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75-428: The date of composition has been assigned to the late 7th or early 8th century, and the text is known to have been included in the lost 8th century codex Cín Dromma Snechtai . Although the conventional title Immram Brain identifies the tale-type as an immram (‘voyage’ tale), some scholars argue the work does not count among the genuine immrama , but should rather be considered an echtra (‘adventure’ tale) and

150-612: A 6th-century king of Dyfed (originally located in Clynderwen ), is the only ogham stone inscription that bears the name of an identifiable individual. The language of the inscriptions is predominantly Primitive Irish ; the few inscriptions in Scotland, such as the Lunnasting stone , record fragments of what is probably the Pictish language . The more ancient examples are standing stones , where

225-470: A beautiful silver branch in white bloom in front of him. He returns to his royal house, and among his retinue he spots a strangely dressed Otherworld woman, who identifies the branch to be from an apple tree (or tree of some fruit) growing in land of Emain (or Emne), and proceeds to sing a poem describing this Otherworld. Emain is a place of "lasting weather" (perpetually like spring or summer), without want of food or water, free from sickness or despair; it

300-459: A close resemblance between Atlantis being surrounded by concentric ringed walls made of metal (including orichalcum ) and brazen ramparts around islands described in the immrama (Máel Dúin; Uí Corra), and some resemblance to the findruine or white bronze "feet" or pillars underpinning the land of Emain, which the mysterious woman sings of in the Voyage of Bran . Alfred Nutt expressed scepticism over

375-512: A crew member is left abandoned. And the material may possibly have been borrowed by the Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis , the Latin work on St. Brendan's voyage. Heinrich Zimmer contended that it led to the episode of the third latecomer being abducted by the demons ( Navigatio 24), though Walter Haug  [ de ] did not see this as an obvious parallel. A different episode open to comparison

450-561: A list of ancient texts. Of those seven only three survive: The Voyage of Máel Dúin , The Voyage of the Uí Chorra , and The Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagla . The Voyage of Bran is classified in these same lists as an echtrae , though it also contains the essential elements of the immrama. The later Latin Voyage of St. Brendan also contains a voyage across the sea to various otherworldly islands. Immrama were first recorded as early as

525-412: A similar Irish genre, the echtrae or "adventure". Both types of story involve a hero's journey to an "otherworld", whether a Christian paradise, a fairyland, the land of the gods or a utopia. They are distinguished by date; echtrai are older, dating from the 7th century, while the earliest immram dates only to the 8th century. David Dumville argues that the immrama include more Christian thinking than

600-537: A stop at the Isle of Joy, where the inhabitants just laugh and stare, and will not answer to calls. When Bran sends a scout ashore, he starts to laugh and gape just like the others. Bran abandons this crewman and sails on. He now approaches the Land of Women but is hesitant to go ashore. The leader of the land casts a magical clew (ball of yarn) at him, which sticks to his hand. She then tugs the boat ashore, and each man pairs off with

675-455: A voyage using 5th century technology to demonstrate that the early Irish could have made it as far as North America. Ogam Ogham ( / ˈ ɒ ɡ əm / OG -əm , Modern Irish : [ˈoː(ə)mˠ] ; Middle Irish : ogum, ogom , later ogam [ˈɔɣəmˠ] ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions , 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later

750-456: A warning to Lug , meaning: "your wife will be carried away seven times to the otherworld unless the birch protects her". For this reason, the letter b is said to be named after the birch, and In Lebor Ogaim goes on to tell the tradition that all letters were named after trees, a claim also referred to by the Auraicept as an alternative to the naming after Fenius' disciples. Strictly speaking,

825-421: A woman, Bran with the leader. There are three times nine "couches" available for all of them. During what seems to be one year's span, many more years have elapsed, while the men feast happily in the Land of Women, until Nechtán mac Collbrain feels homesickness stir within him. The leader of the women is reluctant to let them go, and cautions them not to step upon the shores of Ireland, and counsel them to retrieve

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900-407: A written record of their voyage inscribed in ogam letters, and then sail across the sea, never to be seen again. The poem shares similar themes and elements with other Irish immrama , such as The Voyage of Brendan and The Voyage of Máel Dúin , both written in early to mid-900. For example, both Bran's and Máel Dúin's voyagers reach an island of laughter or laughing people, and in each case

975-595: Is emancholl which means 'twin of hazel' Monumental ogham inscriptions are found in Ireland and Wales , with a few additional specimens found in southwest England ( Devon and Cornwall ), the Isle of Man , and Scotland , including Shetland and a single example from Silchester and another from Coventry in England. They were mainly employed as territorial markers and memorials (grave stones). The stone commemorating Vortiporius ,

1050-464: Is Brendan's abandonment of one of the monks to the psalm-singing choirs ( Navigatio 17), although the situation in Brendan's case is a happy one and contrastive to Bran. Elsewhere, Bran is told of a tree with holy birds that all sing at the same time, similar to what Brendan encounters in his voyage, and Mael Duin encounters trees full of birds as well. However, some scholars emphasise that commonality of

1125-528: Is a distinctly Celtic feature but this is easily overlooked because the concept of the Christian paradise and the British and Irish otherworld are closely related. This difference is highlighted in the difference between sinless and sexless in the native and Christian mindset, like in the existing translation where an author may have turned the "Isle of Woman" into a chaste society, with some difficulty. Such an example

1200-565: Is a letter for the labiovelar q (ᚊ ceirt ), a phoneme lost in Old Irish. The base alphabet is, therefore, as it were, designed for Proto-Q-Celtic. Of the five forfeda or supplementary letters, only the first, ébad , regularly appears in inscriptions, but mostly with the value K (McManus, § 5.3, 1991), in the word koi (ᚕᚑᚔ "here"). The others, except for emancholl , have at most only one certain 'orthodox' (see below) inscription each. Due to their limited practical use, later ogamists turned

1275-527: Is also evidence that ogham may have been used as a system of finger or hand signals. In later centuries when ogham ceased to be used as a practical alphabet, it retained its place in the learning of Gaelic scholars and poets as the basis of grammar and the rules of poetry. Indeed, until modern times the Latin alphabet in Gaelic continued to be taught using letter names borrowed from the Beith-Luis-Nin , along with

1350-471: Is aware that not all names are known tree names: "Now all these are wood names such as are found in the Ogham Book of Woods, and are not derived from men", admitting that "some of these trees are not known today". The Auraicept gives a short phrase or kenning for each letter, known as a Bríatharogam , that traditionally accompanied each letter name, and a further gloss explaining their meanings and identifying

1425-559: Is by Séamus Mac Mathúna (1985). Structurally, The Voyage of Bran is a combination of poetry and prose, with many short stanzas punctuated by longer, prose narration. These prose narrations are known as Narrative Envelopes. The tale can be summarised as follows: Bran mac Febail (modern spelling: Bran mac Feabhail ) embarks upon a quest to the Otherworld . One day while Bran is walking, he hears beautiful music, so beautiful, in fact, that it lulls him to sleep. Upon awakening, he sees

1500-450: Is mostly restricted to phonological developments. There are two main schools of thought among scholars as to the motivation for the creation of ogham. Scholars such as Carney and MacNeill have suggested that ogham was first created as a cryptic alphabet, designed by the Irish to hide their meaning from writers of the Latin alphabet. In this school of thought, it is asserted that "the alphabet

1575-554: Is no evidence for Macalister's theory, and it has been discounted by later scholars. There are in fact other explanations for the name Beith-luis-nin . One explanation is that the word nin , which means forked branch , was used to mean letters in general. Beith-luis-nin could therefore mean simply beith-luis letters. Another suggestion is that beith-luis-nin is a contraction of the first five letters, ie, beith-LVS-nin . The ogham alphabet originally consisted of twenty letters, divided into four groups ( Irish : aicme ) according

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1650-417: Is otherwise called (or has a place called) Aircthech (‘Bountiful Land’) where dragonstones and crystals fall. She instructs Bran to embark on a sea voyage to Emain, which she reveals to be a Land of Women, and disappears with the branch. Bran gathers three companies of nine men apiece for the voyage, and his foster brothers were put in charge of each company. After traveling by boat for two days and nights,

1725-556: Is possibly mentioned in Tochmarc Étaíne , a tale in the Irish Mythological Cycle , wherein the druid Dalan takes four wands of yew, and writes ogham letters upon them. Then he uses the tools for what some interpret as a form of divination . However, as the tale doesn't explain how the sticks are handled or interpreted, this theory is open to interpretation. A divination method invented by neopagans involves casting sticks upon

1800-454: Is rather within the 1st century BC. Although the use of "classical" ogham in stone inscriptions seems to have flourished in the 5th and 6th centuries around the Irish Sea , from the phonological evidence it is clear that the alphabet predates the 5th century. Indeed, the alphabet has letters representing "archaic" phonemes which were clearly part of the system, but which were no longer spoken by

1875-456: Is that ogham was invented by the first Christian communities in early Ireland, out of a desire for a unique alphabet to write short messages and inscriptions in Irish. The sounds of Primitive Irish may have been difficult to transcribe into the Latin alphabet, motivating the invention of a separate alphabet. A possible such origin, as suggested by McManus (1991:41), is the early Irish Christian community known from around AD 400 at latest, attested by

1950-523: The Beithe-luis-nuin (the ogham) as a perfected writing system for his languages. The names he gave to the letters were those of his 25 best scholars. Alternatively, the Ogam Tract credits Ogma with the script's invention. Ogma was skilled in speech and poetry, and created the system for the learned, to confound rustics and fools. The first message written in ogam was seven b' s on a birch, sent as

2025-497: The Odyssey or the Aeneid . Zimmer argued that The Voyage of Máel Dúin derived from the Aeneid , but this hypothesis was dismantled by William Flint Thrall. The mention of the sea god Manannán producing a human scion (Mongan) is analogous to Poseidon having ten sons begotten on human mothers residing on Atlantis as described by Plato, according to Thomas Johnson Westropp . There is also

2100-587: The Old Irish language ( scholastic ogham , 6th to 9th centuries). There are roughly 400 surviving orthodox inscriptions on stone monuments throughout Ireland and western Britain, the bulk of which are in southern Munster . The largest number outside Ireland are in Pembrokeshire , Wales. The vast majority of the inscriptions consist of personal names. According to the High Medieval Bríatharogam ,

2175-477: The Old Irish period (say, 10th century), but it postdates the Primitive Irish period, or at least the time when the letters were originally named. Its origin is probably due to the letters themselves being called feda "trees", or nin "forking branches" due to their shape. Since a few of the letters were, in fact, named after trees, the interpretation arose that they were called feda because of that. Some of

2250-705: The Otherworld (see Tír na nÓg and Mag Mell ). Written in the Christian era and essentially Christian in aspect, they preserve elements of Irish mythology . The immrama are identifiable by their focus on the exploits of the heroes during their search for the Otherworld, located in these cases in the islands far to the west of Ireland. The hero sets out on his voyage for the sake of adventure or to fulfill his destiny, and generally stops on other fantastic islands before reaching his destination. He may or may not be able to return home again. The immrama are generally confused with

2325-402: The echtrae ). The Voyage of Bran may have influenced the later story of Saint Brendan 's voyage, owing perhaps to the similarity of the names of the leading figures. The Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis stands out among other immrama since it mentions the terra repromissionis , which translates into Irish as Tír Tairngire ("Land of Promise"), which is the term for the Otherworld in

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2400-520: The 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn , the 14th-century Auraicept na n-Éces , and other Medieval Irish folklore , ogham was first invented soon after the fall of the Tower of Babel , along with the Gaelic language , by the legendary Scythian king, Fenius Farsa . According to the Auraicept, Fenius journeyed from Scythia together with Goídel mac Ethéoir, Íar mac Nema and a retinue of 72 scholars. They came to

2475-544: The 16th century. A modern ogham inscription is found on a gravestone dating to 1802 in Ahenny, County Tipperary . In Scotland, a number of inscriptions using the ogham writing system are known, but their language is still the subject of debate. It has been argued by Richard Cox in The Language of Ogham Inscriptions in Scotland (1999) that the language of these is Old Norse, but others remain unconvinced by this analysis, and regard

2550-455: The 5th century Irish monks would go on a pilgrimage, a peregrination , sailing from island to island seeking isolation where they would meditate and purge themselves of their sins. The source of inspiration behind the Immram may also be the Christian punishment of sending people adrift for their crimes to be judged by God. Perhaps the largest piece of evidence that immram are Christian works is that

2625-399: The 5th century and never appear in inscriptions, suggesting an extended period of ogham writing on wood or other perishable material prior to the preserved monumental inscriptions. They are: úath ("H") and straif ("Z" in the manuscript tradition, but probably "F" from "SW"), and gétal (velar nasal "NG" in the manuscript tradition, but etymologically probably "GW"). It appears that

2700-697: The 7th century by monks and scholars who fled Continental Europe before the barbarian invaders of the fifth century. These monks carried the learning of Western Europe and became the vanguard of the Christianizing of Europe. On this account it is expected that Immram have their origins in pre-existing Christian voyage literature, pre-existing Celtic legends, or classical stories the monks would have known. The origins of these stories are attributed to three sources of preexisting stories: Irish myths, Christian genres, and Classic Stories. The Otherworld in The Voyage of Bran

2775-616: The Christian period". The concept of "voyage" has been widely used across the world in that time. While this specific set comes from Ireland, it can be compared with Classical sources such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid , some Scandinavian tales as well as other Brittonic tales told on what is now the United Kingdom, particularly those preserved from Wales ( Y Mabinogion ) and Brittany including Tristan and Yseult . The most recent translation

2850-465: The Irish were themselves invading western Britain, the desire to keep communications secret from Romans or Romanised Britons would still have provided an incentive. With bilingual ogham and Latin inscriptions in Wales, however, one would suppose that the ogham could easily be decoded by at least an educated few in the post-Roman world. The second main school of thought, put forward by scholars such as McManus,

2925-686: The Medieval association of each letter with a different tree. Ogham was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0. The spelling of the names given is a standardisation dating to 1997, used in Unicode Standard and in Irish Standard 434:1999 . The Unicode block for ogham is U+1680–U+169F. Modern New Age and Neopagan approaches to ogham largely derive from

3000-662: The Moon goddess in her various forms. Graves' argument is extremely complex, but in essence, he argues that the Hebrews, Greeks and Celts were all influenced by a people originating in the Aegean, called ' the people of the sea ' by the Egyptians, who spread out around Europe in the 2nd millennium BC, taking their religious beliefs with them. He posits that at some early stage these teachings were encoded in alphabet form by poets to pass on their worship of

3075-645: The Ogham alphabet was modelled on another script, and some even consider it a mere cipher of its template script (Düwel 1968: points out similarity with ciphers of Germanic runes ). The largest number of scholars favour the Latin alphabet as this template, although the Elder Futhark and even the Greek alphabet have their supporters. Runic origin would elegantly explain the presence of "H" and "Z" letters unused in Irish, as well as

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3150-487: The Primitive Irish of the early centuries AD. The supposed links with the form of the Greek alphabet that Macalister proposed can also be disproved. A fourth hypothesis, proposed by the scholars Rudolf Thurneysen and Joseph Vendryes , is that the forms of the letters derive from a numerical tally-mark counting system of the time, based around the numbers five and twenty, which was then adapted into an alphabet. According to

3225-622: The characters in the story are generally wandering priests, monks, and nuns, or at least related to them. One of the first Celticists, Heinrich Zimmer , attempted to link the immram with the Aeneid and the Odyssey . Some of the parallels they make are between the Ambrose in the tales who bestow immortality on their lovers for the time they remain with them and the giant sheep on islands in both stories. These parallels have since been debunked by William Flint Thrall. On top of their literary and mythological precedents, some scholars have argued that

3300-576: The evidence from early Irish sagas and legends indicate that ogham was used for short messages on wood or metal, either to relay messages or to denote ownership of the object inscribed. Some of these messages seem to have been cryptic in nature and some were also for magical purposes. In addition, there is evidence from sources such as In Lebor Ogaim , or the Ogham Tract , that ogham may have been used to keep records or lists, such as genealogies and numerical tallies of property and business transactions. There

3375-411: The fact that the inscriptions are believed to have been inspired by the manuscript sources, instead of being continuations of the original monument tradition. Unlike orthodox ogham, some medieval inscriptions feature all five Forfeda . Scholastic inscriptions are written on stemlines cut into the face of the stone, instead of along its edge. Ogham was also occasionally used for notes in manuscripts down to

3450-697: The goddess (as the muse and inspiration of all poets) in a secret fashion, understandable only to initiates. Eventually, via the druids of Gaul, this knowledge was passed on to the poets of early Ireland and Wales. Graves, therefore, looked at the Tree Alphabet tradition surrounding ogham and explored the tree folklore of each of the letter names, proposing that the order of the letters formed an ancient "seasonal calendar of tree magic". Although his theories have been discredited and discarded by modern scholars (including Macalister himself, with whom Graves corresponded), they were taken up with enthusiasm by some adherents of

3525-480: The group encounters the ocean deity Manannán mac Lir riding a chariot over the sea towards them. Manannán explains that while this may seem like a body of water to Bran and his crew rowing the coracle , it appears as an otherworldly flowery plain to the god. Manannán also foretells the birth of his son as Mongán mac Fiachnai in Ireland. Manannán then informs Bran that he will reach his goal by sundown. After parting ways with Manannán mac Lir, Bran's voyagers make

3600-593: The immrama may be exaggerated retelling of historical voyages. The early Irish, particularly monks (see papar ), were certainly far travelled, reaching the Orkney , Shetland , Faroe Islands at an early date and perhaps even reaching Iceland . Some places and things referenced in the immrama and the Brendan tale have been associated with real islands and real things, for instance Brendan's crystal pillar has been suggested to refer to an iceberg . The popularity of The Voyage of St. Brendan inspired Tim Severin to undertake

3675-531: The international contacts that led to the existence of some of these stones. A third hypothesis, put forward by the noted ogham scholar R. A. S. Macalister was influential at one time, but finds little favour with scholars today. He believed – because ogham consists of four groups of five letters with a sequence of strokes from one to five – that ogham was first invented as a secret system of finger signals in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 BC by Gaulish druids, and

3750-399: The language of the monumental stone inscriptions is termed Primitive Irish . The transition to Old Irish , the language of the earliest sources in the Latin alphabet, takes place in about the 6th century. Since ogham inscriptions consist almost exclusively of personal names and marks possibly indicating land ownership, linguistic information that may be gleaned from the Primitive Irish period

3825-488: The letters are named after various trees. For this reason, Ogham is sometimes known as the Celtic tree alphabet . The etymology of the word ogam or ogham remains unclear. One possible origin is from the Irish og-úaim 'point-seam', referring to the seam made by the point of a sharp weapon. It is generally thought that the earliest inscriptions in Ogham date to about the 4th century AD, but James Carney believed its origin

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3900-465: The man left abandoned on the Island of Joy. The group nears the shores of Ireland, and Bran shouts his own name to the people gathered on shore, but they do not recognize the name except as ancient legend. Nechtán cannot restrain himself and jumps off the boat, but the moment he sets foot ashore he turns into ashes. Bran and his company relate the rest of their story to the gathered people, and also hands over

3975-444: The mission of Palladius by Pope Celestine I in AD 431. A variation is the idea that this alphabet was first invented, for whatever reason, in 4th-century Irish settlements in west Wales after contact and intermarriage with Romanised Britons with knowledge of the Latin alphabet. In fact, several ogham stones in Wales are bilingual, containing both Irish and British Latin , testifying to

4050-512: The more pagan genre of echtrae, and that, whereas the purpose of the echtrai is to enhance understanding of the old gods and the land in which they live, in an immram these pagan elements occur as a challenge to the hero's faith. In an echtrae the protagonist only ever goes to one location and may arrive in the otherworld with no explanation of the journey, whereas in an immram the hero always has multiple adventures on several islands. Originally there were seven officially recognised Immram listed in

4125-475: The name idad is probably an artificial form of iubhar "yew", as the kennings support that meaning, and concedes that ailm may possibly mean "pine tree," as it appears to be used to mean that in an 8th-century poem. Thus out of twenty letter names, only eight at most are the names of trees. The other names have a variety of meanings. Of the forfeda , four are glossed by the Auraicept: The fifth letter

4200-534: The names of characters (Brân son of Febal vs. Bran son of Llŷr). But the parallel between the two figures is another point on which Celticists are of divided opinion. It is pointed out that if Manawydan fab Llŷr has an exact counterpart in Manannan mac Lir , then Brân has an Irish counterpart named Brón, though the latter is quite obscure. It has been pointed out that certain episodes in the Irish immrama bear striking resemblance to passages in classical works, such as

4275-459: The neopagan movement. In addition, Graves followed the BLNFS order of ogham letters put forward by Macalister (see above), with the result taken up by many New Age and Neopagan writers as the 'correct' order of the letters, despite its rejection by scholars. The main use of ogham by adherents of Neo-druidism and other forms of Neopaganism is for the purpose of divination. Divination with ogham symbols

4350-572: The notion that the Celtic Otherworld was founded on the Classical Greek Elysium , and contrasts the free-love milieu of the Land of Women in Bran's Voyage with Virgil 's Elysium of chastity. Immram An immram ( / ˈ ɪ m r əm / ; plural immrama ; Irish : iomramh [ˈʊmˠɾˠəw] , 'voyage') is a class of Old Irish tales concerning a hero's sea journey to

4425-509: The now-discredited theories of Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess . In this work, Graves took his inspiration from the theories of the ogham scholar R. A. S. Macalister (see above) and elaborated on them much further. Graves proposed that the ogham alphabet encoded a set of beliefs originating in the Middle East in Stone Age times, concerning the ceremonies surrounding the worship of

4500-518: The number of known inscriptions in the contemporary Elder Futhark ), of which the highest concentration by far is found in the southwestern Irish province of Munster . Over one-third of the total are found in County Kerry alone, most densely in the former kingdom of the Corcu Duibne . Later inscriptions are known as " scholastic ", and are post 6th century in date. The term 'scholastic' derives from

4575-522: The other letter names had fallen out of use as independent words, and were thus free to be claimed as "Old Gaelic" tree names, while others (such as ruis , úath or gort ) were more or less forcefully reinterpreted as epithets of trees by the medieval glossators. McManus (1991, §3.15) discusses possible etymologies of all the letter names, and as well as the five mentioned above, he adds one other definite tree name: onn "ash" (the Auraicept wrongly has "furze"). McManus (1988, p. 164) also believes that

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4650-634: The plain of Shinar to study the confused languages at Nimrod 's tower (the Tower of Babel ). Finding that they had already been dispersed, Fenius sent his scholars to study them, staying at the tower, coordinating the effort. After ten years, the investigations were complete, and Fenius created in Bérla tóbaide "the selected language", taking the best of each of the confused tongues, which he called Goídelc , Goidelic , after Goídel mac Ethéoir. He also created extensions of Goídelc , called Bérla Féne , after himself, Íarmberla , after Íar mac Nema, and others, and

4725-422: The presence of vocalic and consonantal variants "U" vs. "W", unknown to Latin writing and lost in Greek (cf. digamma ). The Latin alphabet is the primary contender mainly because its influence at the required period (4th century) is most easily established, being widely used in neighbouring Roman Britannia , while runes in the 4th century were not very widespread even in continental Europe . In Ireland and Wales,

4800-449: The script was carved into the edge ( droim or faobhar ) of the stone, which formed the stemline against which individual characters are cut. The text of these "Orthodox Ogham" inscriptions is read beginning from the bottom left-hand side of a stone, continuing upward along the edge, across the top and down the right-hand side (in the case of long inscriptions). Roughly 380 inscriptions are known in total (a number, incidentally, very close to

4875-602: The secular tales. The stories are also similar in that at one point, one of the travellers is exorcised or left behind on an island, either by free will or as punishment for a sin. The Voyage of Bran has many parallels to The Voyage of Máel Dúin . The Voyage of Bran may also be compared to the Welsh text Branwen Daughter of Llŷr from the Mabinogi . The parallels are not along the lines of plot, as with The Voyage of Brendan and The Voyage of Máel Dúin , but rather in similarity in

4950-618: The stones as being Pictish in origin. However, due to the lack of knowledge about the Picts, the inscriptions remain undeciphered, their language possibly being non- Indo-European . The Pictish inscriptions are scholastic, and are believed to have been inspired by the manuscript tradition brought into Scotland by Gaelic settlers . A rare example of a Christianised (cross-inscribed) Ogham stone can be seen in St. Mary's Collegiate Church Gowran , County Kilkenny . As well as its use for monumental inscriptions,

5025-521: The stroke angle and direction. The groups were Five additional letters were later introduced (mainly in the manuscript tradition), the so-called forfeda . A letter for p is conspicuously absent, since the phoneme was lost in Proto-Celtic , and the gap was not filled in Q-Celtic , and no sign was needed before loanwords from Latin containing p appeared in Irish ( e.g. , Patrick). Conversely, there

5100-665: The supplementary letters into a series of diphthongs , changing completely the values for pín and emancholl . This meant that the alphabet was once again without a letter for the 'P' sound, forcing the invention of the letter peithboc (soft 'B'), which appears in the manuscripts only. The letter names are interpreted as names of trees or shrubs in manuscript tradition, both in Auraicept na n-Éces ('The Scholars' Primer') and In Lebor Ogaim ('The Ogam Tract'). They were first discussed in modern times by Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh (1685), who took them at face value. The Auraicept itself

5175-547: The title Echtrae Brain should be adopted, for indeed Echtra Bran maic Febail is the title (and categorisation) that occurs in the 11th century tale-list. The constructed title Echtrae Brain ocus Tomaidm Locha Febuil has also been suggested. The tale may derive from the " otherworldly journey" material from Irish mythology , possibly of pan-Celtic origin However there is a dissenting camp of scholars who hold that "these tales [ echtrai ] are literary compositions written within

5250-413: The tree or plant linked to each letter. Only five of the twenty primary letters have tree names that the Auraicept considers comprehensible without further glosses, namely beith "birch", fearn "alder", saille "willow", duir "oak" and coll "hazel". All the other names have to be glossed or "translated". According to the leading modern ogham scholar, Damian McManus, the "Tree Alphabet" idea dates to

5325-402: The voyage is only a superficial similarity, since the true immrama are "exclusively ecclesiastical in inspiration" in contrast to the echtrae (including Bran's Voyage) whose central theme is the voyage to the Celtic Otherworld. However, there are also specific points of close similarity, because the immrama do "draw to a limited extent on the motifs of the native secular literate" (including

5400-483: The word ogham means letters , while the alphabet is called beith-luis-nin after the letter names of the first letters (in the same way that the modern word "alphabet" derives from the Greek letters alpha and beta ). The order of the first five letters, BLFSN, led the scholar Macalister to propose that a link between a form of the Greek alphabet used in Northern Italy in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. However, there

5475-466: Was created by Irish scholars or druids for political, military or religious reasons to provide a secret means of communication in opposition to the authorities of Roman Britain." The serious threat of invasion by the Roman Empire, which then ruled over neighbouring southern Britain, may have spurred the creation of the alphabet. Alternatively, in later centuries when the threat of invasion had receded and

5550-434: Was inspired by a form of the Greek alphabet current in Northern Italy at the time. According to this idea, the alphabet was transmitted in oral form or on wood only, until it was finally put into a permanent form on stone inscriptions in early Christian Ireland. Later scholars are largely united in rejecting this hypothesis, however, primarily because a detailed study of the letters shows that they were created specifically for

5625-448: Was with a passage that described a man and a woman playing under a bush without sin or blame. This passage in light of several others emphasises a Christian effort to create a sinless and sexless Otherworld. Immrama may have borrowed heavily from preexisting Christian genres, such as the sanctae vitae (saints' lives), the Liturgy (pilgrimage stories), and the vision tales. As early as

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