Ogam, Ogma and Ogmios

By David Stifter, OG(H)AM’s Irish Principal Investigator

In an earlier blog post in February 2023, I discussed various etymologies that have been proposed for the word ogam. In this post, I will expand on this matter and look at the connections that the name of the Irish script has with the names of mythological figures in several Celtic literary and religious traditions. 

The name of the ogam script recalls that of the Irish mythological figure Ogma (McManus 1991: 150–152). He figures prominently in the Middle Irish tale Cath Maige Tuired ‘The Battle of Moytura’ as a character of extraordinary strength who belongs to the mythological race of the Túatha Dé. Although Ogma is not linked with the art of writing in medieval Irish narrative literature, in Lebor Ogaim ‘The Book of Ogam’, a medieval tract about varieties of the script, he is called ‘a man very skilled in speech and in poetry’ (Ogma didiu, fer roeolach a mberla ⁊ a filidecht). It goes on to say that is e rainic int ogam. Calder (1917: 272–273) translates this as “he invented the Ogham”, but the verb ro·ic, which is here seemingly instantiated by its preterite rainic, literally means ‘to arrive at’ or ‘to succeed in reaching’. The text rather has to be read (or written) is é ’r·ánaic in n-ogam, elided for is é ar·ánaic in n-ogam ‘he invented ogam’, featuring the related, but separate verb ar·ic ‘to come upon; contrive; devise, invent’. This is further borne out by the fact that the tract then goes on to credit Ogma with the creation of ogam as a means of communication that sets learned men apart from the uneducated. This statement features airec, the verbal noun of ar·ic:

Cuis airic derbad a intlechta ⁊ co mbeth in bescna-sa ic lucht in eolais fo leth, sech lucht na tirdachta ⁊ na buicnechta.” 

‘The cause of its invention, as a proof of his ingenuity, and that this speech should belong to the learned apart, to the exclusion of rustics and herdsmen.’ (Calder 1917: 272–273) 

The same tract calls Ogma the father of the ogam script, and his knife or hand its mother, and it offers an Isidorian etymology of the word:  

Ogam o Ogma suo inuentore primo ria sunn quidem; iar ret, immorro, ogum og-uaim .i. og-uaim, doberait na filid forsin filideacht trid, ar is fri fedaib toimsither Gædelg icna filedaib: athair ogaim Ogma, mathair ogaim lám no scian Ogma. (Calder 1917: 272) 

‘Ogam [comes] from Ogma, its first inventor in respect to its sound, in any case; moreover, according to content matter, ogum [is] og-uaim ‘perfect stitching/alliteration’, which the poets applied to poetry through it, for Gaelic is measured by the poets by letters; the father of ogam is Ogma, the mother of ogam is the hand or knife of Ogma.’ 

Lebor Ogaim may have been written in the Old Irish period, i.e. in the 8^th or 9^th centuries, but its earliest manuscript witness is from the 14^th century. Although its precise date is therefore not known, it illustrates that by its time a connection was made between the mythical figure of Ogma and the writing system, despite the fact that it cannot be proven that there was any actual causal connection between the two. 

The name of the mythological figure is only attested in the form Ogma in sources from the Middle Irish and younger periods. The name was probably *Ogmae in Old Irish and would have been inflected as a i̭o-stem, continuing the preform *ogmii̭o-, an adjectival formation with the suffix *-(i)i̭o- from Proto-Celtic (PC) *ogmo- / Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *h₂og̑mo-. In view of my previous blog about the etymology of ogam, *Ogmae would mean something like ‘being associated with / belonging to a track, line, or groove’. I will not enter speculations what exactly this refers to, but I want to refer to a suggestion made by Katherine Forsyth that Common Celtic *ogmo- may have been a word for ‘writing’. 

The name of Ogma is reminiscent of that of the Gaulish mythological figure Ogmios (Ὄγμιος), mentioned by the 2^nd-century Greek author Lucian of Samosata as an old, sun-tanned psychopompos, i.e. a figure who leads the souls of dead men into Hades (for a detailed discussion of Ogmios, see Hofeneder 2006; 2011: 82‒96; Guyonvarc’h 1960). The name is also found as that of an underworldly figure on lead curse-tablets from Bregenz (Austria; Egger 1943). The alleged female version of the name Ogmia on a 4^th-century beaker from Richborough (Kent) that has been making its round in scholarship (e.g., Birkhan 1997: 568; Carey 2014: 3), does not exist. The excavator Bushe-Fox (1932: 135) read the inscription upside-down; instead it rather says Vicaṇo (RIB 2499.4).

The name, and the figure, of Ogmios has furthermore been compared with a minor figure in Welsh mythology, a son of the ‘goddess’ Dôn and brother to the better-known figures Gwydion, Amaethon, Gofannon and Arianrhod (I am grateful for the advice of Barry Lewis about the following). This was first suggested by John Rhys (1908: 62). Very little is known about this figure. He is commonly referred to as Eufydd fab Dôn; Eufydd could be the regular Welsh cognate of Ogmios. The name occurs in a number of medieval Welsh texts, for instance in the Book of Taliesin (cf. Haycock 2007: 72, note on line 1.81); in one text he is mentioned as a skilled magician, intimately associated with his more illustrious brothers Gwydion and Gofannon, and with his uncle Math fab Mathonwy. However, the equation with Ogmios is hampered by one, not untrivial, philological issue: the name of this figure appears in a staggering variety of spellings such as Euuyd, Eueyed, Euyd, Iennuydd or Yeuny (older forms have u/w, while younger forms show n, which may be a misreading of u). Eufydd, nowadays most commonly encountered, has achieved this pride of place precisely because it permits an equation with Ogmios, not because it is most authentic. It is not even certain that all of these forms represent the same name. Bartrum (1993: 436–437) uses the headword Iewydd ap Dôn for the legendary character. A historical figure, the grandfather of saint Elwad of Holyhead, bears the name Eunydd in Bonedd y Saint D12, the medieval Welsh genealogies of saints (Lewis 2024: 410–412). This complicates the matter even further because in the Latin saints’ lives, that same person appears under the names Eylud or Eliuth. Lewis notes that another variant of the name, Einudd, also used to be fairly common. As if all of this were not already enough, an apparently related name, which appears in the Old Welsh genealogies in the main line of Gwynedd, has been compared here as well (Rhys 1908: 62; Birkhan 2006; Carey 2014: 22 fn. 3). The spelling variants of this name, Eimet, Ennot, Oumun, Omnid, Omid, Onnet, Onwed, are just as chaotic, but Guy (2021: 79) thinks that Oumiud in the Life of St Cadog preserves the proper Old Welsh form. In view of its final part -iud, I wonder if this contains the common Welsh name element -iudd/-idd ‘lord’ and has nothing to do with Ogmios. In short, the Welsh material is textually so complicated that it is advisable not to draw any firm conclusions from it for the moment. 

One rare Old Irish female name remains to be investigated. Dar-Ómae* is mentioned in the Irish genealogies as a daughter of the legendary Ulidian king Conchobur mac Nessa. Dar, a variant of the more common female name element Der, is regarded as a reduced form of PC *duχtīr ‘daughter’. This word was otherwise lost in Irish and only survives in onomastic formulae. Ó Corráin (1979: 165) claimed that Ómae was the regular Irish outcome of PC *Ogmii̯os. However, this is uncertain, as I pointed out in my previous blog post. I argued there that the regular outcome of PC *-gm- was probably rather -gm- in Old Irish. The spelling variant Daromae is found in only one manuscript copy of the genealogies, Rawlinson B 502, admittedly the best copy. The other manuscripts have Dronae (CGH 116, 278); other sources transmit Daranae, Dorona. This variation illustrates that the name was unknown and obscure to the scribes. Again, like in the case of the Welsh cognates, it may be wisest to hold back with a judgement for now. 

The foregoing remarks can be compressed in a rather exasperated summary: The connections, if there are any, among the mythological figures Ogma, Ogmios, Eufydd (uel sim.) and Dar-Ómae* and the Irish writing system ogam are beguiling but unwholesomely unclear.  

Still, the foregoing discussion shines light on a very different aspect of Celtic prehistory. If the etymological comparison between the names of the Gaulish and Irish mythological figures holds, with the Welsh being an uncertain third comparandum, this would make *Ogmii̯os one of the few gods that can be reconstructed with a pan-Celtic, or pan-Core-Celtic, distribution. The others are the goddess *Brigantī, the many-skilled god *Lugus and the smith-god *Gobann(ii̭)ū. *Brigantī is most certainly inherited from even earlier, Indo-European times, but whether this is also the case for the male gods *Lugus and *Gobann(ii̭)ū, or whether their cult was only spreading during the early Celtic period, is more difficult to assess. The smith-god *Gobann(ii̭)ū could owe his wide currency across most of the known Celtic world to his spread in conjunction with the diffusion of iron technology, which must post-date the Proto-Celtic phase. Maybe this is faint evidence for a pan-Celtic cultural sphere, which was facilitated by mutual intelligibility in the first centuries after the break-up of the Celtic linguistic unity. 

Aside from these four comparatively clear instances, there are a few more uncertain cases. One is *Ai̯sus, a god who appears on a number of Continental inscriptions from the Roman imperial period. The value of the initial vowel is uncertain since the name is variously spelled Aesus and Esus. It is almost impossible to decide whether Aesus is the oldest form and Esus reflects the Gaulish monophthongisation of *ai̭ to *ɛ̄, or if Esus is the original and Aesus is a hypercorrect spelling after Latin ae had become a monophthong. On balance, I tend towards Aesus = PC *Ai̭sus as the oldest form, not least because it permits a neat etymology of the name, namely from the Indo-European root *h₂ei̯s- ‘to venerate’. While this god is not known from the Insular world (unless his name survives in the placename Mag nAí in Connacht; cf. Stifter forthc.), a female equivalent or maybe his consort could underlie the common Old Irish female name Aífe, modern Aoife < *Ai̯su̯ii̯ā, which is formally *Aisu- extended with the feminising suffix *-ii̭ā. Even less certain is the case of *Bodu̯ā as the name of a goddess of war. This name is known from ancient Gaul and it appears in medieval Irish literature as that of the female war demon Bodb, but these could be independent personifications of the common noun PC *bodṷā- ‘scald-crow’. 

References: 

Bartrum, Peter Clement 1993. A Welsh Classical Dictionary. People in History and Legend up to about A.D. 1000. The National Library of Wales. 

Birkhan, Helmut 1997. Versuch einer Gesamtdarstellung ihrer Kultur. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 

Birkhan, Helmut 2006. ‘Ogmios’, in: John T. Koch (ed.). Celtic Culture. A Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. IV. M‒S. Santa Barbara CA ‒ Denver CO ‒ Oxford: ABC Clio, 1393. 

Bushe-Fox, Joscelyn P. 1932. Third Report on the Excavations of the Roman Fort at Richborough, Kent. Oxford University Press. 

Calder, George 1917. Auraicept na nÉces. The Scholars’ Primer. Edinburgh: John Grant. 

Carey, John (2014). ‘Ogmios and the Eternal World’. Cosmos 30, 1–35. 

CGH = O’Brien, Michael 1968. Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae. With introduction by J.V. Kelleher. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. 

Egger, Rudolf 1943. ‘Aus der Unterwelt der Festlandkelten’. Jahreshefte des österreichischen archäologischen Institutes in Wien 35, 99–137. 

Guy, Ben 2021. ‘Misunderstanding Old Welsh Orthography and Insular Script in the Jesus College 20 Genealogies’, Celtica 33, 59–96. 

Guyonvarc’h Christian-J. 1960. ‘Gaulois Ogmios, irlandais Ogma, ogam’. Ogam 12, 47–49. 

Haycock, Marged 2007. Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin. Aberystwyth: CMCS. 

Hofeneder, Andreas 2006. ‘Favorinus von Arelate und die keltische Religion’. Keltische Forschungen 1, 29‒58. 

Hofeneder, Andreas 2011. Die Religion der Kelten in den antiken literarischen Zeugnissen. Band III. Von Arrianos bis zum Ausklang der Antike. Sammlung, Übersetzung und Kommentierung. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 

Lewis, Barry  2023. Bonedd y Saint. An Edition and Study of the Genealogies of the Welsh Saints. Dublin: Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. 

McManus, Damian 1991. A Guide to Ogam. Maynooth: An Sagart. 

Ó Corráin, Donnchadh (1979). ‘Onomata’, Ériu 30, 165–180. 

Rhys, John 1908. ‘All around the Wrekin’. Y Cymmrodor 21, 1–62. 

Stifter, David forthc. ‘The gravyty of dark matter. An edition of Fil and griän Glinne Aí’, in: ‘To frighten off the rude and ignorant’? Intentional Obscuritas in Irish and Welsh Literature (650–1650). Edited by Chantal Kobel, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.