Oghamin scripts in Scotland

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The distribution of the Oghamin scripts in Scotland reflects the political situation during the 5th to 10th centuries. North of the Forth-Clyde line (ie north than today), including the Outer Hebrides , the Orkney and Shetland Islands , was Scotland under various kingdoms of the Picts split. The southwest, north of the Forth-Clyde Line, including the southern Hebrides and part of Northern Ireland, was under the control of the Gaelic Kingdom of Dalriada .

Ogham stones in Argyll and Bute

The Kings or Blackwater Cave on Arran

Originally, Scotland was only inhabited by Picts north of the Forth-Clyde Line. From the late 5th century, the south-west corner was colonized by Gaelic settlers ( Scots ) from Ireland . From the middle of the 6th century this part of Scotland belonged to the Kingdom of Dalriada.

In the Gaelic part of Scotland, only three ogham stones are preserved, which were found in close proximity to the coast. Two are classic ogham stones with Gaelic inscriptions on the edges of the stones, as are common in Ireland . The stone on the island of Gigha has the typical formula: "X, the son of Y". The stone found near Poltalloch has only one name. These stones can reflect the colonization phase of the 5th and 6th centuries.

The third Oghamstone is the fragmentary block of Lochgoilhead, which has some peculiarities. The inscription consists of the remains of an Ogham and a Latin inscription. Only two such stones are known in Scotland. The Oghamin script is not applied on one edge, but on both sides of an engraved vertical line on the surface of the stone. It has been interpreted as Gaelic and there is no Pictish decoration on the stone. This stone is probably also a product of the Gaelic settlers, although the Latin inscription indicates a later date and perhaps dates from the 7th or 8th century.

Oghamin writings have also been found on rock faces. One of them is only 4 km from the Ogham stone of Poltalloch, on a rock of the Dunadd Fortress , which has been identified as the royal seat of Dalriada. The inscription is incomplete, but parts of a Gaelic name have been recognized.

Isle of Arran

Three other inscriptions were found on the walls of the Kings or Blackwater Cave on the Isle of Arran . These unusual incisions are the only examples of cave inscriptions of this type in Great Britain , along with an unconfirmed Oghamin inscription in a cave in Fife .

Ogham stones in Pictland

The majority of Scottish ogham stones were found in the Pictish Kingdoms, along the east coast of Scotland north of the Forth, and on the Orkney and Shetlands. The greatest concentration of east coast stones was found in Aberdeenshire . There are no ogham stones in the highlands and the Outer Hebrides, although artifacts with Oghamin scripts have been found on the northern and western islands, showing that Ogham was not only used on stones. There are some columnar ogham stones in eastern Scotland with their inscription on the edge. They differ from the Gaelic stones in that the inscriptions have Pictish and no Gaelic personal names.

The majority of Oghamin scripts in the Pict areas are very different from those in Ireland and the rest of Britain.

  • On the one hand, the inscriptions are mostly applied to Pictish symbol stones or cross-slabs , where the inscription is part of a larger design.
  • Second, the Oghamin script is usually found on a vertical line on the surface of the stone, either on the main surface ( Lunnasting stone ) or on one of the two narrow sides. In a few cases the inscription also runs along the edge of the stone. The most exciting thing about the inscriptions in Eastern Scotland, Orkney and Shetland is their language. The language with its peculiar spelling, with frequent doubling or even tripling of letters, is, according to general opinion, pictorial and completely different from the Indo-European languages ​​spoken in England and Ireland. Piktisch is so poorly handed down that it is difficult to interpret the inscriptions, although it is assumed by analogy to the stones from other countries that the inscriptions primarily consist of personal names. The names of the inscriptions even seem to contain Gaelic elements. MEQQ or MAQQ probably corresponds to the Irish Maqi "son of", so it can be a Gaelic loan word in Pict or the only word that was written in Gaelic while personal names were Pictish.

There have also been attempts, particularly in the Orkney and Shetlands, to find Norse names or words in inscriptions written during Viking rule in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. The preferred example is the Bressay Stone in Shetland, which has the inscription: "CRROSCC NAHHTVVDDADDS DATTRR ANN [-] | BENISES MEQQ DDROANN [-]" (The cross of Nahhtvddadds, daughter of Ann [...], and Benises, son of Droann) wears. Katherine Forsyth thinks the language of the inscription is mixed Norse Gaelic. In particular, she identified the word DATTR as the Old Norse Dottir "daughter"; although the corresponding Gaelic word inigena "daughter" appears only once in Oghamin scripts and the Picts, who are held to be matrilineally organized, had no reason to adopt such a Nordic word.

The Oghamin scripts of Pictish Scotland can be divided into three types, according to Katherine Forsyth:

  • Type I: Texts along the edge of a stone and points for the vowels.
  • Type IIa: Texts on an artificial center line with lines for the vowels
  • Type IIb: Texts on an artificial center line with lines for the vowels and joined distal tips of the lines of the letters.
  • Type IIa / b: Texts on an artificial center line with lines for the vowels and joined distal tips of the lines of some letters.

The Oghamstones of Ireland and the Gaelic areas of England are almost exclusively Type I inscriptions, while in Pictland only two Type I inscriptions are known. Instead, the Type II inscriptions predominate, which are extremely rare outside Scotland with 5 copies.

The exact dating of the Ogham writings is uncertain, but the following chronology has been suggested:

  • Type I: 4th to 6th century
  • Type IIa: 7th to 8th centuries
  • Type IIb: 8th to 10th century

This would make the Pict inscriptions of Scotland later than those of Ireland and the rest of Great Britain. Many Scottish Type II inscriptions have interesting characteristics. Some use additional letters (Forfeda) and unusual letter shapes that could reflect influences from handwritten Ogham texts.

Ogham inscriptions on small finds

The obtained total only about ten Ogham inscriptions that are carved out of stone slabs and stone columns, but in small objects (mostly everyday objects), only four have been discovered in Scotland: the Bornais bone plate and the Bac-Mhic-Connain knife on the Outer Hebrides, and the Gurness knife and Buckquoy spindle whorl in the Orkney Islands .

Time position

It is difficult to date ogham stones, which in many cases have been moved from their original location, without any archaeological context. Few were discovered in connection with burials. The connected grave could provide clues for dating if systematic archaeological research had been carried out at the time of discovery.

In recent years two slate stones with a center line inscription have been excavated outside Scotland . These could be invaluable in fixing the date of the Type II inscriptions.

In 2006, a stone with a Type IIb inscription in connection with a burial dated 540–650 AD was found on the Isle of Man . However, for epigraphic and linguistic reasons, Katherine Forsyth dates the inscription to the 10th or 11th century (possibly 8th to 12th century) and denies any communion between the stone and the grave. However, there is not enough evidence to classify Oghamin scripts epigraphically. The Isle of Man is far from the Pict areas and the inscription does not show any of the distinctive features of Pict inscriptions such as angled consonants or additional letters, so there is no need to assume that the inscription dates from the same period as many Pict inscriptions.

In 2009 a slate fragment with a Type IIa inscription was found on the Penwith peninsula in Cornwall but no attempt was made to investigate the archaeological context or to find any other fragments of the inscription. The stone is an important piece of evidence that does not limit the use of centerline inscriptions to Scotland.

Due to the Isle of Man and Penwith inscriptions, it is possible to propose that the centerline inscriptions and the binding of the Oghams were developed outside Scotland during the 6th and 7th centuries.

See also

Ogham stones of Wales

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Matrilinearity (Latin "in the line of the mother": maternal line) or maternal line refers to the passing on and inheritance of social characteristics and property exclusively through the female line from mothers to daughters.
  2. ↑ Mentions and descriptions e.g. B. by Donal B. Buchanan , Katherine Stuart Forsyth , Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister , Barry Raftery
  3. ↑ Connelly, pp. 65-67

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