessary. The documents would be light, easily transported, easily read by those who knew their trees inside-out (the Druids perhaps), and invisible to the uninitiated who would see them only as peculiar decorations. Might their memory still exist in that traditional woven belt, the ‘Crios’? There was only one person who could help me now: I contacted Terry the Weaver (www.terrytheweaver.ie).
Terry has made beautiful artworks by weaving with twigs but the one he made for me is not art - though it is beautiful. This reads “for Reiltin Murphy by Terry the Weaver”. The trees used are F=Alder, O=Gorse (I cannot blame Terry for refusing to weave with fresh prickly Gorse which he substituted with Dogwood), R=Elder, E=Aspen, I=Yew, L=Rowan, T=Holly, N=Ash, B=Birch, Y=Green Willow, M=Honeysuckle, U=Heather, P=Dogwood, H=Hawthorn, W=Willow, A=Pine, V=Maple. Terry used the trees to hand and any historically incorrect usage may be overlooked - this is an experiment.
I was interested to get Terry’s insight into this experiment in archaeology (or lunacy) and I was pleased to hear that the word spacing assists with stability so it is useful from the weaving point of view as well as practical for legibility. One obvious thing is that these lovely twigs are too big for any serious document: this woven area, the text, measures 37cm.
I then began to compare an imagined preparation for the woven Ogham with the known preparations for the writing of a medieval book and realised that both involved the skills of a lot of people and a lot of time.
Consider this: for the vellum of a book, a big enough herd of cattle is needed for enough bull calves’ skins to be turned into vellum by someone else, and to be finely prepared by another skilled process. Someone needs to gather feathers for quills - remember that only one wing is usable for right-handed people - and then they must be prepared for writing so that each scribe had a large number, someone described preparing sixty for a day’s writing to avoid stopping to recut the writing edge. For ink someone had to gather oak galls, someone else had to turn them into ink. Colours had to be collected and ground - for blue someone had to walk to Afghanistan to collect lapis lazuli. You get the picture, it was a team effort.
The woven Ogham needs a lot of thread which Terry suggests might be spun from wool, linen, or nettles gathered by someone, prepared and spun by someone else maybe. Twigs, I think, would have to be gathered in winter from bare trees and when the sap is low; they would need to be stored until completely dry to avoid shrinkage after weaving. Perhaps only strips of bark was used so it could all be quite tiny and work-a-day. The trees do not all grow in the same place so a team of collectors would be needed. Once the twigs are prepared they would be bundled ready for use - just as any compositor can reach unerringly for any letter so, no doubt, there was a system of setting out the twigs for ease and speed of usage. A skilled weaver would then ‘write’ the ‘document’.
How will we ever know if this is how everyday Ogham was written? Only traces in the archaeological record can prove it. A collection of bits of twig which didn’t grow in that place, maybe, or a reference in a Roman’s writing?
We may never know if this lovely piece of Terry’s weaving is something unseen for two thousand years - or something never seen before. At worst it is a fun new writing system. At best I have stumbled upon a forgotten script.
Reiltin Murphy and Terry the Weaver September 2023.