Gone Medieval - Ogham: A Forgotten Medieval Alphabet

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Across the world, a wide range of writing systems developed in diverse societies and Medieval Europe was no different. Apart from the Latin alphabet, many will be familiar with the use of runes. But did you know that in Ireland and Britain, right at the start of the Medieval period, a different alphabet emerged by the name of Ogham? To find out more about this fascinating script, Dr. Cat Jarman is joined by Professor Katherine Forsyth and Dr. Nora White who are deeply immersed in research into this unique alphabet and writing system. Read more about their project, here >The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg. For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >.For your chance to win five historical non-fiction books (including a signed copy of Dan Snow's On This Day in History), please fill out this short survey > If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. Across the world, different writing systems have developed for use by different society and the medieval world was no different, nor was northwestern Europe. Apart from the Latin alphabet, most of you will be familiar with the use of runes, but did you know that in Ireland and Britain, right at the start of the early medieval period, a different alphabet emerged by the name of Oham. Now, to tell me all about this today, I'm delighted to have two guests with me. I've got

Professor Catherine Forsyth from the University of Glasgow and Dr. Nora White from Maynooth University, who are both working on a brand new research project into this alphabet and writing system, and they're here to tell me all about it. So welcome to you both, and thank you so much for joining me today. Hi, it's good to be here. So first of all, though, I think we just have to start, and we did have a little chat just before we pressed the big record button here about pronunciation, because listeners might have sort of the first time they've heard of this popping up on the screen and seeing what looks like it should be pronounced Ogum, but that is not the correct pronunciation. I wonder, Catherine, can you just tell me, how should we pronounce this word,

and why? The pronunciation that's most common in Ireland, I would say, is Ome, so that's like the modern Irish pronunciation. but for people who are medievalists, a sort of medieval pronunciation, or early medieval pronunciation would be ochem. So those are the two authentic pronunciations that are acceptable, but a lot of people just say ogam. When I first started out 30 years ago, I said ogam,

and I've transitioned to oom. So I try and say oom, but the odd ogam comes in. Okay, good, well, that's great. So we've cleared that up, first of all. So I wondered, just to start off with, could you give us some basics? What exactly is it? People are maybe familiar with runes.

So Ome is a bit like that. It's a writing system or an alphabet that was invented probably in the late Roman period, maybe in the third or fourth century, by people who are beyond the edge of the Roman Empire but are nonetheless familiar with literacy in Rome and invent their own alphabet to represent the sounds of their own language. So it's a writing system or a script. And we know about it because it was used for inscriptions and the earliest of those dates from about the 5th century on. Do we have any idea why? Is it this contact? Is it because they're seeing writing systems being used elsewhere and wanting to develop their own, do you think? Or do we have any knowledge on that at all? That's one of the things that we're trying to investigate in our project. It's a big question. And I think many of the reasons why runes were invented probably apply also to why Ome was invented. It's very unusual in that it's carved in three dimensions. And so if you've ever seen Ome, it looks like a barcode. It's just a series of parallel lines that are arranged.

relative to a sort of stem line, if you like, either above it or below it or across it or on it, and you have between one and five strokes. So it just looks like a bundle of parallel lines, but in fact it's an alphabet to write text. So that was invented to write on sticks. So in a society without papyrus or wax tablets or anything like that, it's very useful for carving little short messages. But it's probably more to do with cultural identity and wanting to have something that was special to them. But as I say, that's something we're hoping to explore in our project. Is it a writing system that we can fully decipher? Do we completely understand what these symbols mean? We do, because knowledge of oom never died out. Its heyday was in the early

middle ages, but it continued in use throughout the later mid-agedes and into the early modern period. And indeed, the latest oms that we're looking at date from the 19th century. So there's an overlap with the interest in antiquarian tradition. So we have manuscripts. that explain the key. So there's no problem about understanding the lettering. So I know that you two have got quite different regional expertise when it comes to studying this. So we'll get onto that a little bit later on the regionality of it. But Nora, so I wanted to ask you, because you work on the early Irish material. What language are they using and representing in that first use of it? Our earliest inscriptions found in Ireland and some in Wales as well, dating from, as Catherine

mentioned, the fifth century. Some maybe even as early as, is laid forth. It's quite difficult to date the inscriptions. But the important thing is that they are in a very early form of Irish and it used to be called primitive Irish, but it's not exactly a great term. It represents the old Indo-European stage of these early languages. And the development of the language in the inscriptions in Ome, which continued until the 7th century, it saw huge changes and developments in the language and by the 7th century it had become a modern if you like insular Celtic language, old Irish

so it's hugely important from that point of view from the linguist point of view. It just shows the early stages of the language and it's quite rare in that respect. Yeah so presumably we don't have a record so much of that language at that point in time. I've heard it said that the difference between the language recorded

the earliest oam inscriptions in the fourth of fifth century and the last ones in the seventh century the difference is bigger than the difference between old english and modern english so there's a massive linguistic change that would have sounded completely different people wouldn't have been able really to understand the old language it was so different and the wonderful thing about home is that we see that change happening through the inscriptions that the only linguistic evidence that we have really for that period so they're hugely important not just for understanding the history of Irish, but for the Celtic family more generally, and as Nora said, for Indo-European. So the linguists get very excited about them. The linguists have led the study

of Ulm up until quite recently. And that's one of the things that the project is doing, as well as doing linguistics, also looking from a kind of archaeological and historical perspective as well, anthropological perspective. So what do these earliest, especially those earliest inscriptions, what do they say, are they quite, like, runes tend to be very, very brief and very specific, at least in my part of the world, the Viking territories. What about these? What do those earliest inscriptions actually talk about? It's the same really.

They're very brief, and they are predominantly names, names of individuals, personal names, and kin group names. You only very occasionally find information. There are only a handful less, three or four examples of, for example, a station in life. There's one who is named as a priest, another a poet. But generally, well, talking about the Irish material, its names predominantly. Which is quite unique, isn't it, for that time in history? But then, of course,

over time, it moves out of Ireland as well. Catherine, you're mainly specialising on Britain, aren't you, in the evidence? Where do we find it in Britain? Probably almost a third of all the surviving home is found outside the island of Ireland. And it was brought by Irish settlers who came and settled in Western Britain in parts of Wales and Devon Cornwall and in the Isle of Man. And it also was introduced into Scotland, but this happened very early. So some of the earliest oms that we have come from Britain. So they were in there near the beginning of the tradition. But it got picked up in Scotland and continued to be used there. And we have inscriptions on Pictish carved stones and cross slabs right on up until the 10th century.

And it also seems to have been of interest to Viking settlers because they have their own runic tradition. In Scotland, they encountered Ome. And so we have a couple of examples where we've got both from the same place, and there's a bit of influence back and forth between the different scripts. That's so fascinating, because as you mentioned briefly a bit earlier on, that when it first developed, he might have had social, cultural importance. Presumably that's the same sort of thing we're seeing, then, when people are taking this with them and spreading.

That's a kind of cultural statement or something along those lines, is it? Latin literacy, or Latin alphabet literacy, is very strongly associated with the church and with manuscripts and a sort of high investment literacy, if you like, because you need to have vellum or wax tablets or things like that. You need to learn the Latin language. It's much more difficult. Whereas Oom, all you need is a knife and a stick.

And so I think amongst ordinary people, secular people, knowledge of Ome was more widespread. I'm not saying everybody knew how to write in Ome, but I think we have occasionally domestic objects, knife handles, a spindle whirle, a comb, a weaving implement, for instance, that have OAM inscriptions on them, which suggests that there was a level of literacy. So I think one of the reasons for using OM on monuments, certainly in Scotland,

was that ordinary people could read them. If you wanted to get your message across and you wanted people to read it, then if you wrote it in OME, you get a wider readership. Fantastic. So you mentioned using it on wood, of course. How good is preservation from that early period? Do we have a lot of sticks? I mean, normally this is the big problem.

and we don't get wooden items preserved. Do we have many at all from the earliest stages, little sort of message sticks or anything like that? Very few. We have this idea that it originated on wood is based on the form of the script. You don't have any direct examples. It's easy to carve on wood.

It's designed to be carved on wood. The earliest examples we have are on stone. It's really hard to carve it on stone. It's not designed for that purpose. That's a secondary purpose. In terms of the other objects, there are not very many of them. a dozen or something, but they're very widespread

geographically, so they're really probably just the tip of the iceberg. We've also got a couple of examples of graffiti in Ome, written on cave walls or other places like that, which again suggests that there was a certain degree of sort of popular knowledge of the Ome script.

So it's very much like Roons to me, we get the same sort of uses, don't we? In many ways it's very similar to runes, but runic literacy I think was more widespread than Ome literacy, but there are many parallels between the two script systems. Hi there. I'm Don Wildman, host of the new podcast American History Hit. Twice a week, I'll be exploring stories from America's past to help us understand the United States of today. Join me as I head back in time to witness Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Independence. Head to the battlefields during the Civil War. Visit Chief Poiton as he prepares for war with English colonists. Tour Central Park before it was Central Park. And a city in Tennessee, which helped build the atomic bomb.

From famous battlefields to secret cities, from familiar names to lesser-known events, I'll speak with leading experts from across the United States and beyond to bring American history to life. Join me every Monday and Thursday for American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. So let's move on then to this new project, because this is all of it, a very interesting background,

but you're now bringing in some new, modern and digital methods, especially. Tell me about this new projects that you're part of and what you're trying to achieve with it. Okay, maybe I should start by saying where it all started, which was actually a project in Ireland that I worked on. First, the idea to use 3D technology to record and to visualize Ome, it started at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies, in Ireland. Back around 2010, we started using 3D technology, 3D scanning and later on a bit of photogrammetry. which is a 3D method using photography. So we started using this. I suppose the main reason was because of the nature of home

that it's a three-dimensional script. It wraps around the stone. So it made sense to visualize it in 3D. And also recording in 3D, of course, you can strip away the colour and the texture of the stone and it helps to actually read the inscriptions. So this started back in 2010. We had a limited amount of funding.

We got some funding from the Department of Culture Heritage and the Gailtock in Ireland to prioritise ome stones in state care. I think we were 73 originally on that list, but we digitised, I think, 160 in total, and they made them available then online on a dedicated website, and that was basically the Omen 3D project. But funding dried up, and this was where we started to look for extra funding,

and this opportunity came up then to work and to collaborate with others like Catherine in Scotland on a bigger project. And as Catherine said earlier, not just looking at home in one period and in one area, but the entirety of the own script. So it's not so much about the certain period

or the language or anything else. It's more about the script and about the totality of the script and its use. This is so fascinating. I do love all these new methods. So when you say you do 3D scanning and then you put them into databases, so it's a part of it is presumably to improve access

so that everyone involved or researching it can look at them. But does it also, mean that you can see parts that you might previously have missed, for example, as part of the scanning process? Yes, absolutely. When you go to record a stone, you actually do end up looking at it in a different way and looking at it much more closely and in much more detail than you might have otherwise. And then when you're actually doing the processing of the stone now, and I'm not an expert in that area, but I have tried a little bit myself. You really get into the materiality and the physicality of the material that's used that's inscribed on and the actual

details involved. So it certainly does help to focus in on the inscription and to find things that you maybe otherwise wouldn't see. Do you say that's the sort of main benefit of using these digital methods or are there other things that are really adding to your skill set and abilities from using this approach? Yes, it's that and it's also accessibility that you can make the 3D models and the digital images available online so that people can actually see for themselves a problem with a lot of just thinking of the Ome inscriptions in particular in Ireland. A lot of them are in very remote locations, are they on private land, or they're in collections, museum collections and they're not on display. So people don't actually get to see them. And a lot of

people don't even know, you know, that they're in their area or that they were moved from their area years ago, but they came from their area. So it's just making them more accessible, letting people know that they're there and what was actually written and what language it's in, all about the script. So just accessibility is a major part of it. But also, on this project, we're going a bit further than just recording them in 3D. We're actually going to analyze data using different techniques. We're also using RTI, which is reflectance, transformation, imaging, which again helps to visualize better the inscription and to maybe to see things that you can't see with the naked eye so easily. So it's using the technology to help us read the

inscriptions because some of them are very faint or very weathered and it can be very difficult to actually read them. I mean, it sounds fantastic. I can't wait to actually dig into this myself and have a little look. Just going back a little bit to some of the other things that you were trying to get at. So, Catherine, you mentioned a little bit earlier some of the sort of research questions. Can you tell me a little bit more about what sort of answers you hope you might get out of this project? One of the things that we're doing with these digital models is a technique that's called groove analysis, which was actually pioneered by a Swedish researcher, Lila Kitzlaarfeld, for use on runestones.

and our colleague Megan Kasten has been developing this for use on oemstones. And it's based on the knowledge that any kind of habitual action like carving, individual carvers will have a rhythm that is distinctively theirs. They're not aware that they're doing it, but you can see it in the stone and this can be measured. And so you can analyse the incised line that they've made on the stone and look at the rhythm of the carving, of the strikes against it. And so we're using this technique to work out if different bits of inscription have been done by the same person or been done by different bits. So this is very useful. So for instance, a small number of ombstones have crosses on.

So the question is, which came first? And by using this technique, we can see, were they done by the same person, where they're done by different people? So that's an example of using the digital technology. That's fantastic. And then you really get into the individuals there and religious. and all sorts of contacts really. Have you had any initial results on that yet on any of the particular stones? Or is it all work in progress? It takes a lot of effort to make these digital models and then to analyse them. It's quite hard mass.

But we've had a lot of fun gathering the data for these. We had a field trip earlier this year to Northern Ireland, which involved going to various sites to record stones, including down into a suitorrain. Many of these stones are preserved because they were built into, underground structures. That's one of the benefits of doing the 3D models, is that these places are not open to the public, but by making the models, then people can see the stones and do their own research on them. That sounds fantastic, and I love this recording these big 3D

structures, but you also mentioned manuscripts earlier on and texts, how the script is actually used for those as well. What's your approach to working with those then? Yeah. Although OM stopped being used for inscriptions in the sort of 10th 11th century, We do have examples after that written in manuscripts. It became a sort of focus of learned interest and also for cryptography, because Ome, just by its nature, is really good for secret codes and things like that. And so they got very into that in the later Middle Ages and came up with all kinds of mad things that you could do with Ome for writing secret messages. And that's a particular interest of one of our colleagues on the team, Deborah Hayden,

who's an expert on manuscripts and medical manuscripts. and she's found a remarkable number of examples of oam being used for little phrases or words in discussions. Sometimes if it's rude words or something like that, they'll maybe just put it in Ome because then it's a bit more kind of private or if there's sort of special words that you say to effect a cure, then they might write that in Ome. And in fact, the most modern thing that we're looking at is a manuscript that was written in 1850 and it's about 50 pages long and it's written entirely in Ome. It's the only thing that we have everywhere else. Ome is just a word or a phrase or a short bit, but this whole thing is written in Ome and it's charms. So this was written in Ireland and it's actually

ended up in a library in Scotland. The National Library of Scotland called it today and they've kindly digitised it and so we're going to be able to include that in our project as well. That's fantastic. I love that. So does that suggest that in the more recent periods, it's people are sort of seeing it because it's slightly unusual, slightly old that they're almost wanting to give it slightly sort of mythical or magical purposes or uses? Is there anything like that in it? Even if that's just made up?

I think so. I think it developed like that. I'm not sure that was necessarily present from the beginning. The earliest examples are completely straightforward. There's nothing cryptic about them. But in the later period people start messing around with it. And of course today in Ireland we see it in use

in branding, company logos, jewelry, tattoos. Loads of people have own tattoos. In fact, that's one of the things that we're hoping to do on the project is write a little handbook for people who want to get an oom tattoo so that they spell it right. That sounds very useful. Yes, I know nothing about ruins myself, but studying the Vikings, because I always get questioned about that. No, indeed. Norah and I frequently get queries from the public, so we decided the best thing to do was write a book about this. So if any of your listeners

want to share their own tattoos, then they might like to look at our project website and get in touch with us on social media. Show us your own. We'd love to see it. Because actually, what is really interesting with something like this and what you're doing and bringing out to everyone is you're taking that heritage and that history and also looking at the relevance of it today to different people and different groups. I mean, is this something quite recent?

It's sort of in the last few years or has that interest in it been around quite a long time, do you think? I think the antiquarians were interested in it from the end of the 18th century, the first sort of antiquarian articles about it, and antiquarians offered local people money if they could find oomstones. Many of them were discovered, maybe a few of them were faked. That's again something that we're going to look at in our project. And so antiquarian interest has grown and then archaeological interest, but I think it's really only in the last couple of decades. Nora would know better. It's interesting that it's not something that's known about in

Britain so much, even though that it was used in Britain, whereas the general public, I would say, in Ireland is much more familiar with Ome. Yeah, I think most people that you would talk to today, they will say, oh yeah, I remember learning something about that in primary school. But after that, they never heard about it anymore. Even though everybody's got a vague idea

of Ome, most people have never actually seen an Ome Stone or they don't know exactly what it is. They just know it's some old Irish writing and that's about it. We are spreading the word a bit, I think, because I am getting more and more emails from people looking for Ome tattoos and wanting to know more.

I think certainly since the project started last year, people are getting really interested. And you can see it on social media and that we're really getting a lot of interest in the project. So it's great. We declared an international Day of Ome this year on the 8th of July. And we had fantastic response on social media from all over the world. Tune in next July for the second International Day of Ome. Yes, that's how I came across your project as well. But what do you think is the sort of biggest impact that,

a project like yours and a better understanding of OEM in general can give us about the periods we're studying? I think if you ask different people, you'll get a different answer. If you ask the other member of our team, Dr. David, Professor Davosst Davich Stifter, he'll say the linguistic information, this is what's most important. I think for people who come from areas where there are own inscriptions that have maybe been taken away to a museum far away, then they'll say, we get to see our own in context with all the others. I think for archaeologists or for historians, it's a really important body of evidence for understanding

this completely pivotal period in history where this transition from prehistoric society to an early medieval one, one in which Christianity comes in, all the ramifications of the collapse of the Roman Empire, all of that, we see that impact of that through the ome stone. So for historians and archaeologists, it's very important.

And then for modern Irish people and for others who are interested in the script, it's something that's part of our collective heritage, and it's something that we can take forward and that can be a living tradition, something that's authentic and grounded in the material, but adapted for modern use. So don't forget everyone out there listening. If you have a tattoo already, if you're about to get one, do please share your own with the team. We'd love to see them, so get in touch.

How can they get hold of you and find out more and get in touch on social media and things? So if people are engaging on social media, we encourage them to use the hashtag, hashtag OG underscore H underscore AM. So that covers both pronunciations, O monogam and both spellings. So hashtag OG underscore 8 underscore AM. So get in touch. Fantastic. Well, hopefully we'll get inundated with pictures and ideas.

We'll have a look. Brilliant. Well, thank you both so much, Catherine and Nora, for joining me in the studio today. Thanks so much. Brilliant. To hear so much about it, and I can't wait to see the progress of the project. So if you're listening to this, do check it out. Go to those links and you can find out more. And thank you all so much for listening to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. And don't forget that you can subscribe to our Medieval Monday's newsletter, so you get brand new medieval information and special

offers and all sorts of interesting things directly into your inbox every Monday morning. Just look in the episode notes of where you found this podcast for instructions for how to do that. Thank you so much again and we hope to have you with us again next time.