e bards in their transcription, compilation, or
reformation of the old epics.

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. The ancient bard, who, in the
Tan-bo-Cooalney, describes the slaughter of Cailitin and his sons by
Cuculain, states that there was an inscription to that effect, written
in Ogham, upon the stone over their tomb, beginning thus--"Take
notice"--evidently intended for all to read. The tomb, by the way, was a
rath--again showing the ethnic character of the alphabet.

In the Annals of the Four Masters, at the date 1499 B.C., we read these
words:--

"THE FLEET OF THE SONS OF MILITH CAME TO IRELAND TO TAKE IT FROM THE
TUATHA DE DANAN," i.e., the gods of the ethnic Irish.

Without pausing to enquire into the reasonableness of the date, it will
suffice now to state that at this point the bardic history of Ireland
cleaves asunder into two great divisions--the mythological or divine on
the one hand, and the histo