DeDanaan

Ogham (Old Irish Ogam, from Middle Irish ogom, ogum) was an alphabet used primarily to represent Gaelic languages that was probably often written in wood in early times. The main flowering of the use of “classical” Ogham in stone seems to be 5th–6th century AD. Monumental Ogham inscriptions are found in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, and the Isle of Man, mainly employed as territorial markers and memorials. The more ancient examples are standing stones, script being carved into the edge (droim or faobhar) of the stone, which forms a stemline against which individual characters are cut. Text is read beginning from the bottom left-hand side of a stone, continuing upward, across the top and down the right-hand side in the case of long inscriptions. Inscriptions written on stemlines cut into the face of the stone, instead of along its edge, are known as “scholastic”, and are of a later date (post 7th century). Notes were also commonly written in Ogham in manuscripts down to the sixteenth century.

Ogham Alphabet

Some people have theorized that Ogham could also be used as a secret gestural cypher, because of its structure: the fingers of one hand, using the nose or shin or any other “straight” edge as a stemline could, it is suggested, be used to signal individual Ogham letters, which, it is asserted, could be readily read by an Ogham practitioner. There doesn’t appear to be any evidence to support this theory.

The Ogham alphabet consists of twenty-five distinct characters (feda), the first twenty of which are considered to be primary, the last five (forfeda) supplementary. The four primary series are called aicmí (plural of aicme “family”). Each aicme was named after its first character (Aicme Beithe, Aicme hÚatha, Aicme Muine, Aicme Ailme, “the B Group”, “the H Group”, “the M Group”, “the A Group”). Some of the names and all of the values of the forfeda are open to question.

Ogham is sometimes referred to as the “Celtic Tree Alphabet“.

Beith (BEH), birch - The silver birch (Betula pendula Roth)
Luis (LWEESH), rowan - The rowan, or mountain ash (Sorbus aucuparia L.)
Fearn (FAIR-n), alder - The common alder (Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertner)
Sail (SAHL), willow - 60+ types of willow (Salicaceae; Salix sp.)
Nion (NEE-uhn), ash - the common ash (Fraxinus excelsior L.)
Uath or hÚath (OO-ah), hawthorn - The common hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna Jacq.)
Dair (DAH-r), oak - The great oak (Quercus robur L.)
Tinne (CHIN-yuh), holly - The holly (Ilex aquifolium L.) or holly oak (Quercus ilex L.)
Coll (CULL), hazel - The hazel (Corylus avellana L)
Ceirt (KAIRT), apple - The European crabapple (Malus sylvestris Miller)
Muin (MUHN, like “foot”), vine - The grape (Vitis vinifera L.)
Gort (GORT), ivy - Ivy (Hedera helix L.)
nGéadal or Ngetal (NYEH-dl), reed - The common reed (Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steudel)
Straif (STRAHF), blackthorn - The blackthorn (Prunus spinosa L.), sloe
Ruis (RWEESH), elder - The common elder (Sambucus nigra L.)
Ailm (AHL-m), silver fir - The silver fir (Abies alba Miller)
Onn (UHN), furze - Furze, or gorse (Ulex europaeus L.)
Úr (OOR), heather - Heather (Calluna vulgaris (L.) Hull)
Eadhadh (EH-wah), poplar - The aspen (Populus tremula L.)
Iodhadh (EE-wah), yew - The yew (Taxus baccata L.)

Primitive Irish is the oldest known form of the Irish language, known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Britain up to about the 4th century.

Transcribed Ogham inscriptions show Primitive Irish to be Old Celtic in character, lacking the letter P, and in morphology and inflections similar to Gaulish, Latin, Classical Greek or Sanskrit. It has few of the distinctive characteristics of modern Irish and is difficult to recognise as a form of Irish.

By contrast, Old Irish, written from the 6th century on, is recognisably Irish, complete with initial mutations, distinct “broad” and “slender” consonants, the letter P, consonant clusters created by the loss of unstressed syllables, along with a number of significant vowel and consonant changes.

Ages of Man

The Ages of Man are the stages of human existence on the Earth according to Classical mythology.

In his Works and Days, the Boeotian poet Hesiod described Five Ages of Man:

* The Golden Age - This took place during the reign of Cronus. Peace and harmony prevailed during this age. Humans did not grow old, but died peacefully. Spring was eternal and people were fed on acorns from a great oak as well as wild fruits and honey that dripped from the trees. This race eventually died out.
* The Silver Age - These people lived for one hundred years as children without growing up, then they suddenly aged and died. Zeus destroyed these people because of their impiety.
* The Bronze Age - These humans were fierce and warlike and their tools and implements were made of bronze. They destroyed one another in wars.
* The Heroic Age - In this period lived noble demigods and heroes. This race of humans died and went to Elysium.
* The Iron Age - This is the current age where humans bicker and fight, and have to struggle to eke out their existence. Zeus will someday destroy this race of humans. In Roman literature the Iron Age is commonly regarded as a time of decline from the great literature and culture of the Heroic age, beginning after the taking of Rome by the Goths, 410 AD. Through Greek and Assyrian oral tradition iron production was believed to have begun with the discovery of iron near the mineral-rich region north of Assyria.

In Metamorphoses, Ovid followed a similar tradition, translated into Roman terms. Ovid described Four Ages of Man: Golden, Silver, Brazen, and Iron.

These mythological ages are sometimes associated with historical timelines. In particular, the Bronze Age and Iron Age are well-known eras in archaeology, which may have some relation to the mythology.

Marija Gimbutas

Marija Gimbutas (Vilnius, Lithuania January 23, 1921 – Los Angeles February 2, 1994) researched the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of “Old Europe”, a term she introduced, in works published between 1946 and 1971, that opened new views by combining traditional spadework, linguistics and mythology.

A professor of Archaeology at UCLA from 1963 to 1989, she researched and documented an enormous amount of archaeological findings and by happenstance dug deeper, below the known surface to unearth an overwhelming number of art and daily life objects of Neolithic cultures of Europe.

Gimbutas earned a reputation as a world-class specialist on the Indo-European Bronze Age as well as on Lithuanian folk art and the prehistory of the Balts and the Slavs, partly summed up in the definitive Bronze Age Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe (1965), but she gained unexpected fame with her last three books: Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 B.C.: Myths, and Cult Images (1974), The Language of the Goddess (1989) — which inspired an exhibition in Wiesbaden, 1993/94 — and her final book The Civilization of the Goddess (1991 - out of print), which presented an overview of her speculations about Neolithic cultures across Europe: housing patterns, social structure, art, religion and the nature of literacy. The book advanced what she saw as the differences between the Old European system, which she considered goddess-centered, and the Bronze Age Indo-European patriarchal cultural elements, which she claimed fused to form the classical European societies.

In her work Gimbutas reinterpreted European prehistory in light of her backgrounds in linguistics, ethnology, and the history of religions and challenged many traditional assumptions about the beginnings of European civilization. Joseph Campbell and Ashley Montagu each compared Marija Gimbutas’ output to the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Joan Marler has written,

“Although it is considered improper in mainstream archaeology to interpret the ideology of prehistoric societies, it became obvious to Marija that every aspect of Old European life expressed a sophisticated religious symbolism. She, therefore, devoted herself to an exhaustive study of Neolithic images and symbols to discover their social and mythological significance. To accomplish this it was necessary to widen the scope of descriptive archaeology to include linguistics, mythology, comparative religions and the study of historical records. She called this interdisciplinary approach archaeomythology.”

Marija Gimbutas arrived in the United States as a refugee from Lithuania in 1949 after earning a PhD in archaeology in 1946 at Tübingen, though she never forgot her Lithuanian heritage. She began immediately at Harvard University, translating Eastern European archaeological texts, and becoming a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. In 1955 she was made a Fellow of Harvard’s Peabody Museum.

In 1956 Gimbutas introduced her “Kurgan hypothesis” combining archaeology of the distinctive burial mounds called “Kurgans” with linguistics to unravel the problem of the origins of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples, whom she named “Kurgans” and to trace their migrations into Europe. This hypothesis, and the act of bridging the disciplines, has had a significant impact on Indo-European research. Marija Gimbutas directed major excavations of Neolithic sites in southeast Europe between 1967 and 1980.

Gimbutas’ forcefully expressed and speculative theories have been extended and embraced by a number of authors in the Neopagan movement, although her conclusions are generally considered highly speculative. Her critics instance grave goods as characterizing more familiar Neolithic gender roles, note early fortifications and criticize her emphasis on the few female figures among many male or asexual figures. Andrew Fleming, “The Myth of the Mother Goddess,” (World Archaeology 1969) denied that Neolithic spirals, circles, and dots were symbols for eyes, that eyes, faces, and genderless figures were symbols of a female, or that female figures were symbols of a goddess. Peter Ucko even speculated that fertility figures were Neolithic dolls.

Unlike some of her enthusiastic followers, Gimbutas did not identify the diverse and complex Paleolithic and Neolithic female representations she recognized as a single universal Mother Goddess, but as a range of female deities: snake goddess, bee goddess, bird goddess, mountain goddess, Mistress of the Animals, etc. Her attempts at deciphering Neolithic signs as ideograms, in The Language of the Goddess (1989), received the stiffest resistance in her field of all her speculations.

The Fate of the Children of Lir
Translated and Adapted by Lady Gregory

Now at the time when the Tuatha de Danaan chose a king for themselves after the battle of Tailltin, and Lir heard the kingship was given to Bodb Dearg, it did not please him, and he left the gathering without leave and with no word to any one; for he thought it was he himself had a right to be made king. But if he went away himself, Bodb was given the kingship none the less, for not one of the five begrudged it to him but only Lir. And it is what they determined, to follow after Lir, and to burn down his house, and to attack himself with spear and sword, on account of his not giving obedience to the king they had chosen. “We will not do that,” said Bodb Dearg, “for that man would defend any place he is in; and besides that,” he said, “I am none the less king over the Tuatha de Danaan, although he does not submit to me.”

All went on like that for a good while, but at last a great misfortune came on Lir, for his wife died from him after a sickness of three nights. And that came very hard on Lir, and there was heaviness on his mind after her. And there was great talk of the death of that woman in her own time.

And the news of it was told all through Ireland, and it came to the house of Bodb, and the best of the Men of Dea were with him at that time. And Bodb said: “If Lir had a mind for it,” he said, “my help and my friendship would be good for him now, since his wife is not living to him. For I have here with me the three young girls of the best shape, and the best appearance, and the best name in all Ireland, Aobh, Aoife, and Ailbhe, the three daughters of Oilell of Aran, my own three nurslings.” The Men of Dea said then it was a good thought he had, and that what he said was true.

Messages and messengers were sent then from Bodb Dearg to the place Lir was, to say that if he had a mind to join with the Son of the Dagda and to acknowledge his lordship, he would give him a foster-child of his foster-children. And Lir thought well of the offer, and he set out on the morrow with fifty chariots from Sidhe Fionnachaidh; and he went by every short way till he came to Bodb’s dwelling-place at Loch Dearg, and there was a welcome before him there, and all the people were merry and pleasant before him, and he and his people got good attendance that night. (Continued)

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Cashel, Caiseal : (An Caisleán in Irish, meaning “the castle”) Stone-walled ring forts or cashels are essentially the same as Raths except that they are surrounded by drystone walls rather than earthen embankments. There are even a few sites on which both techniques are used. Cashels are more frequently found in the west of Ireland where stone is more easily acquired and excavation in the stony earth is correspondingly more difficult. A ráth (anglicised rath), was made of earth, caiseal (northwestern Ireland, anglicised cashel) and cathair (southwestern Ireland) were built of stone.

In a cattle-dominated society it is generally argued that the purpose of the ringfort was to provide protection to a small community and their livestock during a ‘hit and run’ raid for cattle. The idea being that the ringfort would provide adequate defense for a small period of time. Early Christian texts stress the importance and role of the banks in signifying nobility, kingship and authority. This relationship can be quite clearly seen in the following extract from the Críth Gablach:

What is the due of a king who is always in residence at the head of his tuath? Seven score feet of perfect feet are the measure of his stockade on every side. Seven feet are the thickness of its earthwork, and twelve feet its depth. It is then that he is a king, when ramparts of vassalage surround him. What is the rampart of vassalage? Twelve feet are the breadth of its opening and its depth and its measure towards the stockade. Thirty feet are its measure outwardly.

As can be seen from the above text, the relationship between the banks of a ringfort and vassalage is quite clear. With the argument being that the more elaborate the ringfort, usually in the forms of multiple outlying banks, the higher of the status of the occupant.

Cairn : (Middle English; cárne, from Scottish Gaelic; cárn, from Old Irish) a manmade pile of stones. They are nearly always in uplands, on moors or mountain tops. In prehistoric times it was usually erected over a burial. A barrow is sometimes called a cairn. They are built for several purposes:

*To mark a path across stony or barren terrain, and across glaciers.
*To mark the summit of a mountain.
*To mark a burial site, or in commemoration of the dead.
*Some are also merely sites where a farmer has removed large amounts of stone from a field.

Additionally cairns have been used to commemorate all kinds of events from sites of battles to places where a cart has tipped over.

They vary from loose, small piles of stones to elaborate feats of engineering. In some places, games are regularly held to find out who can build the most beautiful cairn. The word can take in various types of hill, and natural stone piles. Naturally, due to the idea’s simplicity, cairns can be found all over the world in alpine or mountainous regions.

The present-day traditions of building cairns emerged from the Bronze Age habit of putting cists into cairns, which would be situated in conspicuous positions, often on the skyline above the village of the deceased. These cairns are still to be found, but are often much bigger than modern day ones in Scotland.

Tumulus : A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or kurgans and can be found throughout much of the world. A tumulus composed largely or entirely of stones is usually referred to as a cairn.

The method of inhumation may involve a cist, a mortuary enclosure, a mortuary house or a chamber tomb. Examples of barrows include Duggleby Howe and Maes Howe.

Dún : (dOOn) Dún comes from the Brythonic Din and Gaelic Dún, meaning fort, and is now used as a general term for small stone-built strongholds, enclosures or roundhouses in Scotland, as a sub-group of hill forts. In some areas they seem to have been built on any suitable crag or hillock, particularly south of the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth down across the border into Northumberland.

Dúns appear to have arrived with the Brythonic Celts in about the 7th century BC, associated with their Iron age culture of warrior tribes and petty chieftains. Early Dúns had near vertical ramparts constructed of stone laced with timber, and where this was set on fire (accidentally or on purpose) it forms the vitrified forts where stones have been partly melted, an effect that is still clearly visible. Use of Dúns continued in some cases into the medieval period.

The word in its original sense appears in many place names, and can include fortifications of all sizes and types, for example Din Eidyn, in Gaelic Dún Éideann which the Angles (Anglos) renamed Edinburgh, and the Broch Dun Telve in Glenelg.

Crannog : (Irish Gaelic - crannóg, wooden structure, pole, from Middle Irish; crannóc, from Old Irish; from crann = tree) Prehistoric habitation built over the shallow waters of a lake shore or a marsh, usually erected on pile-supported platforms, but sometimes on artificial mounds. Crannogs were used for a settlement and usually linked to shore with a timber gangway or stone causeway. Such a site afforded easy access to a varied food supply by the availability of fish, marsh fowl, and good crop lands. Remains of Bronze Age lake dwellings were discovered in Britain, Ireland, and central Europe.