Ogam
As we saw in the section before this one, when we were talking about historical sources, we touched on the matter of ogam and the inscriptions that were carved onto stone from around the fourth to the eighth century or so. The earliest of these inscriptions were carved in a language that linguists have dubbed ‘Primitive Irish,’ although we don’t know a whole lot about it – we only know of Primitive Irish from the inscriptions themselves, and they’re typically very brief and formulaic, just limited to names and a few other details. This sort of evidence doesn’t give us a very comprehensive view of a language, but to be fair it’s a lot better than nothing at all.
To give an example of an ogam inscription, we can look at this one, from a stone standing in the grounds of Faunkill-and-the-Woods, Co. Cork:
᚛ᚋᚐᚊᚔᚇᚓᚉᚉᚓᚇᚇᚐᚄᚐᚃᚔᚈᚒᚏᚐᚅᚔᚐᚄ᚜
MAQI-DECCEDDAS AVI TURANIAS20
Like most other inscriptions, our example here just gives the name of an individual. It tells us that the stone is ‘of Maqi-Decceddas,’ a ‘descendant (avi) of Turanias.’ Linguistically speaking, we can identify the language of the inscription as Primitive Irish because the names are obviously ‘pre-apocope,’ as we talked about earlier: We don’t see any evidence of apocope or syncope – the loss the final syllable or case-ending (-AS/-IAS in this case) or the middle syllable (-EDD- or -AN-) – which therefore tells us the inscription must be quite early (possibly as early as the fourth century, or as late as the sixth century CE).
If we translate this inscription, giving the names in Old Irish instead of Primitive Irish, it would look something like this:
‘Of Mac-Deichet Uí Thorna‘
The surname here, Uí Thorna, tells us that Mac-Deichet belonged to a people who called themselves the ‘descendants of Tornae,’ and although the stone is situated in Co. Cork, the historical record suggests that the Uí Thorna were a sept of the Cíarraige (‘descendants of Cíar’). The Cíarriage give us the modern-day name (and location) of ‘Kerry,’ which is quite a bit further west from Co. Cork, in the south of Ireland.21
This talk of apocope and syncope might all seem mind-numbingly pointless, but it really is important (promise). First of all, the presence or absence of linguistic features like this can help us date an inscription, and it can can also help us trace how a language evolved over all (which can, in turn, help us reconstruct it). Second of all – and more importantly, perhaps – being able to see these early forms of the names (which are a bit of a mouthful, let’s be honest) allows us to get a better idea of what the names might actually mean, because they preserve the original linguistic roots more clearly.
For example, we have an inscription that mentions someone by the name of LUGUDECCAS, which we confidently can say is an early form of the name – it has lots of syllables, and its over all form basically shows us that neither apocope or syncope are present here. Another inscription, however, gives this name as LUGUDEC. The final syllable – the case-ending (-AS) – is now missing, which therefore shows us clear evidence of apocope. As we saw earlier, the presence of apocope but the lack of syncope here tells us that this name is given in Archaic Irish – an early form of Old Irish – which gives us a rough idea that the inscription was probably produced in the sixth or seventh century (depending on who you ask).
If we sprinkle a bit of syncope onto the name, LUGUDEC would then become LUGDEC. Turning to Old Irish sources, we can confirm this name was still in use in the Old Irish period (and beyond, in fact), because our sources give us Lugdech. This is the genitive form of the name ‘Lugaid’ – unlike English, Irish names will change their form depending on the grammatical case, so when Lugaid changes to the genitive form, Lugdech, it means ‘of Lugaid.’ All of the names on the ogam inscriptions are given in the genitive, so even when LUGUDECCAS or LUGUDEC appears as the first name on the inscription, this is the genitive form of the name. The inscriptions doesn’t explicitly tell us what belongs to Lugaid, but since we’re looking at a name carved onto stone, it seems reasonable to suppose that it’s being implied that the stone itself belongs to that individual (in this case, then, it’s ‘[the stone] of Lugaid.’22
The name of LUGUDECCAS (or in Old Irish: Lugaid) is thought to mean something like ‘he who venerates Lug,’ which can obviously tell us there was a god by the name of Lug (as we already know from our historical and comparative sources). A similar name that’s also attested from the ogam inscriptions, LUGUQRIT (which is Archaic Irish in its form here, becoming Luccreth in Old Irish), and this has been suggested to mean ‘he whose form is like that of Lug.’23 This is illuminating because it gives a sense of how the pre-Christian Irish may have viewed their relationships with their deities (and so it could help inform our own). In the case of a name like Lugaid or Luccreth, they may not have been intended in a literal sense, necessarily – especially as, over time, their meanings may not have been so obvious, or at the forefront of people’s minds when they decided to name their child. People might have just chosen them because they liked how it sounded, or because it was a family name so it was traditional, etc.
Even if the meaning was a consideration, most people are given their name by their parents, so it arguably says more about the parents religious beliefs than the individual and their relationship with their namesake. If Lug was seen as an ancestral deity, or a patron of a particular people (or family), for example, then it’s only natural that children might be given these names. It would be assumed that the child would be a devotee of Lug, because that was the god who was worshipped in the túath or kindred the child and the parents belonged to. Regardless of the child’s own outlook as they grew up, Lug would have been likely to have been seen as being involved in their lives in some way or another, by sheer dint of the fact that they were understood to have been related to one another, or Lug had a vested interest in them as a patron, or whatever.
Names like Luccreth (‘he whose form is like that of Lug’) suggest that at least some deities were viewed as aspirational figures, whose looks or behaviour were considered to represent an ideal. All together, these names could also be interpreted as a sign of respect or reverence, so it shows us that relationships could be rather personal, at the very least, and that was seen as a desirable thing.
This idea of personal relationships with gods is confirmed by other names we find, as well, both in the ogam inscriptions and the later sources. Certain types of name are thought to indicate the status of a ‘devotee’ of some sort, and this is something that’s articulated in the first inscription we mentioned in this section here, with the name MAQI-DECCEDDAS. As we’ve seen, this becomes Mac-Deichet in Old Irish, and in its most literal sense it can be translated to mean something like ‘son of Deich.’ These Mac- type names are very common, but they aren’t always intended in a literal sense; quite often, the ‘Mac-‘ element is combined with something descriptive – a tree, a defining quality, an implement – which may hint at the person’s profession or role in society. Examples here include MAQI-QOLI (becoming Mac-Cuill in Irish, meaning ‘son of hazel-tree’), or MAQI-TRENI (becoming Mac-Tréin, meaning ‘son of strength’), where the latter name might apply to a champion (a warrior par excellence, the best amongst his people). Mac Cuill, meanwhile, might describe a poet, perhaps (since hazel has strong associations with poetry and revelatory knowledge). In the case of Mac-Deichet, then, his dad probably wasn’t called ‘Deich.’ Instead, Deich (from dech, meaning ‘best or most distinguished’)24 may well have been the name of a deity (who was presumably especially associated with the Uí Thorna). This supposition is partly based on the suggested meaning of his name (quite a few deity names refer to this sort of quality, or something similar, as we’ll look at in more detail later on), but it’s also based on the numerous other examples we can point to here that suggest the same sort of devotee relationship with a deity, specifically. These include names like MAQI-ERCIAS (Mac-Erce), MAQI-AINIA (Mac-Áine), MAQI-RODAGNI (Mac-Rúadáin), and MAQI-RITEAS (Mac-Rithe), although besides Mac-Áine here the names aren’t all that recognisable as widely-known divinities here.25
So this type of name – when combined with a noun, referring to a tree or a certain quality – might relate to a specific profession. When combined with the name of a deity, it may have been intended to demonstrate that the individual was a descendant or devotee of the deity (as we’ve seen, gods often pop up in genealogies).
Another type of name-formula that’s sometimes used on the ogam stones suggests the same sort of thing, although in this case the relationship is a bit more explicit. These inscriptions generally take the form of ‘[X] MAQI MUCOI [Y],’ which can be translated to mean, ‘of [X] descendent of [Y].’ The descendant in question here (‘Y’) can often be identified as an eponymous ancestor – a founding figure of the people the individual (‘X’) belongs to, who lends their name to the people’s group identity. This eponymous ancestor can often be identified as a deity, making them a divine ancestor (and thus a patron, or tutelary deity) of the kindred in question.
The MAQI MUCOI formula isn’t always articulated in a precise way on the ogam inscriptions, and sometimes it might take different forms, like [X] MAQI [Y] MUCOI [Z], or just [X] MUCOI [Y]. In the latter example here, it’s possible the MAQI part was dropped to save space, or because it was considered to be rather redundant. Either way, we can give the following inscription as a good example of one of these inscriptions that describes a divine ancestor:
VEDDELLEMETTO MU/CI/ LOGGIDEAS/ AVVI MUNICCONA
In this case, the MU/CI/ part is meant to be interpreted as representing MUCOI, although some damage to the stone means a complete reading isn’t possible; we can make a good guess on what the illegible letters ‘should’ be, based on the gap that’s left. The inscription can be therefore be translated to mean something like:
Of Feidlimid, descendant of Lóigde Uí Muinchon (?Muirchú)
By itself, this hardly screams that any of the names should be regarded as divine, but it’s the meaning of LOGGIDEAS that gives us the big hint here. LOGGIDEAS is the genitive form of the name (as it should be), so theoretically the Primitive Irish nominative would have been something like *Loigodēvā.26 This allows us to see that the name contains early forms of the words loég (‘calf’) and dia (‘god; goddess’), which means that VEDDELLEMETTO (or Feidlimid) is a descendant of the ‘Calf Goddess.’ In Old Irish, LOGGIDEAS (or *Loigodēvā, more to the point) becomes Loígde, and this name is preserved in the population name of the Corcu Loígde (meaning ‘Seed of Loígde’), who are known to have been based in the western part of Co. Cork (right where this ogam stone is situated).27 It could not be more obvious that Loígde should be viewed as a divinity, and an ancestor of the Corcu Loígde as a whole.
Other names that are associated with this MAQI MUCOI formula (and its related counterparts) point us to ancestral deities including DOVINIA (Old Irish: Duibne, or Duiben) of the Corcu Duibne, CORIBIRI (Old Irish: Coirpre or Cairbre) of the Dál Coirpri, LUGUNI (Old Irish: Luigne) of the Luigni (likely indicating a meaning of ‘descendants of Lug’), and so on…28 Most of these are again examples of deities who aren’t well known from the myths, and they show a high degree of localisation, which again gives us an idea of how the gods were viewed by the people who venerated them: Each dynasty claimed their own divine ancestor, creating a patchwork of deities embedded in the genealogies, who were also tied to environment in which those people lived.
While some of the gods clearly had quite a broad degree of influence – like Lug, since his name can be found in so many different places across the whole of Ireland – others seem to have been rather more limited. Just as people in Ireland were defined by some sort of social hierarchy, so were the gods, it seems.
References
20 R. A. S. Macalister, Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum (1945; repr. 1996), 71.
21 Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991), 112.
22 This argument is supported by a single inscription that does actually refer to ‘the stone’ of the individual named. It is, however, inscribed in Latin, although the over all form (and formula) that’s used is identical to ogam. See: Richard Warner, ‘The Drumconwell Ogham and its Implications,’ in Emania 8 (1991), 43; Catherine Swift, ‘Commentary, The Knowth Ogams in Context,’ in Byrne et al (Eds.), Excavations at Knowth 4 (2008), 122.
23 Mark Williams, Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016), 18.
24 http://edil.qub.ac.uk/14869
25 Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991), 108-109.
A rather more controversial example here is a possible reference to the god Núadu in one of these Mac-type name. This can be found on an inscription from Co. Kerry, where the inscription has been read as:
ANM MAGANN MAQI NUADAT.
This reading is a little problematic, however, because it relies on accepting that one of the forfeda – one of the ‘additional’ ogam letters, which were only added at a later date (and, crucially, are not otherwise used in the ogam inscriptions themselves) – has been used here, to give the ‘UA’ dipthong in NUADAT.
If this inscription represents a form of Primitive Irish, however, this name wouldn’t use the UA dipthong. Instead, Núadu’s name would be expected to take the form of something like NODAS or NODOD, because the initial ‘o’ sound here only became ‘úa’ in the Old Irish period (something we see happening in Old Irish texts from around the eighth or ninth century or so). This means the inscription must either be very late in date (and unique in its adoption of a forfeda), and so may represent one of the very last ogam stones to have been carved, or the expectation that this name could represent an early reference to Núadu – if (and only if) the reading of the forfeda is correct – has prejudiced the reading of the lettering.
See: Damian McManus, ‘Ogam: Archaizing, Orthography and the Authenticity of the Manuscript Key to the Alphabet,’ in Ériu 37 (1986), 12; Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991) 176.
26 Thomas Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland (2000), 186; Mark Williams, Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016), 27-28; Thomas O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (1957), 3.
27 Mark Williams, Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016), 27-28; Thomas O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (1957), 3.
28 Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991) 103; 108-109; 111; Eoin MacNeill, ‘Notes on the Distribution, History, Grammar, and Import of the Irish Ogham Inscriptions,’ in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature Volume 27 (1909), 358; Eoin MacNeill, ‘Early Irish Population-Groups: Nomenclature, Classification, and Chronology,’ in PRIA Volume 29 (C) (1911), 73.
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