Even if an ogham rosetta could be discovered, they would still have to try and translate the text back into oral pictish, difficult unless it is accepted that the way to understand it is via p-celtic patterns. From Wordnik.com. [Pictish female names] Reference
The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic). From Wordnik.com. [Ulysses] Reference
(Woden's last words to Balder are famous); the riding round the pyre; the eulogium; the piling of the barrow, which sometimes took whole days, as the size of many existing grass mounds assure us; the funeral feast, where an immense vat of ale or mead is drunk in honor of the dead; the epitaph, like an ogham, set up on a stone over the barrow. From Wordnik.com. [The Danish History, Books I-IX] Reference
It's fair to say that no sample of written Pictish that we can read has survived, although as we still can't decipher the symbol stones satisfactorily we can't say whether the symbols, and/or the ogham inscriptions that also haven't been deciphered, represent a form of written Pictish, perhaps a limited sub-set of the language used for particular purposes. From Wordnik.com. [Pictish female names] Reference
(Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic). From Wordnik.com. [Ulysses] Reference
In the exercise of this they made use of wands of yew, upon which they wrote in a secret character called ogham. From Wordnik.com. [The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 5: Diocese-Fathers of Mercy] Reference
When a king died, his people raised his ferta, set up his stone, and engraved upon it, at least in later times, his name in ogham. From Wordnik.com. [Early Bardic Literature, Ireland.] Reference
The language of the ogham stones is in fact centuries older than that of the very oldest vellums, and agrees to a large extent to what has been found of the old Gaulish linguistic monuments. From Wordnik.com. [The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent] Reference
Early Irish literature and the sagas relating to the pre-Christian period of Irish history abound with references to ogham writing, which was almost certainly of pagan origin, and which continued to be employed up to the Christianization of the island. From Wordnik.com. [The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent] Reference
This ogham script, as it is called, consists of lines, straight or slanting, long or short, drawn either over, under, or through a given straight line, which straight line is in lapidary inscriptions usually formed by the angular edge of a rectangular upright stone. From Wordnik.com. [The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent] Reference
They might even refer to the ogham wands on which the first words of their tasks and the opening lines of poems were cut; and it is likely that, being new to these things, they would talk of them to a youngster, and, thinking that his wits could be no better than their own, they might have explained to him how ogham was written. From Wordnik.com. [Irish Fairy Tales] Reference
Christopher Culver has a post with some nice resources for those who love Old Irish (and it's one of those things, like Laphroaig, that you either love or hate): The Voyage of Bran and Aided Froích ('The Death of Fróech'), both in Gaelic and English, a timeline showing the development from ogham to Modern Irish and Scots Gaelic using the word for 'daughter' as an example, and a photographically reproduced text of Kuno Meyer's 1909 Irish Metrics. From Wordnik.com. [languagehat.com: OLD IRISH RESOURCES.] Reference
I simply think that these two neighbouring cultures are historically, artistically and religiously linked in the early post-Roman era - not the same, just linked - and therefore their languages are far more likely to be associated with one another, than with Q-Celtic Irish language the language usually communicated in ogham and used by Columba, who of course needed a translator with him when visiting Bredei in the Moray Firth as late as the 570s, long after the Irish had established eastern Dal Riata in Argyle. From Wordnik.com. [Pictish female names] Reference
A couple of hundred inscribed ogham stones still exist, mostly in the south-west of Ireland, but they are to be found sporadically wherever the Irish Celt planted his colonies in Scotland, Wales, Devonshire, and even further East. From Wordnik.com. [The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 8: Infamy-Lapparent] Reference
On a road again the learned men of Leinster, each with an idea in his head that would discomfit a northern ollav and make a southern one gape and fidget, would be marching solemnly, each by a horse that was piled high on the back and widely at the sides with clean-peeled willow or oaken wands, that were carved from the top to the bottom with the ogham signs; the first lines of poems (for it was an offence against wisdom to commit more than initial lines to writing), the names and dates of kings, the procession of laws of Tara and of the sub-kingdoms, the names of places and their meanings. From Wordnik.com. [Irish Fairy Tales] Reference
Letter N in ogham. From Wordnik.com. [How to make a magic wand 101.] Reference
GMTA amandakat nd ogham. From Wordnik.com. [i battle budy - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?] Reference
At head and at foot stands an ogham-stone. From Wordnik.com. [The Four Winds of Eirinn] Reference
Also, many words on Mr. Crowley's list are used almost exclusively in an Irish or Scottish setting: asthore, cateran, colleen, claymore, gallowglass, kern, macushla, mavourneen, ogham, pibroch, spalpeen. From Wordnik.com. [VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol II No 4] Reference
LearnThatWord and the Open Dictionary of English are programs by LearnThat Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit.
Questions? Feedback? We want to hear from you!
Email us
or click here for instant support.
Copyright © 2005 and after - LearnThat Foundation. Patents pending.

