The ancient Celts had a form of writing called ogham. It was the traditional alphabet of druids and bards. Ogham is also called “Tree Alphabet” because each letter corresponds to a tree. Each of the Ogham’s twenty letters has the name of a tree, for example A-Ailim (Elm), B-Bithe (Birch), C-Coll (Hazel) and so on. This is not surprising until it is realized that not all of the twenty plants of the Ogham were found in the pre-Christian Celtic time of the British Isles. This detail seems to lead to a theory that Ogham writing developed after the first century AD.¹

The letters of the Ogham alphabet are read from the bottom up. The inscriptions are made using a combination of lines placed nearby or crossing a middle line. An individual letter may contain from one to five vertical or angled lines. Vowels were sometimes written as a grouping of dots. The middle line was, most often, at the very edge of the object on which the inscription was carved.²

Ogham was named after the Celtic god of literature, Ogma. It was most often used on burial stones and boundary markers. It was also used on rods or strips of wood that were fastened together at one end. These wands were opened and closed to present stories or poems.³Bards are thought to have carried these kinds of Taball-Lorg or “Poets Staff.⁴

Wooden sticks with Ogham markings were used for divination similar to the way Runes were used by Norse people. Only the druids and bards actually understood the system of writing and could have great influence on their people when they demonstrated its power.⁵

There are hundreds of examples of Ogham writing surviving today. These exist in the form of standing stones in Ireland, in Scotland, the Isle of Man, South Wales, Devonshire, and as far as Silchester (the ancient Roman city of Calleva Attrebatum). Similar markings have been found on standing stones in Spain and Portugal. The markings in Spain are believed to be much older than the ones in Ireland, perhaps from 800 BC. It is from this area of the Iberian Peninsula that the Celts who occupied the British Isles may have come.⁶The discovery of similar carvings in the state of West Virginia in the United States has led to a theory that the Celts may have come to the New World as early as 100 BC.⁷

The peak of the use of “classical” Ogham on stone seems to be around the 5th - 6th century. Ogham was adopted and further developed by the first monks in Ireland. Early information shows that the monks weren’t quite sure from where Ogham came. According to the “Auraicept” the origin of Ogham is in the Near East: “In Dacia it was invented, though others say it was in the Plain of Shinar”. An Irish version is recorded in “In Lebor Ogaim”, which states that the inventor of Ogham is “Ogma mac Elathan who is said to have been skilled in speech and poetry and to have created the system as proof of his intellectual ability and with the intention that it should be the preserve of the learned, to the exclusion of rustics and fools”.⁸

Notes were also commonly written in Ogham in church manuscripts down to the sixteenth century. Even since that time, this tradition of native writing has never really been forgotten.

1. Website
2. Patricia Levy, Scotland, (New York: Marshall Cavendish, 2000), p.85
3. Celtic Attic
4. Jean F. Blashfield, Ireland, (New York: Children’s Press, 2002), p.90
5. Celtic Attic
6. Levy, Scotland, p.85
7. Website
8. Blashfield, Ireland, p.90