The full force of the concurrent authority of the bardic literature
to the above effect can only be felt by one who has read that
literature with care. He will find in all the epics no trace of
original invention, but always a studied and conscientious
following of authority. This being so, he will conclude that the
universal ascription of Ogham, and Ogham only, to the ethnic times,
arises solely from the fact that such was the alphabet then
employed.
If letters were unknown in those times, the example of Homer shows
how unlikely the later poets would have been to outrage so
violently the whole spirit of the heroic literature. If rounded
letters were then used, why the universal ascription of the late
invented Ogham which, as we know from the cemeteries and other
sources, was unpopular in the Christian age.
Cryptic, too, it was not. The very passages quoted in Hermathena
to support this opinion, so far from doing so prove actually the
reverse. When Cuculain came down into Meath on his first [Note:
Vol. I., page 155.] foray, he found, on the lawn of the Dun of the
sons of Nectan, a pillar stone with this inscription in Ogham--"Let
no one pass without an offer of a challenge of single combat." The
inscription was, of course, intended for all to read. Should there
be any bardic passage in which Ogham inscriptions are alluded to as
if an obscure form of writing, the natural explanation is, that
this kind of writing was passing or had passed into desuetude at
the time that particular passage was composed; but I have never met
with any such.
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