OG(H)AM

Og(h)am of the Month: February 2023

Since some of the OG(H)AM team will be heading Stateside in early March to share our findings with colleagues in Boston, it seems timely to feature an Ogam of the Month with a US connection. The manuscript now known as ‘Dunnington 1’, bequeathed to the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 2017 by the late Professor Edgar Slotkin of the University of Cincinnati, was one of two Irish manuscripts purchased by Mr Michael Dunnington in Lexington, Kentucky during the early 1980s. The volume, which had come into the possession of the Holy Cross Fathers of Cincinnati, consists of a collection of Irish tales and poems written in the nineteenth century, mainly by a scribe named ‘Uilliam Breathnach’, who records the date 1813 in two places and gives his place of writing as County Waterford. Two other colophons in Dunnington MS 1 mention a ‘Uilliam Ó Eichiaruinn’ (‘Ó hEachthigheirn’ or ‘Hearne’), possibly the owner of the book, whose signature appears at the end of the manuscript alongside several doodles, including some ogam script near the centre of the final page:

Slotkin made only a brief note about this ogam in his catalogue description of Dunnington MS 1, stating that ‘The name William Hearne appears […] on the last page of the manuscript in both English and in ogam’. Upon closer inspection, however, the ogam does not appear to be a transcription of Hearne’s name: rather, the first ten symbols should probably be transcribed as PATTMULLER. These are followed by an eleventh symbol of doubtful value, shaped a little bit like a lozenge:

The significance of this little scrap of ogam script is uncertain: could it be the name of someone once associated with or in possession of the manuscript, or is it merely more doodling on the part of the scribe? For now this remains a mystery, but the appearance of ogam in this context offers yet another illustration of the longevity and popularity of the writing system in Irish manuscript culture of the modern period.